Girls remind me a lot of my favourite things – JD Salinger stories, Woody Allen movies and Jonathon Richman in general. Things that are one-part smart-alecky quips and another part Vaseline tears and heavy heartbreak. Despite being totally un-Google-able, Girls are easy to get crushed-out on, with their natural skill for catching feelings and passing them on.

Now there isn’t a stand-out track like ‘Lust for Life’ on Broken Dreams Club but, unlike a lot of EPs, it stands up as more than just new album off-cuts. Girls still have that carefree surf balladry sound going on, but the production is leaps and bounds ahead of Album‘s, with more confident vocals, complex instrumentation – and touches of free jazz and post rock worked in seamlessly.

If I say Girls have managed to maintain an endearing childlike quality (despite gross amounts of hype) don’t think it’s all happy-and-you-know-it, because it’s easy to forget how strongly and sincerely young kids can fall in love and get their hearts broken too. Remember, unrequited love at any age is a real bitch.

Originally published in The Thousands

Claire Denis is a conundrum. Her entire filmmaking career has been critically lauded, she’s won a swag of awards and is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of the 21st century. However I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never seen one of her films. I’m not sure why, but her films are so hard to see, even if you’re trying pretty hard to. In fact seeing her masterwork Beau Travail has been on my To-Do-List for at least five years – right next to ‘write novel’ – but getting a copy is not so easy. As far as I know a Denis film hasn’t had a ‘season’ in Melbourne in the last decade.

Thats why ACMI’s season of White Material is so gosh-darn exciting, because you’ll have more than a once-off-film-festival-type chance to see a Claire Denis film. If my film nerd guilt-slash-enthusiasm hasn’t convinced you to see White Material yet, well… it also stars Isabelle Huppert (on her A-game as per usual), it’s set in Africa, it’s political, suspenseful and also quite beautiful to look at. BTW did I mention it’s made by one of the greatest (yet relatively unknown) filmmakers of our time?!

Originally published in The Thousands

So there’s this guy Brian Eno who’s kind of a big deal. He’s been enough of a big deal for enough of a while that the BCC made a doco about him. They were granted unparalleled access to his life and it turns out the dude is the ultimate renaissance man. He’s interested in art, science, religion, music and – in a modern twist – also cybernetics, which he got into via his mum.

The doco provides insight into Eno’s methods and techniques in making and recording music, as well as giving a bit of insight into Eno the man – who descended from a long line of postmen and as child spent his time fossil collecting among other things. There’s the obligatory Velvet Underground moment of clarity that all artists from the ’60s and ’70s like to talk about and next thing you know Eno was in a dress and make up looking pretty sensational on stage playing in Roxy Music and getting more girls than Bryan Ferry.

The best parts of this documentary are when Eno picks apart his favourite artists and songs from the last few decades – pointing out recording and producing techniques that no-one else would notice. The contemplations about life et cetera aren’t too shabby either.

Originally posted on The Thousands

There’s been a lot of talk recently about this being such a hard time for filmmakers – aka there’s no money it in anymore. An alternative view of course is that this is a great time for filmmakers because it costs almost nothing (comparatively) to make a film. The times when no money is being made often lead to the most exciting work since no-one’s trying to please anyone; they are just making something they believe in – usually pretty off the wall.

Magically putting money where my ‘expert’ opinions are, along comes Adam Green’s The Wrong Ferarri [sic] (yes he of Moldy Peaches fame). It shows that if you have some interesting ideas, a unique aesthetic and a bevy of hipster friends – you too can have your film screened at the Anthology Film Archives. Oh and an iPhone – you need that to shoot it on.

Before you jump on the film’s website to download this exciting development in 21st century film culture (starring Macaulay Culkin and Chris Egan among others), please be warned it’s NSFW. I can guarantee you some hard-core Adam Green nudity. The Wrong Ferarri lands somewhere between a Shakespearean farce, Jodorosky’s Holy Mountain and any coming of age film made in the last 20 years. That is, if you define coming of age as taking ketamine and turning into a caricature of yourself.

Originally published in The Thousands

Flipping through my RSS recently I came across a few reposts of Sofia Coppola’s essentials via Self Service‘s blog. The simple feminine stylings of Sofia’s films are a constant inspiration to any etsy-loving 20-something blogger you’d care to name, second only to her own personal wardrobe selections. I myself have been obsessed with Scar-Jo’s style in Lost in Translation since 2003 – from pink lips to her pink wig, but most of all her high-waisted semi-sheer peachy-pink cottontails in the opening shot of the seminal film. I was thrilled to have this secret behind her John Kacere inspired booty finally revealed – Araks underwear!

Clearly Araks is the cool, classic-yet-modern knicker equivalent to a perfect slouchy cashmere sweater or a Celine coat. Though they are not currently creating the Lost in Translation style knickers – god knows why – they are still making the undies that Ms Coppola (nee Phoenix) has been enjoying and endorsing to this day. Araks are also taking inspiration in their current collection from another amazing film – Sergie Parajanov’s Colour of Pomegranates. With super rich colour and texture they’re creating some of the most luxe yet comfortable underpinnings known to man or Coppola.

