Donnie Darko, Mad World & Gary Jules

Donnie Darko is probably one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. The time-traveling, sci-fi tale of a guy and his giant, slightly-psychotic, imaginary bunny friend (if that's even a worthy depiction) is an instant classic of cult movies. If you haven't seen it, you should. But, even if you don't like the movie, you gotta love Gary Jules' cover of Tears for Fears' Mad World. I didn't really pay attention to the soundtrack when I first watched the movie, I didn't use to be big on soundtracks. But so many people told me how great it was, I just had to go back and give it a listen: it's awesome, and this particular song is just unbelievably beautiful. Gary Jules' voice is amazing, and simplicity of his version of the song just adds to the whole sentiment of the song: when he sings

"And I find it kinda funny,
I find it kinda sad,
The dreams in which I'm dying
are the best I've ever had."

he really sounds like the type of guy who would feel like that... it's great. So, after some digging around I found out he releases his albums through CD Baby, which is just great. So you can buy the (DRM-Free) mp3's, you can stream his stuff from the website or you can buy the actual CD. Being in CD Baby means that most of the money actually goes to him, which is kind of reassuring, specially after all the news about the RIAA going on lately. If you still don't know the song, watch the video below. If you like it, check out these albums at CD Baby, you can listen most of them for free and see whether Mad World was just luck. :-)

Tropa de Elite [Movie]

I have only one thing to say about Tropa de Elite: Fuckin' Awesome!!!!! I don't remember the last time I was this blown away; I seriously think it's the best movie of the year so far, and a definite candidate to hold the crown all the way through. It tells the story of a captain of Rio de Janeiro's special ops division who's having a baby and wants to quit the force but first has to find and train a worthy successor. It's raw realism in depicting the urban war in Rio is shocking, and to know that it's actually based on a (n apparently very badly written) novel by a former captain of the special ops just enhances it's effect. The cast is amazing, and Wagner Moura, I'd say along with Lázaro Ramos, Selton Melo, Rodrigo Santoro, is definitely firming his position as one of the most important actors of his generation. The movie is violent, funny and real, it's a slap in the face of many, many people.
By now everybody's seen Cidade de Deus (City of God) and the comparison is unavoidable: I honestly don't know which is the better one: it'll take a few days and another go at Tropa de Elite before I can make up my mind. Tropa de Elite is that good.

Another point for not living in the US

Just a quick note on a story from the NY Times on how Bush says interrogation methods aren't torture. The fun part is that he won't disclose exactly which interrogation methods he's talking about, all people know is that the CIA is authorized to use them. Conforting, isn't it? I loved this quote in particular from Bush's press secretary:

“I’ve had the awful responsibility to have to work with The New York Times and other news organizations on stories that involve the release of classified information,” Mr. Fratto said. “And I could tell you that every time I’ve dealt with any of these stories, I have felt that we have chipped away at the safety and security of America with the publication of this kind of information.”

RIAA and trials for online music sharing

I was talking to a friend of mine a couple of days ago how we thought the world (well, at least the western world) had reached a peak of freedom maybe a decade or so ago and that now everything is going down the drain. The Patriot Act and the DMCA (not to mention Bush's reelection) have literally made me not want to live in the US for as long as I can foresee. Software patents (hell, patents in general) already spread to Europe. In Germany it's now against the law to host or write any program that could possibly be used to hack another computer (yeah, that's right, anything that could possibly be used, how the hell are you supposed to define that?? How the hell are you supposed to be a network security engineer when all the programs you use on a daily basis (to defend from attacks) have suddenly become illegal?!?!). And now, the RIAA won their first trial case against mrs. Thomas.
Let me paint you a picture: Jammie Thomas, a middle-age mom, was accused by the RIAA of sharing music files back in early 2005 through KaZaA (everybody remembers that spyware-infested program, don't you?). She is an avid music fan. She owns literally hundreds of CD's and DVD's. No real evidence of her distributing any of the music was presented; she was found guilty on ground that making the songs available was already copyright infringement. The "evidence" presented against her were a username that coincided with her e-mail address, the IP address used to share the files (which, as anyone that knows anything about how the Internet works knows could be forged and is by no means evidence of identity; heck, if it were why the hell would we need half of the cryptographic protocols we study?!?!? I'd go back to Salvador and sell coconuts at the beach....). By the end of the trial she was ordered to pay US$9.250,00 per song (out of a possible US$150.000,00, so one might say that she actually got lucky)!! She was charged with sharing 24 individual songs, so that amounts to US$220.000,00.
It's easy to have sympathy for her, right?! After all she's a mom, a formerly good customer who spent thousands of dollars on products by the same guys who sued her; she was convicted for sharing 24 songs... how many "illegal" songs have you listened to in the last few years?? Downloaded, shared?? She is supposed to pay US$220.000,00 in damages, it'd probably take hr quite a few years to even see that kind of money, let alone being able to pay it up. But take all that sentimental bullshit aside: if it were a single 25-year-old millionaire who got sued for
the exact same crime, it would still be very wrong to get this outcome.
I know customers don't usually care about the practices of the companies whose product they buy. Later on, they bitch and complain when they see something unfair: "Oh My God, how could they do that?? Sue a mother for US$220.000,00 because she shared 20 something songs..." They could and did because it's cheap for them and it's a win-win situation: at the very least they scared a whole lot of people from sharing music on the web. And what if they lost?? So what, lawyers come cheap to giant industry conglomerates, they are expensive for us, who have to defend ourselves. So, what I'd like to see happening is a boycott on music sold by members of the RIAA. Music in the US nowadays is mostly shit anyways, but they still have some good stuff on their catalogs; don't buy it. Buy independent music that is just as good (or even better). Put your money to good use and try to stand up for something: not the legality or morality of sharing music, but the immorality of their scare-tactics.

