#ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. DELICIOUS COMPOSITION AND FEATURES THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD

[vicaesco]

10 of ‘17

I usually like to release my top ten lists on the night before the Oscars. Last year, I was a few weeks late because I struggled to think of ten films that really made an impact on me. This year, I had a decent top ten by the time we hit December.

Of course, so many incredible films were released in that final month that I’m actually heartbroken over the films I’m leaving out. There’s no Baby Driver, The Shape of Water, The Post, Lady Bird, I, Tonya, The Disaster Artist, Logan Lucky, Good Time, or The Beguiled. They’re all movies that had a spot in here at some point but I only have 10 spaces. It’s a testament to how strong 2017 was in terms of movies and even then, there’s so many movies I did not see. I’d still like to see A Ghost Story which looks like it could have a place here but until then, here are my ten favorite movies of 2017.

1. Call Me By Your Name - dir. Luca Guadagnino - A poem, a portrait, a photograph, a song. Call Me By Your Name perfectly captures that summer romance you thought was going to last forever. It’s beautifully crafted in it’s composition, in it’s performances, in it’s setting, in it’s emotions, and in it’s time. I have not stopped thinking about Elio and Oliver since I saw this. Call Me By Your Name is not just one of my favorite movies of the year but one of my favorites of all time.

On a side note, Michael Stuhlbarg delivers a monologue that will literally save lives.

2. Phantom Thread - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson - There’s a look that Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis share with one another about ten minutes into the film that absolutely hooked me in.  For a career as varied as Anderson’s, he delivers a film unlike anything he’s ever done before. Restrained in it’s content and execution, Phantom Thread is a delicate, luscious treat. I could’ve easily watched another two hours of this.

3. Mother! - dir. Darren Aronofsky - Mother is punk rock filmmaking. This is a filmmaker who’s screaming. He’s pissed off about some of the same things that I’m pissed off about and he turned it into a dizzying, horrific, hilarious, and ultimately cathartic film.

4. The Killing of a Sacred Deer - dir. Yorgos Lanthimos - The Killing of a Sacred Deer occupies the same cold, idiosyncratic world that Lanthimos past films do. It’s just as absurd as The Lobster but it’s absurdity lies in a very twisted, warped worldview. It’s not an easy film to get through but it’s an incredibly rewarding one. It’s a cruel, detached film and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

5. Get Out - dir. Jordan Peele - There’s nothing I can say about Get Out that hasn’t already been said. I’m also nowhere near intelligent enough to add something new to it’s discussion on race. What I can say though is that horror is a director’s genre and Jordan Peele proves to be a master in his first outing. A smart, well-crafted thriller with some of the biggest laughs of the year, Get Out may very well be the movie that defines 2017.

6. Dunkirk - dir. Christopher Nolan - Christopher Nolan’s love of Terrence Malick finally shows. Nolan steps out of his comfort zone to deliver the most primal form of cinema that can be offered. There’s no emotion, there’s no heroics, just the confusion and horror of knowing your only one wrong step from the end. This is Christopher Nolan’s best film, showing he’s at his best when he does less. 

7. The Florida Project - dir. Sean Baker - The Florida Project is a very raw, ugly, difficult film made even more painful by the fact that it’s real. It broke my heart in a way that no other film has in quite a while. I can not think about the final moment without shedding a tear, in fact I’m shedding one as I write this. What really makes this shine is the care and love that Baker treats his characters with. Never looking down at them and giving them just enough to make their situation bearable. I love this movie.

8. Blade Runner 2049 - dir. Denis Villeneuve - Blade Runner 2049 not only builds upon the world and the philosophies of it’s predecessor but it stands tall on it’s own. In fact, it may even surpass the original film.  Deliberate and beautiful, Blade Runner 2049 is a stunning piece of sci-fi. It’s ending may not pack the same punch as Ruther Hauer’s “Tears in the Rain” monologue but it comes quite close. Blade Runner is a masterpiece.

9. Raw - dir. Julia Ducournau - Yes, Lady Bird is the great teenage girl coming of age film of 2017 but Lady Bird does not feature cannibalism. Raw works not just because it delivers on the kind of fucked up you come to expect from a cannibal movie but it also contains a human story at it’s core. I can’t help it but yes, Raw is delicious, it’s disgusting, it’s intelligent, well-written, and it’s kind of sexy. Ducournau’s debut is a very bold take on the horrors of growing up.

10. Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri - dir. Martin Mcdonagh -  Mcdonagh walks an incredibly tight rope with Three Billboards. He juxtaposes the darkest moments in the film with the funniest ones and it works every time thanks to his script. These characters aren’t heroes. They’re ugly, they’re nasty, and they have almost no redeeming values. But I dig that. And I dig the world that Mcdonagh creates.

