SFR & KBAC

So, every Thursday morning, I talk with KBAC morning host Honey Harris about the issue of SFR on the street. This week (and, perhaps, from now on), we videotaped it (Thanks Teri Nolan) and then I attempted to edit it in imovie. Heavy emphasis on "attempted." But, hey, I was kind of busy and distracted. I'll improve: I promise.

This week in comics

Chris Diestileus, manager at True Believers on Cerrillos, recommends some reads that will make your life worth living! (OK, that was an exaggeration, but they're cool). Oh, and Captain America is good for the first time, Diestileus explains.

- Madason Gray

P.S. Also on sale at True Believers: SFR "Daddy Needs a Drink" columnist Rob Wilder's son London has released a series of collectible superhero cards. Isn't this adorable?

just add an eye patch and a parrot...

My bold plans for the weekend were horribly derailed by...myself. Whee. Two, maybe three songs into the We Drew Lightning set over at High Mayhem my already bothering me knee went out full force and two very kindly friends walked (aka practically carried) me to my car, drove me home and let me pass out.

Good times. So my blogging in the near future will, no doubt, be about all the fine flicks I've watched on DVD. Yup, it's doctors appointments and a bitchin' neoprene knee brace for me for awhile.

Much thanks to my kick ass former coworker here at the Reporter, Nathan Dinsdale for the couch he donated to the office, which is the only way I'm able to get anything done today. Also mad Reporter props go out to staff writers Dave Maass and David Alire-Garcia for hooking me up with internet over here in news land and for bringing me back lunch.

On the plus side of being hurt it's hard to get outside so the cigarette intake has been minimal.

Onto the DVDs. Last night it was The Boxer, a Daniel Day-Lewis/Jim Sheridan flick about a just released from prison boxer/former IRA terrorist. Good stuff. Day-Lewis is amazing, as always. Apparently he spent two years training for the part. Though the movie was nominated for 3 Golden Globes it seems to be pretty under the radar, especially in comparison to Sheridan's other flicks (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America and, um, the 50 cent movie Get Rich or Die Trying--Sheridan is definitely at his best telling Irish stories).

It's nothing to do with Santa Fe...

...but it's just so damn good.

Adriano Celentano & R.Carrà "Prisencolinensinainciusol" 1974

"Unforgettable modern clip, probably the hugest and most famous dance composition in italian Tv history! Note: Adriano sings with chest naked!"

- From the YouTube description.

(Props to D. Segal at OCW)

give a little love

While many people are probably thrilled that Valentine's Day is over I'm a little sad. Not because of the sappy romance side of things, but because I love candy and V-Day is the time of year when all that nasty yellow, green and purple candy is replaced with the colors we dig for all year long--red and pink! Not to mention those really gross candy hearts that I just can't seem to get enough of. Sugar, corn syrup and artificial flavors, yum!

But it's over. Keep out of the seasonal aisle of Albertsons for a day though will you? I'm gettin' stocked up on the cheap this weekend.

Tonight there's a triple threat of art over at High Mayhem. The super sassy party photos of Alexis Brown kick off the night. Brown's got a great eye and some colorful friends. I can't wait to see who the shots are of! Then We Drew Lightning, a little psychadelic rock and Health, this crazy dance, experiemental, punk, noise band from LA. Health came through last year and I remember enjoying myself thoroughly.

Then tomorrow it's off to CSF for Large and Small Rooms. Somehow I keep missing this band and am determined NOT to do so this time around. Fortunately, if I do happen to drop the ball they've got a few more shows coming up.

On the V-Day candy note: I will not be stocking up on tootsie pops. Yuck. The outer candy is so good. The tootsie part, not so much.

Also: I fucking love Al Green. If I have 1/10th his cool I'm doing pretty good.

Tonight the Gender Offenders are doing a special post V-Day show. I've seen the group before, they're always a lot of fun. (Read more in the Reporter, I wrote about this a little more elegantly! And more on Health/We Drew Lightning and a couple of other cool events that I'm going to have to duck out on. Go! They'll be great. I would, but I gotta get my sleep.)

