5.29.10 - She & Him @ the Fox Theatre - Oakland, CA

Went to see She & Him on Saturday night. I thought the crowd would be pretty relaxed considering who was playing, but I was surprised by the gaggles of girls screaming "I LOVE YOU ZOOOOOOEEEEEY!" Please, this is not a Britney concert circa 2000. Two girls behind me were about to start something during a very quiet, mellow number. ("JUST STOP TALKING. STOP TALKING." Something unintelligible, murmur murmur. "OH, THAT'S REALLY CLASSY. REALLY." "JUST WATCH THE SHOW AND STOP TALKING!!!")

Girls will be girls.

They put on a good show, playing songs from both albums along with a few additional covers like "Fools Rush In" and "I Put A Spell On You." It was hard to hear what ZD was saying in between songs. Kind of mumbly. She looked really pretty, though. Double encore, which was nice. I like that they do covers of songs that most of our generation would probably overlook, because hopefully it pushes people to discover the source material. But wouldn't it be hilariously ironic if ZD covered Katy Perry?!!

And I'd like M. Ward to sing me a lullaby.

A blurry pic because I'm short and have zero camera skills.

Rekindling my amor for Gael Garcia Bernal

A few nights ago I watched Mammoth (2009), a film I hadn't even heard of until Netflix recommended it to me. I've been way out of the indie loop!

It's about a wealthy young New York couple who live in a loft that looks straight out of Dwell. GGB plays the daddy, a green-eyed manchild who jets off to Thailand to sign off on some contracts relating to the social gaming empire he owns (This is the first time I've heard MySpace referenced in a film), and Michelle Williams plays stressed-out-surgeon while their spawn learns Tagalog from the nanny whose two flip-flop clad young sons mope around the Philippines without her.

It was pretty predictable, somewhat disappointing plot-wise, and left me scratching my huge head for some kind of proper resolution, but it was decent. (I'm prone to switching off intolerable cinema, Couples Retreat being the most recent case). It also made me appreciate my mother.

Anyway, I do recommend the film, despite all the negative reviews I've read. I like movies that hop from place to place geographically and deal with a lot of characters.

I ALSO LIKE MOVIES WITH GGB. Which is my point here. It's funny how I end up spending only about 10% of my posts being shallow while most of it is usually semi-substantial/non-superficial commentary. Besides his lovely mouth and his tendency to appear mildly clothed in many of his films, I love that he's so versatile, yet he always seems to play morally ambiguous characters.

Maybe it's those pensive eyes...

Is it bad that I want to see LETTERS TO JULIET?

"Madame Robinson, vous essayez de me séduire, n'est-ce pas?"

Over the weekend I dusted off my record player (which looks as if it's made by Fisher-Price) and put on Simon & Garkfunkel's Greatest Hits while I crammed for my design 101 midterm (which I probably did fine on, fingers crossed). Naturally I felt the urge to rewatch The Graduate* so I put it on as background noise.

I love this film so much. I'm sure everyone's felt a little bit like Benjamin Braddock in the last few months. I didn't think much of it after my first viewing since I had to watch it for my histoire du cinéma class and I could only get my hands on a VHS copy of Le Lauréat. Dubbed Dustin Hoffman = no fun. My professor prefaced his lecture on the film by pointing out that DH was not "très beau" (direct quote!), and I found myself outraged. Since my French comprehension at the time was considerably low compared to now, I didn't really understand all the dialogue in the film, but I sure wasn't blind! DH was so beautiful, a perfect embodiment of youthful apathy. I can't imagine any other actor pulling off that empty, glazed look that he has in 80% of the movie. And he sure did look fit in all those pool/bedroom scenes...

The cinematography, of course, is also stunning, but that's pretty obvious. Ha, every time I'm at the airport I find myself staring blankly off into space on the moving walkways (easiest way to set up a tracking shot, no?!) then I start to hum "The Sound of Silence" quietly to myself. (I have a similar ritual at train stations, I whistle "I Will Wait For You" from Les parapluies de Cherbourg as I sob on the platform!)

Here's my favorite S&G tune from the film, a somewhat lesser-known track called "April Come She Will." (I love songs with references to months. "June in January," anyone? John Mayer's "St. Patrick's Day"?)



April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again

June, she'll change her tune,
In restless walks she'll prowl the night;
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;
September I'll remember.
A love once new has now grown old.

Sigh. Love it.

*I dedicate this post to Bernie because she insisted the film was amazing and was patient with me when I kept stopping the movie to take notes!

Upcoming CD releases that I'm looking forward to!

Yesterday in my ad class someone brought up how CD sales are still down and no one actually buys them anymore. Errr...I do? :( You can't hold an mp3 in your hand with excitement, it's not the same.

March 23 - She & Him, Volume Two (Got tix for their May 29th show at the Fox Theater!)

April 13 - MGMT, Congratulations

April 20 - Rufus Wainwright, All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu (SOOOO excited for this!)

May 10 - Foals, Total Life Forever
             Keane, Night Train

Über

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At the start of each week I write myself a To-Do list though I never seem to check anything off nor get anything done.