• More information on the case here, here and here.
• List of Record Labels members of the RIAA.
  

Paying what you want for music

Maybe you haven't heard about it yet, but Radiohead is releasing their next album, In Rainbows, in a few days and people can pay whatever they want for it. Yeah, that's right: you can download the album from their website for whatever price you feel is fair (of course there's some sort of "base price" or "transaction fee"). Magnatune, an online music store for independent artists, has been doing something similar to that for quite a while: their suggested price for albums is 8 bucks, but you can pay anything between 5 and 18 bucks... and, the best part is that, according to their statistics, people pay around 9 dollar on average... cool, isn't it? But that's a very small scale label/online store with basically no famous/mainstream artist (which doesn't keep them from being really good, check this out for example)... I have no idea what's gonna happen when Radiohead (arguably one of the biggest bands in the world for over a decade now) tries it... but it's gonna be mighty interesting to see.
I think everybody agrees that the model we have today (and that's been there for quite a few decades now) is dying... file-sharing, cheaper equipment, near-zero distribution costs (through the net, that is)... the future certainly looks grim for big record companies... but is pay-what-you-feel-like a plausible option?? Is it best fit for big, famous acts like Radiohead, or independent artists like the ones in Magnatune's catalog?? The next few weeks will tell us a great deal about it all... by the way, the most you can pay for Radiohead's new album is 99 pounds... interesting to know they put a limit there...

Wonder Years of the '00s??

I grew up on a regular dose of Wonder Years, the amazing TV series that let us all follow Kevin Arnold's life and cheer for him and Wendy to end up together. I still get a shiver every time I hear Joe Cocker's version of With a Little Help from My Friends (in fact, I stopped writing for a few seconds to look for it and am currently listening to it as write this post). I really loved this show and I think many/most people my age also loved growing up in the '80s/'90s with that beautiful image of the '70s that Wonder Years gave us. But, most of all, it was Kevin's problems and mishaps that caught us the most: his life, were it not for the silly limits of time and space was exactly like ours (or like we wished ours was like, sometimes). Wonder Years was a huge success, spanning 6 years and basically becoming one of those shows that'll always be in people's memory. A few years later, around 1995 a show called My So-Called Life introduced a 13 year old girl called Claire Danes to the world. I won't say MSCL was as amazing as Wonder Years, but it was a close call; it was more raw and in tune with the not-so-'70s-like world of the '90s, drunk teenagers, gay classmates, quite a different feeling towards parents than what Kevin & co. had. It only lasted for 13 episodes, so I guess there's no frame of comparison in terms of success between the two shows, but I really liked MSCL too and it felt, to me, as the Wonder Years of the '90s. Now, there's a chance we're seeing the soon-to-be Wonder Years of the '00s: Aliens in America.
The show premiered yesterday really, so this is a very premature statement; even so, I really liked what I saw and I'm confident this is gonna be one of the most successful new shows of the year (not that I know what else is out there...). It's about this really geeky kid, Justin, who's obviously picked on on a daily basis at school. His mom has the great(!!) idea of hosting a foreign exchange student in order to boost his popularity in school, thinking that they'll get a blond, great-looking athlete of a kid. Instead, they get a pakistani muslim kid, probably the only thing that could make Justin even less popular. It's probably not going to be as attaching as Wonder Years was, specially because we're meeting a Justin who's already 16 years old, unlike the little kid Kevin Arnold was when Wonder Years started. But I really liked the writing and acting on the show; and I loved the sense of humor of the show, the one thing lacking from MSCL (the show was a little too melodramatic). There is a 4-minute preview of the show up on YouTube (what isn't up on YouTube?!?!?), so check it out and see if you can find some way of watching the pilot. It's really worth it.

