recent DVD purchases

[Who Shot Sam?]

I love the degree of praise this series has got. I read about it longingly when it was first screened on the FX channel here, one not in my cable package. Now it is, and so I watched a minute or 10 of series 5 just to see a bit of it. Looked great, but what did I know about what was going on? So clearly I had to get it, first time I've ever bought a TV series. The Word race about it and carry a very good interview with Simon in this month's edition. He's a tremendously intelligent and interesting character, and the story of how he got involved with Baltimore homicide police as a journalist and then, disaffected with the steady demise of newspapers, got his lucky TV break is absorbing. I imagine the interview you linked to up above is worth it too.

Series 1-5 are coming out on a box set in Dec. Couldn't wait, so got series 1. My son is dying to watch it too and has been watching it on YouTube! It just sounds like very original and important stuff with huge points to make. Great that TV can produce great art too. And clearly the man has great taste in music. Will report back in a few weeks...

I'm sure you'll love it Otis. Stick with it through the early part of season two. It seems to take a little detour, but it all makes sense in the end.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Will bear that in mind, thanks. Am more than excited about joining the club. I've been developing a theory of cultural umami as a way to explain to myself why the Fleet Foxes LP sounds so perfect or a paragraph of Roth at his most potent reads to perfectly, and it can only be explained at some sort of transcendent level where the whole is very much greater than the parts. Here's hoping for some televisual umami! Or as Philip Larkin put it in 'For Sydney Bechet':

On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes.

[Who Shot Sam?]

Got a Samsung Blu-ray DVD player for Christmas, along with two discs - The Dark Knight and the latest Indiana Jones pic (that one mostly for my boy I think). I've since ordered The Man Who Fell to Earth. Criterion is just getting into the Blu-ray game with a few titles, but The Last Métro is one of them and I will almost certainly be getting that as well once it comes out this spring.

I can tell a big difference in quality between the Samsung and my old beat-up Pioneer, which has since decamped to the bedroom. Even up-converted standard DVDs look much much better on a Blu-ray player.

So, Otis, what progress on The Wire?

[Otis Westinghouse]

F all. We kept saying at Christmas, 'we gotta watch it', but there was all this other stuff on. Soon! Honest.

I got the splendid Joy Division documentary film DVD, only £7. Contains some 40 mins extra interviews. Ain't been able to watch it all, but did a quick spot-check.

One of the things that got watched was Little Miss Sunshine. which none of us had seen and eldest got for his mum. I loved it! Way more than I expected to. I laughed throughout, but loved the whole thing immensely. One thing that confused me was the music, which sounded entirely like it was all Sufjan, unmistakably so, not just 'Chicago', but throughout, apart from Devotchka in the credits. But the credits seemed to be saying it was Devotchka playing the incidental stuff throughout. Maybe I got muddled. Seemed odd.

[bambooneedle]

Maybe I got muddled. Seemed odd.

Nothing odd about that.

[Who Shot Sam?]

One thing that confused me was the music, which sounded entirely like it was all Sufjan, unmistakably so, not just 'Chicago', but throughout, apart from Devotchka in the credits. But the credits seemed to be saying it was Devotchka playing the incidental stuff throughout. Maybe I got muddled. Seemed odd.

I don't think Sufjan was involved with that film - it was DeVotchKa throughout. I hear some similarities in their music.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Curious. I'll have to watch it again knowing it wasn't Sufjan. I'll probably enjoy it less. Great film though, no? There's a second Sufjan on the sountrack, No Man's Land, which is not a track I can recall.

http://www.soundtrack.net/albums/database/?id=4123

[Otis Westinghouse]

So, Otis, what progress on The Wire?

OK, my son's 16, so after dinner with Stephen Hawking nearby, as one does in Cambridge, (my 8 year old hadn't heard of him before, but looked impressed when he heard he'd been in the Simpsons!), we settled down to Episode 1. Fucking brilliant! I was slightly anxious as a lot of people say it takes a few episodes, but it seemed reasonably followable, if richly detailed, and with some impenetrable language. Totally compelling, Simpson is obviously a very smart guy. I watched c. 10 mins of his commentary too and that was really interesting, all about how they consciously made things different to the TV norm, e.g. no music other than from real sources. It gave an incredibly convincing sense of Baltimore street life. I can't wait to watch the next 12, and to think there are four more seasons after that. Yum.