Video Library Recommends....

This weekend Lisa Harris and Emily Montoya of the Video Library on Marcy Street recommend some documentaries you may or may not have heard of. In Manufactured Landscapes (2007), photographer Edward Burtynsky travels the world, capturing images of beauty inside vast landscapes of destruction. Also out on DVD is The King of Kong (2007), a film following two competitive Donkey Kong players as they battle for the world record. Other Video Library picks include, Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi. Enjoy! (Madason Gray)

Beneath the top hat

If you're ever at the cinematheque and

...you find you can't focus on whatever french new wave film they're screening,

....because the guy directly in front of you is too damned disconcerting with his home-cut mullet,

....the kind only seen in the bleachers at Wrestlemania,

...then, moviegoer, you've spotted the Santa Fe Reporter's film critic,

....Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff.

I'll let The Screener explain it himself.

bad blogger!

So, I've been doing a heckuva job not blogging lately. Not because there's nothing going on, but because there's been a lot and it's been busy. Plus the old internet here at the Reporter office has been on the fritz which means that online time has been precious and busy.

So let's roll back in time to three Mondays ago and start with the Eoto show at the Brewing Company. Honestly, I didn't expect much from two guys from the String Cheese Incident on electronics. The traveling hippie thing has never worked for me, but I'll try anything once (read: Rainbow Gathering). Eoto was a touch jam band-y, which was kind of expected, but good. They got a solid crowd on the dance floor and kept it up. I wanted the beats a little faster, but definitely a solid show. The guy on electronics definitely knew his shit and seemed to have control over all the music, with the other guy on drums backing him up, but not adding too much.

I'm sure lots of fun things happened between then and the following Monday but nothing stands out too much, so...jumping ahead.

Snowy Monday night, getting ready to toss some laundry in the machine and slack off with a book or movie when the phone rang. An invitation to Second Street for beer sounded way better than a date with the lint trap so on went the shoes and out the door I went. Showed up for the company and got a surreal experience instead. As soon as I walked in the door I noticed the tie-dyed wall hanging and CD table. Hmmm...Second Street doesn't usually have music on Mondays, but hey. Cool. My friend arrived and we scoped out the situation. Looked a little new agey, but we were game. Expecting a flute or, as my friend put it, some kind of hipster Ricki Lee Jones (which I kept hearing as Joni Mitchell) thing. Nope. Instead we were treated to a beat-boxing librarian who sang a song called "Dr. Bronners makes your hoo-hoo tingle." Okay then. We'd guessed that Celia was from Austin, just trying to make her way back. She was from Oregon, probably the second guess if we'd made one, so my friend and I decided that she was still working her way too or from Austin. Didn't want to confirm this though, as it was a little too much for dinner music.

A couple days later I got to watch Diva, a flick from the '80s that's playing at The Screen this week. It was great. Had a bit of that Hunger look to it--dark, smooth, a little neon lighting here and there. Also a little bit of a contemporary film noir. I don't want to ruin it because it was great. Get in your car and drive to The Screen right now before it goes away.

Through a series of friends I've found myself hooked on the HBO show Flight of the Conchords. Goddamn it's funny. Since I don't have a TV I've been watching the DVD, way better, no commercials!, and am almost finished.

K, so the Internets went down again during this, so there aren't any links for most of this post, but that's why we have google right?

Lots of good things coming up. Another busy week ahead, must try to blog more.

Hundred K

It's not often that a filmmaker edits his own retrospective. Not often, and not all that seemly either. But hey, Jim Terr's YouTube videos topped 100,000 views in 2008, so why shouldn't he self-celebrate? Ego and genius self-perpetuate.

You gotta hand it to Jim. If there's a reason to whip out a camera, a subject out there to be shot, Jim's been there, going there or there right now. Or sitting at home manipulating stock footage into some rudimentary animation.

And when there ain't nothing else to do, hell, he'll just write a song and film himself playing it.

