Clark: OK with Beats

Chris Clark was once the new goldenchild at Warp, the grandest electronic label in the world. He made this brilliant little IDM record in his college dorm room that they put out and he was going to be the next Aphex Twin. So what does he do? Rather than buckle under the pressure and go AWOL, or deliver a stinky sophomore effort, he just starts churning out material like mad, probably becoming the label's most prolific artist - he's been averaging a record every one to two years for a while now. But poor Chris Clark, the buzz has worn off. He's no longer the new thing and that's how people make brilliant music and get taken for granted.

He has a new album, it's called Turning Dragon and he's not fucking around. Clark's always had an amazing command of his gear and next-level arranging skills - his tracks are the un-linear. Hulking, breathing, flexible compositions, tricked out in every direction and avoiding solid beats like they're The Man. But he's lashing himself to the grid a bit on this new one, seeing how the other half lives. It's all burnt popcorn beats and toasted melodies. And then there's the distortion. My god the distortion. Clark clearly likes his peanut butter crunchy. The whole record sounds like he mastered his mixes through a Darth Vader mask.

Clark - "Hot May Slides"

Clark - "Mercy Sines"

All Hail the Cassette

Today, let's celebrate the sound of melted cassettes, wherever we can find it.

This Neu! track is always welcome in the shuffle mix. Because it is the most destroyed a track can sound, and has these great careless edits, it comes on like a break from the monotony of "correct" production. "Cassetto," is from the album Neu! 2 and, with its warbly, tape-stretched sound, is aptly named.

I don't know how long you have to bake your mixes to get them to sound this crispy, but I have a feeling Neu! were using their own cookbook.

Neu! - "Cassetto"


In the book "Dream Brother," a biography of Jeff and Tim Buckley, there are some really strange anecdotes about the weeks preceding Jeff's death, stories that make it sound as if he were going batshit. Like the one where his tour manager walked in on him in the bathtub and found him giggling, with blood dribbling down his chin (the blood turned out to be red ink from a pen he had chewed through, but still). Or the friends and neighbors who told of how he'd show up to their homes at odd hours, wanting to talk but with no sense of what time it was, having been awake for days.

I don't know if he went crazy. But if you listen to the four-track cassette demos they found near the milk-crate studio in his shack of a Memphis house, Jeff sounds, at the very least, unwell. "Let's Bomb the Moonlight" was left off the commercially released collection of Jeff's works in progress Sketches For My Sweetheart the Drunk. Who knows why. Was it because it sounds like it was recorded inside a jet engine, mid-flight? Are the screeching tornado sirens that drop in at the 4:00 mark too beautiful? Or was it the unsettling contrast between his exorcist scream at 5:15 and the cherub coo harmonies he overdubbed?

Who cares why they shelved it. Music this oily has a way of seeping out anyway.

Jeff Buckley - "Let's Bomb the Moonlight"

Mystery Piece + Noise Soup

I have a few unidentified mp3s on my laptop that I've gotten really attached to. They're all classical, which makes identifying them even harder, since even if I figured out the composer and the piece, recognizing the specific performance and recording would be near impossible.

Today I'd like to post one. I have Benjamin Britten labeled as the artist in iTunes, but no other information. I have no idea how or where I got this sublime recording, but I'm glad I did.



The thing I'd like to point out here is how much ground he covers in under 3 minutes. He starts things off with the main hook, first with the winds and later the soprano, but then there's all this exposition and journey. When you consider that three minutes is thought of as a succinct length for a pop song, just a couple of verses and choruses and maybe a bridge, Britten is absolutely cooking here.

If there are any classical fans out there with golden ears who can tell me more about the identity of this piece, I'd appreciate the info.

Benjamin Britten - Unknown Piece

To me, a little classical goes a long way. I'm pretty much a habitual shuffler now with my mp3 player and every time a classical piece comes up, I like it because it kind of cleanses the listening palette with its open space and softer textures. Then if, say, Queens of the Stoneage is the next random track in line, I'll have a new sense of appreciation for just how abrasive and heavy they really are with my rested, recalibrated ears.

Ambient noise tracks have the same effect (and a little also goes a long way). Only rather than cleansing the palette, it's more like pouring liquid Drano down it. When you've just listened to ten pop songs in a row and suddenly the noise soup of Fennesz comes blasting in all of its humming, crackling glory, it's like hearing every pop form and device boiled down into one elemental current of sound. Then if, for instance, a Sam Cooke cut follows, you're going to have a new appreciation for its warmth and simplicity.

