Springsteen and the Flight Back Home

To end my trip to sunny (but a little cold) California on a high note I went to see Springsteen last saturday in San Jose. I wasn't much of a Springsteen fan before last year, only knew those songs that everybody probably does (Streets of Philadelphia, Born in the USA, Glory Days...). But then I read Rolling Stone's review of Magic and just had to listen to it: now Magic was probably my favorite album of 2007 and I'm a big fan of the guy. Luckily he was playing in San Jose, which is like 10 minutes away from Moutain View, so I had to go (even if the tickets were a little pricey). It was amazing!!! First of all, that guy can't be (almost) 60, it's impossible. He played for way over 2 hours with so much energy, it was really impressive. He played most of Magic and a lot of oldies too, and he'd always take requests, taking signs from the audience and playing the songs they asked for. He and the E Street Band sound just as good live as they do on the records, they know each other so well it's amazing (well, they have been playing together for over thirty years after all). And, to top it all, he did an amazing live version of my favorite song on Magic, the title track... it was really cool and I managed to find (bless YouTube!!) him doing something similar on another concert of this tour... check it out!

Psycho and Stanford Theatre

There's this very cool, old-fashioned theatre in Palo Alto called the Stanford Theatre. It's a theatre from the '20s that got some attention in the late '80s and since then only shows old movies, with great decoration and ambiance (if you haven't noticed there is a guy playing a Wulitzer organ in the photo on the right... it's very cool, he plays before and after the movie, and he did a part Psycho's soundtrack!!!). The main hall is all decorated with old movie posters, and there's always some cool memorabilia related to the movies currently playing. Particularly this past week they had the last days of a Hitchcock festival, featuring Psycho and The Birds.
Now, I'm not really fond of The Birds... I watched it a few years ago but couldn't understand what the hell everybody saw in it. Psycho, on the other hand, is a timeless classic: not even the bad memories brought about by Gus Van Sant's "version" (basically, a frame-by-frame copy of the original with the expection of picking a bad cast, using color, and of a unnecessary scene of Bates jerking off). I watched it last monday. Psycho has grown old a little bit... the countless times we've seen the shower scene takes the edge off it, but luckily there's dozens of other scenes just as good, but a lot less exploited... Everything is top notch: Anthony Perkins gives one of the most memorable performances ever as poor, lonely Norman Bates... Hitchcock is at his best, orchestrating one memorable scene after the other... the soundtrack is amazing... even the black & white photography seems perfect!! It's an amazing, memorable movie, and it was really cool watching it in the Stanford Theatre (and getting to listen the guy wailing Psycho's soundtrack at the end!).

Quick Note

A couple of quick notes:

1-) If you're thinking about watching Vantage Point, please DON'T! It's so bad it hurts, and it's giving 10.000 B.C. a decent run for worst movie of the year.

2-) One of the best nerdy jokes I've seen lately (from the nerdiest of all comics, xkcd):

News from California

So I'm officially half way through my time in California and I thought it was time to post some news. I've been postponing this, hoping I'd get some pictures to put up here, but since my camera cable is still gone I'll have to go picture-less for the time being... :-) So, what's Silicon Valley like?! It's freaking awesome, kinda like a high-tech american TV suburb. Which is also the bad part: there's not much to do around good ol' Mountain View; I mean, there's great shopping, some movie theaters, fine restaurants and a couple of bars. Enough to go by for who's gonna be here for a few days, but living here probably leads to a very quiet life...

San Francisco, on the other hand, is awesome, and only an hour away!!! It's a gorgeous city, with a very beautiful coast, and very nice people. There's all the touristy stuff, you know, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, the weird winding streets, Fisherman's Wharf... there's great shopping, of course, nice parks, restaurants, bars, everything!!! Up until 2am that is, because there's a very annoying (apparently state-wide) law that prohibits people to sell alcohol after 2am!! Do you believe that?!!?!

I've done some pretty interesting things already, and I will go into more detail when I actually get to my photos to post here, but I gotta say the coolest thing I've done was to bike on the Golden Gate bridge, that was awesome!!!! And yeah, it also made me realize I'm really, really out of shape... will have to work on that... :-)

Oh yeah, to finish off, since I don't have any photos to post (because I have no idea where I put my camera cable), check out this video: this is how I know we're all actually living in a sci-fi book some crazy dude is writing somewhere...

