18 reviews. I’ve been busy. Check out the One Week // One Band Tumblr tomorrow to find out why.

Music

Shugo Tokumaru: In Focus? — A discovery thanks to an All Songs Considered from a couple weeks ago. And while I’m enormously looking forward to the new album that features the track on that episode, it feels great to have his whole back catalogue to get through. Tokumaru is one of those artists who can provide the unpredictable sensory overload that I love best in music. And this album doesn’t seem to leave much out. The really miraculous thing about it is how it never stops feeling like a pop album, even when its arrangements reach their most ludicrously complex. It’s a beautiful expression of the joy of excess. This is one of those discoveries you long for. And good lord, that video. Pick of the week.

Movies

John Wick — Wow, is this movie ever macho. Just, unrelenting testosterone from beginning to end. Part of me admires its relentless commitment to its own nature, but I found myself thinking it would be a more interesting movie with a less rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack and, I dunno, Tilda Swinton? There are moments when this nears Boondock Saints territory, and that’s very bad territory. Still, this is ultimately a movie that’s about an ex-hitman who kills dozens of mobsters to avenge his dead dog. How self-serious can it be? The fact that John Wick is able to wring not just a sequence of outstanding fight and chase scenes out of its premise, but also a consistent and unique atmosphere and some actual character beats is a miracle. (Though the character of John Wick may only seem interesting because of Keanu Reeves’s uniquely inept acting choices.) The thing I loved most about the movie is the builds a criminal universe that seemingly exists right under the nose of polite society but completely invisibly. The Continental is a fascinating idea — a hotel specifically for the use of contract killers and other unsavoury sorts, governed by a set of rules and a code of etiquette that goes basically unstated throughout the movie. John Wick is good enough, and more to the point, weird enough that I’ll probably see the sequel while it’s in theatres. But… could we dial back on the guitars, please?

F for Fake — A documentary by Orson Welles that is as sure-handed (obviously) as it is inscrutable. It focusses on two fakers: Elmyr de Hory, the greatest art forger of the century, and Clifford Irving, the author of the fake Howard Hughes autobiography. Incredibly, the two of them ended up getting to know each other on the island of Ibiza and Irving wrote about Elmyr. But the real star of F for Fake is Welles himself, who takes the opportunity to muse on the entire notion of charlatanry. He repurposes a Kipling poem into a brilliant indictment of either Elmyr or the art dealers he fleeced, and he makes it abundantly clear that he regards the latter as just as fake as the former. Keep at this through the difficult first act. It does start to coalesce eventually, and the ending is a lovely bit of rhetorical magic.

Literature, etc.

Brian Merchant: “The Last Relevant Blogger” — This Motherboard feature about the music blog Hipster Runoff is essential reading for anybody who mourns the days before online attention was commodified. It is relevant to that concern because Hipster Runoff basically defines the historical moment as that shift was just about to happen. The fact that the piece is itself old enough for all of its Hipster Runoff links to be dead (the site went offline sometime since this piece’s 2015 publication) is itself an illustration of how completely we are now in a post-blogosphere world. I never read Hipster Runoff and I find all of the excerpts here insufferable. After all, it was as much the beginning of the shitty state of the web now as it was the end of the glorious pre-Facebook phase it started in. This is a fascinating read, and Merchant is right to say that this story is basically the story of the internet itself in the last decade.

Podcasts

The Gist: “Andy Zaltzman Is Back at Exactly the Right Time” — Oh, he is, isn’t he? This is a solid interview with funny moments from both Zaltzman and Mike Pesca, whose sense of humour is inconsistent to say the least, but he’s got in in him somewhere.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “The Oscars Were Crazy” — Well, it was only the ending that was crazy, wasn’t it? Aside from that it was pretty much just the Oscars. I am with Linda Holmes on Jimmy Kimmel’s interminable Matt Damon bits, and I’m with Stephen Thompson on how goddamned long that tour bus thing went on. It’s almost good that they screwed up the envelopes, because the evening needed some enlivening, I thought. And I like Jimmy Kimmel, more or less.

Chapo Trap House: “Fash The Patriarchy” — A rather clarifying discussion of the schisms and substantial ideological differences between different factions of what we’re now calling the alt-right. Their guest, Angela Nagle’s article on the alt-right is worth reading, but shorter than I expected given the depth of her knowledge and research. (Seriously, somebody ought to give her a medal for trawling through the muck of that awful part of the internet.) Suppose I’ll have to read her upcoming book.