São Paulo x Boca Juniors

Wow, two posts on one day?!?!?! Yeah, you could say I'm procrastinating... yesterday we went to the Morumbi to watch the football match between São Paulo and Boca Juniors (Argentina): it wasn't really for anything important (one of the South American cup, not the important one (Copa Libertadores da América), the other much less important one(Copa Sulamericana) ). But it doesn't matter what it's for: playing Argentina is always good and beating Argentina is specially satisfying. And beat them we did!! I took a few pictures, it's a pity we didn't take any with everybody in it... but this is how the stadium looked like, pretty packed for a game that had nothing special to it... probably because São Paulo is in such a great phase that people just want to come see them play... guess it's gonna be a pity next year I'll only get to see them when they come to Belo Horizonte and beat Cruzeiro or Atlético Mineiro... and I'll have to pretend not to be supporting São Paulo, after all I don't wanna get beat up or anything... :-)

Records of the Month, September - Pt. 1 [Music]

The month is coming to an end and I suddenly I realized that much of the stuff I've been listening to lately, according to last.fm, I didn't use to just a few months ago... so I started wondering how much new music I listen to, say every month, and that gave me the idea of doing this little sum up of what's the new stuff I've heard to this month... let's just hope I can remember everything:

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, by Spoon
I think that in the last couple of days, from every 5 songs I listen to, one is from this amazing record. I first got to know Spoon through their previous album, Gimme Fiction and, as much as
I liked that record, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is miles ahead. First of all, I love records that you can hear without ever feeling like skipping a track. Don't Make Me a Target is a great opener, catchy but by no means representative of all that is to come. After that, you get an avalanche of perfectly handcrafted songs all very different from each other, the best sort of Indie Rock you're bound to find out there... from the tension buildup of The Ghost of You Lingers, through the funky Don't You Evah, to the catchy-pop-sing-along The Underdog, it all just shows these guys are good, very good indeed... this is a very serious candidate for best album of the year in my opinion, and certainly already has a place in my Top 5!

Samba Meu, by Maria Rita

Maria Rita is one of the best things to have happened in Brazilian music for a while now. This is her third record, and the first one to depart from the sort of jazz-band-formation that was the staple of "Maria Rita" and "Segundo". In this album she sings exclusively sambas, by mostly unknown composers and she's done an amazing job of finding really talented people to write songs for her. Her voice is sweet as always, it's a delight to hear. She's certainly amongst the most talented Brazilian singers out there, and it's specially gratifying to notice that they are all rediscovering samba in full strength (Marisa Monte also released a samba-only CD last year that, interestingly enough, had a track composed by Adriana Calcanhotto; Ana Carolina always has sambas in her CD's, and her last outing with Seu Jorge is full of them).
I actually bought this CD "by accident": I didn't know it was coming out and was, as I often do, just roaming around FNAC, drooling over all the stuff I couldn't afford (yet!!!!), as I saw the CD. Naturally, being a big fan and all, I bought it right away and wasn't disappointed. It didn't take much to win me over, I admit, as I love samba, and I'd have a hard time judging whether this album is brilliant or just "very good". I guess it's very good. I say that because the fairest comparison I could make is with Marisa Monte's Universo Ao Meu Redor, and I gotta pick Marisa's record over Maria's... I guess all the songs in Samba Meu sound too much alike, I'd have a hard time picking out more than 3 or 4 that individually caught my attention (keep in mind this is just a first evaluation, as I listen to it over and over, that might change), whereas with Universo Ao Meu Redor, I instantly fell in love with 3 or so songs, and could tell most of the other apart easily... songs just sound more distinctive than in Samba Meu and, for me, that's very important... but, on the other hand, you could actually say it's a good thing if they all sound alike because they all sound good!!! :-)
Here's her talking a little bit about the record (in Portuguese), and singing one of the songs as sambas are meant to be sung!!!




