shuffle this!

So a while back on the FB, there was a meme where you'd hit shuffle on your iPod and forward your list to friends. Then they'd do the same, etc. The whole bit is that we all have great stuff and we all have schlock, and oh isn't it fun to revel in it all. So, on this champagne friday (yes, that's how we roll on Friday afternoons at The Sound), I thought I'd share my shuffle ten. Here is the v. Williamsburg-friendly list:

1 - Intro, Deerhunter

2 - Music Is Happiness, The Octopus Project

3 - Into the Groove, Madonna

4 - Young Adult Fiction, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

5 - Procession, New Order

6 - I Bleed, The Pixies

7 - Pitter Patter Goes My Heart, Broken Social Scene

8 - Home, LCD Soundsystem

9 - Your Name Is Wild, Guided By Voices

10 - Daniel, Bat for Lashes

What are yours? Please do share.

Casting Couch

No stranger to the political circus, writer Aaron Sorkin will tackle the John Edwards-Elizabeth Edwards-Rielle Hunter-Andrew Young saga. He's bought the rights to Young's tell-all and will write as well as direct. Good for him. Based on the Edwards section of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's Game Change (which I loved), there's plenty of drama to mine.

No matter the quality of Sorkin's script, the film's success, I'm betting, will come down to casting. Think of The Queen without Helen Mirren's dead-on portrayal. And remember how sour all of the portrayals in Oliver Stone's W. rang? Thandie Newton as Condi Rice? Please. So let the guessing game begin.

For the man in the center of the media firestorm, I'd say Dennis Quaid if he hadn't just played another Southern politician embroiled in scandal (Bill Clinton) in HBO's The Special Relationship. So, as wary as I am to give Tom Cruise more work, who else could embody smarm, artificiality, and expensive hair so well?

The role of Elizabeth is a meaty role for any actress - she's a media martyr but a reported paranoid terror behind closed doors. I'll go with Annette Bening, who is showing everyone how good she is at mixing steely exteriors and fragile vulnerability right now in The Kids Are All Right.

Based on how she came off on Oprah, all lost/affected valley girl, I'd have to say Gwyneth Paltrow. Hey, and if the script calls for her to carve a chicken, we know Paltrow's a pro at that.

Scenes from a blog, revisited ...

Last night was about revisiting the past. Keeping in the spirit, I've decided to revamp this blog (wherein I'll actually write on a semi-regular basis). Reboots are the thing of the moment, don't you know?

Hole is the latest to try to recreate something old as something new. That's right. Flannel made a comeback last winter, so why not dredge up everything from 1996? At the time, Hole was everything I was afraid of and wanted to be. Loud, outspoken, subversive, provocative. Courtney Love - front woman, pinup, antichrist - shocked and scared me. But somehow I couldn't look away. I just wanted more and more and more.

That was then. For Love, the road since has been wild and well-documented. For a while, her trainwreck antics were emblematic of the flip side of celebrity culture in the information age. Drugs, twitter, trash bag dresses, pale skin, protruding bones, and plastic surgery -- that's a look that even an icon can't wear well. So it was with morbid fascination that I accepted an invitation to see Love front a rebooted Hole at Terminal 5 last night. Based on my experience, here are 10 things that will happen to you at a Hole show:

1. You will get hit on.

He may be old and in town from Buffalo, but it will happen. Another demographic you're not pursuing thinks you're irresistible. Cheers.

2. You will learn esoteric facts about Courtney Love.

Like the fact that Malibu won't give her the key of the city, despite the song she rocks on Celebrity Skin. What's a girl gotta do?

3. You will see Zach Quinto.

In the VIP. Dreamy.

4. You will be in the splash zone of the mosh pit. And it will suck.

No wonder your mother wouldn't let you go to shows like this in the mid-90s.

5. You will be corrected for thinking that Hole is an oldies band

Or in Courtney's words, "We're not an oldies band, fuckers!!!"

6. But you will still think the old stuff trumps the new stuff.

Miss World, Doll Parts, Violet. These are a few of your favorite things. And she can still rock them.

7. You will see Love channel Stevie Nicks.

The cover of Gold Dust Woman? Fab.

