To prepare for the upcoming Academy Awards, Franklin Laviola, director of the acclaimed short Happy Face, gives us his Academy Award predictions. Read what he thinks and watch the Oscars on Sunday night!

Picture

The Artist

The Descendants

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

Moneyball

The Tree of Life

War Horse

Will Win: On Sunday night, Michel Hazanavicius‘ silent film simulation The Artist will take the top prize.  Over the last decade, there have been several instantly forgettable Best Picture winners — A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Crash, and Slumdog Millionaire.  The Artist will join their insipid ranks, thanks mainly to the marketing juggernaut of the Weinstein Co.

Should Win: I would be happy with either The Tree of Life or Hugo (my #1 and #2 films of the year, respectively), taking the top prize.  Scorsese’s film is his best in years, a technically dazzling tribute to the history of early cinema, as well as a personal testament to his love of the medium.  Malick’s epic poem of a film goes where few films even dare to go and will be revered for many years to come.  It’s a miracle that a film as aesthetically challenging as Malick’s was even nominated for Best Picture.

Should Have Been Nominated: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier, Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, Bertrand Bonello’s House of Pleasures, Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods & Men, and, a film that many actually believed had a realistic shot at being recognized, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.  

Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Will Win: Barring a last minute surge of support for Scorsese, the French-born Michel Hazanavicius will take this category too.  Hazanavicius won the DGA award several weeks back and the winner there, more often than not, also goes on to capture Oscar gold.

Should Win: Terrence Malick for the beauty and commitment of his vision, which engages with the cosmic and the individual or the divine and the human, in equal measure.  Of course, I would love to see Scorsese win too, even if he already won in this category for The Departed, five years ago.   

Should Have Been Nominated: Werner Herzog, Bertrand Tavernier, and Abbas Kiarostami, to name just three great filmmakers, who all made significant contributions to the art form, this past year. 

Actor

Demian Bichir, A Better Life

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Will Win: Back in December, this looked like Clooney’s prize to lose, with only Brad Pitt giving him any real competition.  However, within the last month, Jean Dujardin won three major Best Actor prizes in a row — the Golden Globe (Comedy/Musical), the SAG award, and the BAFTA.  The Oscar will be next for the French comic.

Should Win: The two frontrunners in this category, the mugging Dujardin and shabby Clooney, actually, give two of the more insufferable performances of the year.  As good as first time nominees Bichir and Oldman are in their roles, it’s an effortless Brad Pitt (as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane), whose work really stands out.  Pitt gives a terrific movie star performance, reminiscent of some of the best work of his mentor, Robert Redford.

Should Have Been Nominated: As an American everyman, who is experiencing either visions of the Apocalypse or a psychotic breakdown, Michael Shannon gave arguably the finest male lead performance of the year in Take Shelter.  

Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Will Win: Two-time Oscar-winner, Meryl Streep won both the Golden Globe and BAFTA, for her performance as Margaret Thatcher.  But it’s the SAG award-winner, Viola Davis, who will win the Oscar.

Should Win: There are three excellent performances, nominated in this category.  Streep gives a technical master class, particularly in the scenes as the older, senile Thatcher.  Rooney Mara’s highly physical performance is precisely-modulated and often riveting.  Viola Davis, as the Mississippi maid, who dares to tell her own story, is never less than moving.     

Should Have Been Nominated: In a career of many distinguished performances, Juliette Binoche gives one of her two or three best in Certified Copy.  By far, the best work by a lead actress in any film this year.  

Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Will Win: As the cuddly septuagenarian father, who comes out of the closet and is then stricken with cancer, Christopher Plummer wins his first Oscar, with very little competition.

Should Win: Traditionally, this is one of the strongest categories on the board, but not this year.  Plummer is better delivering exposition in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, than he is at trying to salvage an underwritten role in the horrid Beginners.  Von Sydow deserves something for his endurance and patience in acting opposite the insidious Thomas Horn, but not an Oscar for his efforts.  Branagh, mimicking his idol Sir Laurence Olivier, is fine, if a bit predictably broad, while Jonah Hill is Jonah Hill, only without the pot jokes.  Nick Nolte does shine in Warrior, however.  If you want proof, just watch the scene, in which he relapses in a hotel room … it involves a recitation of Moby Dick.

Should Have Been Nominated: Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken, as father and son, were both extraordinary in The Tree of Life.

Supporting Actress

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Will Win: Octavia Spencer, the Mississippi maid, who gets her revenge with a scat-filled pie, is a lock for the win.      

Should Win: As good as Spencer is, it’s her co-star in a number of scenes, Jessica Chastain, who nearly steals the film.  In a year of several great supporting roles, she shows her remarkable comic range, here, as a naive, but genuine Southern belle.   It’s the real Marilyn Monroe performance of the year!    

Should Have Been Nominated: Jessica Chastain should have also received a nod for her ethereal work as the grieving mother in The Tree of Life.  Alice Barnole and Celine Sallette are both captivating in House of Pleasures, a film whose female ensemble includes a number of worthy candidates.

Original Screenplay

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Margin Call

Midnight in Paris

A Separation

Will Win: The surprise box-office success of Midnight in Paris will garner Woody Allen his third screenwriting Oscar.    

Should Win: While I do have reservations about the didacticism of A Separation, it does happen to be the most-finely calibrated and accomplished of the bunch.     

Should Have Been Nominated: The Tree of Life is shaped like no other film, while Certified Copy has a theorem-like perfection to both its dialogue and structure.

Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants

Hugo

The Ides of March

Moneyball

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Will Win: Despite strong support for Moneyball, Alexander Payne will win his second screenwriting Oscar for The Descendants.     

Should Win: John Logan’s adaptation of Hugo tells a children’s story with adult reverberations, by having the guts to take its time and allow the visuals to come first.   

Should Have Been Nominated: The Princess of Montpensier for its rich sense of character and period and Mysteries of Lisbon for its mammoth undertaking in juggling numerous narratives.    

Animated Feature

A Cat in Paris

Chico & Rita

Kung Fu Panda 2

Puss in Boots

Rango

Will Win: Both a critics’ favorite and a box-office hit, Rango will take this category easily.    

Should Win:  I must admit, I have not seen any of the nominees.

Should Have Been Nominated: The Adventures of Tintin was more vigorous proof of Steven Spielberg’s pop artistry.    

Animated Short

Dimanche (Sunday)

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

La Luna

A Morning Stroll

Wild Life

Will Win: Pixar’s La Luna (not to be confused with Bernardo Bertolucci’s incest epic of the same name) has its fans, but I have a feeling that The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris will sneak in for the win.    

Documentary Feature

Hell and Back Again

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Pina

Undefeated

Will Win: The cause of the West Memphis Three has passionate support within the Hollywood community, so look for Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory to win this category.

Should Win: Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory tells an incredibly gripping story.     

Should Have Been Nominated: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light elevated the documentary form.    

Documentary Short

The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement

God is the Bigger Elvis

Incident in New Baghdad

Saving Face

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Will Win: Saving Face, the story of Pakistani women disfigured by acid attacks and the surgeon dedicated to helping them, sounds like the winner here to me.    

Live Action Short

Pentecost

Raju

The Shore

Time Freak

Tuba Atlantic

Will Win: Directed by Terry George (Hotel Rwanda) and starring Ciaran Hinds (Munich) and Kerry Condon (Rome), The Shore will have the most industry exposure and will, therefore, win this category.     

Foreign Language Film

Bullhead (Belgium)

Footnote (Israel)

In Darkness (Poland)

Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)

A Separation (Iran)

Will Win: When it comes to AMPAS’ voting committee picking the winner, festival prize-winners, critics’s favorites and assumed frontrunners (The Class, Waltz with Bashir, A Prophet, The White Ribbon, to name just a few), have not faired well in this category in recent years.  However, perhaps bizarrely, something tells me that the current climate in the Middle East and the possibility of military conflict with Iran, will actually help to make Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, the rare exception to the rule.     

Should Win:  Just like I said before, A Separation is the finest piece of filmmaking of the bunch … even if I have my reservations.       

Should Have Been Nominated: Of the films officially submitted by their countries to the Academy for consideration in this category, Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse (Hungary) and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey), are both on a whole other level of cinematic achievement.

Film Editing

The Artist

The Descendants

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Hugo

Moneyball

Will Win: The winner of this category often goes to the winner of Best Picture, but not so this year.  I have a feeling history will repeat itself — just as Thelma Schoonmaker won for her editing of The Aviator in 2004 (with that film losing the big prize to Million Dollar Baby), she will win again, this time for her work on Hugo.    

Should Win: The legendary Thelma Schoonmaker deserves her fourth Oscar for her deliberate and emotionally-attuned cutting on Hugo.    

Should Have Been Nominated: The five credited editors ofThe Tree of Life created a poetic, impressionistic tapestry, like no other film in history, while Matthew Newman did not waste a single shot in Drive.    

Cinematography

The Artist

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Hugo

The Tree of Life

War Horse

Will Win: Having just picked up the ASC award last weekend, master cinematographer and five-time nominee, Emmanuel Lubezki will likely win his first Oscar on Sunday for The Tree of Life.      

Should Win: In its expressive power and technical innovation, The Tree of Life represents a towering achievement in the cinematographic medium.     

Should Have Been Nominated: Caroline Champetier’s naturalistic work on Of Gods & Men and Bruno de Keyzer’s period lighting on The Princess of Montpensier were both highly deserving.       

Art Direction

The Artist

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

War Horse

Will Win: This is the one category that Hugo is guaranteed to win.    

Should Win: Two-time Oscar-winner, Dante Ferretti is one of the great production designers of all time — after all, the man designed Pasolini’s Salo’!  The sets of Hugo represent another major achievement for him … in a career of many.     

Should Have Been Nominated:  Jack Fisk’s work onThe Tree of Life conjured the memory of a 1950s childhood in the most subtly beautiful ways possible, while the set designers ofThe Princess of Montpensier and House of Pleasures evoked their film’s own time periods with memorable texture.

Costume Design

Anonymous

The Artist

Hugo

Jane Eyre

W.E.

Will Win: The vibrant colors of Sandy Powell’s work on Hugo overtakes the black and white 1920s styles of The Artist.    

Should Win: Powell’s costume design brilliantly aided in the creation of individual characters in Hugo 

Should Have Been Nominated: Just like their art directors, the costume designers of the The Tree of Life, The Princess of Montpensier, and House of Pleasures, all contributed to the specific, detailed worlds therein.    

Sound Mixing

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Hugo

Moneyball

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

War Horse

Will Win: The loudest film traditionally wins this category, but I can’t imagine anyone voting for the Transformers film.  That means it’s between Spielberg’s war film and Scorsese’s silent film tribute.  I’m going to go with Hugo, primarily because it’s the film with the most nominations at eleven.    