Some other interesting videos from YouTube:

• Rodrigo Bittencourt, the original composer of Samba Meu, showing off a pretty raw version of the song.
• Samba Meu, now in Maria Rita's version
  
• O Homem Falou
• Num Corpo Só
• Trajetória

I actually intended to write about quite a few more records I listened to this month, but I don't wanna make some giante post that nobody's gonna be brave enough to read, so I'm gonna stop right here and come back for more some other day.

Knocked Up [Movie]

This weekend I went to the movies to see the surprise hit of the season, Knocked Up. With the atrocious translation to portuguese of the title (something like "Somewhat Pregnant"... what the hell does that mean anyway??!! You're either pregnant or not!! It's not like being somewhat hungry...) and all, it was pretty hard to convince anyone to come with me at all, but I guess since we were late and there was almost nothing else to watch I got lucky and everybody settled for Knocked Up. I really didn't know what to expect: on the one hand, something told me, perhaps how silly that guy looks, this was going to be a pretty silly comedy; on the other hand, it was a huge hit (yeah, even with critics) and was rated 7.9 in IMDb, which is unbelievably high for a comedy. So we went and I think that even my grumpy-hate-silly-comedies friend liked it (yeah, Nanda, that's you!!!). First of all, it's not that silly at all, it actually gets somewhat serious approaching the end... I won't name names, but there was some crying going on around me!! :-) Basically, the story is about this amazingly beautiful girl, who just got her break as an on-camera reporter and goes out to celebrate. She meets this very charming, curly-haired guy and, well, after a few drinks gets pregnant. Most of the jokes are about their (very different) worlds clashing, and you get some pretty good laughs off it all. Of course, he's gonna grow more mature and all that shit, and that's when the movie gets more serious. I shouldn't tell more about the story, don't wanna ruin it for anyone, but Paul Rudd's characters (the girl's brother-in -law) is just awesome, and some of the best scenes of the movie are due to him. It's definitely an unusual, worthwhile comedy, written and directed by the same guy from 40 Year Old Virgin, and with two of the four main actors. Keep an eye out for Superbad, already out on the US but far from it here, it's by quite a few of the same guys!!!! Who knows, may be we're seeing a (well overdue!!!) renewal of the whole comedy scene...

Closer [Movie]

A couple of days ago I put a quote here, saying it was from one of the best-written movies of the decade, a movie that I love!! The movie is Closer, and it's written by Patrick Marber, adapted from his own play (also called... yeah, you guessed it, Closer!!). I was blogging about it 'cause I finally bought the DVD last week, and watched it over again... it's an awesome movie, anyone who hasn't seen it should definitely give it a shot. I've already mentioned the script, it's a character-driven impressively well-written drama, with dialogues that will leave you wondering for quite some times... it's really raw, with people so fucked-up you're left wondering whether you know people like that, or who knows if you're a little bit like them too... another great quote from the movie is

Dan: I want Anna back.
Larry: She's made her choice.
Dan: I owe you an apology. I fell in love with her. My intention was not to make you suffer.
Larry: So where's the apology? Ya cunt.
Dan: I apologize. If you love her you'll let her go so she can be happy.
Larry: She doesn't want to be happy.
Dan: Everybody wants to be happy.
Larry: Depressives don't. They want to be unhappy to confirm they're depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live. Which can be depressing.


Then there's the direction. Mike Nichols is a genious. I mean, he actually has more bad movies ('80s and '90s) than really good ones (his first few movies, and Closer); but he's still an amazing director... The performances he gets from each of the four main actors in this movie is unique: I've never seen any of them nearly as immersed and convincing as in Closer. Specially Clive Owen and Natalie Portman, nominated for the supporting actor/actress Oscars (why the hell "supporting", I mean if there's a main character, it's definitely Alice), for whom I cheered a hell of a lot, but not enough to turn the head of the Oscar-voters... Portman's performance is specially meaningful because she is a great actress that needs good directing... she's given us great performances (such as this one, V for Vendetta, Garden State) but anyone who's seen the new Star Wars trilogy (and who hasn't, right?) knows that she needs good directing and that George Lucas is no good for that.
All in all, a movie that is so well-written, brilliantly directed and enacted couldn't go wrong. It certainly is sort of disturbing, really raw at times, but is a worthwhile experience, a peek into a very pessimistic view of relationships and how unexplainable and unavoidable people's behavior is sometimes...