I mentioned Fennesz because his disembodied sonic melt is nearly an art form unto itself, something which nobody else I've heard comes close to repeating. But the album Way Blank by Axolotl almost does in places. "Occiput the Brain Is the Seat of the Dnine Part" is all blast, no drip, but there are melodies buried deep in the gush of distortion.




Axolotl - "Occiput the Brain Is the Seat of the Dnine Part"

We Won't Call it Reggae

About three years ago, a friend turned me onto the Trojan Records Originals box set, a collection of early reggae recordings, some of which later became hits when other groups covered them (Like "Red, Red Wine"), but all of which were the first productions of the songs. We were particularly fascinated with a track called "Please Don't Make Me Cry" by Winston Groovy and its brilliantly goofy arrangement that featured a use of synthesizers about three decades ahead of its time.

As I borrowed and began to absorb the box set, I quickly got obsessed with these recordings. The productions are often shockingly quirky, with really bizarre and angular hooks, the warmest drum sounds of all time, and an addicting distortion in the mixes. There are deeply soulful performances featuring some of the greatest soul singers I've ever heard. Genius actually, and I don't use that word lightly. I think that some of these guys, like Alton Ellis, Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson and Dennis Brown are easily on par with the great American soul singers like Sam Cooke, Al Green and Smokey Robinson... only weirder. Unfortunately, while those American artists received recognition in their lifetime and a lasting legacy, many of their Jamaican counterparts were mostly unknown outside of their native country (sometimes even in their native country) during their paltry "careers" and are today largely forgotten.

I've always had a bad association in my mind with the word "reggae" that probably stems back to college and the abuse of Rasta paraphanalia in dorm-hippie culture. Bob Marley is the name brand for the genre, and his most famous records left me cold (I've since come around to the greatness that is early Wailers). And I'm not sure if I can really get with music being made today under the reggae label. But after getting hooked on the Trojan Originals box set, I began a dig for more material of similar style and quality, and it's an obsession that is still going strong. I now have probably between 50 and 75 cuts that I personally consider essential.

I think that the emotional quality of this early Jamaican soul music (which is how I've decided to refer to it) just fits my life and temperament better now than the darkness and theatricality of the groups I used to get off on, like Fugazi, Radiohead or PJ Harvey. There is definitely a melancholy current flowing beneath the surface of these tunes, a kind of resigned sadness that is part of most third-world culture. But there is just as much joy and warmth, which is just something I find more interesting these days. Not a fake, peppy joy, but an earned joy, that was yanked from down deep. Plus, it's just rhythmic Christmas for me, with pockets so sick that all I can do sometimes is just laugh at how good they are.

It's weird. These days, besides electronic music, I listen to Jamaican soul music probably more than anything else, but I've barely blogged about any of my discoveries. I guess part of me just wanted to keep it to myself or didn't know if other people would hear and appreciate the same things I was hearing (my girlfriend, for example, couldn't care LESS). But today, I'll start adding a pinch of it into the mix of this blog.

Since I already made the Detroit/Jamaica comparison, I think a good place to begin would be with two cover versions of the track "You Keep Me Hangin' On," which was a huge hit in the 60s for Motown group The Supremes.

The first version, "Set Me Free," is by Ken Boothe, who occupies about as much space on my mp3 player as any other artist of any genre.



Ken Boothe - "Set Me Free"

I first heard this track in a restaurant outside of Cincinati. My band was there to play a show and when we got to the venue, it was closed - the promoter had flaked. Luckily someone pointed us to a local burrito joint. The place nearly saved our souls. Besides serving burritos the size of watermelons, the jukebox was stocked with tons of old soul and reggae. When this track came up on the system, I think I had an out-of-body experience from the combination of good 'rito and good jams.

I love how Boothe doesn't even bother to use the original title. I also love the whacky Ennio Morricone meets Shuggie Ottis instrumental tag on the intro. Eventually, the track descends into extremely crude dub in its second half, but it doesn't matter. Boothe did his damage. Listen to how Boothe's singing constantly plays with going flat. It's kind of his signature move. He stops just this side of letting it get ugly every time.

As much as I adore Boothe's rendering, I think I might love this Mike Dorane version even more. It's more low-key, but the way he arranges the chorus is brilliant, singing a falsetto harmony of the traditional melody instead of the melody itself. He's basically banking on the fact that the listener already knows the tune, and that that implication is strong enough in the listener's mind to supply the hook while he provides embellishment. It's a bold move, and totally works.

