“Right from the get-go Daft Punk presume that you take them to be the game changing serious artists by positing that they are the music of your life and that listening to them gives life back to music. This idea of “life” returning to a world of cold machinery shows up again on “Touch”, an eight minute long bloated prog rock suite in which Paul Williams speak-sings from the perspective of a robot regaining his ability to feel. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine all of this as a statement about Daft Punk returning to teach the current EDM scene about “real” music, even recruiting Giorgio Moroder to give a history lesson over bubbling analog synthesizer arpeggios. As much as I hate to admit it, this elitist agenda does allow the record to sound incredibly pristine. Sonically, this album is nearly perfect. Every detail is immediate and has a well-defined place in the mix, and even when the arrangements get busy like on “Motherboard”, there’s still an alarming degree of clarity.”
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I say goodbye to The Office, looking back at its best years and the excellent series finale:
“So let’s get to that series finale, and discuss why it is, largely, a success. It is by no means a perfect episode of television; it’s bloated, occasionally staid, and periodically goes for emotional beats that are undeserved. That proves, rather than negates, how it works as a series finale for The Office. This wasn’t a perfect show. As great as Michael Scott was a character, he would once in a while venture too far into “asshole” territory. The final two or three seasons of The Office were mostly bad, with flashes of the show’s former self. Some characters didn’t work, and reality often turned into farce (for better and worse). But The Office was, overall, a magnificently loveable and hilarious beast that utilized strong writing and performing to churn out two perfect seasons (2 & 3), and two great ones (4 & 5). It gave us Jim and Pam and Dwight and Michael and Angela and Oscar and any other number of characters that fans will recall for the rest of their lives. It gave us the Office Olympics and introduced us to Ellie Kemper and taught us a love of Chili’s that seemed impossible. With how much The Office gave, it seems foolhardy and unfair to treat its end as just another episode. Yes, the show became bad. But before that, it was one of the greatest things on television.”
Ian Cory reviews the new Eluvium album, Nightmare Ending:
“Describing ambient in the terms of pop music is a pretty thankless task. Not only does it function differently from a formal perspective (i.e. for most ambient music, form isn’t really a concern) but also the requirements from a listener on a moment-to-moment basis are drastically different. Nightmare Ending doesn’t have many “events” in the way that a standard pop album would, although it does have noticeable shifts in harmony and melody. These changes occur slowly and often loop back around in unsurprising and natural ways, which allows the listener to move beyond the excitement of “what happens next” and focus on how the music is happening. Many of the sounds being made on this album are originally from a piano but have come a long way to their final form on the album. Often, the forefront of the piece will be a recognizable piano progression, while mountains of echoes of the same part build in the background, until they eventually overtake the entire mix. Each of the sounds that ebb and flow through the tracks leave a small sonic residue. Cooper is a master at creating a sense of distance and space in his music, and listening to this album is much more like walking through something than having something happen to you.”
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“I began my relationship with How I Met Your Mother near the middle of the show’s first season. I was in 8th grade, 13 going on 14. I’ve watched it regularly every season, never falling more than a couple of episodes behind. This is untrue of almost every other show (I caught up with season 8 of The Office this summer, after not being able to make it through while it aired). I spent my entire high school experience with Ted, Lily, Marshall, Robin and Barney by my side. When I graduate college next spring, the show will end. I will have spent almost half of my life, at that point, with How I Met Your Mother. My age obviously differed greatly from the characters’, so I grew alongside them, rather than with them. Regardless, I have spent many years of my life, the most important portion yet, with this show. And that is why the ending of tonight’s season finale hit me as much as it did. I know how long Ted has waiting for her, because I’ve been with him every step of the way.”
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John Green's tumblr: The Commencement Address
Some people have asked to read the commencement address I delivered this morning to the 2013 graduates of Butler University. So here it is.
My own commencement speaker, who shall remain nameless, began with a lame joke about how these speeches only come in two varieties: Short and bad. This…
“About a Boy
Plot: Based on the 2002 film, which is based on a Nick Horsby novel, About a Boy tells the story of Will, a man who lives off of the success of hit song he wrote. This allows his to lounge and hit on numerous women in his carefree life… that is, until a single mother and her son move in next door. Will initially uses the kid to pick up women, but ends up bonding with him.
Pros: Of the shows that have already been picked up by NBC and Fox, this is the one I’m most invested in, for one simple reason: Jason Katims. Sure, his last foray into comedy was The Wedding Bells, which I’m guessing not even he remembers. But his two most recent shows as executive producer are the terrific and perpetually underwatched Parenthood, and Friday Night Lights, one of the greatest shows of all time. It helps that David Walton has been cast as Will. Walton has been thrown around the sitcom circuit for the past couple of years, starring in shows like Bent, Perfect Couples and 101 Questions, but his performance was engaging in even his worst projects. He recently played Jess’ boyfriend on New Girl and did an excellent job doing so. Hopefully this will be his critical and commercial time to shine. Minnie Driver will play the single mother, and Leslie Bibb and Al Madrigal are also in the cast.
Cons: There’s always risk with adaptation, and the last pilot that Jon Favreau directed (as he directs this pilot) was for Revolution which isn’t a great show.
Overall: But Favraeu is hardly responsible for the issues with that show. And Parenthood and Friday Night Lights were also adaptations (FNL even stretching back to book form as About a Boy does). And again, there’s the hesitation from the fact that those two shows are dramatic while this is comedic. But it is comedy with a heart, and if there is anything Katims has mastered, it’s wearing the heart on the sleeve without slipping into saccharine, a skill both mentioned shows utilize to powerful effects.
Widely Speculative Grade for Unseen Pilot: A
How Many Episodes Will It Get: 22+ (I may be optimistic on it getting a full season, but optimism can be fun)”
Read about this show and more here, check back tomorrow for word on Fox’s new shows, and next for week for ABC, CBS and The CW.
“More than any duo listed above, this one seems especially odd at first glance. Dawson has made her name on playing extremely direct and lo-fi anti-folk. Aesop Rock is one of the flag bearers for a type of needlessly wordy abstract hip-hop that exploded in the early 2000’s. This dichotomy is, for the majority of Hokey Fights, not smoothed over in the least. Songs will begin as a standard Dawson tune would, an acoustic guitar, some light percussion, and a melody built on an extremely economical collection of notes. Then, with little to no warning Aesop will swing by, spit a typically knotty and impenetrable verse and vanish into the night just as quickly. Aesop Rock’s lyricism also remains incredible verbose and his idiosyncratic enunciation can make his verses come across as syllable soup, leaving Dawson to act as a sort of emotional translator. To be fair, his close vicinity to the most blunt lyricist on earth has cleared some of the haze of metaphor around Rock’s subject matter, like on “TV at 10”. And besides the discrepancy of their approach to music, Dawson and Rock do have some notable similarities. Both have startlingly deadpan senses of humor, and both find the minor details of life much more worthy of inspection than the big picture.”
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“As I (probably foolishly) admitted in my last HIMYM write-up, I’ve never had a girlfriend, so my situation falls far from the one captured within the show. But I’ve been in love, ever since I was 14, with the same girl. We don’t talk anymore, because I screwed things up, which even casual readers of my autobiographical work should not find difficult to believe. We never dated or anything of the sort, she had no reciprocated feelings. Our friendship grew throughout high school, and we remained close freshman year of college. Then things fell apart because I’m the kind of person who is too informed by the kind of shows that he watches, like How I Met Your Mother. A warning to young readers: almost every sitcom character in history would qualify as a sociopath. Remember that.”
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(Source: fatfook, via wilwheaton)
