Melting in the heat in this old house hasn't been helpful. Fortunately, Alex directed me to this lovely website, 8tracks. Whatever your fancy, select a bunch of tags and find a playlist that suits what you need. Right now, I'm listening to one called "Wake" which is currently playing a song by The Beatles. The funny thing here is, I've never quite been a fan of The Beatles. Now imagine if I hadn't heard of this site, my life would be devoid of this song. That's all well and good, to be perfectly honest, but I do enjoy how this site can let you discover new songs without any extraneous effort.
Hurrah for the Internet, I say.
I would write more, but this heat is making me want to melt into a pool of ice cream. That, and I keep thinking that the fan is doing itstypical rotations out of the corner of my eye when I know I locked it so it could bestow all its sweet lovin' on me, all on me.
Instead of working on my 5000+ word essay that's probably overdue at this point, I went to watch Midnight in Paris, the new film by Woody Allen. In all fairness, I had to watch it for an article that I'm writing for my school paper.
My only encounters with Mr. Allen have been through Vicky Cristina Barcelona and videos of the final scene of Manhattan that my friend keeps frantically sending me with the message, "YOU REALLY SHOULD BE WATCHING THIS MOVIE NOW." (I still haven't listened to him.)
If I hadn't seen Vicky Cristina Barcelona, or even those last few shots that sweep the New York City skyline, I would have never understood what people meant when they said that Woody Allen "plays tourist." I think that's his strong suit - he shows the audience these beautiful images of cities that most of them have probably never visited. One of the memorable moments of Midnight in Paris is Gil's declaration that Paris is at its most beautiful when it rains. There's something to be said about a city that emanates its allure, even in the most sopping wet of conditions.
I've never been to Paris, though I'm seriously considering adding it as a rendezvous on my (tentative) way to Vienna next year. I think I romanticize the City of Lights too much, in a similar way to how I think New York City is everything it's cracked up to be. It probably isn't and, from what I've heard, Paris is just a city of litter and overzealous tourists.
Like Gil in Midnight in Paris, however, I'll always want to be there just like how he'll always want to be in the Roaring Twenties. People like us? We can't be helped.
Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris
Anywho, I'm out of town for the weekend - gone to visit one of my favourite places to see some of my favourite people while I die of sweat and happiness. I'm watching Tree of Life tomorrow, so I'll probably have a page-long diatribe about dinosaurs and Sean Penn's hair curl. Until then!
While I wait for my Google+ profile picture to upload, here:
Darwin Deez - "Radar Detector"
I first heard this when my sister and I were indulging in an underwear sale at American Eagle. Have you seen their patterns? So cute. And so cheap!
I usually dismiss music based on where I hear them. (Alternatively, 15 year-old me nearly had a heart attack of joy when H&M started playing Yule Shoot Your Eye Out as part of their in-store Christmas music.) But once I heard Darwin Deez, I could not keep myself from dancing. In fact, I still dance to this song. In my seat. In a library at school. At 1:30 in the morning, more often than not.
I realize that what gets me moving is this: hand claps. What is more joyous than a steady rhythm of happy hand clapping? Nothing! That's what!
In celebration of my blissful obsession with hand movements and palms forced together, here are some songs that feature clapping. Both of these have collectively been on my iTunes for over five years now.
Tokyo Police Club - "Citizens of Tomorrow"
I would listen to this song on the way to school in the morning. I thought I was so cool when I went to HMV to buy their EP, not knowing that buying music from a mass distributor wouldn't be as cool or hipster as, say, digging around in Sonic Boom in downtown Toronto. Oh, lost youth.
Point is, the dystopian themes and eerie synthesizers in this song really make it stand out in my mind. I went to go see TPC in concert sometime in the spring and they had us clap along to this song. It was great, and I felt like so much of my lost youth's happiness was regained in those moments.
Also, the lyrics are bad-ass.
The xx - "Heart Skipped a Beat"
I paid no attention to The xx when I first heard them in the summer before going off to university. A few months later, with the help of my friends' heckling me, I gave the album another try. Granted, it's not something I could listen to over and over again in exact track order but, hey, "Heart Skipped a Beat" really caught my eye. Or ear, whichever. The clapping is a bit haunting and a bit jovial at the beginning - you can't really decide until that guitar comes in and you think, "Oh. This is a song about lamenting shit like broken hearts and slamming the door on your way out." Then again, my heart breaks and I slam the door every time my cat doesn't respond to my declarations of love. But what can you do, really?
The rough translation of the phrase "notte sento" is "night felt." (Google helped me with that one, not my 8 or so years of Italian classes...) It features a girl, a boy, a train, and a night gallivanting around a beautiful European city - in this case, Rome. Shot with more than 4500 photographs, this short film really knows how to exhaust the hell out of a DSLR. Man, I don't even know if I've taken 4500 photographs in my lifetime.
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise
Notte Sento heavily reminds me of another, perhaps more affecting, film: Before Sunrise. Again, a girl, a boy, a train, and a night gallivanting around a beautiful European city - in this case, Vienna. It's directed by Richard Linklater (fun fact: he also directed School of Rock) and centers around a night-long conversation. It doesn't sound all that exciting right now, but I can tell you that this movie (and its 2004 sequel Before Sunset) are the most emotionally devastating films I've seen in a while. And if you suggest Blue Valentine as a choice contender for that title, I'll tell you something: if you see Before Sunset before Blue Valentine, the latter will feel like nothing.
A rather decent movie, but Williams and Gosling have got nothing on Hawke and Delpy