Sadly, I couldn't even find a decent photo of Mike Durane on the internet.

Mike Durane - "You Keep Me Hangin On"

Add Shuffle

I don't know if you know this, but Radiohead's track "My Iron Lung," off '95s The Bends, was recorded live in concert. Their producer, John Leckie, felt that they weren't capturing the immediacy he had sensed during pre-production, when the band had performed their new material for him. So he rented a mobile studio and followed the group to their gig at the London Astoria. If you're listening on headphones you can hear phasing (swishy sound), a problem created when the same sound is being picked up by different mics at different distances - and exacerbated by the unruly acoustics of a live venue room. Which makes it not only a feat of delivery but of engineering as well. Anyway, I always appreciate this track more knowing that it's a live performance, especially with all of those abrupt transitions and tempo shifts. Radiohead have said that they didn't figure out how to be a good live band until the Kid A and Amnesiac tours, but clearly they had it going on long before that.

Radiohead - "My Iron Lung"


I'm jealous of the name Hot Chip. It's perfect. It's one of those perfect band names that comes along every five years. Like Sonic Youth or Daft Punk. The words "hot" and "chip" together seem to imply so much goodness. Like melting circuit boards inside a malfunctioning keyboard. Or spicy snack foods. And these are all things that Hot Chip delivers musically. Loads of analogue and soft synths in service of a master funk, hot beats and hook city. This is from their new one, Made in the Dark.

Hot Chip - "Ready For the Floor"

Shuffling

These three tracks came up on my mp3 player this morning, which was set to shuffle. (Baby was a good DJ this morning.) They're all older, but way ahead of their time.


Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill

The Police - Bring on the Night

Genesis - The Carpet Crawl (live)

Child Mind Magic: The Art of Yeondoo Jung

Yeondoo Jung takes childrens' drawings, recreates them in "live action," and photographs it. It's the most beautiful thing. Here is a
website link.

It's Called a Scarflette

Yeah, I kind of hate that name, too. Scarflette. It sounds like miniature microwavable food. Or like something that Zorro The Gay Blade (look it up) would wear. But that's the name and my lady is wild about making them. She prefers to call them neckwarmers, since they wrap around your neck and... warm it. Whatever you call them, they exist and the digital Revolution of Crafty Peoples over at Etsy.com is hot for them.

I've kind of been looking on Kirsten's knitting mania with a mixture of scientific detachment (like a zoological field study) and boyfriend pride. I mean, it seems to have all happened so suddenly. One minute she's bowing out of our Scrabble games (for us, Scrabble=foreplay) to knock needles, the next she's opening a little shop online and selling her wares to total strangers. It's become an obsession for her really. Or, more accurately, an addiction, with plenty of adverse consequences for both of us; from her neck strain (I've never doled out more massages) to the weird routes she makes us take just to dodge the loan sharks that financed all that nice yarn. And yet, despite the ways that my style has been crimped, it's pretty cool to see somebody finding something new and creative they love to do and just freaking going for it.

She started with scarves and blankets as a warm-up (pun not only intended, but relished). And now all of a sudden there are Scarflettes. Like the real scarves had babies when nobody was looking.

A Scarflette is like the knitted equivalent of the clip-on tie. That is, it performs its sartorial duties quickly and efficiently, without wasting material on something that's just going to get tucked out of sight anyway. Think about it. What do we ask of our winter neckwear? Basically a little protection from the elements and - bonus - maybe something cool-looking poking out of the tops of our coats. The Scarflette takes it further and asks, what if you could have all that and fit it in your pocket once you were back indoors? The knitting stakes have been raised frankly. Observe:




First, it wraps around the neck and buttons. Kirsten was given a stash of antique buttons (only a ziploc-bag's worth) that belonged to her great grandmother and so these buttons are literally a find - and rare-ish - and are really cool besides. She sheds a little tear each time she lets one go.

Then once you've got it buttoned BLAM, throw your coat over it and:



Ruling commences.



And then, DOUBLE BLAM, when you're back inside, the thing goes pocket-sized. Magic.



She has an Etsy shop here where you can craft-stalk her. It's called La Femme Monkita. (If you don't catch the reference, it's from a brilliant movie called Kicking and Screaming - The Noah Bombach one, from '95. Check it out.)