Should Win: The sound mixers of Hugo conjure an entire aural environment, in each of the film’s major locations.  Just listen to the jaw-dropping number of sounds and sound levels in the train station scenes alone.      

Should Have Been Nominated: The sound mixers on The Tree of Life created a phenomenally vast soundscape, incorporating everything from soft-spoken voice-over to the sounds of prehistoric life.  Watch the opening getaway sequence in Drive and you’ll hear the varying levels of specific sounds, used to create further suspense.    

Sound Editing

Drive

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Hugo

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

War Horse

Will Win: Hugo will win this category too, because voters will likely vote for the same film in both sound categories.  

Should Win: The sound editors on Drive design memorable individual sound effects, like the smashing of the head in the elevator, throughout the film.

Should Have Been Nominated: The sound editors onThe Tree of Life faced the enormous challenge of designing sound effects for events and things that could never have been heard by the human ear — original cosmic happenings and various prehistoric lifeforms — for an entire twenty-minute-long sequence.  The clang of sword blades and ripping of flesh had to be sustained by sound effects editors for a 45-minute-long fight sequence in 13 Assassins.

Makeup

Albert Nobbs

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

The Iron Lady

Will Win: The makeup designers of The Iron Lady will win for transforming Meryl Streep into Margaret Thatcher.      

Should Win: The makeup designers of The Iron Lady should win for convincingly aging Meryl Streep.      

Should Have Been Nominated: The imaginative creature design of Boonsong and the other monkey ghosts in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and the surreal, ghastly disfigurement of one of the prostitutes in House of Pleasures, are both highly deserving of recognition.        

Visual Effects

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Hugo

Real Steel

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Will Win: Four-time Oscar-winner, Joe Letteri, will win another Oscar for his ground-breaking motion-capture work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes.    

Should Win: As great as the visual effects on Rise of the Planet of the Apes happen to be, my vote here would go to Rob Legato’s work on Hugo.  Legato brilliantly contributes to the recreation of Melies‘ silent films in the film’s third act.    

Should Have Been Nominated: Effects legend Douglas Trumbull was shockingly snubbed this year for his astonishing work on The Tree of Life.  The effects designers of The Mill and the Cross skillfully placed viewers inside a Pieter Bruegel painting.

Original Score

The Adventures of Tintin

The Artist

Hugo

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

War Horse

Will Win: Ludovic Bource will win for his audience-suffocating score of The Artist.     

Should Win: As much as I like both of John Williams’ scores, Howard Shore’s Erik Satie-inflected work on Hugo has the most resonance.     

Should Have Been Nominated: Ernst Reijseger’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams score was the perfect aural match to the spectacle of the prehistoric cave paintings.  Marie-Jeanne Serrero was confronted with the challenge of inventing the music Nannerl Mozart herself would have composed in Mozart’s Sister.    

Original Song

The Muppets (“Man of Muppet”)

Rio (“Real in Rio”)

Will Win: The Muppets are a lock.      

Should Win: Neither one.  They’re both terrible songs.

Should Have Been Nominated: “Coeur Volant” from Hugo and “Star Spangled Man” from Captain America: The First Avenger are two fine examples of songs, which were written specifically for use in a film, this year.       

******************************************

Franklin P. Laviola is a filmmaker and freelance writer, based in the New York area. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film “Happy Face,” which has screened at over twenty film festivals. He most recently gave us his reactions to the latest Academy Awards and shared his picks for worst and best movies of 2011.  

[Singer-songwriter Alex Nackman discusses the death of Whitney Houston]

Let’s cut the bullshit for just a second. The death of Whitney Houston is irrelevant to anyone outside of her immediate family and close friends. Obviously 24-hour news cycles are now clamoring for all the details and all the rumors of what led to her death and are just foaming at the mouth that some new “news” has finally been released for them to harp on, over analyze, speculate on, dramatize, and journalistically masturbate to, but in reality, this type of thing was so inevitable, and honestly, so incredibly unimportant in the scheme of real meaningful news and issues.

I am not saying that the death of Whitney Houston does not matter in any way. It matters to her friends, to her support team, and to her family, especially a daughter, who now will live without a mother. But, let’s just back up for a second and admit that for the rest of us, who gives a shit? Whitney Houston was not a philanthropist, not a humanitarian, not a hero of war or struggle or a cause greater than herself, not a diplomat, not a fighter, and not a leader of any kind. Furthermore, she had not even been a relevant musician, touring act, singer, producer, or songwriter in the current day music business. I personally cannot even remember hearing her name mentioned in the news in a single capacity beyond the tidbits of information that leaked of her post-marital problems with Bobby Brown and her own struggles with substance abuse. That was truly the extent of her publicity over the past decade. I’m not sure if Whitney or her publicist should be blamed for that.

So, what on earth are we really talking and lamenting about here? Every single day there is a soldier killed in Afghanistan, an activist killed in Damascus, children killed by their psychotic father in a house explosion outside of Seattle, WA, a family killed in an apartment fire in Brooklyn, NY. Those events are the real tragedies. Those events are examples of the real struggles, both common and exceptional, in this world on which we should be focusing. The death of Whitney Houston is sad, but it is not important in a worldly sense or even a national sense. And, if they would admit it, I would argue that the vast majority of Whitney Houston’s fans probably did not even have the name “Whitney Houston” in their minds or on their iPods at all prior to hearing about her death (a true example of “out of sight, out of mind”). Yet, as soon as her death came over the AP wire, the clamoring of “news breaks” and tearful “this just in” segments flowed as if a leader and a caregiver for humanity had finally met his or her match, and was in route towards martyrdom. Yet, no martyr  (or even a social hero) was born from this event.

Whitney Houston was a talented, yet troubled, entertainer with constant and incessant issues that she could not overcome. The world had not heard a single piece of news relevant to her music in years. Like Amy Winehouse, losing talented and troubled people is sad, but should not be treated as a monumental unexpected world loss worthy of a “Piers Morgan Special Edition” (though to be fair to CNN, Piers has trouble filling an hour with content on an average night with his tepid, silly, and vacuous interviews, so this probably felt like an open lay-up).

This all may sound insanely insensitive, but back away from Whitney for a moment and think about all this and think about what truly matters. We should save the melodrama and street shrines for those who give something bigger than themselves or at the absolute very least, appear to be remotely relevant in respect to their craft and what they do as people (musicians should make new music or tour, actors should release new movies, writers should release new novels). Must we continually fall to our knees for those whose lives are caught in a Groundhog Day cliché? All too often we focus on those individuals who continually and inevitably get into the same sordid situations in Hollywood hotel rooms.

Now, I know it sounds difficult and may feel unnatural, but those who look outside themselves and dare to do better, dare to change their outlook on the world and on the challenges they face, and dare to unite for the good (no matter the size of the cause) are the individuals for which our tears are truly worth shedding.

Alex Nackman is a songwriter, producer, composer, and artist who lives in Brooklyn. He’s written music for HBO, NBC, The CW, among others in the U.S. and UK. He’s been an MTV Buzzworthy Artist and toured alongside Buddy Guy, Norah Jones, and The Roots. This post originally appeared on his tumblr.

10. Essential Killing, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski & Aurora, directed by Cristi Puiu (tie)

Skolimowski’s previous film, Four Nights with Anna (2008), a masterpiece, still has not been picked up for any kind of distribution in the US. His latest was relegated to a poorly-advertised VOD release, beginning last summer. Vincent Gallo plays Mohammed, a suspected Taliban member, who is captured by American special forces in Afghanistan and transported to a secret detention center in Eastern Europe, where he is tortured. Mohammed manages to escape and soon finds himself pursued by an entire army, through harsh, unfamiliar terrain. Clocking in at only 80 minutes, this is a lean and brutal survivalist action film with some of the year’s most hallucinatory imagery. From the barren canyons and caves of Afghanistan to the frozen, snow-covered forests of Eastern Europe, Skolimowski demonstrates his painter’s eye for natural landscapes. As you would expect from the director of the classic Deep End (1970), surreal humor also abounds here — perhaps best represented by a scene, in which a famished Gallo holds a breastfeeding woman at gunpoint to steal a helping of milk! Gallo’s expressive and amazingly physical work, as Mohammed, is the real silent film performance of the year.

Filmmaker Puiu made the brilliantly absurdist The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), still the best film of the Romanian New Wave, released stateside. His latest is a slow-burning character study about a divorced father, with two young daughters, whose mental deterioration culminates in a shocking murder spree. Puiu’s filmmaking is tense, formally rigorous, darkly humorous, and insightful in its behaviorist approach. His own self-directed lead performance, as the troubled father, defined by a blunted affect and measured movements and speech, is equally precise. As a portrait of a contemporary family in crisis, this is the anti-The Descendants, in every possible way.

9.  Mysteries of Lisbon, directed by Raoul Ruiz

When the Chilean-born Ruiz died last August, he left behind one of the most prolific and variegated bodies of work of any contemporary filmmaker.  His penultimate film is this adaptation of the celebrated Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco’s novel of the same title.  How does a filmmaker not just dramatize the complex narrative, but duplicate onscreen the subjective experience of reading such a massive 19th century novel?  This ambitious metaphysical project (visualizing the theatrical space of the mind’s eye) is essentially what Ruiz’s film is about.  The novel (similar to Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo) and the film are structured around shifting fortunes and shifting identities, obsessive revenge schemes, and the idea of narrative itself — stories within stories within stories, repeating (seemingly) ad infinitum.  At four and half hours, Ruiz’s adaptation is definitely long, but it’s the rare epic that actually gets better as it goes along — in fact, the second half is downright riveting.  This is a dazzling cinematic achievement, distinguished by the great ensemble, sumptuous look and design, and, of course, Ruiz’s seamless handling of multiple narratives and time frames.

8.  Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

In interviews, the Danish Refn has called himself a “fetish filmmaker.”  This, his first film made in the USA, exhibits what could be read as an entire catalogue of fetish objects — the late-70s to mid-80s action films of Walter Hill, William Friedkin, and Michael Mann (their unique atmospheres, rhythms, dark psychology, and graphic violence); the synthpop scores and soundscapes of Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno; the car and the road as emblems of American freedom and identity; a satin scorpion jacket; and star Ryan Gosling.  This is not a shallow exercise in style, but, rather, a near psychotic identification with and feverish personalization of key genre elements and ideas.  In other words, Refn uses the language of genre to build on his fetishism, crafting a work that expresses a mythic quest for purity, a preoccupation with light and dark forces, and a sincere emotionalism.  His film about the ultimate LA getaway driver also takes on many forms — an atmospheric film noir; a lean, mean action film; a modern fairy tale; a dreamy retelling of Shane; even a musical (just observe how the song “Under Your Spell” is used to multiple ends in an important early scene).  The now infamous elevator scene, in which Gosling’s hero first kisses Carey Mulligan’s love interest and then pulverizes the head of a thug, crystallizes all of these cinephiliac energies and obsessions and reminds us why this is one of the best films of the year.

