american hustle

Trailer for the new David O. Russell film American Hustle. Looks interesting!

tu(n)esday!

Some beats for y'all.

Safe with me...

Raw cut...

Winter..

Something about you...

All I want...

Stay...

I can tell...

Reach out Richard...

Strong...

Odd look...

Who you are...

Gravediggress...

Surrender...

new jt video

Video clip for Justin Timberlake's "Take Back the Night."

emo fru

Emotive Fruition is not your typical poetry reading.  It's an excellent, lively series curated and directed by Thomas Dooley.  Actors perform poems, giving them new life and resonance.

This Sunday night they will be reading three of my pieces at Bowery Poetry Club.

Check it out!

american roads: photographs by leah frances

Digging these photographs by Leah Frances.

Her tumblr is here & here's where you can order prints.

hot knife

Fiona Apple video directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

tu(n)esday!

Here are some more fun summer grooves & some free mp3's for ya...


Summer heat (free mp3!)...





F for you





Magic carpet...





Control (free mp3!)...





Dispel (free mp3!)...





Taking over (EP)...





Far gone..





Come & get it...





On my own...

art by thorton willis

chris pratt at comic con

Cutie alert.

take it off!

Intentional or not, the marketing of Drive made those hungering for another Fast & the Furious walk out of theaters.  But some, including myself, ended up being genuinely surprised how fun, riveting and stylish it was.  Just when I thought 1980s-nostalgia was played out, Drive created a world that was dark, violent, moody but blended with richly detailed, contrasting L.A. settings, and that hot pink title font and that catchy electropop soundscape.  Knowing in its humor, Drive embraced its tropes while purposefully being irrelevant compared to talky and loud action pics of the day.  Director Nicolas Winding Refn and actor Ryan Gosling's follow-up Only God Forgives is a tepid and rather uninteresting neo-noir journey into a stylized version of Bangkok's criminal underworld.  This time the joke is on the Drive fans.  Those hoping for similar atmosphere, great music, and another quietly electric performance from Gosling, will likely find little here to get lost in.

Julian (Gosling) runs a boxing club that's a drug smuggling front.  His brother Billy (Tom Burke, in a dreadful, albeit thankfully brief turn) rapes and kills a young prostitute. Billy is arrested and killed. Frosty mother (an icy, unrecognizable and largely squandered Kristin Scott Thomas) comes to pay respects and see revenge on Billy's killers.

Only God Forgives is a melding of Western and Far Eastern revenge flicks, filmed quite nicely by Larry Smith.  Smith was the lighting cameraman on Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which is what this movie sometimes reminded me of, with its stoic, nightmarish fairy tale quality.  Shooting in Bangkok (chronologically) gives the film a dingy, neon allure.  Cliff Martinez returns with another good score--the centerpiece being a spooling electro riff in the "Wanna fight?" sequence--one of the rare moments when the pic jolts to life.  Thomas is a compelling presence and a weird one, especially for movie buffs, since it's unlike anything she's done before.  Her scenes are the most arresting in the movie: her testy hotel arrival, moments between her and Julian with some Oedipal and Lady Macbethian shades, and when she gets to describe violent Julian's past (is she trustworthy or literally, with her long skinny cigarettes, just blowing smoke?).

Lacking in tension, this "Angel of Vengeance" tale seems to "try" to be offbeat though it ends up feeling a bit preciously-plotted and watered down.  Gone is a wide array of quirky, engaging characters (which is what we found in Drive and what is usually found in the movie's influences: film noir and Westerns) so there isn't much to be invested in except the style.  I'm an unabashed fan of Gosling as both an actor and a sex symbol but his dispassionate staring did little for me (maybe Refn's intention?).  Gosling called the script (by Refn) the "strangest thing" he's read. And it's also probably one of the easiest for him to remember, since he barely has any lines or emotional cues.  The high point for him is when he wails "take it off!" to his "woman" (Yayaying Ratha Phongam), which is what I was hoping she'd yell back at him.  **


- Jeffery Berg

acid rap

Nice album from Chance the Rapper. Free download.

verano mix 2013

Lovely mix tape from Goldroom.

Free download!

Tracklist

1. Mitch Murder – Mirage
2. The Preatures – Is This How You Feel? (Classixx Remix)
3. Oxford – Mirage 84 (Neptune Safari Remix)
4. Hayden James – Permission To Love
5. Dumb Dan – Ele (Jesper Samuelson Remix)
6. Follow Me – Somethin’ Bout You (Satin Jackets Remix)
7. Peter & The Magician – On My Brain (Le Crayon Remix)
8. Goldroom – Angeles (Palm & Trees Re-Tropicalize)
9. Monitor 66 – Nyx
10. Monte – You Should Know
11. Owl Eyes – Jewels & Sapphires (Goldroom Remix)
12. Cyril Hahn – Perfect Form (feat. Shy Girls)
13. Patrick Baker – Reckless Love
14. The Knocks (ft. St Lucia) – Modern Hearts (Goldroom Remix)
15. Poolside – Golden Hour
16. Little Daylight – Name In Lights (Pacific Air Remix)
17. Mayer Hawthorne – Her Favorite Song (Oliver Remix)
18. Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound Of Silence (Luxxury Edit)
19. Goldroom – Sydney Dreams