Originally published in The Thousands

Sometimes the film nerd bubble in my head becomes a sinkhole for sense. The combination of press for Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams’ rising celebrity somehow led me to believe that Meek’s Cutoff might be Reichardt’s real break in the commercial mainstream. After seeing it I instead realised that, once again, my centre of reality has been majorly thrown out of whack. Not that Meek’s isn’t a big step – it points Reichardt in the direction of the big indie or auteur directors, like in ten years she’ll be walking a line between Gus Van Sant and Lars Von Trier. Despite a “larger” budget, Meek’s Cutoff is still a Kelly Reichardt film through and through. Every detail is attended to – from the credits to the costumes. I could bang on about them for days. It doesn’t hurt that it’s shot on 35mm and so artfully composed that I can see an exhibition of stills from the film in my future.

Set in 1845, the film begins in the middle, with three families being guided across the Oregon Trail by Stephen Meek, who apparently knows a great short cut. Just as their supplies are dwindling, they meet a Native American who they take prisoner. Now the settlers are in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to trust their enemy to lead them to safer trail or to continue to trust a guide who has put them in danger. Michelle Williams plays the sassy wife, while Zoe Kazan plays the most annoying movie character since Jah Jah Binx. This film ain’t no Fast and Furious 5 - the action is so underplayed that when someone speaks you’re on the edge of your seat. Though it’s technically being sold as Western, its aesthetic echoes Picnic at Hanging Rock and Days of Heaven more than The Wild Bunch. Now where can I get one of those bonnets for summer?

Originally published in The Thousands

“I can hear everything. It’s everything time.” So starts Gang Gang Dance‘s fifth album Eye Contact and its epic opener ‘Glass Jar’. It’s also a perfect summation of the band’s sound – borrowing from everything (sometimes at once) and copying no-one.

Perhaps this is what makes GGD so enjoyable upon first listen because even people like me (who can’t catch a tune at the best of times) can come up with convenient reference points like Yoko Ono and The Knife. Their songs make you imagine girls with long unwashed hair and face paint doing interpretive dance in underground clubs wearing Bernard Wilhelm. Or is that just me? Either way, once this album breaks good and proper you’ll be sick to death of the phrase ‘cosmic hipster’.

Hype aside (not like Goblin hype but hype nonetheless), Eye Contact is wonderfully cohesive and works magically as a whole rather than split into blog sized bites. GGD manage to make synths sound warm and visceral and improvisation sound cohesive. Instead of being an impenetrable art band as you’d expect from everything you’ve read about them thus far, let me just say – they are instead weirdly accessible – but emphasis on the weird.

Originally published in The Thousands

Kat Dennings is the kind of actress you wish was in better movies (House Bunny) or had bigger parts in more movies (40 Year Old Virgin). She strikes me as a noughties Christina Ricci without the roles – which is a pity. Daydream Nation gives her a first chance in a proper lead and she takes it for all its worth. Though the dialogue is a little Diablo Cody-wannabe (with Polanski jokes coming off a little forced) Dennings makes it work, perfectly cast as the slightly nasty dysfunctional high schooler.

These are the kind of films you used to have to dig through racks in video stores for (remember those kids?) – low to middle budget films with a small and slightly off-centre story to tell. This movie is the saving grace between screenings of Twilight and High School Musical – I’d rather you slept with your teacher than make out with Zac Efron, truly. Also the mostly Canadian score (Emily Haines, Stars etc) make for a dreamy alt-teen soundtrack which makes me never want to grow up.

Originally published in The Thousands

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is directed by Werner Herzog and produced by David Lynch (who seems to have given up on features, you heard it here first). It’s worth mentioning because Lynch’s fingerprints are all over this film – in a good way. In fact it feels more like a collaboration between the two avant film giants, who share a desire for “a return to essential filmmaking” – tight ass budgets, small but quality casts and a good story.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done comes in somewhere a between black comedy and a crime drama with some surrealist notes thrown in – seriously dude, that talking garage door freaked me out. Michael Shannon does his best Klaus Kinski throwdown – which while no match for the original is not bad at all. Chloe Sevs and William Dafoe are also top notch (Sevigny, as always, shines a bit brighter in these slightly absurdist low-budget films).

From the seed of the true story of murderer Mark Yavorsky – a young man who acted out the myth of Oresteia and committed matricide – Herzog has created another ode to obsession. Like most Lynch and/or Herzog films it takes some unravelling. And if you’re searching for the meaning behind the God in the can of oats after the credits roll – well, I’m sure you won’t be the only one.

Originally published in The Thousands

Xavier Dolan is a bit dreamy. Not only are his films some of the most highly anticipated and beautiful films to come out of Quebec in some time, but he also has the face of a cherubic James Dean and never seems to age – I swear he has been 21 forever!

Dolan manages to fill his films with other absolute dreamboats. The love triangle of his sophomore feature Les Amours imaginaires (or Heartbeats) is a combination of Dolan himself (yes he acts), Monia Chokri – who combines the best of Carmen Maura and Audrey Hepburn  – and Niels Schneider, whose halo of of gravity-defying blonde curls and Adonis nose actually hurt my eyes. So yes, while Dolan may favour style over substance it’s such GREAT style! Please see the slo-mo sequences featuring Dalida’s version of ‘Bang Bang’ – swoon!

Also on release from Madman this month is Dolan’s first film from ’09, J’ai Tue Ma Mere (I Killed My Mother) – a scarily accurate and brilliant portrayal of mother-child relationships.

While Dolan’s films feel referential they also feel like someone just threw open a window in the stuffy room of modern cinema. Please don’t let his age or his pretty face fool you; this kid’s got chops – as Dolan’s character Hubert says in I Killed My Mother, “Stop comparing me to kids my age! I’m not like them!”

Originally published in The Thousands