Another cool trip

These have been hectic days and the first thing to be neglected was this blog (well, actually the second thing to be neglected... the first was my masters :-) ). But now I got an hour or so to spare in Houston Intercontinental Airport, so I'll post a few updates. First things first, I'm very much in love with my job right now; working at Google has proven to be everything I'd hoped for, fun, challenging, and full of opportunities. Moving to Belo Horizonte has been an interesting experience too. Even though it's the best place I could think of to live in right now, it's a great city with a lot of interesting things happening, concerts, good restaurants, good bars, very nice people, a very nice place indeed. The only thins is it's hard to find an apartment there, but hopefully I'll take care of that problem soon.
Now for the news that's probably going to run this blog for the next few weeks: I'm spending three weeks in Moutain View, Google's main headquarters. Mountain View is a little town in the Silicon Valley, near San Francisco. It's gonna be a great chance for meeting people and learning A LOT for more experienced googlers and it's gonna be an amazing opportunity to travel a little bit around, after all God (or whoever) did invent the weekend! Right now I'm in Houston, Texas, waiting for my connection to San Jose, some 30 min. away from Mountain View. This weekend is probably gonna be spent in SF, walking around town and seeing the sights (Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, all the hills and buildings... I'm pretty sure there's plenty to see), and partying in town (there's a Blind Boys from Alabama concert today too, we might go to that).
Next week we'll probably go to Vegas, either drive (roadtrip!!!) or fly, specially because Cirque du Soleil has a special show in town inspired by Beatles song (how the help could I miss that??). Then there's one weekend that we don't know yet what to do and on our last weekend here there's gonna be a Bruce Springsteen concert saturday night (also my grandma's birthday, hopefully I won't forget :-) ) before we catch our flight back home on sunday. We might do some wineries saturday before the concert, but nothing is certain yet... who knows what might happen, I'm just sure it's gonna be grrreat!!!!

A very bad year for movies

Hey, it's been a while, right?? Well, life's been crazy lately, haven't found an apartment yet, new job's been very demanding (end of quarter), I've been back and forth from Salvador more often than usual... oh, yeah, and my masters (similar to this blog) hasn't seen much action... but, one thing's still the same: I've been going to the movies! And, well, I've been mostly disappointed, with a few noteworthy exceptions. So, for starters the best movie of 2007 is Tropa de Elite, hands down (and kudos to the Berlinale for recognizing that!). I've seen most of the Oscar nominees, and they're no competition whatsoever. Actually, 2007 was such a bad year that any of the 2006 Top 5 would be the best movie of 2007. Both No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood are very good movies that will be forgotten in a few months. Juno is cute, but no Little Miss Sunshine. The comedies were pretty good, though... Superbad and Knocked Up are awesome!! Finally, the movie I enjoyed the most was Across the Universe,
I guess hundreds of people must've thought of making a movie musical with Beatles songs; if they hadn't, it should've come to them after Moulin Rouge! came out. That's exactly what they do here, they use 35 Beatles songs to tell the story of the '60s, of Jude and Lucy, Max, Sadie, Jojo and a bunch of other names right out of the songs we all love. Their use of the songs is amazing: some are obvious but very well done, some are surprising and some are amongst the most moving things I've seen lately (the gospel version of Let It Be is really amazing). The only one song I didn't enjoy so much was For The Benefit or Mr. Kite, but I guess 34 out of 35 is pretty good, right? :-)
The movie tells the story of Liverpool-boy-but-America-bound Jude and Ivy League-bound girl Lucy, who meet and (yeah, you guessed it!) fall in love. They happen to move to NY during one of the most complicated (and fun) moments in recent American history (late '60s, Vietnam, Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination, Psychodelia) and we live it all through their lives and the Fab Four's songs. If you're a Beatles fan you're gonna have the time of your life. If you're not a Beatles fan, well, you should just rethink a whole lot of things now, shouldn't you?

"Spider Pig" or "Porco Aranha"

I thought always the brazilian voices for The Simpsons were better than the american ones... but they changed Homer a few years ago and it's never been the same... so, what's better nowadays, Spider Pig or Porco Aranha???

American Gangster

I seriously think that, after The Godfather's, only Martin Scorcese should be allowed to make gangster movies. There it is, I said it. I doesn't matter how talented the people involved are (and you don't get much better than Denzel Washington, Russel Crowe and Ridley Scott); it doesn't matter how good the story is; it doesn't matter how much money goes into the production, how many awards it gets... it always feels like it's lacking something. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good movie; it's just not good enough to stand up against Casino, Goodfellas, The Departed, and so on... it's the story of Frank Lucas, a nice fellow with a tendency for sudden fits of rage (he's specially fond of banging people's heads against stuff) that became the most successful drug dealer in the US during the Vietnam years. It's also the story det. Richie Roberts, the most honest cop ever, who is gonna spend the better part of the movie trying to catch Lucas (actually, he first has to find out who Lucas is...)
The movie is a bit too long and still manages to have kind of a sudden ending... it's weird. Some parts of the story aren't really clear and I think that there isn't enough violence and tension to keep the mood for 157 minutes. Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe are both very good, as we've come to expect, but this isn't a carrer-high for any of them. We've seen they play this before.
All in all this a very good movie; just not the classic I was expecting. And since last year's The Departed is still fresh in our memory, I think American Gangster is gonna have a tough time this awards season.
On a sidenote, a very promising thing to come out of this movie might be the "unofficial soundtrack" released by Jay-Z; apparently he watched the movie and got so inspired he just had to write an entire album about his own experience as a street hustler.