[edibleflowerseu]

SOUNDS

Alexandre Bazin / Full Moon (2016) [Umor Rex]

“Eleven stunning compositions with a neo-classical signature, an obsessive focus on structure and a refined sense of melody. Emotional compositions serve as interludes to relaxing, post-new age moments, with plenty of space for intuitive beat journeys. An independent-minded composer attuned to the society that surrounds him, he channels the fury of the world into exceptional music marked with poetry. With a free-thinking approach to writing, Alexandre transcends context and genres. Full Moon is the meeting point of early electronic analog exploration and classical minimalism.” (---)

...

What the fuck does that quote even mean. I dunno, bruh. I'm feeling kinda sick and beat af. Need to sleep. Didn't do enough of that last night or the two nights before.

Anyway I've only listened to like four tracks off this but its a lot of fun, I think. I think its fun. I can't tell what is fun anymore, but I still try to have it. U know??

I wanna listen to this more when I have the time but rn gotta meet up with a gal, u know how it is. I honestly just wanted to include this cause it has bangin' artwork I'm very into. An aesthetic I would like to emulate for my own work, whatever or whenever that will be. A reminder to return here when the weather improves.

Burial / Rival Dealer (2013) [Hyperdub]

“Few electronic artists from the last decade have been pigeonholed like William Bevan. Since the London producer behind Burial gained widespread attention with 2007's epochal second album, Untrue, listeners and critics alike have spoken of "the Burial sound"—pitched-down vocal samples, rustling noise, blocky garage rhythms in perpetual decay—as if it were straight gospel ... As imitators big and small have lined up to pay respect, the phrase 'sounds like Burial' escaped the connotation of wishful thinking and started sounding almost like, well, an insult.

Insulting because, as this decade so far has proven, one person who doesn't sound like Burial anymore is Burial himself.” (---)

...

Burial has long been in the domain of “shit I fuck with if I ever decide to fuck with it.” I've known about him a long ass time, been in my radar, and showered with praise in every corner of the internet in which his named is dropped. Good dude, mysterious dude. Wintery dark type dude.

I don't know shit about this genre front as I may. But I like the way it makes me feel, and I want to feel like this more.

Max Richter / The Blue Notebooks (2004) [Fat Cat]

“Conceptually, Max Richter's The Blue Notebooks – German-born composer mixes contemporary classical compositions with electronic elements in a dreamscapy journalogue featuring excerpts from Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks as narrated by Tilda Swinton – reads like a relentlessly precious endeavor, as new age music for grad students, the sort of record that sagely pats you on the back for being smart enough to seek it out. And yet in practice, despite the fact that it is exactly as outlined above, Kafka quotes and all, there is absolutely nothing exclusive or contrived-feeling about it.” (---)

___

“[U]nlike his influences, he's not remotely interested in subverting the traditional rules of composition. Short of one very beautiful moment that plunges an electronic sublow bassline into a deep sea of harpsichords and violas (see: the literally perfect "Shadow Journal"), there is nothing here to suggest that Richter is concerned with anything other than melody and economy. It's a formula he singlemindedly exploits with staggering effect.” (---)

...

I have a problem with Max Richter. Back in college, I took a summer semester film course in which – among other things – I had to watch old ass movies. One of those old ass movies was a bit called Intolerance, which was D.W. Griffith's attempt at redemption after he massively fucked up with the famously racist Birth of a Nation**. Within, it's a handful of unconnected narratives set throughout history (Babylonia, the Renaissance in France, Jesus getting his ass whooped by a cross, and one set in “modern” times a.k.a. 1916). It's pomp, it's pretentious, it's James Cameron in the 1910s. But most importantly, it's two hours and silent. I had to watch a shitty two hour silent film for class. I guarantee u I was the only one who actually did it.

I survived by endlessly looping Richter's Memoryhouse as a quasi-score for the film. It worked incredibly well and I got very into the movie. But now, every time I hear that album or anything from it, an image of a huge and horrifically expensive historical set piece being set on firefor some weak high art film snobbery wedges itself into my subconscious.

The Blue Notebooks wholesale revisits some melodic motifs here and there, which instantly conjured up my past woes. That being said, it was still a killer, moving album. It has Tilda Swinton reading some excerpts from Kafka's journals, which teeters between “ooh this is fun” and “try-hard city.” Generally it is the the former, and upon multiple listens, maybe its always the former.

**ok looked this up actually an urban myth, he apparently made this film in reaction to the intolerance he perceived the NAACP and others had for him after making the famously racist Birth of a Nation. deadass this is Griffith's “you're the real racist for calling me racist.”