7.  Of Gods & Men, directed by Xavier Beauvois

The best film of its kind since Roland Joffe’s The Mission (1986).  Both based on true events, Joffe’s film is about 18th century Spanish Jesuits, who were martyred by the Portuguese in colonial South America, while Beauvois’ film is about contemporary French Trappist monks, who were martyred by Islamic fundamentalists in colonial Algeria.  Joffe’s film, with a screenplay by frequent David Lean collaborator Robert Bolt, took the form of an epic religious allegory, whereas this film takes a decidedly more subdued and episodic approach.  The emphasis, here, is on the daily rituals and mundane details of the monk’s austere way of life.  Beauvois and his brilliant ensemble, led by Lambert Wilson and, world treasure, Michael Lonsdale, commit themselves to not portraying the monks as monolithically heroic.  Plenty of screen time is devoted to the group’s debate on whether to leave for France or stay and face slaughter, as well as individual struggles with doubt, fear, and pride.  What emerges is an ecumenical vision that calls for coexistence and community, without a trace of sanctimony.  The final moments, featuring the monks walking through snow toward their certain fate, will leave viewers haunted.

6.  House of Pleasures, directed by Bertrand Bonello

From a group of French monks to a group of French whores.  Called L’Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close, back home in France, and then House of Tolerance in the UK, the film was retitled a second time to the more salacious-sounding House of Pleasures for its extremely limited US theatrical release.  Based on the fact that the film is anything but exploitative of its subject matter, a better alternative title would have been Elegy for a Brothel.  As if arising out of an opium haze, this is a hypnotic dream (and sometimes nightmare) of a specific time and place — the last days of a high-end Parisian brothel at the turn of the last century.  Bonello’s film is both an engrossing portrait of the group dynamic between prostitutes, their madam, and their aristocratic clientele, and a detailed study of the female body.  His gliding camera observes the daily routine and work habits of these young women, as they confront aging, debt, disease, drug addiction, limited social prospects, and sudden bursts of male violence.  The imagery is occasionally surreal (one of the prostitutes cries tears of semen), while the soundtrack features such blatant anachronisms, as the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin.”  Such terrific young French actresses, as Alice Barnole, Celine Sallette, Jasmina Trinca, Adele Haenel, Hafsia Herzi, and Iliana Zabeth, play the main girls, while Noemie Lvovsky serves as their madam.  The final images of this beautifully-crafted film are bound to arouse debate.

5.  Certified Copy, directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Iranian master Kiarostami’s Tuscany-set light romance leaves the viewer with a number of questions to ponder, long after the credits have rolled.  What is the precise nature of the couple’s relationship?  Does the couple have an actual shared personal history?  Is the Juliette Binoche character delusional about a shared personal history, or is she simply playing her own odd game of seduction?  Why does the William Shimell character so easily go along with the husband and wife role-playing, if the couple has no actual history?  This is certainly a film about many things — authenticity and inauthenticity in individuals and relationships, not just in objects of art; feminine complexity and masculine posing; the specific stations of a relationship or marriage, in the filmic tradition of Rossellini and Bergman; and, perhaps most of all, the ever-widening gulf between the two sexes in the modern world.  However, after three viewings, I’m inclined to believe that Kiarostami’s story is best appreciated at face value.  That is to say, appreciated not as an intellectual puzzle, but, rather, as an unexpectedly moving romance about two adult strangers, who happen to come together one afternoon and are presented with the opportunity to embrace their connection.

4.  The Princess of Montpensier, directed by Bertrand Tavernier

Tavernier’s richly-textured adaptation of Madame de Lafayette’s 17th century short story is the best French costume drama in years.  Gorgeous newcomer Melanie Thierry stars as Marie, a young noblewoman, whose own desire and individual freedom is immediately compromised, when her father marries her off to increase his own status and wealth.  Trapped in a loveless marriage with a jealous weakling (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), Marie soon finds herself the object of desire of three other men — a decadent, opportunistic duke (Raphael Personnaz); a chivalrous, consummate man of learning (Lambert Wilson); and a dashing warrior (Gaspard Ulliel), for whom she has always longed.  Through his heroine’s dramatic predicament (social duty pitted against romantic passion), Tavernier eloquently explores the various forms (and illusions) of love, as well as a woman’s specific role in French courtly society.  Set during the Catholic-Protestant wars of the 16th century, this is the rare recent period piece that does not settle for slick pageantry and pomp, while condescending to the different beliefs, customs, and values of its depicted era.  Tavernier’s roving camera is as much concerned with the mud and blood of history, as it is with the story’s sweeping romance.  If only all films of this kind were as detail-oriented and attuned to the subtleties of human nature …

3.  Cave of Forgotten Dreams, directed by Werner Herzog

Herzog’s visionary cinema has gazed upon some of the most wondrous places on earth — Machu Picchu, the Sahara Desert, the deepest jungles of the Amazon, the frozen landscapes of Antarctica, and, now, the Chauvet Cave of Southern France.  Discovered in 1994, this vast prehistoric space is home to cave paintings, which could be 32,000 years old.  Most documentary filmmakers defer to scientists and so-called experts, allowing their films to be dominated by talking heads.  Herzog, in contrast, maintains a healthy skepticism towards scientists, their dry banter, and their need to dissect and explain everything in rationalist terms, granting them only limited screen time.  The real subject of Herzog’s film is the phenomenon of the cave and the sheer beauty of its paintings.  The effect is overwhelming, as Herzog’s camera traces each contour of the cave’s walls, exalting in the individual figures and tableaux of mankind’s first masterpiece of art.  Surely, these are sacred images in a sacred space.  In the film’s final section, Herzog compounds his romanticism with a dark absurdism, contemplating whether modern man (compared to a horde of genetically-engineered albino crocodiles!) is even capable of appreciating or connecting with ancient man’s grand spectacle.  Herzog’s own communion with his shamanic forebear is most fully experienced in 3D.

2.  Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese

Scorsese’s best and most personal film, since Gangs of New York (2002), as well as his most persuasively spiritual, since Kundun (1997).  Set in 1931, the master filmmaker’s first foray into the children’s fantasy genre, tells the story of Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), a twelve-year-old orphan boy, who lives deep within the walls of a Parisian train station, repairing its giant clocks and spying on its many shopkeepers and personnel.  Hugo’s quest to reanimate his deceased father’s prized automaton leads him to encounter Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley), once a great filmmaker of the early silent era, now an embittered toy shop owner.  What is the special connection between this man and this machine?  On every level, Scorsese’s film is a technological marvel — Robert Richardson’s striking cinematography (its color palette similar to the many “color-tinted” works of the silent era); Dante Ferretti’s astoundingly-detailed and large-scale production design; Sandy Powell’s vivid costumes; longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker’s patient and precise cutting; the multi-layered work of the sound design team; the enormous contribution of the VFX crew; and the director’s own expressive and purposeful (and first time) use of 3D.  However, this is a celebration of cinema as both a technological AND humanistic art form.  The ending, in which Melies finally accepts the opportunity to open up and revisit his past and his films is deeply felt … even transcendent.

1.  The Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick

Back in August, I wrote that I didn’t expect to see a better film, released before the end of the year, than Malick’s The Tree of Life.  Well, I didn’t happen to see a better film.  Why is it the very best film of the year?  Drawing primarily on his own childhood experience and the Book of Job, Malick creates a work of art that is aesthetically radical and emotionally direct, quite paradoxically.  He also risks failure more than any other filmmaker, by daring to tackle such grand subject matter (the very fabric of the universe and man’s humble place herein/therein), with absolute commitment and sincerity.  Bathed in natural light, the stunning result has strong reverberations of both the painting of the Italian Renaissance and the poetry of the American Renaissance.  An acceptance of the universe’s mysteries and man’s inevitable suffering, along with the recognition of the divine attributes of imagination and memory, are just a few of the core ideas, permeating Malick’s cinematic vision.  Just as Scorsese celebrates the medium (and its history) that has become his life, Malick celebrates life itself, in all its infinitesimal manifestations, opposing energies, and moments of immanence.

Franklin P. Laviola is a filmmaker and freelance writer, based in the New York area. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film “Happy Face,” which has screened at over twenty film festivals. He most recently gave us his reactions to the latest Academy Awards and shared his picks for worst movies of 2011.  Compare this list of the best movies of 2011 to the best movies of the year as of July 2011.  

Point being, it’s hard to wow me with a cake.  And chocolate cake?  Forget it.  I absolutely adore chocolate, but I’d rather have a piece of real chocolate or maybe a truffle.  But this weekend I met my match, the chocolate cake that stole my heart away.  It was light and fluffy like cheesecake, cloaked in deep, dark ganache frosting, and rich enough for just a sliver to suffice.  And the best part?  I made it myself!  Normally I’m not one to toot my own horn, but this cake was killer.

If you’ve been following my column, you’ll know that I hardly ever bake.  The way I see it, there are two types of cooks in the world (and maybe even people, if you want to extend the metaphor): the chefs and the pastry chefs.  Pastry chef-ery requires meticulous attention to detail, and by nature makes it pretty much impossible to “undo” if you mess up.  Added too much flour?  One too many eggs?  Sorry!  Ya can’t fix it, and you may not even know something’s wrong until it comes out of the oven caved in and soggy.  Whereas with most savory cooking I do, you can taste as you go and adjust for mistakes.  Sometimes you even discover something magnificent by way of error.  But baking is a science, and bakers are chemists.  Chemistry was my only C in college.  Let’s move on.

There comes, however, a point in every chef’s life when the barrier to baking must be transgressed.  Perhaps you’ve found yourself a contestant on Top Chef, and you know Padma and Tom will think you’re a total wimp if you don’t at least TRY for a dessert course.  Or maybe you requested an electric hand mixer for the holidays and want to test it out.  Or maybe it’s your fiancé’s dad’s birthday, and chocolate cake is truly the way to his heart.  Or maybe some combination of those last two?  Yes, that sounds about right.

With these motivators in play, I decided to try my hand at baking once again, this time with a close ally (read: 1.2 pounds of chocolate) on my side.  There was some splashing of buttermilk, and some rising and falling plumes of cocoa powder, but in the end, the two layers of this cake were born, along with a bowl of dense, luscious ganache frosting, destined to become the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had.