I tease and needle, because that's the vital role he plays in Americana. He's the self-effacing hold-nothing sacred kick-him-in-the-balls sweet ol' folk singer that lives inside all our bleeding liberal pinko deep-down sunnbitch hearts.

In 2008, even the old folks are rockin' YouTube. I present:

"A Hundred Thousand YouTube Views"
From: hymiehymie

OK, so that thing is 8 minutes long. In the first three and a half minutes there's:

a dude swings a bat into a coconut, full force;
a high speed collision;
a mini-Jim jousts on the highway with a Christmas turkey;
a dude with a harmonica freaks out a dog;
I gesture wildly;
an extreme close-up of a fisherman's beard;
and women, women, women.

After that, I don't know. I got bored and moved onto the Yes.We.Can video again.

____

Congrats, Jim! I wish you five more in a fifth the time it took to reach the first. May these views help you on your way. Well done, sir.

Without a trace of Santa Fe?

The other day I was watching crap cable TV and Without a Trace, you know, that show about the FBI and missing people, came on. This episode had the team tracking a kid who was lured by a pedophile across the country, under the pretenses that he was the kids long-lost biological father. The show culminated in Santa Fe, or at least that's where they said they were. For the life of me, I couldn't determine whether it was indeed our city different.

Here are some shots I took of the screen. Let me know (davem @ sfreporter [dot] com) if you can figure out what park this is.

strangers in the dark

As a shusher, movie going in Santa Fe has always been especially frustrating. Nowhere else I've ever been have people been more inclined to bring their own sandwich (covered in the most odorous of condiments and wrapped, of course, in loud, crinkly paper), answer their phones ("Can I call back, I'm in a movie...what...what...hang on...I'm...in...a...movie...") or chat openly with the person they came with about the movie, or worse, something else entirely.

So I was shocked on Saturday night when I hit DeVargas for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The small theater was packed, some of us straining awkwardly to get a good view of the screen. During previews people muttered about being uncomfortable, discussed whether the preview looked like something they wanted to see and asked their partners about other films the actors had been in. But then, when the movie began. Nothing. For the full two hours of the film: nothing. A man gasped at a scene that made him unnerved, but his reaction wasn't the inconsiderate chit chat that so often fills movie houses. It was heartfelt, neurotic, uncontrollable fear. When the film ended and the credits began to roll the silence continued. There was none of the clapping that often (and so oddly) follows a good film. Just a mesmerized audience who didn't quite have the bearings to go back out into the real world.

I would like to invite that entire audience to see every movie I ever go to. They were perfect and polite. And yes, the film was fantastic.

If only that little bubble of joy could have lasted forever. Alas, the very next night I tested my luck at Once Upon A Time In The West. Really, beer? I know it's a Western, but there's just no need for an audience to crack open cans of beer in the middle of a film, is there? The individually wrapped candies were a nice touch too. But the prize for worst theatergoer goes to the man who'd obviously seen the film a few times, probably one of his favorites, and ruined every ounce of suspense for me (having never seen it) by announcing each plot point aloud before it happened, interjecting his own commentary and identifying the next famous face to come on screen moments before the actor arrived. No amount of hushing or dirty looks would stop him, and he was loud enough that moving seats in the small CCA theater would have been useless. So my companion and I did the only thing we could think to do. We packed up our things and left.

It's a shame, as it was the last night and I'll probably never get the chance to see it on the big screen again. But, then again, if I choose to watch it I can do so by myself and enjoy the surprises the film has to offer all on my own, without the smell of cheap beer accompanying my stranger's soundtrack.

puttin' it out there

Saturday was a night to celebrate new artistic products. SFR's own Gabe Gomez had a signing for his book of poetry The Outer Bands at El Farol. Though Gabe didn't read he did have a great turnout of supporters and signed a few books. Radio la Chusma even rocked the party for Gabe. Go, go Gomez!

After El Farol it was down to the Brewing Company for the Santa Fe All-Stars' EP release. It was packed. The show started at 8 and well before 10 signs were hung up on the doors announcing that the show had sold out. I couldn't even get to the merch table to check out the EP because the crowd was too thick. The age mixture was great to see, a lot of young people and a lot of older folks jammed in together. No one had too much room to dance, but everyone tried. I'm surprised that the All-Stars have only an EP, but let's hope it's just a teaser for a longer album to come.

