The first part of this piece was published as a separate post but I wanted to expand my thoughts and references. Expect more to come on the subject.
W David Marx put out an edition of Culture: An Owner’s Manual last year focused on the significance of Rocky IV as a cultural artifact.
But unlike most bad films made in 1985, Rocky IV remains fascinating nearly forty years later. It has great value to us in 2024 as a relic — an artwork that embodies the unique stylistic choices of a particular point in time. Rocky IV is a time-traveling passport to 1985: the Manichaean Reaganite politics, the sassy robot maid, the soundtrack of power ballads and cold digital synths, the artless action-film editing and over-use of freeze-frame fade-outs, the casual lack of verisimilitude in using Wyoming as a stand-in for the Russian countryside.
My wife was arguing tonight that much of indie music in the 90s still sounds fresh and timeless today. I can see that in some ways, but overall I think the 90s was the last decade to have a real distinctiveness to its culture. You couldn’t make Empire Records or Belly’s “Feed The Tree” today. They just wouldn’t feel right in the current context.
I read about the new animated film Flow recently and was sufficiently intrigued to rent it from Amazon when my youngest son and I were home by ourselves one night. I was impressed by the visuals and the well, flow, of the story, as a group of animals navigate their way through a mostly drowned world. I was drawn in to the main character, a black cat that reminded me of my own cat, Jonah. The film has no dialog, and you never learn the protagonist’s name, but my son and I kept calling him Jonah. He moved like Jonah, he displayed the same emotions as Jonah and he sounded exactly like Jonah.
I know some of you are probably thinking that these traits are common to cats but I’m here to tell you that’s not so. I have another cat, Snickers (a long haired tortie) and she has a completely different personality and presence.
Based on the buzz, I expected an engrossing and innovative experience with Flow, but what I was not expecting was how much Jonah himself would enjoy the movie. He became enraptured about halfway through and perched himself on the edge of the bed to watch. Before long, he felt he needed to get closer to the action, and jumped on the dresser to get a better look. His interest led to him pawing at the screen to see if he could interact with his doppleganger and the rest of the animals.
Jonah and the lemurs
Jonah never ceases to surprise and delight me. A couple of weekends ago, my wife and I watched A Man Called Otto. I had read the corresponding book and knew that the movie was a well regarded adaptation. Plus, you can’t go wrong with Tom Hanks. I had heard the film was a bit of a tearjerker, but since I had read the book, I reasoned that I was going to be mostly immune to the emotional moments. I knew what was coming, after all.
What I hadn’t counted on was a soundtrack that would lend some significant emotional heft to the proceedings. It would be wrong to go into detail and spoil the plot. However, I can sketch around a particularly tragic scene. I knew what was going to happen, but when the Kate Bush song, “The Woman’s Work” from The Sensual World came on, I literally said, “oh, no.” I was all too familiar with the song, which has been used to great effect in other movies, such as 1988’s She’s Having A Baby and had made appearances on some of my playlists. Seconds later, I burst into tears. I just lost it. Jonah saw me sitting on the edge of the bed weeping and ran over, concerned. I didn’t have much lap to access, but he jumped up into it anyway. He started licking my hands and face and then reached out to touch my face with his paw. His actions were so touching and that made me even more emotional. Jonah wouldn’t leave until I had settled down, though. His empathy was startling.
The Souls of Animals
The various interpretations of the Christian faith make different provisions for the souls of animals. I have read Orthodox writings that speculate that animals do indeed have souls, the same as people. This is intuitive to those of us who have been close to their pets. Those relationships feel transcendent in some ways and seem to go beyond our material existence. When I see the friendship that animals can bring, I can’t help but think of the support that God has given to us through their presence.
The record label Ghostly International just reissued West Coast, the 2006 album by Studio, a collaboration between two musical auteurs from Gothenburg, Sweden. Ghostly spent months hyping the release, and it has garnered critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, which labeled it a best new reissue. Bandcamp selected West Coast as their album of the day near the end of January.
Louis Pattison’s review for Bandcamp Daily focuses on the balearic influences that feature prominently on West Coast but what struck me most was the sense that this album fit right in with much of the disco (dance) punk revival that permeated the musical landscape in the aughts. Even the heavy reggae vibes coming from the slow staccato guitars on the expansive (almost 16-minutes long) “Out There” wouldn’t sound out of place in some of the first wave experiments in dance punk.
When I heard that Starflyer 59 was releasing a new album hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed 2024 record Lust For Gold, I was a bit surprised. Once I dove further into the concept for the record, though, I began to understand why the band was able to put this out so quickly. This isn’t a collection of new songs, but rather a reimagining of previous material in a gently soporific, slumber-inducing format. I wasn’t sure about the premise, but I have to admit to being fond of the results.
The collection comes off as very similar to the Lullaby Renditions of… series that came together almost two decades ago. The series took the songs of popular bands and recreated them in a format that sounded like lullabies. Tracks by Nirvana or Radiohead or even Led Zeppelin were transformed into something that you would hear coming from the plastic mobile rotating over an infant’s crib. If it sounds hokey, maybe it was a bit, but somehow it worked. We had the volume dedicated to The Cure and used to play it to get my oldest son to settle down when he was a baby.
Anna Kodé has a piece in the New York Times (gift article) about the early Space Age Googie style of architecture. The article is filled with eye candy and visual delights from the style, some prominent artifacts of which were still around when I was young. It brings a tremendous sense of nostalgia.
Kodé examines why people now seems so attracted to buildings that were, just a few decades ago, disparaged as being garish.