I'm a little jealous myself. The future of my dreams is an Etsy future. It's a celebration of the one-of-a-kind item. Of hand-craft couture. The antidote to mass-produced malaise. And I want to be part of it. And will, as soon as I can think of something to make. (My recipe for soup consisting entirely of crushed tortilla chips and salsa has so far met with pure scorn.)

And of course, there is a Monkita MySpace page. Check them both out. And send me suggestions for my own personal craft empire. (All sarcastic e-mails will be met with witty, soul-crushing retorts so think it through.)

Songs 2007

Here are some songs released in 2007 that I played to death.

Spring and Summer By Fall - Blonde Redhead. I couldn't have been happier that Blonde Redhead hired Alan Moulder to produce their new record 23. As a producer Moulder, more than any band, soundtracked the '90s for me with his work with groups like My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver. With Moulder's help Blonde Redhead's unholy transmogrification into a one-band shoegaze revival is now complete and I think it's the best work they've ever done.

Why Should I Be Sad - Britney Spears. More Prince than Prince. With Pharell Williams behind the curtain.

Indoor Swimming At The Space Station - Eluvium. 10 minutes of piano, synth and seagulls stirred up into an ambient build without resolution. Completely gorgeous.

Irene - Caribou. Starts out as Sesame Street slow jam, but reveals a sublime pop tune buried under all the '70s PBS warble. Like Boards of Canada producing the Beach Boys.

The Ghost of You Lingers - Spoon. In all the best Spoon tracks, the band arrangements are kept to their most spare, so that when a disembodied effect like a crackle or a shower of reverb gusts by for a few bars, it actually means something. "The Ghost of You Lingers" leaves the band out entirely and makes its point with just a piano, SFX and Brit Daniels' cocky croon.

On Large Amusements - Zoos of Berlin. The EP that this showed up on was a long time coming. (Zoos of Berlin played their first show in 2005, if that gives you any idea of the depths of their perfectionism.) And yet... the EP almost justifies the wait, it's that marvelous. And even more incredible, a really well-realized demo version of this beautiful song has been floating around for over a year, long enough for me to build a severe attachment to it. For the official version, they gutted the thing and changed it all around. It's a much different animal and if you loved the demo like me, odds were against loving the changes. And yet... [insert Italian expression of enthuisasm here]!

My Swag - T.I. "Swag" is short for "swagger" here, but who needs two syllables when one will do? Not T.I. "This is impeccable pimping."

Scream - Timbaland (featuring Keri Hilson). I spent a lot of wasted energy trying to convince friends that some of the tracks on Timbaland's new album Shock Value were the next level. It seemed all the songs I was hot for were the ones written and including guest vocals by Keri Hilson. But my friends couldn't look past the record's atrocities. And there is much to hate on Shock Value, most of which has to do with the really inane lyrics and pseudo-thuggery. Still, Timbaland managed to cram a lot of goodness in between the pandering reaches for crossover success while adding a layer of epic to his already classic sound. He's left Pharell and his protoge, Danja, the post-apocalyptic, empty crunch if his previous productions and moved on to a kind of Phil Spector-goes-third-world smear. I feel that.

Through My Sails - Soulsavers. This track consists of Mark Lanegan (he of indescribable voice) and Will Oldham duetting on a cover of a classic Neil Young tune. I will stop writing now.

Reckoner - Radiohead. Radiohead finally made a song in the shape of my skin. Or at least it feels that way, that's how much I identify with this track. I devoted a rambling blog to it and how much it reminded me of Talk Talk's "New Grass."

Into the Hollow - Queens of the Stone Age. QOTSA are the perpetual heavy. They make a mean brand of metrosexual metal. But walking the metrosexual tightrope is to hover between douchebaggery and emasculation. And, like the over-groomed asshole with too much product in his hair, their records have in the past tended to sound a little too sculpted. Era Vulgaris fixed all that. It sounds pummeled rather than mixed, with all the shades smearing into the color of death by sexy.

Stronger - Kanye West. He didn't sample Daft Punk as much as he appropriated their track, making it seem almost obsolete in the process, like the original had been pre-production for Kanye all along. The balls! Then he made a ridiculous-good video for the thing that was an homage to Akira, the post-nuclear Japanese manga masterpiece and '80s milestone, with Kanye as the psycho-kinetic title character. Clearly, the world is Kanye's for the taking. I'm glad to see him get away from that '70s retro soul sprinkle, even if it means coming to the electro revival a few years late. Dig the way he stutters the chorus lyric: "Nah-nah that-that which don't kill me, can only make me stronger." It's totally next-level in a really effortless and natural way.