8. You will learn you shouldn't wear your shitty converse with holes in them.

You will get spilt beer on your purple socks.

9. You will think Courtney Love has a thing for her lead guitarist.

Yes, his name is Dragon.

10. You will be glad that Courtney Love is alive. And fabulous.

Enough said.

Jane Campion’s latest, Bright Star, explores the love affair between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. For all its literary ambition and handsome styling, it’s never more than a coffee table book of a film – very pretty to look at, but totally devoid of substance.
When we first meet Brawne (the round, vacant Abbie Cornish), she’s a superficial fashionista who finds literature and poetry a total bore. That’s until she meets Keats (the brooding, whisp-thin Ben Whishaw). He sulks around the grounds, writing verse and wearing his impending demise like the latest fall fashion. Of course she falls in love with him and their mutual infatuation swiftly moves into doomed love affair territory. With echoes of Julianne Moore’s nagging cough in The End of the Affair, Keats begins hacking up blood and though we know how this story will end, Campion chronicles his slow end at a snail’s pace. I suppose that I was meant to feel something, but as I watched Whishaw wither away, I couldn’t help but think how much better Bright Star would have been if he died at the beginning of the film.
It doesn’t help Campion’s case that Cornish, meant to be the film’s heart, is an utterly hollow screen presence. Best known for being the third wheel in a campy love triangle with Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen in the mess that was Elizabeth: The Golden Age, she has the look of a younger Kate Winslet with none of the depth. Whishaw fares slightly better, though as written Keats is more of a lovesick teenage girl’s fantasy of who Keats might have been rather than a fully formed character. Paul Schneider (so good in Lars and the Real Girl and currently on TV in Parks and Recreation) delivers the film’s only real performance as Keats’ pompous fellow poet and confidante.
This is a rare misstep for Campion, who even when she is off (the bizarre Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel two-hander Holy Smoke!) is at least interesting. While nice to look at, Bright Star lacks the visual whimsy and dazzle of either The Piano or In the Cut, not too mention the dramatic urgency.

god, not more phlegm

Long before he burned the image of Tobey Maguire in spandex into our minds with the Spider Man franchise, Sam Raimi was the master of B-movie schlock. His Evil Dead films are the gold standard for blood-splattered, midnight-showing-worthy guts and gore. With Drag Me to Hell, Raimi returns to the genre, this time with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Much like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino did with their Grindhouse double bill, Raimi delivers a gleeful, self-referential horror send-up.

When we meet Christine (Alison Lohman), her life seems full of potential. She’s ripe for a promotion at work, is about to meet her brainy boyfriend’s parents, and has bouncy blonde hair worthy of a shampoo ad. Everything changes when she turns down an old woman’s request for a third mortgage extension. The old woman begs and pleads, but with that promotion in sight, Christine has security escort her from the building. Big mistake. Christine quickly learns that the last thing you want to do is shame a gypsy, especially during the housing crisis. The old woman puts a curse on Christine that she has three days to reverse, otherwise she will, as the title suggests, be dragged to hell.

As Christine works tirelessly to undo the gypsy’s curse, demons from the underworld unleash an increasingly horrific barrage of terror upon her. It’s gross, visceral stuff — geyser-like nose bleeds, home-wrecking phantasms, and phlegm, lots of phlegm. There’s an especially memorable sequence when Christine finally meets her boyfriend’s comically snobbish parents that involves a piece of cake that bleeds and spews flies.

Raimi pulls all the gross excess off because he’s winking at us the entire time. The film sustains an elevated comic tone throughout and crescendos at a memorable, shocking climax.

Lohman, best known for enduring an embarrassing succession of wigs and the foster care system in White Oleander, gamely traverses the corporeal horrors that Raimi springs on her. The film rests on her shoulders, and she carries the narrative with dignity and pluck. As her improbably supportive and understanding boyfriend, Justin Long reminds us why he’s most famous for those 30-second Apple ads — he’s a TV-sized personality who does not seem comfortable on the big screen.

Drag Me to Hell knows exactly what it is. The production values, including a memorable score by Christopher Young, conjure memories of dated, low-budget staples of the horror genre. One gets the feeling that it would feel more comfortable being watched in the middle of the night on one of the lesser cable networks. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.