February 2024 Top Ten

1. May December (Todd Haynes, 2023) Terrific film. But this entry is about the pitfalls of democracy. I cannot stand when moviegoers need to signal how well they're grasping a film's irony or ineptitude by laughing out loud. It's happened at screenings of Bloodthirsty Butchers (Andy Milligan, 1970),  Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017), and select avant-garde films. And I hear it happens every time a NYC theatre screens a Sirk film, an experience I have so far gratefully avoided. I caught May December on Netflix thereby being spared waves of self-aware snickers. Yes, of course, it's funny (or "funny") when, over dramatic piano music, Julianne Moore's Gracie stops at the fridge to wonder if she has enough hot dogs for a barbecue. In a film about a 34-year-old teacher who engaged in sexual relations with a 12-year-old student, this moment is supposed to cocoon us from becoming too wrapped up in a melodrama that threatens to devolve into a Lifetime Scandal of the Week episode. But is it laugh-out-loud funny? Are you laughing out loud because the humor of the line leaves you no other choice? Or are you laughing to signal to others that you know Haynes is employing some sort of distanciation effect? However annoying I find the resultant laughter, though, it's the chance I take when taking part in the democratic act of moviegoing. As a fervent (albeit sometimes wavering) believer in democracy, there's nothing I can do about this nor, more importantly, would I want to, if only because I'm a hypocrite on this matter. At a recent home viewing of Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997), I snickered out loud at Lynch's propensity to ridicule (or poke gentle fun at?) his characters. I snickered to signal to my partner, whose attention was flagging, what Lynch was up to. But he didn't ask for any lesson. And in that moment, I was no better than any smarty pants whose throat I wanted to punch for pulling the focus away from the film onto their erudition. But again, this is democracy. I have a right to bitch and complain and be hypocritical about it all. Hence, this entry.

2. Kleenex/LiLiPUT: The Diary of the Guitarist Marlene Marder (Thrilling Living, 2023) Published in a run of 1,000 in 1986, Kleenex/LiLiPUT: Das Tagebuch der Gitarristin Marlene Marder is a mishmash of flyers, reviews, lyrics, and diary entries from Marder, the guitarist for the landmark Swiss post-punk band LiLiPUT (née Kleenex). I'm one of the lucky few in America to own a copy and while some of the reviews are in English, most of the book is in German which I cannot read (although years before I got my hands on a copy of the book, a German friend wrote down and translated the German lyrics to Kleenex's 1978 "Nice" which I can still sing auf Deutsch to this day). Tons of cool pics. But it just sat on my shelf as a curio from a band I adored so much that I used their name as my first AOL handle. Now, thanks to publisher Grace Ambrose and in a translation by Jen Calleja, it appears in English in a gorgeous coffee table edition. It's not a translation of every word and review from the German edition so LiLiPUT completists (all 100 of you?) will require both books. But the most fascinating aspect of finally getting to read Marder's work is how, well, workaday it is. LiLiPUT’s music seemed to come out of nowhere (aka Switzerland?), a joyous but alien thing rife with squelches and sax blurts and nonsense syllables and whistles and shouts expressing little about the particular women who joined together to make these sounds. But Marder, who died of cancer in 2016, never explains how something as singular as, say, 1981’s “Eisiger Wind” came to fruition. She simply chronicles the typical highs and lows of life on the road/in a band and then it’s over as decisively as “Eisiger Wind” stops after three-and-a-half variable, ass-pinning-back minutes. And perhaps that’s apt. They came to earth and then vanished leaving so little an impression even in their native country that the Swiss arts council which funded the translation had never even heard of the band. 

 3. Steacy Easton: Why Tammy Wynette Matters (University of Texas Press) The ultimate rejoinder to "it's all about the music, man" types. Easton enlarges what counts as popular music by taking seriously such possible apocrypha as the controversial October 4, 1978 kidnapping and Wynette keeping her beautician's license current long past her first success. Precisely because these stories might not be true, Easton analyzes them as a "hermetic and seamless, rooted in the domestic...kind of art"(14). Their thesis: "Wynette crafted a persona, and resisted that persona, and that this kind of persona-crafting is difficult work, work we should recognize" (13). Where more traditional studies would focus on producers and musicians, Easton honors the women who helped Wynette with her clothes, hair, and makeup, women who were more consistent and loyal than any of the men in Wynette's life. So allow me to name them here: Nanette England, Jan Smith, and Jan Howard, the latter of whom enjoyed a substantial recording career of her own. And fret not, music-only types - Easton is an excellent textual analyst, especially in discussions on camp and kitsch. 