My 2007 Musical Favorites...

2007 was the year I stopped being so lazy and started looking for new music. I really listened to a lot of new (for me) stuff and found I liked a lot of them. At least three or four of these "new" bands are now amongst my most-listened. I was wondering whether I should talk about the stuff I discovered in 2007 (even though most of it has been around for quite some time), or the stuff that actually came out last year. Being lazy as I am, I chose the latter basically because it's less to write about :-)... I might come back and do the other later on!!!!
Let's start with the Best Album of the year... here, I have three very strong contestants:

• Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, by Spoon
• Icky Thump, by The White Stripes
• Magic, by Bruce Springsteen
  

I'll have a hard time choosing a favorite. Icky Thump is probably the most irregular of the three: it has some pretty weak tunes (I don't really like Conquest and a couple other), but it also has some of the best songs of the year: Icky Thump, 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues and Rag and Bone. Spoon's album is a lot more regular, it's one of those albums that you just listen from start to finish without ever feeling like skipping. But there's not really any song on the level of 300 M.P.H... Magic is an amazing record... like Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, there are no weak tracks; it also "tells a story" through some really amazing songs, at least three of which (Gypsy Biker, Girls in Their Summer Clothes, and Magic, not to mention the catchiest of all, Radio Nowhere) can go head-to-head with Jack White's best any day. So, there you go, it wasn't so hard after all:

1. Magic, by Bruce Springsteen
2. Icky Thump, by The White Stripes
3. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, by Spoon
4. Who You Are, by Cary Brothers
5. Sky Blue Sky, by Wilco
   

Some albums may not be in my list simply because I haven't had the chance of listening to them. Others I did listen to and couldn't see what the fuss was all about: specifically, why the hell did everybody love M.I.A., Arcade Fire, and LCD Soundsystem, respectively numbers 1, 4 and 7 in Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums of 2007 list? It's beyond me... too much electronica for my taste... actually, I might give M.I.A. another shot, it did sound different enough to deserver a few listens... Arcade Fire is interesting, but definitely not great... and LCD, well, I would say that they really suck... but since everybody seems to love them, I'll just say that "they're really not the kind of music I like"... I'll come back later for another post on My Top 5 Songs of 2007...

cheers

Two Books

Well, since my search for an apartment (unfruitfully) continues, and I haven't been able to go to the movies lately, I'll take a few moments to write a little about a couple of books I read recently... The first one is The Act You've Known for All These Years: A Year in the Life of Sgt. Pepper and Friends, (em português) whose title is pretty self-explanatory... it's a great book about one of the most creative and weird periods of pop music. Beatles, Bob Dylan, (Syd Barrett's) Pink Floyd, Beach Boys (well, Brian Wilson really), Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young... those were amazing times... basically Clinton Heylin writes about that year when the world's greatest bands were fighting to see who would come up with the next big breakthrough (you know, after Rubber Soul, Revolver, Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds...) in pop music, and would set the pace for everything that was to come. Acid is, alongside the aforementioned artists, the main character of the story of the rise (and fall, sort of) of psychodelia. For me it was really cool to get to know much more about one of my favorite musical periods ever. One of the best parts of the book is that, even though Heylin pays the deserved respect to everybody involved he does look at everything with a critical eye... this is no ode to Sgt. Pepper's... it is a serious, fairly unbiased analysis of the environment in which it came to be... oh, and he suggests soundtracks for each chapter, which is pretty cool too!!! :-)

When I came to Belo Horizonte, one of the first places I went to was (of course) the nearby mall. There I went into a bookstore and two books caught my eyes: a fairly short book by José Saramago that I'd never seen before, 1993, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (em potuguês)... I don't really know why I got interested in the latter... I didn't know the author, had never heard about the book, and didn't contain any clues as to what the hell it was about. But it wasn't an expensive book, so I trusted my guts and bought it anyways (I bought 1993 too). I actually do that quite often and I usually end up enjoying the book. This was no exception. It's not an amazing book, that's true. But it's pretty enjoyable. The fact that it's from the perspective of a 9-year-old, and the lengths the author goes to to make sure you don't forget that, is sometimes annoying: like "mispronunciation" of some words, repetition of certain sentences, stuff like that. It's not meant for children, though, no way! There's not much I could write about the story that wouldn't ruin it for you because if you don't have at least a little suspense in the beginning it will be hard to read it all... but if you like little fables that try and tell really heavy stories with a light mood you'll definitely enjoy this... I guess that was the whole point, because the theme in itself has been touched on by so many people before (and yes, with so much more talented) that were it not for the whole fable thing, it would be hard to justify why the hell do we need another little sad story on the matter...