This week has been no exception, thanks to a distracting little epic called Inglourious Basterds. Until my 2nd year of college, I had never seen a Quentin Tarantino film in its entirety. I had a roommate who pretty much worshiped him (From Dusk 'Til Dawn included). I never really saw the fuss--to me, he was this funny-looking guy who had made a cameo on an episode of Margaret Cho's All-American Girl in the early 90s (a show that I watched religiously) and liked to pack his scripts with guts and expletives. As someone who found The Adventures of Milo & Otis mildly traumatizing, I doubted my ability to endure a Tarantino picture.

Then I took a screenwriting class sophomore year, had to read Pulp Fiction, was appalled, watched the film, and fell in love with it!

But I digress, because this is not meant to be a written tribute to QT! Though I'm still set on being Mia Wallace for Halloween sometime in my life...as soon as I have a Vincent Vega to be my +1.

Anyway!

Here are the real reasons for this post.

The talented & lovely Daniel Brühl & Christoph Waltz.





Now I've been obsessed with Daniel Brühl for quite sometime (I was one of two people under the age of 70 in the theater when Ladies in Lavender was released, the second being my friend Joycie whom I dragged along!), but IB definitely reminded me of how versatile of an actor he is.

And Christoph Waltz...akdjklsjakfl...so amazing. I might have sifted through 40+ pages of Fuck Yeah Christoph Waltz! in one sitting in lieu of doing my homework. I need help. He's too cute. And Der Humpink is an instant mood lift.

Mein gott, I want to learn German! This always happens whenever I watch foreign language films, I get this itch to know the language. For example, I was dying to learn Spanish after my Gael Garcia Bernal phase (but I never did!)....and wow, I totally just looked up language classes at the Goethe Institut.

Anyway, if you haven't seen IB yet, I urge you to asap! Digestible for the faint of heart, even. In the meantime I think I'll slowly work my way through the QT canon, but I'll probably close my eyes during the yucky bits.

Lifehouse: an ex-boyfriend you can't get over

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The first time I heard "Hanging By A Moment" was sometime in the winter of 2001. I used to watch the music videos on VH1 in the mornings while getting ready for school, and if you tuned in consistently (basically, if you watched every morning), you'd always see the same videos. There was something so comforting about hearing those first two purring guitar notes (notes? I don't know any guitar terminology) at the beginning of the song. It also didn't hurt that Jason Wade was easy on the eyes (and he still is, but I'm going to forget his new hair exists)!

I was sold.

Soon after I picked up their debut album No Name Face, wore it out from too many spins on my Discman, told all my friends about my new discovery, went to their shows, bought their T-shirts, bought the tab book (and I don't play guitar...obsession overboard), and purchased every subsequent CD...

Their fourth album Who We Are was released during the summer of 2007, right before I left for my year abroad in France. I was a bit torn--I wasn't impressed with their first single (it was too radio-friendly and shouty) and wasn't sure I liked the sound direction they were heading in. What was perfect about their debut was this sense of rawness and honesty in the songwriting. Their new stuff didn't have that same...oomph, for lack of a better sound. I caved and bought it anyway, out of loyalty or something, not that they would have been aware of my betrayal, listened to it once, frowned, then fled to the land of Gauls and adopted Justice as my new patron saint.

It took about two years for the songs on album four to really grow on me, but it made me a little sad that I no longer proclaimed Lifehouse as my favorite band because they had evolved, and my tastes had changed, too. (In case you're curious, Beirut is my current favorite band.)

Whoosh, 2010. Their latest effort Smoke and Mirrors was released just this past Tuesday. I had heard "Halfway Gone" a few months ago and again found it too mainstream for my tastes. Sure it's catchy, but it's not the Lifehouse I fell in love with. Instead of impulse-buying the CD (I'm on a very tight budget at the moment), I streamed it off their MySpace and opened a TextEdit file to geekily take note of which songs I actually liked. Admittedly, a good handful (Check out "Had Enough"...how sad that I like all the break-uppy tunes!), but I'm not sure if I'm ready for purchase commitment. Yet I have this lingering guilt!!

While I'm no longer their biggest fan and probably won't line up at noon for an 8pm show again anytime soon like I had done many a time in my youth, I still have this fondness for them. I check their Twitter page, peek at their website from time to time. I'll watch them if they're on TV....and I wish I had a good boyfriend metaphor to end this post...

My LJ username's namesake is featured in this video! :)

Konnichiwa!

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Hullo. The lovely Tiffany at Anthro-Elegy told me to start a blog, mostly because she'd probably rather voluntarily subject herself to my pop culture swoonings than be forced to read chunks of it over instant message. (I can be very aggressive when it comes to sharing links.)

Anyway, a little about me. I'm easily amused and have a somewhat obsessive personality, so I like a lot of things, but at the same time I can be a bit of a culture snob (or snob in general...)

Re: the title of the blog, it's grabbed from Francoise Hardy's 1962 hit "Tous les garcons et les filles" (Watch it here). I put "les filles" in parentheses because I'm more likely to post stuff about male thespians and artists, but I'm no sexist! (I go through girl singer phases, for example! Plus I love Sally Field!)

To start us off, I've included my favorite photo of Paul Newman. On a Vespa. OMG.

C'est tout for now. (See, I'm a snob. Told you.)