 4. Barbra Streisand: My Name is Barbra (Viking Press). At almost 1,000 pages, an offense. A predictable offense, given the subject matter, but an offense nonetheless. There's a fine autobiography lurking within, though. She's erudite on the song choices for her many albums and revealing on the sexism she's encountered in various industries, e.g., Nick Nolte requiring her to sit on his lap so she can give him direction while filming The Prince of Tides. But perhaps a tougher editor could've eliminated such Streisandian wisdom as "1929. Not the most wonderful year, frankly, because that's when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began" 

5. Daniel Clowes: Monica (Fantagraphics). In the first issue of Eightball, Clowes ends a comic with hipster Satanists certain of an eternity of glory upon entering Hell. But Satan deems them suckers for their lifetime of devotion and dumps them into a lake of fire. His latest graphic novel ends with a similar eleventh-hour reversal. Despite all the voices from beyond or attempts at reconciliation or the quests for the meaningfulness of life that pepper this epic tale, nothing but nothing can prevent the unleashing of apocalyptic forces hellbent on (potentially? ineluctably?) destroying life on earth.

6. Fargo, Season 5 (FX) Previous seasons trafficked a bit too much in the near-supernatural character of the principal villains, a drawback that severely afflicts the Coens' No Country for Old Men. This season features a Michael Myersish bad guy as well. But he's disarmed in the end with kindness in a more humane twist on the Final Girl scenario of slasher films. Now that the superb Ted Lasso has found a way to make niceness interesting (and popular), perhaps we'll get more shows where conflicts are resolved with a plate of biscuits instead of violence. Added attraction: Jennifer Jason Leigh's Sandra Bernhard accent.

7. The Curse (Showtime) A Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie creation about a well-meaning white liberal couple (Emma Stone and Fielder) who star in a HGTV show meant to help disenfranchised locals in Española, New Mexico but who wind up gentrifying the area instead. After nine uncomfortable episodes, the titular curse voids the laws of gravity for Fielder. What starts as a hilariously demented take on Fred Astaire's ceiling dance in Royal Wedding quickly becomes harrowing before ending on an oddly comforting note as he gets sucked into space. I don't want an explanation/second season because I want to cherish this solitary moment of peace in an unbearably itchy series.

8. The Crown, "Season 6, Episode 6: Ruritania"(Netfix) Apart from the one about the abdication, this was the best episode of the entire addicting series. Under public pressure to economize, The Queen takes stock of the many people in her employ and we're granted a glimpse into what it takes to run a palace. The Warden of the Swans. The Queen's Herb Strewer. The Queen's Guide to the Sands. Yeoman of the Glass and China Pantry. Astronomer Royal. Piper to the Sovereign. Lord High Admiral of the Wash. All are interviewed by Her Majesty as she learns that "few have truly mastered the Dutch bonnet napkin fold." To the chagrin of anti-royalists, no positions are cut. But it makes for a wonderfully synchronic deep dive/pause before moving on to the Kate Middleton dénouement. 

9. Matthew Solomon, Méliès Boots: Footwear and Film Manufacturing in Second Industrial Revolution Paris (University of Michigan Press) One of the most eccentric books of film scholarship I've ever read. Solomon traces Méliès' career as a theater director and filmmaker to the earlier Méliès family success as a manufacturer of boots. He links the artisanal and industrial nature of shoe production and the international flow of commodities necessitating such a commercial endeavor with Méliès mode of creating films. As such, he places his filmmaking activity in a wildly expansive context, even getting down to the material makeup of celluloid: "The material substrate of cinema was constituted from vegetable matter (cotton, wood) that was chemically treated to yield sheets of celluloid that were cut into strips and emulsified with gelatin made of pulverized animal bones to which crystallized silver was added" (8).

10. JPEGMafia & Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes (AWAL, 2023) Danny Brown alone is enough, the most sonically generous rapper of our time. I know little about JPEGMafia. But whatever his profile, together with Brown he's created a phantasmagoria that invites a lifetime of exploration. JPEGMafia brings the politics with references to Matt Gaetz, Kyle Rittenhouse, Marjorie Taylor Green, and kicks off the album with "First off, fuck Elon Musk." Brown is the sybarite rapping about sex, drugs, and rap (and politics, fear not). They dis/honor R&B, jazz, and, especially, gospel via samples that they rap against, like magnets stuck haphazardly on a fridge. Titles include "Orange Juice Jones," "Run the Jewels," and, the best, "Jack Harlow Combo Meal." It's all given a glistening, high-register sheen reminiscent of the PC Music aesthetic. The overall effect is akin to being bounced around a pinball machine, scary for the milquetoasts they parody on the title track but exhilarating for those of us who never mind getting our hair mussed. And if somehow all of this isn't enough for you, proceed directly to the Scaring the Hoes: DLC Pack EP which includes another gospel trash compactor number called (thank gawd for copy and paste) "No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!"