I Am Always Waiting - Mobius Band. When I drooled over this song in a blog, I wrote, "Emotionally, it's breakup-song big, the kind of cut you want to listen to when your life feels like plates of massive, tectonic shift. But even in breakups, the tearing is sometimes balanced with adrenaline, and "I Am Always Waiting" strikes that kind of balance."

Pioneer To The Falls - Interpol. I'm not going to lie, I've lost the love for this band. Maybe it was never true love in the first place, only a lusty haze of nostalgia and well-appropriated new wave goth influences. But I swear, if they made more tracks like this, where Ennio Morricone is conjured rather than Joy Division, I could love them for reals. And the bridge is just a goddamn amazing wonder of structural engineering.

Work It Out - RJD2. This is how the learning process went for me: "Hey, that video is pretty cool, the way that guy's making a new dance form using crutches and skater moves... hey, I like that song, too. Is that a Beatles cover? Say what? That's RJD2? But I thought he produced destroyed-sounding hip hop. Where'd he learn to write like that, and who's the guest vocalist then? Say double what?? RJD2 himself?! Man, where was I when this record dropped. For shame. Ima have to check this out.... let's see here.... MOTHERFUCKERS! What is all this tepid internet buzz. Haters! Oh, well, maybe the rest of it doesn't live up to the single.... oh, shit, but oh, how it does. Oh, shit, this record is totally soothing my summer soul." Then I tried to do something about it.


Nature Springs - The Good, The Bad and The Queen. Few songs on this uneven record managed to live up the promise of the band's premise: namebrand britpop frontman (Damon Alburn) turned creator of things next-level (side project Gorillaz's Demon Days is probably producer Danger Mouse's finest hour) hires bass player (Paul Simonon) from The Clash (one of only two white bands to ever play reggae rhythms and still keep their self respect) to anchor the jerky drum brilliance of afrobeat revolutionary (Tony Allen). But "Nature Springs" was actually better than even the idea of all that. It's its own genre; a wistful disembodied sound that reminds you how seasons always seem to be changing in the right direction. When Simonon drops in with his sub rumble, he makes you think the word "bass" was created by smashing "bad" and "ass" together. And Allen? ALLEN! I once lost a whole weekend trying to put his seasick sound into words.

Movies 2007

It's nuts how many great movies were made this year. I'm going back over it to write about my favorites now and my mind is blown all over the walls. (It's very lasagna-y. I want to take a picture of it but I can't summon the motor skills to make it happen. Since my BRAIN IS SPLATTERED ON THE WALL.)

The two closest to my heart were the ones that were brutally philosophical – Sunshine and No Country For Old Men. Each of these seemed to mirror one of my two favorite films in 2006: Sunshine, like The Fountain, was metaphysical, extreme and Eastern; poetry about transcendence hiding out in a mainstream science fiction piece. No Country For Old Men was Eastern too, only instead of using the vacuum of outer space to talk about emptiness, they used the wide, desert vistas of a western. In this way, it was a lot like Australian film The Proposition, based on a genius first script by musician Nick Cave. Between the two, I'm not sure which was more ruthless, but they both had a lot of soul.

I never wrote about The Proposition, though I should have. But here are three posts about the other three, probably the most fun I had writing this year:

Cowboy Taoism: No Country For Old Men

The New Holy: The Fountain

Poetry of Disintegration: Sunshine

So those are the movies that sent me into philospho-geek overdrive. But when I'm not being such an egg head (and when I say egg, think dinosaur egg. My head is... large-ish), I also like to laugh, and I lost my ass in the process of watching Knocked Up and Superbad. I have a pretty filthy sense of humor and so these movies made me feel validated. That is, I am, as a result of their high box office scores and the cultural acceptance this implies, more at peace with my filthy self. Also The Simpsons movie was like a 2-hour episode from one of their more inspired seasons. So, awesome.

The Bourne Ultimatum was, as expected, a great ride. Although it was probably my least favorite of the trilogy. The editing was a little too ADD, which doesn't make for a good view and can blur the effect of the action, a lot of which is hand-to-hand combat. But, as the story tied up the three-film arc of the franchise, it did so while making a really strong, resonant statement about the war, dealing with the folly of loyalty as blind faith. I didn't go in expecting a political message and was surprised at how much I didn't mind, and even admired, it.

Speaking of hyperactive editing, The Departed is one of the most entertaining things ever and owes much of its energy to the way it's cut, high-speed and without fat. I highly recommend listening to this interview with Scorses's long-time, oscar-winning film editor Thelma Shoonmaker.