WTF with Marc Maron: “Raoul Peck” — This takes forever to get going. Maron has been hit hard by the death of Bill Paxton, and it has him thinking about how “life is so fucking fragile.” So, you’ll have to sit through an untenable amount of that material (or skip it, if you’re smart) before you get to Maron’s interview with Raoul Peck, the filmmaker behind the brilliant I Am Not Your Negro — which is actually a really excellent conversation. I think Maron requires the presence of another mind to be his best. Because nothing in the first ten minutes of this podcast would suggest that he’s the sort of person who could remotely keep up with Peck in a conversation about James Baldwin that also frequently touches on Marx. But he does, and it’s good enough that even Peck sounds delighted at the calibre of the conversation by the end of it. If you’re choosing between Maron and Terry Gross for a Raoul Peck interview (I frequently find myself deciding to go for one or the other but not both when they have the same guest), this is the rare occasion where you should take Maron.

Home of the Brave: “It’s All Over Now” — I can tell Scott Carrier is going to be a mixed bag for me. On one hand, he makes radio documentaries that aren’t like radio documentaries that anybody else makes. On the other hand, he can be awfully earnest when he just talks into a microphone. I imagine there will be an adjustment period. But I’m going to give this show a shot, because I’m looking for more podcasts that don’t sound like all the other podcasts.

On the Media: “Smoke and Handcuffs” — I’m looking forward to Brooke Gladstone being back, but Garfield’s analysis of the relationship between Trump and Fox News is really solid. It’s worth it just for that.

All Songs Considered: “Lana Del Rey, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Colin Stetson, Penguin Cafe, More” — I should never have gone two months without listening to this. So much good music here, starting with the very opening cut, chosen by Robin Hilton: “Lita-Ruta” by Shugo Tokumaru, who I had never heard of. But it is completely crazy and wonderful and complex and I will absolutely be checking out the album when it’s out in April. Immediately after, Bob Boilen introduced me to an Eno-allied 80s instrumental band that I somehow hadn’t heard of, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and their modern incarnation, which is excellent too. And we finish off with new Colin Stetson, in much finer form than he was on his limp Górecki adaptation last year. That’s both an indication that I should hear his next album and a reminded that I need to check out his older stuff. I’m less convinced by the new Lana Del Rey track. Still, this is an episode full of the sort of stuff I look to this show to find for me. Pick of the week.

The Heart: “Local Honey” — A sonically beautiful collaboration with a sound artist whose gender nonconformity forms a spine for her work. She’s the perfect personality for a story on The Heart, because to a certain extent, she comes pre-sound designed and already living in this show’s lush sound world. Really nice.

Home of the Brave: “The Test” — Scott Carrier’s most acclaimed story (though new to me) plus a new postlude about how America’s gone off its meds. Well worth hearing, though I’m beginning to suspect that everything Carrier says about contemporary America, however poetically and ironically phrased, will seem facile to me in light of my also listening to a bunch of cynical radicals over on Chapo Trap House.

You Must Remember This: “Veronica Lake (Dead Blondes Part 4)” — Outstanding stuff. Veronica Lake’s story is especially sad among the characters that Karina Longworth is exploring in this series, because she’s just so likeable that you can’t help but think she deserved more out of life. A bit like Carrie Fisher, I guess.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Justin Timberlake” — Ehh. I like JT, but this is an interview full of platitudes.

You Must Remember This: “Carole Landis (Dead Blondes Part 5)” —  “The greatest dramas in Hollywood are not filmed — they’re lived.” I think Karina Longworth has found her new tagline.

99% Invisible: “Atom in the Garden of Eden” — Here is a story about a moment in history when interested amateurs could obtain nuclear sources for independent research. 99pi is a show you can always count on to make you think “how do people not know about this?”

All Songs Considered: “Resistance Radio: Darkly Reimagining the ‘60s Sound” — Sharon Van Etten singing “The End of the World” is definitely something I needed in my life. But let’s not forget that Skeeter Davis’s original is timeless. Also, Danger Mouse has a really sonorous speaking voice. Who knew?