UPDATE: briefly checked out Richter's 24 Postcards in Full Colour and its probs my fav thing by him so if u wanna fuck with this dude start there, is what I say.

The Pharcyde / Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1992) [Delicious Vinyl]

“Nearly two decades after it was released, Bizarre Ride's dizzying mix of SoCal 420 culture, jazzy bohemianism, self-conscious rap smarts and postmodern pop-cult potpourri is still as entertaining and emotionally satisfying as ever, and with the benefit of hindsight, stands as a perfect snapshot of rap's rapid, diverse ascent to pop status in the early 1990s.” (---) ___

“"We're serious about certain things, but everything is basically a joke. We live through hard shit, but we can laugh about it." (---) ___

“She keeps on passin’ me by”

...

The landscape of the 90s rap canon is some shit. People cite The Pharcyde among the secretly smart, playful-type about-some-regular-shit school of rap, as opposed to the hard, violent and larger-than-life drama of gangsta rap. But there are holes in that view and p much everyone got down w/ Pharcyde despite or because of their foolish fun times. The group is class clowns with classics. “Oh Shit” is one of those transphobic “found out she had a dick, DAAAAAYUM” rap songs that really don't hold up in 2017. Or rather, you can forgive it as a relic from a less-informed time, but it still sours a room if u play it in mixed company.

Anyway, my boi Jesse sometimes reminds me of The Pharcyde (very much without the transphobia), and every disciple of REAL RAP knows wassup. I think I'm getting a fever or some shit can't think straight at all rn. Oh well, I'm still chugging forward. Progression n shit.

Royal Headache / High (2015) [What’s Your Rupture?]

“The ferocity of punk intimidates some. For those entering the field, High is a pair of training wheels. Even the album’s title track, a good-natured romp through the park with friends at your side, sounds like a muted clink of beers in celebration of revolt to come. It’s cheap, sure, but mediocre songs level out the uproar on others.” (---)

...

Another thing involving my boi Jesse. When he was in Budapest he ran into an Australian dude in the Hungarian equivalent of Staples. They became buds and he was visiting him the other weekend. We talked music for a minute and I name-dropped one of the few Australian bands I was legitimately about and the dude lit the fuck up. He was a huge fan of Aussie garage rock and his sister was a pretty big name in the Melbourne scene. Every time the conversation veered back to Royal Headache, I mentioned how huge they were in the US in terms of the scene. Every time he would say, “Royal Headache? Really? Of all bands??” He showed me some music and a lot of it was just Australian versions of Wavves and videos of dudes drinking and smoking. Nothing I was wild into but I saw the appeal.

Later on, high af w/ him and some dudes from my friend's pop punk band and the frontman/drummer asks if the Australian dude knows Royal Headache. Once again, Australian dude was like “of all bands??” People who know whaddup know that Royal Headache is one of a kind. Pop punk frontman tells me Joyce Manor fucks with them. And that's some cred right there.

Soulful croon-shouts, lo-fi power chords, sweat + beer.

Sleater-Kinney / Dig Me Out (1997) [Kill Rock Stars]

“A life-or-death seriousness is omnipresent with Sleater-Kinney, but they never rejected rock's base desires—sex, dancing, proverbial milkshakes—although sometimes they vaguely mocked them. Sleater-Kinney stole from men what men had in turn stolen from the margins: electrified blues that all still made girls scream.” (---)

...

While it's not going swimmingly, I continue my reacquaintance with quintessential guitar rock of the 1990s. I banged through the first couple of Sleater-Kinney albums and was semi-into em. Not something I would reach for immediately but something I would be down with if I was in the right mood.

This is the first album I listened to that sounded like it was made by a band as revered as Sleater-Kinney. The vocals are a clear precedent to the howling vibrato of Screaming Females (Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein share vocal duties and I'm pretty sure the aforementioned howl belongs to Tucker?), and the guitar-work sounds deft and deliberate, something by people who knew what they were trying to do. This is in contrast to the earlier albums I had heard, which were good but banked more on raw guitar slamming and ~rebellious~ lyrics. I get the feeling that once I poke around Sleater-Kinney's catalog more and get a real feel for their sonic world, I'll be able to confront older albums I was mixed on with new insights and appreciation. Let’s see what happens.

Sleater-Kinney is a monumental band and I wanna do them justice.

Other shit:

Mobb Deep / The Infamous

DJ SVYATOPOLK / Original Moscow Sound

DJ Camgirl / Problems

Merchandise / A Corpse Wired for Sound

Swum / Runway

Saiko / Breezin’

Jinsang / Gratitude

Jinsang / Solitude

Especia / Gusto

Mounika / Basket Sound