Some things I learned from my dabbles in pastry:

• When they tell you to grease the pans, use a whole lot of butter.  No, more butter than that
• If you are asked to line the pan with rounds of wax paper, you need to actually cut circles the size of the pan (don’t ask what I actually thought this meant)
• Add powder to spinning mixing blades and they will throw it right back at you
• How do you get one layer of a layer cake onto the other?  Very gently lift and plop
• If you live in New York, you have access to baking mecca
• For someone with quite lovely handwriting, my icing-writing legibility is subpar
• Everyone loves (and simultaneously hates) a baker

It was most certainly a success with the future in-laws, and now that I have established myself as a cake rookie, I think you should feel pretty secure in your abilities to recreate this chocolate wonder.  Just cut small slices and invite over lots of friends for a BYOM (milk, obvi) party.

Double Chocolate Layer Cake

From Gourmet magazine, 1999

 

For cake layers

3 ounces fine-quality semisweet chocolate such as Callebaut

1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee

3 cups sugar

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)

2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

3 large eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups well-shaken buttermilk

3/4 teaspoon vanilla

For ganache frosting

1 pound fine-quality semisweet chocolate such as Callebaut

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

Special equipment

two 10- by 2-inch round cake pans

Make cake layers: 

1. Preheat oven to 300°F. and grease pans. Line bottoms with rounds of wax paper and grease paper.

2. Finely chop chocolate and in a bowl combine with hot coffee. Let mixture stand, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

3. Into a large bowl sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl with an electric mixer beat eggs until thickened slightly and lemon colored (about 3 minutes with a standing mixer or 5 minutes with a hand-held mixer). Slowly add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to eggs, beating until combined well. Add sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined well.

4. Divide batter between pans and bake in middle of oven until a tester inserted in center comes out clean, 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes.

5. Cool layers completely in pans on racks. Run a thin knife around edges of pans and invert layers onto racks. Carefully remove wax paper and cool layers completely. Cake layers may be made 1 day ahead and kept, wrapped well in plastic wrap, at room temperature.

Make frosting: 

1. Finely chop chocolate. In a 1 1/2- to 2-quart saucepan bring cream, sugar, and corn syrup to a boil over moderately low heat, whisking until sugar is dissolved. Remove pan from heat and add chocolate, whisking until chocolate is melted. Cut butter into pieces and add to frosting, whisking until smooth.

2. Transfer frosting to a bowl and cool, stirring occasionally, until spreadable (depending on chocolate used, it may be necessary to chill frosting to spreadable consistency). I found that stirring this over a bowl of ice water did a great job of cooling it off quickly and evenly.

3. Spread frosting between cake layers and over top and sides. Cake keeps, covered and chilled, 3 days. Bring cake to room temperature before serving.

Freya Bellin writes alternate Wednesdays for Frontier Psychiatrist. Her recent FP recipes include Rooted in Winter, The Ultimate Roasted Chicken, and Coffee Roasting 101.

Sharon Van Etten is a very serious songwriter; no one would argue that. Her three albums are narratives of self-aware heartbreak, with a rare glimmer of hope or positivity. Track after track, Van Etten pines over lost love and mistakes made, always with taste. So, naturally, she’s my kind of girl. In person, however, she is very different.

I had the opportunity to see Van Etten on a mild Thursday evening in Chicago at Lincoln Hall, near DePaul University. A clean and high profile venue, Lincoln Hall is for sure one of the most comfortable places to see a show in Chicago. A nice, not too large floor offers great sight lines and even better sound. Opening act Shearwater—not to be mistaken with Stillwater of Almost Famous—successfully mixed noise and psych rock elements with a downhome folk sound, but failed to engage the crowd. We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t for them.

After minutes of set up and sound checks, Van Etten took the stage with her band, comprised of a second guitarist, drummer and a vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist. Immediately, her grounded charm was imminent as she fumbled her electric guitar, apologizing for not properly preparing first. With the first chords of “Warsaw”—the opener on her fantastic new album Tramp—Van Etten’s demeanor changed. As she shared her ability to “love silently,” her face no longer smiling, but pensive and determined.

Sharon Van Etten – Warsaw

The rest of the show was a tale of two Sharons. The talkative, goofy and good-natured Van Etten would engage the crowd and her stoned bandmates directly, always with a disarming smile. The introspective, wounded but proud Van Etten hit every solemn note while rocking on her Fender Jaguar or strumming her worn acoustic. Much of her set culled tracks from Tramp, which sounded spectacularly grunge in a live setting, with all members turning up their distortion. This 90’s influence came most alive during new track “Serpents”, the recorded version of which never reaching this level of heaviness. “Everything changes/I don’t want life to this time.”

Sharon Van Etten – Serpents

Van Etten is a successful live performer because her songs take on new life on stage. Whether it’s the acoustic, harmonic dirge of “Give Out” or the Omnichord featuring “Magic Chords”, Van Etten and band stuck to their guns in the best way. The emotional pinnacle of the night came with the swelling “All I Can”, one of the best songs off Tramp.

Sharon Van Etten – All I Can

The fact is this: Sharon Van Etten is an artist interested in and dedicated to self-expression. This makes her recorded output come off as overly gloomy, because it just so happens her sadness is what she is compelled to express, similar to many other artists of all disciplines. That said, her live performance reveal depth beyond the sadness, and in many ways she is a positive, uplifting and reassuring performer. Her choice to build and maintain a career out of her heartbreak must take its toll. Is she empowered by her expression, ultimately allowing herself to rise above the pain in her heart? Or, does retracing her sad memories keep old wounds fresh and unable to heal? With Sharon Van Etten, it’s probably a mix of both. And, what’s more human than that?

Peter Lillis is a staff writer for Frontier Psychiatrist. Damn, Sam, he loves a woman that rains.

Chris Thile is a monster of modern music. A rare talent, Thile is known for his constant progress, taking his skills and voice into new territories with every endeavor. The mandolin virtuoso has released 19 full-lengths in the last 19 years, while working with renowned artists like Yo Yo Ma, Béla Fleck, Dolly Parton, Jack White and Steve Martin, among many others. In 2009, he debut his mandolin concerto Ad astra per alas porci with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, later to be played in as many as 10 high-profile orchestras across the country. He released two highly acclaimed albums in 2011: the traditional, hot-blooded Sleep With One Eye Open with Michael Daves (our #8 album of the year), and the neo-classical Goat Rodeo Sessions. He is also set to star in How To Grow A Band, a documentary about the writing and marketing of his first chamber piece “The Blind Leaving the Blind”, directed by Mark Meatto, my cousin. Oh yeah, and today he turns 31.

Finding a perfect balance between effortless pop bluegrass songwriting and awe-inspiring technical skill has long been a mission of Chris Thile, and his most recent regular outfit, Punch Brothers. Who’s Feeling Young Now?, their third release (fourth if you count How To Grow a Woman From the Ground, which you probably should) find the virtuosic five-piece balancing their extreme technical skills with their songwriting expertise better than just about anyone.

Thile returns to the scene just four months after the release of the Goat Rodeo Sessions, and takes another artful left turn on Who’s Feeling Young Now?, as is his wont. Burning through 12 tracks in 50 minutes, the Brothers take us through an emotional journey of moving compositions both rowdy and sweet. The band has never sounded this tight and comfortable, each instrument essential to the body of sound. The creeping, In Rainbows-esque opener “Movement and Location” is a perfect example of the band living and breathing as one entity, like a flock of birds navigating stormy weather.

Punch Brothers – Movement and Location

Their newfound liveliness is consistent throughout the album, whether they’re playing a jangly pop jam like “This Girl”, the vaudevillian hopeless romantic anthem of “Patchwork Girlfriend” or the raucous, shredding instrumental “Flippen”. The title track is where you start to realize that this isn’t your ordinary, jam packed Punch Brothers album. A song like “Who’s Feeling Young Now?” would never have fit on Punch or Antifogmatic because the restless spirit—trademark of a Brothers release—is created by concise and lean songwriting rather than balls-to-the-wall complexity. Abstract Johnny Greenwood-inspired scratches flourish the heavy beating banger, as Thile gives his own “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together” sermon, all building to an ending that is virtually punk rock. Check it.

Punch Brothers – Who’s Feeling Young Now?

The influences of Who’s Feeling Young Now? are as far reaching as Buddy Holly to Pinkerton to Brahms to OK Computer to Aaron Copeland. If you’ve been counting, that’s three Radiohead comparisons. Long known as Radiohead fanatics, Punch Brothers acknowledge their admiration with their fantastic, instrumental arrangement of “Kid A”, composed of hand slaps and bowed bass.

Punch Brothers – Kid A

With no song breaking the five-minute mark, the songwriting is both concise and robust, welcoming movements and chilling interludes while never overstuffing compositions with too many “look at me” moments. Every single beat of every song is necessary, each playing an integral role in creating a fantastic, living document of modern bluegrass. Just like every member of the band plays an integral role in the reinvention of music the Punch Brothers are known to do so well.

There isn’t a person on Earth that would argue that Thile is just your average 31-year-old. His dedication to self-reflection and musical progress keeps him alive and spry, willing to tackle any new musical challenge. And, while Thile is certainly the star of Punch Brothers, Who’s Feeling Young Now? feels the most like a group effort than anything they have previously released. While the title Who’s Feeling Young Now? may sound like a complaint, it’s more a statement of maturity. By composing an album as an attempt to reconcile the realities of the mid-life, Punch Brothers have reached a turning point in their career. The effortless quality of this album only comes with age. Happy Birthday, Thile.

Peter Lillis is a staff writer for Frontier Psychiatrist. Although he’s only 24 years old, he’s starting to feel pretty old now.

And now, for your enjoyment, Side A of our February mixtape. If you missed our January tape, stream sides A & B or download the whole thing from our Tumblr.

1. Evian Christ – “MYD”

2. Mirel Wagner – “No Death”

3. Holograms – “ABC City”

4. Kendrick Lamar – “Cartoon & Cereal”

5. Dustin Wong – “Pink Diamond”

6. Lushlife – “Big Sur”

7. Julia Holter & Linda Perhacs – “Delicious Descant”

8. Curren$y feat. Tradema – “Conference Call”

9. Gap Dream – “Scary Dennis”

10. The-Drum – “Night Driving”

11. Chromatics – “Into The Black” (Neil Young Cover)

12. Cities Aviv – “Flex Your Gold”

13. oOoOO feat. Butterclock – “NoWayBack”

10. Bridesmaids, directed by Paul Feig 

Clocking in at an unbearable 125 minutes, this drab-looking gag fest seems to exist for no other reason, than to hit filmgoers over the head with the idea that girls can be just as obnoxious and vulgar as guys, when it comes to big screen comedies. Just like in the worst sketch comedy, scenes are stretched to interminable length, basic comic timing is rendered irrelevant, and broad scatology rules the day. The pop exuberance of Wedding Crashers is nowhere to be found here. Melissa McCarthy deserves a Razzie for defecating in that sink — not an Oscar nomination.

