oh my...

I don't mean to belittle your (mis-)adventures but your recounting is quite grim dB.

Secondly, I've been listening a lot to two mixes by a favorite somebody but in between there's been a lot of SD radio, listening to my old KALX shows (man, I sound really nervous and young--no wonder so many creepy people called me), and NPR online.

My question is what does one make of appealing but possibly slight foreign fusion? Are Ozomatli, Manu Chao, and Amadou and Mariam the (and I shudder to type these words all together) the Dave Matthews of international music?

Thirdly, (i'm listless, excuse the rambling) I've rewatched Shopgirl in light of the fact I don't think Steve Martin's music is terrible. I think his novella and movie is a little too pat and smug (his voiceover narration really rubs me the wrong way) but this is a really cute, if flawed, little film. My favorite part is a gesture at the end. Claire Danes walks away from Steve Martin towards "Jeremy" and Jason Schwartzman raises his arms in a celebratory gesture of excitement, love, adoration and she rushes into his embrace. So silly and adorable. Something about how complete and uninhibited that gesture is--like a child wanting to be picked up, like the triumph of a touchdown, like the ecstasy of a gossip singer--like love.

Lastly, I think I'm coming to a better understanding of what floats my aesthetic boat in the world of cinema. I've always had a hard time reconciling my love of the over-the-top (Almodovar, Fassbinder, early Hollywood, HBO shows) and the minimalism (Japanese cinema, "mumble-core", Chabrol, left-bank French New Wave) that defines the two kinds of films that I adore. But really it's all about the well done melodrama. While that's certainly true of the big brassy films, there is something unabashedly grand and equally ballsy in the vast desolation and lack of things that happen in the small films I love. That makes something like There Will Be Blood (which I prefer vastly to No Country for Old Men) a perfect storm for what I love.