Congrats to Gabe and the All Stars for putting new art into the world and for drawing such great support. Good luck!

In the Shins

Albuquerque native and bassist for The Shins, Martin Crandall has been charged with domestic abuse against his girlfriend, model Elyse Sewell, also from ABQ. Or so, the Post-Chronicle reports...

... Wikipedia editors have their revenge:

Click to enlarge.

(Props to Luke Baumgarten for posting the story to Facebook)

funky font

Okay, so watching a movie about a font doesn't sound all that cool to most people. It does to me, but that may just be evidence as to my mental instability.

Anyway, we had a few days off over the holidays and I spent a lot of good quality time on my ass watching movies. Mostly rewatching old John Cusack movies that I've seen a thousand times before, because, frankly, High Fidelity never gets old. But after reliving the music snob world of Championship Vinyl it was time to move onto something even geekier. Helvetica, an 80 some odd minute documentary about a typeface. Sounds lame. It's not. People are crazy about this font. You're probably surrounded by it right now. And there are two, very different, schools of thought when it comes to the aesthetic of the font. School 1 is the lovers. Helvetica is one of three fonts they'll use. They find it crisp, traditional--though a touch sassy--and so clean that the eye reads it without thinking about its existence. School 2 is the haters. They find it boring, feel that the world is surrounded by bad taste and a few on the fringe are actually morally opposed to what it represents.

It's kinda insane. But it's fascinating.

Seraphim Fell Hard For It

Crossposted from Maassive.com:

This week, I finally got around to watching Seraphim Falls, a western filmed in New Mexico that played in theaters briefly last year. My coworker, his partner and I hooked my laptop up to their projector and we watched the film unfold across the length of the wall of his living room. It killed my laptop doing it, but in the end, reinstalling Vista (again) was worth it.

Starring two Irishmen as American Civil War veterans, the film’s too sparse on dialogue to hear the lilting holes in their assumed American accents. Hell, from the opening scene, you know that Brosnan’s character probably hasn’t spoken to anyone in three years.

He’s a mountain man, one minute building a fire and the next running for his life. Throughout the film, Brosnan’s motivated only by shame and survival, as Neeson and a gang of bounty hunters chase him across the New Mexico wilderness. You don’t know what Brosnan’s done, but it’s something horrific and old and soul-scarring, both for him and Neeson, who won’t stop until he’s personally put a bullet in Brosnan’s head. The chase is exquisite and brutal and logical and long; you might call the plot slow, but the scenes are white-knuckling and physically exhausting.

It’s the kind of Western I complain they don’t make anymore. It obeys the genre rigidly, and yet completely transcends it. It’s the thinking man’s action film; a little James Dickey with a lot of Serge Leone. Man against man. Man against nature. Man against his own soul. In the last quarter, it gets downright metaphysical, but it’s both apt and intriguing and wide open to interpretation. That’s just how I like it (and why My Name is Nobody is one of my all-time favs). I spent a good twenty minutes lying in bed that night meditating on the multiple layers of meaning in the title, “Seraphim Falls.” Plural on purpose, I concluded.

Anyway, it satisfied me like so few films do. Totally recommended, dude.

Recon from the Total Pig's Beautiful Sty

REVEALED: Images from home prove Gwyneth Doland really IS a total pig.

Suffer for Fashion

The belt of bourbon from Evangelo’s is settling nicely inside me; it crawls up my spine onto my head like a skullcap, making the post-sunset cold manageable as I huff to Palace Avenue where Lewellen Contemporary awaits with a confusion of well-dressed people meandering inside.

Project Runway’s current season features Elisa Jimenez, a couture fashion designer from New Mexico who relocated to Santa Fe after spending a number of years in New York making clothes for the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Courtney Love. Lewellen is hosting a fashion show featuring the work of Jimenez, who is also the daughter of famed sculptor Luis Jimenez.