9. The Debt, directed by John Madden

The anti-Munich. Madden’s film tells the story of a trio of young Mossad agents, who track down a Nazi war criminal in 1960s East Berlin and then agree to lie about their dispatching of him, when he escapes into the night. Thirty years later, each one is still haunted by this decision in a different way. Steven Spielberg’s political thriller Munich, which benefitted from a finely-tuned screenplay by playwright Tony Kushner, was emotionally involving, psychologically complex, enormously suspenseful, and dramatized an intelligent moral debate. Madden’s film has none of these virtues. Avatar’s Sam Worthington is severely miscast as one of the young Mossad agents, while both Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson mope around with bad accents in the present day. If it weren’t for Jessica Chastain (as the young Mirren) and Jesper Christensen (as the Nazi), this pointless muddle would be virtually unwatchable.

8. Red Riding Hood, directed by Catherine Hardwicke

Nearly every aspect of this brainless turd reeks of a big studio’s desperate attempt to capitalize on the global success of the insipid Twilight series. Here’s a bit of advice: forget this nonsense even exists and, instead, go and watch Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves, his marvelous take on the same fairy tale, which happens to be frightening, sexy, and psychologically resonant … all qualities the classic material deserves.

7. Fright Night, directed by Craig Gillespie 

Without a doubt, one of Hollywood’s most irritating trends in recent years has been the move to remake what seems like every known (and profitable) horror movie from the ‘70s and ‘80s. This update of Tom Holland’s 1985 sleeper about a suburban teenager and his vampire neighbor, is right up there with Platinum Dunes’ (Michael Bay’s production company) big-budget remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher, and Friday the 13th, as the very worst of the new pack. Holland’s original had a great B-movie premise, and, with the exception of casting Amanda Bearse as the teenage love interest, his execution was consistently clever and creepy. With no respect for the genre or its viewer’s intelligence, Gillespie’s tone-deaf remake throws story, character, atmosphere, and suspense out the window, predictably opting to indulge in cheap plot twists, unnecessary explosions, and wall-to-wall CGI, instead. The original film gave reliable talents, like Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall, and, future gay porn star, Stephen Geoffreys, plenty of room to fashion memorable characters. Infuriatingly, this remake utterly wastes A-List talents, like Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin, and rising star Imogen Poots.

6. Cowboys & Aliens, directed by Jon Favreau

By far the worst of the summer tentpole releases (yes, that’s correct, even worse than Green Lantern), this dismal mess appears to have been cynically thrown-together by a committee, which included Iron Man director Favreau, several big-name producers, and about twenty overpaid USC screenwriters. Evidently, their collective creative contribution began and ended with the easy to market title. If anything, this mega-bomb proves two things: Harrison Ford should retire very, very soon and Hollywood still hasn’t figured out what to do with Olivia Wilde and her other-worldly looks. Hopefully, Brian DePalma can help with the latter issue.

5. Potiche, directed by Francois Ozon & Beginners, directed by Mike Mills (tie)    

Where are John Waters and Terence Davies, when we need them? Ozon’s exercise in camp and canned feminism results in one terminally unfunny comedy (despite the presence of France’s real-life Falstaff, Gerard Depardieu). Mills’ exercise in narcissism is not surprisingly even more problematic — a shallow hipster “dramedy,” in which the writer-director portrays his gay father as one-dimensionally cuddly, while inappropriately (and defensively) perceiving his boundary-less and psychologically-damaging mother as wise. Along with last year’s The Kids Are All Right, both of these films suggest that mainstream gay cinema has perhaps become too rigid and programmatic in its discourse, in effect allowing political correctness to eclipse genuine artistry and complex takes on the human comedy and drama.

4. The Descendants, directed by Alexander Payne

Alexander Payne is at his best, when working in a purely comic mode (the Thomas Haden Church scenes in Sideways), or in a purely satirical mode (the Reese Witherspoon scenes in Election). As he did in the equally misguided About Schmidt, Payne takes the “dramedy” route here, and the result is not humanistic identification and illumination, but an odd and off-putting mix of condescension and sentimentality, toward his characters. I suppose this is what fourth-rate Billy Wilder might have looked like. George Clooney, whether making faces or tears, has never been less convincing.

3. The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius 

Remember Steven Soderbergh’s misfire The Good German? Well, aside from its lack of spoken dialogue, Hazanavicius’ film, with its calculated retro style and self-conscious project of manufacturing film nostalgia, is not much different. It just happens to be much worse and better-marketed. Call it what you like — a hollow experiment, a gimmick, a simulation, or a two-hour affectation — but, please, don’t call it a sincere homage to the very real and very much alive silent cinema of the 1920s. Hazanavicius’ pastiche lifts its basic premise from Singin’ in the Rain, recreates the dinner table scene from Citizen Kane, and, most criminally, incorporates nearly eight (!) whole minutes of Bernard Hermann’s towering Vertigo score, into its own soundtrack, during the witless climax. When true cinephiliac filmmakers, like Godard, Scorsese, DePalma, and even Tarantino, appropriate elements from other films, the act becomes a celebratory gesture and the effect is frequently liberating for the viewer, because he or she experiences both the filmmaker’s individual connection to and commentary on the preexisting work. In stark contrast to these filmmakers, Hazanavicius’ appropriations are facile and merely opportunistic, and the effect for the viewer is deadening. As hyperbolic as her claim might have initially sounded, Kim Novak was right — this film is what an aesthetic “rape” looks, feels, and sounds like.

2. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, directed by Stephen Daldry

What’s worse, “literary” hack Jonathan Safran Foer’s opportunism in using 9/11 as a narrative device to legitimize his tawdry novel, or the filmmakers’ (producer Scott Rudin, Daldry, and screenwriter Eric Roth) decision to shape Foer’s morass into Oscar bait, a veritable torture device for unsuspecting filmgoers? Every milli-second of this film is dominated by the voice of Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old protagonist, whose father is killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. As conjured with cloying hyper- verbosity by Foer and embodied with equivalent affect by actor Thomas Horn, this character is what could only be described as demonically shrill. Despite his tragic situation, he quickly becomes what is perhaps the least sympathetic child character in the history of the movies. Watching this disaster, one shudders to think — that there could very well be an entire generation of little monsters out there, all desperate to be indulged to the max by their parents and everyone else they come into contact with … all just like Oskar Schell … all just like Jonathan Safran Foer.

1. Shame, directed by Steve McQueen 

First off, Michael Fassbender is a brilliant actor, and director Steve McQueen made a startling debut with Hunger, several years ago. It just so happens that their sophomore collaboration yielded a terrible film. Fassbender stars as a miserable NYC sex addict, whose many graphic encounters are captured with a sub-Haneke clinical distance by McQueen. In a film of numerous bad scenes and sickening moments, it’s difficult to say, which is the very worst. Is it the opening montage, in which Fassbender’s silent seduction of a female subway rider is intercut with shots of him, first walking around his apartment completely naked and then pausing to urinate, while the overbearing musical score (a motif ripped off from Hans Zimmer) swells on the soundtrack? Is it Carey Mulligan’s endless, downbeat rendition of “New York, New York,” shot entirely in an unflattering closeup? Or is it the climax, a cross-cutting, chronology jumping extravaganza, as Fassbender’s hitting rock bottom is represented by his getting blown by another guy in a gay nightclub, getting beat-up by a bar slut’s angry boyfriend, having a threesome with a pair of tattooed hookers, AND discovering that his unstable sister has just attempted suicide? It’s a tough choice.

What makes Shame such a terrible film is a variety of factors — the complete lack of insight into its subject matter of sexual addiction; McQueen’s heavy-handed and suffocatingly formal direction; the screenplay’s overdetermined structure and strange lack of humor; the inescapable feeling that all of the shocking content is there for one reason only, not to deepen the drama or character study, but, simply, to shock. I have no objection to films, which are built around extreme imagery, so long as these films have substantial ideas (David Cronenberg’s Crash) and/or provide the viewer with a uniquely visceral experience (Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible). McQueen’s film, however, does not succeed on either level.

Fassbender’s prodigious talents are certainly on display throughout the film, but they are, ultimately, wasted on such banal, inflated material.

Franklin P. Laviola is a filmmaker and freelance writer, based in the New York area. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film “Happy Face,” which has screened at over twenty film festivals. He most recently gave us his reactions to the latest Academy Awards.  Compare this list of the worst movies of 2011 to the worst movies of the year as of July 2011.  

Admittedly, I knew very little about Michel Houellebecq (pronounced “well-beck”) before I read this novel. I knew he was the main inspiration for Iggy Pop’s underrated 2009 album Preliminaires. I knew he has been criticized for being an intense misogynist and racist. But then again, so was Henry Miller, so I let that slide. I heard of his writing being particularly vulgar, solipsistic, but nonetheless brilliant. At the center of The Map and the Territory is Jed Martin, an artist in the present day. Despite a few throwaway thoughts of a wandering mind, Martin doesn’t seem to carry any of the characteristic tendencies of a Houellebecqian main character, but rather offers a more introverted and reflective presence.  Martin is rather cold and distant, but not entirely outside of society. He does live in Paris after all, but he carries the defeatist and fatalistic outlook akin to Camus’ Mersault. “They don’t really amount to much, anyway, human relationships,” he thinks to himself while having Christmas dinner with his father.

When Jed was on his way to the funeral of his grandmother, he was struck by a new artistic inspiration, not in the form of any existential crisis or questions of meaning often associated with the death of a loved one (or at the least of a relation), but rather with the sublimity of a simple Michelin road map. He launches an exhibition of photographs of these maps and serendipitously acquaints himself with a beautiful Russian woman who works for the company. They begin a romantic relationship, as well as a commercial one, and Martin’s stock as an artist rises. Eventually, his gallerist suggests he contact a writer named Michel Houellebecq to write the catalog for his newest exhibition. The narrative tactic of an author placing himself in the story has become a bit trendy over the past few years and perhaps that is why Houellebecq decided to do it, almost mocking the connection of author and story. He doesn’t paint a positive picture of himself, as an alcoholic recluse in Ireland. But Martin and him become quick friends, surprising considering both of their isolationist tendencies.

A major theme of the novel is not just the acceptance of mortality, but the anticipation of one’s own death. This becomes abundantly clear when Jed’s father develops cancer and they have the most open and honest conversation of their lives during their annual Christmas dinner. Further, Houellebecq drives the point home with the third part of the novel involving a murder, of which the biggest concern for Detective Jasselin is what the biggest criminal motivation is: sex or money? This is the third in a set of conflicting, albeit not complete opposite dynamics as shown previously with art and love (the latter being fleeting in Jed’s eyes), and fathers and sons.