Tony Gilroy is the writer of the Bourne movies. And this year he also found time to write and direct the somewhat overlooked but unassumingly brilliant George Clooney vehicle Michael Clayton. The opening monologue is delivered in a frantic voice-over by Tom Wilkinson and is such a phenomenal synergy of writing and acting that it was basically worth the price of admission alone. I think Clooney is a serviceable actor and does a fine job, but what sells Michael Clayton is its brainpower. It's two hours of smart. I can't remember a single character on either side of a black and white morality divide in this movie. It's all nuance and ensemble power, rounded out by Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. If anything, Clooney does a disservice to the material if only by the fact that his immaculately groomed face on the posters suggests a layer of slick that really doesn't exist.

In the world of cartoons, there was Ratatouille and 300. I took my daughter to see Ratatouille, a movie about a rat with fancy airs who rises to the top of the Parisian culinary elite. And, though she claimed to enjoy it, I don't exactly see how. It was pretty talk-y. The Pixar flicks have been going this direction for years but, whereas they used to be movies for kids that can also entertain adults, this was the first one that felt more like a movie for adults that can also entertain kids. It was the most refined thing Pixar has done. Just really immaculate and well-conceived, if a little slow in the pacing department. I think what I liked most, and why I would like to buy it for my daughter, is the way the resolution handles the villain. Without giving anything away, it's with a lot of empathy. To me, the further our children's entertainment material gets away from "us vs. them" ethics and closer to the acceptance of ambiguity that you see in the Japanese animations by Hayao Miyazaki, the better.

300 is basically mythology for professional wrestling fans. I called it a cartoon not because it's soaking in CGI but because of its over-the-top gestures and Rambo-in-a-loincloth aesthetic. And yet... I'm a sucker for Frank Miller's graphic novels and like to think that, in my own way, I live a fairly spartan existence (subsisting only on tortilla chips and V8, NUMEROUS push-ups and stomach crunches, the occasional vanquishing of foes...). So I cheered.

There were movies I liked maybe more for personal reasons. The Darjeeling Limited was probably Wes Anderson's most affecting movie yet. I've always felt that I liked Anderson movies in spite of Anderson and his overly twee art direction. Because of the soul and truly out humor underneath his little hipster dollhouses. But though I couldn't have loved Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums more, I had to jump ship with The Life Aquatic. So I was glad to see him put out something so funny and searching again. Although it's hard to tell if I liked it for its own sake, or because I grew up one of three brothers who regularly pounded the shit out of each other and grew slightly estranged over time.

Same goes for The Pursuit of Happyness. It's possible that this movie was overly sentimental or at least, for other reasons, not as good as I thought it was. But the whole single dad thing was too much for my critical faculties to bear and I had no problem loving this movie unconditionally.

And last, but not least, the Latino Invasion. Or, "The Three Amigos," as the press has been calling them. Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro. Of this spicy trilogy, Iñárritu's Babel was the black sheep; the one with imperfections. I spent the first half of it hating its creator and squirming in my seat. And then an odd thing happened and the film blossomed for me into a colorful, vast thing that I didn't want to end. A lot of that appeal was visual. Iñárritu's pictures have the humidity of Michael Mann but with twice the amount of color. I've seen Iñárritu's last two films, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, which had a lot going for them in the way of guts and energy but, particularly in the case of 21 Grams, were weakened by one-note melodrama. I think that Babel took a lot of steps to avoid that and Iñárritu's by-now cliche technique of colliding disparate storylines into a giant narrative about connectivity survived the transplant to a global scale just fine. Basically, the film talked me into loving it. I'm anxious to see it again.

Cuarón's Children of Men was dystopian perfection. It's set in our near-future, but all of the essential elements of modern life haven't changed. He's saying, the way things are is a recipe for disaster. That the ingredients already exist for a total meltdown; all that remains is for someone to add a little heat and stir the pot. So Cuarón shows us one way that might happen and it's too believable. It's gloomy science fiction based more on plausibility than wishful thinking. Completely unnerving.

And then Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. A genre unto itself. Half horror, half wistful fairy tale. This is Del Toro's second film to be set during the Spanish Civil War and the resistance to Francisco Franco. It's brutal and vivid and sees the world as both lit with enchantment and caked in a sad mud. A strange half-light emotion that, thinking back on it now a year later, I can't decide if it was more grisly or magical. I think neither.