I was made hip to this shindig and invited by CeCe Kurzweg, the wife of music producer John Kurzweg, who is also one of the models for the show. I drank warm honey wine and watched beautiful people who couldn’t possibly consume more than 200 calories a day slither in expensive clothing, looking bemused, uninterested, yet delighted to see one another.

I run into Larry Mitchell who has just been nominated for a Grammy for his work as producer of Johnny Whitehorse's Totemic Flute Chants in the Best Native American Album category. Brian Hardgroove, who I haven’t seen in a while, tells me about his own production work in Hong Kong with Chinese punk band Demerit.

Before the actual show begins a blue line of tape is laid down on the floor like a landing strip, which will guide the models to their final destination. Then announcements, then images from Project Runway show providing contextual information on Jimenez. But like any reality show we only see a character, a blip of images and segments pretending to construct a person; it’s a lesson in post-modernity where one reality views a faux reality for insight on what’s about to happen in front of our faces.

One by one the models cascade down the stairs where 100 or so my newest and most fabulous friends await. The women wear a series of multi-colored shreds with puffy backpacks, and the men (who are shirtless for some reason) sport the backpacks and smile sheepishly; I’m reminded of my neglected gym membership going to waste.

Once all have descended and congregated around a table with a tied bundle of clothing upon it, Jimenez appears at the foot of the stairs to a round of applause. She too wears the strategic shreds but somehow makes it work to her full advantage. After a few announcements, we are instructed to untie the bundle and try on clothes. It’s like spilling a bucket of chum in shark infested waters with the airs of a JC Penny fire sale. The pile of clothing comes apart like an anthill in the rain. I don’t participate...

preggers

Sometimes really cool promo stuff comes to my office. Advanced copies of knitting books (beware the uncorrected proof of a pattern!), movie screeners, the occasional random t-shirt. But today I think some genius marketer takes the cake.

The movie: Juno (about a pregnant high school girl, blah, blah, blah)
The swag: A highlighter in the shape of a pregnancy test.

Gross. At least the ink is orange, not yellow. But still. Ha, ha, ha, pregnancy tests are funny. And who doesn't want to mark something as important with an item in the shape of something you pee on? Especially if you're the type of person who chews on your pen.

Ugh.

a-ha!

That's it. I've been trying to remember all day what I was going to do today, this weekend and, of course, the unTRAINed gallery opening at the Railyard. Blogged about here before, an missed by myself due to a cold, I love the idea of a cold wintery night, a hot drink (um, I'm bringing my own just to be safe) and art in a funky location.

Hooray! My evening has been saved. Now I have to go and re-myspace a friend who I asked if anything was happening.

And tomorrow (or Sunday morning, depending on how motivated I am) at 11 am The Red Balloon at the Screen. Yipee! I hope it's as good as it was when I last saw it, probably in 1988...

Happy weekend!

shit

I ran around my house super antsy last night trying to figure out what to do with my night and to remember what it was that I'd forgotten. Naomi Klein at the Lensic, that's what. Errrr. Yes, it was sold out, but with the Lannan readings there are always a few last minute tickets that become available. And you can watch from the lobby. But instead I just sat at home reading, not that there's anything wrong with that.

I guess that's one of the pitfalls of working on things so far in advance. Ask me what's going on tonight and I'll look blankly past you, ask what's happening next Thursday and chances are I can list several fun things. So I'm constantly forgetting to go to things I want to go to. This week it's even worse because we've got a week off, so the next issue of the Reporter goes all the way to January 1st.

Maybe if I mark down my plans for the break publicly I'll remember, or my twos of friends who read this blog can call and remind me:
Knitting (time and location top secret)
Kilt and Alchemical Burn show at High Mayhem (Dec. 28)
New Year's, um, I'm not sure yet, there are several options in the works
Faralito walk on Christmas Eve (yes, I will probably need a reminder for this, I'm that Christmas-y)

That's it? A whole week and that's all I've got? There's more to do, I'm just not feeling very committed at the moment.