What doesn’t show itself entirely clear but is something to consider is the implications of the title of the novel. The quote that inspired it is “the map is not the territory,” the meaning of which can be likened to Magritte’s painting of a pipe with the text “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“this is not a pipe”). While the representation may have similarities with the object it is meant to represent, it does not encapsulate entirely what the thing is. The title of the Martin’s map exhibit is “The map is more interesting than the territory.” It doesn’t seem too much of an extrapolation (although Houellebecq never mentions this explicitly) to apply this train of thought to those of us who are always “connected.” Certainly by this point in life, if you haven’t been criticized by someone for updating a status, tweeting, or posting a picture of something while you’re doing it, you’ve done the criticizing yourself. Our culture (and apparently the global one at that) has become plugged in to the point of ignoring objects while embracing the representation of those objects ignored. This view is often lamented as the demise of [language / experience / relationships] but the title of this exhibition says otherwise, that perhaps the abstract is actually more meaningful than the concrete.

Fiction is a simulacrum of reality. The sequence of events in this or any work of fiction never happened, even if parts of it may have been inspired by empirical reality. Therefore, stories are just a representation of reality and in which we find just as much, if not more, truth in. Because if we didn’t, I would have no reason to review this novel. And you would have no reason to be reading it. I would be writing about current events and what not. Alas, here I am, wrapping up this review, more enveloped in a representation than the objects that surround me outside this 269 page exploration into a fabricated world, of which I know never happened, but still commit energy and time to deconstructing. Houellebecq (the author) offers honesty and imagination. We have to wonder why he inserts Houellebecq (the character) into the novel, and what the relationship between the two of them are, the map to his territory.

Andrew Hertzberg is a Chicago music blogger for Windy City Rock, a deep dish pizza slinger, and a night-time bike riding enthusiast. This is his first book review for Frontier Psychiatrist. 

In an effort to fortify my resume and to combat the boredom resulting from hours of watching British sitcoms on Netflix Instant, I recently joined a program at my school pairing international students with American guides. I was paired with a Chinese student, and like a good American, I have spent my time with her extolling the virtues of Mexican food and Chai lattes at restaurants and coffee shops around town. Naturally, at one point our conversation turned to music. She told me that she particularly likes American country music, her favorite artist being Taylor Swift. She then asked me why Americans like rock and roll so much, surprised that people who live such laid back lives would want to listen to such loud and boisterous music.

I had this question in the back of my mind as I listened through Royal Bath’s powerful new Better Luck Next Life, out now on Kanine Records. Royal Baths are the latest from the burgeoning Brooklyn via San Francisco psychedelic garage rock scene. It’s an album drenched in violent lust and strung out on speed. The scene is always a seedy one, evoking images of back alley drug deals and ravaged motel rooms. The subject matter is undeniably dark, as singer Jigmae Baer details vampiric sex scenes and murder fantasies with an icy detachment that makes the album feel that much steamier. On occasion, Cox’s withdrawn persona crumbles and the man sounds positively demonic. Think Al Pacino in Devil’s Advocate without Keanu Reeves ruining everything.

The album plays out like Velvet Underground with a shoegaze-bent, reminiscent of other psychedelic infused garage bands like Brian Jonestown Massacre and Spiritualized. Every instrument is drenched in reverb, giving the rhythm section more punch and imbuing Baer’s mumbling lyrics with a certain bravado. The songs are built on mood rather than structure and drift from bluesy grooves to a pulsing frenzy, punctuated by frequent, manic guitar solos.

The best example of this wandering style comes in “Burned”, a song built around a blues riff that sounds like George Thorogood after too much cough syrup. Baer’s murmuring, wounded voice feeds off of adlibbed guitar noodling, creating a rising tension. By the song’s end, the murmuring turns to howling as Baer repeats ad nauseam that he’ll “Never, ever get burned again”. The result is the most cringe-worthy moment on the whole album.

Royal Baths – Burned

Baer exhibits an entirely different personality on the slinky, perversely catchy “Faster, Harder”. A swinging bass line, rudimentary drum line, and swaths of slide guitar provide the backdrop as Baer smarmily coos about sexual encounters with probably the only girl as depraved as he is. The guitarist, Jeremy Cox, is given every opportunity to shine on this song with two (!) guitar solos that are enough to make Jonny Greenwood eat his own heart out. By the songs end, in which Baer urgently chants “Faster, Harder” over a cacophony of noise, you feel like you should put on some hand sanitizer.

Royal Baths – Faster, Harder

If “Faster, Harder” can be characterized as dark, then “Black Sheep” is positively sociopathic. The song is a punchy stomp comprised of a walking bass line and jangling guitars. Cox adds additional tension, peppering the songs with tremolo picking and feedback. Meanwhile, Baer evokes your classic Catcher in the Rye inspired serial killer. When Baer croons in call and response “I am sick of all the phonies in my life. I would like to kiss them properly with a knife”, the result is arresting.

Royal Baths – Black Sheep

Which leads me back to my Chinese friend’s question. What is it about this album that draws me in? As she perceptively noted, I lead the fairly laid back life of a student. In no way am I caught up in a seedy underworld of sex, drugs and violence. And yet, year by year I can’t get enough of this stuff. I still have Weeknd’s House of Balloons on repeat and obsess over the 70’s punk rock heroes whose influence clearly pervades Better Luck Next Life throughout. Why is this stuff so profoundly compelling and, more confounding yet, so American?

My theory lies in America’s fascination with excess. We are all guilty of it, from the mindless consumers to the college liberals who hate them. (http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/college-liberal )It’s in the endless lines for new Apple products and Nike sneakers. It’s in the big box stores. It’s at the gas pump. It’s the KFC Double Down. It’s evident in ways both mundane (e.g. how, as hard as I try, I am incapable of taking less than a 10 minute shower) to the extreme (in other words, this album). Greed, seduction and lust, for better or for worse, speak to all of us. These are emotions that the classic American bands that have inspired Royal Baths tap into. So for fans of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, and Tom Waits, this album is for you. For everyone else there is Taylor Swift.

Tim Myers is a law student and a frequent contributor for FP. If anyone knows how to live a life of excess, it’s Tim.

Every 30 days we bring you our five favorite music videos of the month gone by; if you missed any of last year’s entries, click here. The music video is off to great start in 2012, and there were many fantastic entries that could not find room on the list.  If you take a look at some of them, head over to our tumblr where we have posted several (and where we frequently post new music and videos).  In the meantime, enjoy the months’ best, featuring shadow puppets, action figures, dangerous car stunts, and gay porn stars. 

5. The Darkness – “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us”

The Darkness is less a band than a caricature of a band, and their awareness of this fact is their most endearing feature.  It’s absurd to think that a sentient human being’s room would be filled with Darkness action figures, but then it’s absurd to think it would be filled with KISS action figures as well, and how’s that working out?  This video manages to encapsulate incorporate everything that pubescent boys love about rock n’ roll without shame or irony.  Bravo.

4. Shabazz Palaces – “Are You…Can You…Were You? (Felt)”

It’s an open question whether music videos are at their best or their worst when they attempt to blur the boundaries that separate them from film, but this short from Shabazz Palaces certainly argues for the former.  Another stunning entry in the portfolio of the most interesting hip-hop project in a long, long time.

3. Kate Bush – “Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe”

Kate Bush’s songs are dreary, complex, and decidedly not-for-everybody.  Her 2011 LP 50 Words for Snow was a difficult listen, and I doubt you’ll be hearing the 11-minute “Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe” at many parties.   Still, there’s no denying the mystical, moving quality in Bush’s voice, and this stark tale of loss and shadow puppets is the perfect compliment.

2. M.I.A. – “Bad Girls”

I am no M.I.A. apologist, and I certainly don’t think she is the most important artist of the aughts.  But even I have to admit: this video is pretty badass.

1. Perfume Genius – “Hood”

I love Perfume Genius, and his upcoming LP Put Your Back N 2 It is absolutely stunning.  That said, I readily admit that much of the beauty and power of his music, which centers primarily on the traumatic experiences of a gay youth,  is inaccessible to me.  Somehow though, this video featuring gay porn actor (!) Arpad Miklos manages to achieve a tone of universality, rendering in clear visual language the painful self-consciousness that comes with revealing yourself fully to another.  Also, the Freddy Cruger thing is pretty funny.

L.V. Lopez is co-editor of Frontier Psychiatrist.  And that’s that. 

Prologue: Down in the Gutters, Up to the Stars

Myth begins in the gutter.  It comes to life as folktales.  It’s what the Germans call Volkgeist; the Spirit of the People. The Priests and Poets come later.  It always starts with the stories.  They can be refined, re-worked, written down, re-vamped, re-told, re-booted but never actually altered because Myths are always true.  They are forged in the crucible of the People’s predicament.  They are told because they are necessary.  They exist because they must.

Homer was a blind man who wrote down the stories of shepherds and cutthroats.  Geoffrey of Monmouth took the strange Welsh songs of a peerless hero who fought giants and cat-monsters and turned it into the defining myth of the United Kingdom.  Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were academics who recorded the morbid morality tales of Central Europe.

Achilles.  The Trojan Horse.  Helen of Troy.  Arthur.  Lancelot.  Gwyneviere.  Sleeping Beauty.  Cinderella.  Little Red Riding Hood.  They come as freely to the modern mind as they did centuries ago and they will continue to until we no longer have need of them.  Like it or not, these are our defining stories, and they didn’t come from the Literati or the Tastemakers.  They sprung from the Volkgeist and help to illuminate the Spirit of the Age.

Now, add two more names to that list:

Superman. Batman.

Sprung from the bowels of the Great Depression, The World’s Finest have existed for over 70 years, morphing through time to best reflect the ever-present Now yet always possessing the same truth at their cores.  One, the stranger from another planet gifted by our yellow sun with powers far beyond mortal man, raised in the heartland of America to be the best of us; the other, a child of tragedy who pledges unlimited will, talent and resource to the war against injustice, they are the twin archetypes of the American Century.  In them, we may see the old stories re-invented, re-told, re-packaged.

They both offer us protection, justice, hope but in different ways.  One descends from the sky; the other ascends from the streets.  One patrols the day-world of high technology while the other polices the archaic night, each explicating their side of the great debate:

From whence will salvation come, above or below?

And they were born from a medium which, for most of its history, has been uniquely positioned to best reflect the Volkgeist at its most primal.  The comic book has always been a trash form.  Beginning with Richard Outcault’s The Yellow Kid (the first full color newspaper strip and the basis for the term “Yellow Journalism”), American comic books have neither aimed for nor often achieved high literary value.  It’s always been a throwaway medium (in the case of many heartbroken young boys whose parents forced them to march their comic collections out to the trash, this is a very literal truth).  While the comic books of Europe became the Graphic Novels of Belgium and France, widely accepted by the literate public, American Comics could only march in step with the crass vigor of the United States.

Much like modern Hollywood, the early publishers in the Golden Age of Comics (1938-1949) were primarily concerned with devising the most powerful way to grab the attention of the marketplace.  In practical terms, they’d print whatever it took to get the kids to hand over their nickels.  The pulps were fine for the grown-ups but children have shorter attention spans and, besides, there was a new shark in the waters and it had moving, talking pictures.

It’s important to remember the past was just as vulgar as the present.  As popular entertainment proliferated through the 19^th century into the 20^th, it tended to best reflect what the largest part of the audience was interested in.  As it turns out, what they were interested in then is what they’re interested in now; action, sex, crude morality and heroic power fantasies.  The cheap pulps, filled with half-naked women and intensely misogynistic male protagonists were selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the first two decades of the 20^th century.  Radio and film, though decidedly more tame, were practically dripping with undisguised aggression and barely disguised libido as the Thirties reared its depressing head.  The world of mass entertainment, in the time before World War II, was as far from the forcefully sterile landscape of the 1950’s as ours is today.  And it was this world which birthed American comics.

The first comics were nothing impressive.  It was mostly just reprints of newspaper strips, mainly featuring broadly comedic caricatures with more than a dash of odd and disturbing racial stereotypes.  But, when the reprint well ran dry, the publishers had to find new faces to fill the panels.  Thus, by 1935, they were throwing anything and everything at the comics reading public.  Funny animals, historic adventures, futuristic police stories, bumbling cavemen.  The novelty hadn’t worn off yet so the kids would still buy just about anything and each book had 64 pages to fill.

In New York City, strange little sweatshops sprung up, packed shoulder to shoulder with young men, most of them poor, many of them immigrants (or sons of immigrants), some of them talented, all of them hustlers.  They’d cram into grubby Midtown publishing offices and hunch themselves over desks to crank out make-believe bullshit for the yokels in Dubuque.  They were tough kids making a tough living but they weren’t doing what their fathers did.  They weren’t digging ditches or chopping meat.  They were making their way through the Great Depression drawing dreams and that was better than most.

As the 20^th century turned, an age of technology was upon us.  The restless spirit of the pioneers was still playing out while the great urban centers welcomed fresh blood from across the Earth.  As the global engines of commerce belched wealth and advancement, the rise of easy media gave birth to an accelerated culture.  Even World War I, with all its terrible, pointless death, gave rise to a flowering of American arts and letters and a new-found swagger in the public stride.  Gangsters, Glitz and Guns.  Opportunity Everywhere.  Skyscrapers rose and jazz filled the streets but the Stock Market Crash of 1929 not only wiped fiscal stability from the ledger of America, it rattled a confidence central to the national ethos.  Manifest Destiny, that glorious and terrible phrase and the post-Enlightenment dreams of a newer, greater society had been replaced by breadlines, desperate public works projects and immigrant ghettoes with no more West to conquer.

The air got let out of the balloon.  All that dynamic energy so ingrained in the American Spirit seemed to fritz out like an electrical wire not connected to anything.  Those smartly dressed young men were forced to sell their pocket watches and stand in line for work.  The first generation immigrants whose parents had abandoned their worlds so they might inherit a better one found a gaping hole where the American Dream was meant to be.  For ten years, the roar of America became a whimper.

And then, Superman happened.

Try to imagine the visceral thrill of being a kid and opening up a comic book in 1938.  These were children born into gloom.  They had never known the swinging trumpets of the Twenties or the unbridled optimism of Edison’s electrical age.  They were Depression kids, bred on privation and managed expectations.  Radio was the dominant medium.  Film was still in its monochrome infancy.  Awash in gaudy color and unceasing action, invincible men crumple tanks between their fingers like a portal to some other, better reality where the spires never cease and nothing is impossible.  But, this was not the exotic jungle of the Phantom or the distant Mexico of Zorro.  These were the streets and tenements the increasingly urbanized population could recognize.  And the superhero world shared our problems.  Superman fought bank robbers and crooked union officials.  Batman’s streets were filled with muggers and hoodlums.  It was not the future.  It was not the past.  It was not another planet or a fantastical realm.  It was right here, right now (and part of the longevity of superheroes is their omnipresence; they always exist right here, right now).

But, unlike our world, a hero was coming to save us.  The drab businessman in the glasses and three-piece suit would take off his tie and snatch us from the path of a speeding car.  The vapid Rockefellers of high society took to the rooftops and kept watch against the night.  There were magic lanterns and men with wings.  No one ever starved or suffered wrongs these gods could not right.  In the blink of an eye.  In a single bound.  It was pure and crude heroic mythology.

The idea of the superhero isn’t exactly a new one.  Hercules was, after all, stronger, faster and smarter than normal humans with his own rogue’s gallery of colorful villains (The Nemedian Lion, The Lernaen Hydra, Cerberus, etc.).  Robin Hood had a secret lair (Sherwood Forest), an arch-nemesis (The Sheriff of Nottingham) and even his own heroic gimmick (master archer).  Arthur possessed a magical sword bequeathed him by a wizard with a whole team of heroes who banded together whenever the peril was too great for any one knight alone.  Not to mention the masked adventurers which filled the pulp pages of the early 20^th century, many of whom are still recognizable (Zorro, Green Hornet, The Shadow).

But in the Kryptonian, there was something different at play.  Debuting in Action Comics #1, dated June, 1938, Superman had no precedent.  In fact, it had been centuries since the West had created a potent hero who was so blatantly more than a man.  Bullets bounced off him.  He was practically invincible.  He feared nothing for he had nothing to fear.  There is something charmingly simple to Superman’s essential premise:

What if a seemingly weak man was secretly mighty?

It would be easy to reduce this profound formulation to the wish fulfillment it represented to Superman’s creators.  After all, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were bookish Jews from Ohio.  But the artists of a society can often predict its direction.  Sometimes through genius, sometimes through inspiration, sometimes through simply grabbing into the air and coming down with which the way the wind is blowing.

When Superman debuted, America was still crawling on its belly.  Seven years in the future, it would be the greatest military power the world has ever seen.  It would control the atom bomb and be the center of the new world economy.  It would stand astride the Earth, its flag waving proudly in the wind, bound by nothing save its own code.  So, let’s re-work Superman’s essential premise:

What if a seemingly weak country was secretly mighty?

After his debut, Superman was quickly rushed to radio and the matinee houses.  His symbol adorned everything from lunch boxes to belt buckles.  Supermania swept the country and in the blink of an eye, it seemed as though superheroes had always been among us.

They represented a unique blend of high imagination, crude wish fulfillment, unwavering, puritanical morality and melodramatic mythography.  The men in tights (and save for a very few notable examples, they were always men) were forthright, endlessly energetic, attractive, ultimately unbeatable and generally tremendously clever (or at least, more clever than the supervillains, which often wasn’t saying all that much).  Coming out of the decade long horror show dubbed The Great Depression and headed straight into the conflagration of World War II and the American Century, they were everything we wanted to be, everything we thought (or perhaps hoped) we were and everything we pictured ourselves becoming.

By this time, the top comics were selling in the millions.  By 1945, The Market Research Company of America reported 70 million people read comic books (that was roughly half the population).  Of children between the ages of 6-11, 95% of boys and 91% of girls identified themselves as comic readers.  41% of men and 28% of women, ages 18-30, were reported as regularly reading comics.  Make no mistake, this was mass culture.  By the time World War II began, comics were being shipped to G.I.s on the front.  A whole generation of children was learning what it meant to be a hero between the pages of a comic book.

The appeal of the superhero as a concept is as easy to understand as kids playing pretend in a parking lot.  It speaks to basic childish wish-fulfillment.  By putting on the costume, we can imagine ourselves to be bigger than we are, more powerful, more just.  Our battles become Wagnerian with morality etched in unambiguous black and white.  Even the garish color palate of the uniform, though probably chosen to grab the eye of young children, set the superhero apart from drab world of the 1930’s.  The secret identity allows us to be someone else yet remain ourselves.  It lends us the strength of a secret.  If only the pretty girl knew there was a god behind these glasses.  If only the world could see the remarkable abilities hidden beneath this mundane disguise.

Superheroes are both an expression of impotence and a totem of potential.  They speak to the difference between how we seem and what we truly are.  On one hand, they’re voyeuristic fantasies, allowing us to do in imagination what we dare not do in life.  On the other, they give us the courage to dare.

They serve the same function as hero myths have always done.  They give us something towards which to aspire.  We can never be as powerful as Superman but we can be as good.  We can’t do the things Batman does but we can possess the same unwavering commitment to justice.  Our heroes tell us who we are and what we value.  They reflect our culture’s idealized notion of itself.  The criticism leveled against superheroes is they’re nothing more than adolescent power fantasies but America is a young country.  We lack the deep and varied mythic systems of the Old World.  Our heroes didn’t exist so we had to invent them.

A list of superheroes published before 1945 number in the high hundreds, if not the thousands.  From Ma Hunkle to the Human Bomb, no gimmick, power or design element went unused.  There was literally an army of super powered do-gooders marching across the globe.  Most of them are long forgotten.

Stories and Truth are murky things, Myths and Truth even murkier.  Of all the superheroes invented in the Golden Age, only a handful made their way into the public consciousness.  The People are fickle.  They’ll let every story into their hearts but only a few get to stay.

What is it about Batman and Superman which makes them so essential?  Across a century, they have morphed into global icons whose ideographic value is higher than ever.  Through a strange and energetic alchemy, they were imbued with a core potency which defies easy explanation.  Each generation re-invents them yet they remain unchanged.

Batman is still Bruce Wayne.  He still has a trusted Butler named Alfred and a brightly attired boy sidekick named Robin.  He still lives in a house on the hill while descending nightly into the smoke to protect and avenge the innocent.  He is still matching wits with a mad clown.

Clark Kent is still Superman.  He is the adopted son of Kansas farmers, sent to Earth by his scientist parents from a doomed planet.  He is still ludicrously powerful yet impossibly moral.  He is still a newspaper man working alongside a strong, intelligent and beautiful woman called Lois Lane.  He is still grappling with a bald tycoon.

Stop anyone on the street and they’ll most likely be able to tell you some or all of these details.  Superman and Batman have become ingrained in our national psyche.  Their stories are part of our internal machinery.  In them, we might discover ourselves; who we are as a people and a country.  Like it or not, Superman is our Arthur, Batman our Lancelot and their Camelot is called America.

Jared Thomas is an author and scriptwriter living in Brooklyn. His works include The Street Dreams of Electric Youth, The Last Amesha, and Gre & The Devil. His column “Words & Pictures (for sub-literates)” appears regularly on Frontier Psychiatrist. He can be reached for correspondence at jtlovesyou@gmail.com.

It’s all a slow slide until we’re all wearing Snuggies, I suppose.  While the tailless dinner jacket got its start from the tailor of Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Edward, it got its American name due to its adoption by members of the exclusive country club in Tuxedo Park, New York, where members wore it to dinners.  The founder of the tony club, Pierre Lorillard VI, was a tobacco magnate and avid horseman. It’s safe to assume that he and his blue-blooded cronies enjoyed a cocktail or two.  Which brings us to the cocktail named for Lorillard’s club – cocktails named after fancy clubs tend to be among my favorites.

The Tuxedo Cocktail

2 oz. dry gin

1½ oz. dry vermouth

¼ oz. maraschino liqueur

2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with ice; strain into an absinthe-rinsed, chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with a brandied cherry and lemon peel.

This precise formulation is from the magnificent PDT Cocktail Book, but the drink itself shows up in many early cocktail guides.  It often appears in two versions, the above, which is often labeled “No. 2”, and a “No. 1” from the Old Waldorf Bar Days.

No. 1 swaps an ounce of fino sherry for the dry vermouth, and omits the maraschino and absinthe rinse.  They’re both great, the No. 1 as a Martini variation with a dry nutty backbone, the No. 2 as a Martinez variation, but all told I prefer the No. 2.  Also, I’m more likely to have a dry vermouth open than a fino sherry.  Either way, the result is one sophisticated tipple.

Drink up,

After years of toiling in hardcore obscurity, definitive Bay Area “power violence” band Ceremony is on the cusp of international recognition and (relative) mainstream success. From their smashing debut—the appropriately titled Violence Violence, 13 songs in 13 minutes—through 2010′s redefining Rohnert Park LP, Ceremony has been recognized for their decidedly artful approach to lo-fi brutality. Over the past 8 years, Ceremony have jumped from label to label, releasing 2 LPs and 4 EPs in the process. Now, after signing to indie powerhouse Matador, the music press is finally taking notice. The more “mainstream” jump is a move that diehard fans, such as myself, view with equal amounts of excitement and skepticism.

The new record—Zoo—is due out next month, and has already received press for its stylistic change. The lead single, “Hysteria” (featured on our January Mixtape) finds the band channeling new pop and experimental sounds, a move that I was initially less enthused by. Despite my apprehension, I was still exceedingly excited for their February 4^th performance at Le Poisson Rouge. And they didn’t disappoint.

Ceremony – Hysteria

Upon arriving at the Bleeker Street venue I see signs noting how the show was sold out- Le Poisson Rouge holds 700 standing. Luckily, I snagged my ticket long in advance. After grabbing a limited release show poster, I lined up with the best of the waning NYHC movement. Within the time of arriving and merchandise scouting, the show room doors had swung open and birthed 500/700 drenched-in-dedication fans looking to rejuvenate their lungs before Ceremony took stage. I capitalized on this moment to go find decent spot for a better live experience, especially having missed the opening acts (sorry, Pissed Jeans).

It was an easy squeeze for me to make it up front stage left where I had planned on spending a few short songs to nab photos. The people around me were already swinging fists and spiting beer on each other, I acknowledged their presence, pointed to my camera and started to mention I’d only be there for a short span. Before finishing the sentence my ears were met with the dissonant chords of “Violence”. I turned my attention to the stage just in time to receive an accidental right hook by a hyped fan stage diving.

The air was thickening with hate as the anxious crowd pulled and pushed in every direction. After the quick face jab I ducked down and squeezed back out of the chaos. Readjusting my clothing I scrambled to an upright position further back just in time to see the boys blast into “Hysteria”. The crowd went nuts, the floor opened up and everyone was now in a huge circle pit. The song performed live was untouchable; I was absolutely floored. In a live setting, “Hysteria” thrived with a 3^rd dimension that the recorded production sorely lacks. It wasn’t too long after that when Ceremony started getting heavy into some older tracks.

They plowed through an abundance of songs off Violence Violence, nailing every little nuance. A quarter of the crowd had left the stage after joining to scream some lyrics from “It’s Going To Be A Cold Winter” and another oldie; so the boys were then able to treat us to a new song. Yet to be heard or released, the new song blew me away again. Continuing on the sounds they explored on Rohnert Park, these new tracks fall a bit closer to conventional punk, not necessarily in a bad way. I encourage you to see their new material live before making snapshot judgments on the hard pressings.

After the new debut the song selection grew better and better. Mid-set the crowd again joined in to help sing the popular cover of Red C’s “Pressure’s On”. Together, the crowd and the performeds digested the agreement of anti-societal importance just in time for a transitional face melt to the raw punk sounds of “M.C.D.F.” Ceremony, at this point, is really feeding into the crowds energy. Every song the stage is again swarmed with fans emerging from the pit. Whatever vocalist Ross Farrar threw out, the crowd threw it right back. They blasted through some more classics such as “My Hands Are Made of Spite”, “Along”, “Kersed”, “Terminal Addiction” and “ He God-Has Favored Our Undertakings”.

Ceremony ended the night with “Lines In My Forehead”; at this point Ferrar is his usual half shirted, mic-wrapped-around-neck angry self. (If he didn’t have his shirt off by then I can guarantee the bombardment of admirers would have left him that way anyhow.) The crowd was now louder then the amplified instruments all screaming, “Shake the earth head through floor!” in unison. It was a chilling moment to share such a profound lust for the lyricism of Farrar with 700 other beating hearts. After seeing Ceremony live you walk tall, can fully breathe and annihilate any task at hand. They are able to produce such an energetic performance you will feel no other show can compare- and your future findings will mostly be correct.

Contrary to my early skepticism, their performance of “Hysteria” and the other new songs pressed me to revisit the track. After scooping up the 7” on my way out, I have been unable to spin much else. Kudos, Ceremony you’ve done it again. This show really excited me for the release of Zoo, and Ceremony’s mini-US and UK tours in support. Find the nearest city to you and treat yourself to a night of hardcore which will propel you into a blunder of emotions.

Nicole Pettigrew is a sound engineer and photographer in New York. Keep your eyes peeled for new FP content from her in 2012.

Despite suffering debasement from low-quality acts and living as a cultural punchline for the better part of the last decade, emo has persevered as a legitimate sub-genre. Songwriters like Jesse Lacey, Patrick Stickles, Max Bemis and David Bazan have managed to preserve the essence of intelligence, self-awareness and honesty that has defined the genre as far back as Minor Threat, while still progressing the sounds in their own ways. After an explosion in popularity (and an equal and opposite backlash) in the late 90s and early Aughts, great emo records are certainly harder to find than they were 20, or even 10 years ago. Which makes the gift of Attack on Memory (Carpark Records), the enormous and fantastic new album from the rapidly rising Cloud Nothings, that much more powerful.

If you’ve heard anything about Attack on Memory, you would know that production was handled by the infamous Steve Albini, known for his awe-inspiring resume of being involved with nearly every great alternative album of the last 20 years. But there is a whole lot more at work over these 33 minutes that isn’t characterized by Albini’s signature sonic touch. First off, the album pulls absolutely no punches, noteworthy in our current days of adult contemporary indie rock. In eight songs, Dylan Baldi and his newly acquired bandmates (more on that later) have done more for heavy, schizophrenic pop than any album since Red Medicine. (update: This may be an overzealous comparison, but you get what I mean) (update 2: How about Analphabetapolothology? These two records are definitely closer related than Red Medicine, one of the greatest rock albums of any generation.) The grippingly explosive first track “No Future/No Past” starts the attack on the offensive. With a thesis of “Give up/Come to/No hope/We’re through” (the only lyrics of the song, save a chant of the title), “No Future/No Past” plays like a fight song for the negative voices in your head.

If you thought track one was heavy, just wait for “Wasted Days.” Clocking in at almost nine minutes (26.6 percent of the entire record) and featuring a four-minute, boiling jam that would make King Crimson and The Wipers quite proud, “Wasted Days” is an early contender for song of the year. At this point in the record, you begin to notice the immense power and weight the new rhythm section adds to Baldi’s personal soothsaying. “I thought I would be more than this,” Baldi screams. Dude, how can you ask for more?

Cloud Nothings – Wasted Days

A shift of gears without losing any momentum showcases the versatility of Baldi’s songwriting. Killer, hooky pop gems like “Fall In” and “Stay Useless” use a bit more of the major scale, sure, but it’s important to note that the rhythm section still sounds as huge as it did on the earlier tracks, which is likely a combination of fantastic musicianship and Albini’s recording techniques. “Stay Useless”—featured on FPs January Mixtape—is a perfect example of an emo song that is appropriate to play at a house party.

Cloud Nothings – Stay Useless

From there, Attack on Memory bounces between the dark, ominous and rage-filled and the catchy, more approachable themes artfully. Whether it’s the pit commanding instrumental of “Separation” or the relative tenderness of closer “Cut You”, the album succeeds at communicating the desperation Baldi no doubt wanted us to hear.

Cloud Nothings – Cut You

The general negativity towards emo is unjust, but understandable. A member of the ever growing family that is punk rock, emo at it’s best provokes thought and reflection through ambiguity, expression and a touch of personal philosophy. Ok, maybe more than just a touch. But it’s in exposing the close relationship between personal feelings and collective (and sometimes unnamed) societal woes do the trademark emo bands do their most damage, in a good way. Favorites like Cap’n Jazz, Pedro the Lion, Brand New, The Promise Ring, Braid, Fugazi, and oh so many others succeed in communicating what goes unsaid in our modern times.

Conversely, it’s the bands that fail to understand the beauty in ambiguity and the power of earnestness are the ones that have failed at making good emo. And most unfortunately, the public remembers the high-profile embarrassments of From First To Last and late-My Chemical Romance more so than they do of the triumphs of others, more artistically accomplished members of the genre. Offense intended, Sonny Moore.

Attack on Memory—and its positive reception—show that great, thoughtful emo can still hold weight in 2012. Baldi certainly did his homework, as evidenced by his clutch hiring of a truly stellar band, his choice in producers and above all, embodying the restless emo spirit in the best way a songwriter can these days. It’s entirely possible that this record will be revered as a genre classic, should others continue with Baldi’s lead. And between now and then, there are no wasted days.

Peter Lillis is a staff writer for Frontier Psychiatrist. He is an Advocate for the Proliferation of Emo Rock. Check out our newly established tumblr this week for some discussion on his favorite emo albums of recent years.