This Week At The New Beverly

Our full November / December calendar is online!
http://www.newbevcinema.com/calendar.cfm

Friday & Saturday November 20 & 21

Two by Krzysztof Kieslowski

Three Colors: White
1994, France / Poland / Switzerland, 91 minutes
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0111507/
dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, starring Julie Delpy, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Stuhr
Fri: 7:30; Sat: 3:40 & 7:30, Watch The Trailer!

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1) Wale Attention Deficit (Interscope Records/Allido Records)

2) FELT FELT 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez (Rhymesayers)

3) Wu-Tang Meet the Indie Culture, Vol. 2: Enter The Dubstep... (Ihiphop Distribution)

4) Gift of Gab Escape 2 Mars (Cornerstone/RAS)

5) Wyclef Jean From The Hut, To The Projects To The Mansion  (R.E.D. Distribution)

It may seem like Washington DC rapper Wale has been around for quite a while already and that he should be up to his third or at least second album by now, but in actuality the justifiably hyped emcee is only just now releasing his debut, Attention Deficit on Allido via Interscope. The album has been much anticipated and has numerous big name collaborators (particularly production), including Mark Ronson, Cool & Dre, The Neptunes, 9th Wonder, and Green Lantern, and Lady Gaga, who lends her MIA inflected vocals to the single "Chillin" (already out many months and a big hit -- see video below), which seems to be everyone's favorite new hip-hop release. Since it dropped last week, Attention Deficit has been selling really well everywhere, including at the Berkeley Amoeba Music store, where it shot to number one with a bullet on the latest Weekly Hip-Hop chart. The album, which distinctly packs much crossover appeal, features Wale tackling many topics, including feelings of insecurity ("Contemplate"), the trials & tribulations of the everyday grind for a hard working rapper ("World Tour" featuring Jazmine Sullivan -- another already released single, one that revisits A Tribe Called Quest's song of the same name), and the reality of reality shows ("TV in the Radio").

Who am I, my mother?


Thirtysomething was just released on DVD and as a My So-Called Life fan (it has the same producers), as well as someone who has a passing interest in late 80s fashion, I decided to check out the show.

It's been more than 20 years since this show first aired, and watching at first I found the couples difficult to relate to and the emotions overwrought. As I watched more episodes, I kept waiting to like the show...and I just continued to try through 3 discs worth of episodes, until I finally straight up gave up! I really, really gave it a shot though. It is definitely dated, and I plainly did not like the male characters on the show at all, with their cheating thoughts and penchant for suspenders.

My other major issue with the show: it's so boomer it hurts. Really, it hurt me when they used and badly cropped Joni Mitchell songs not once but twice just in the first few episodes! Ouch.

I also feel, as someone who is currently technically thirtysomething and living in this ol' world of ours, that our lives now, at least in my scene anyway, are so completely different from these portrayed back in 1987 it's kind of a bit shocking. These people own their own businesses, homes, can afford children, have perfect hair and functional, stylish vintage cars...it's just not real to me, in my world, and that's a big part of why the show fell flat for me personally.

While the publicity blitz a couple of months back surrounding the remastered reissue of the Beatles' back catalog was certainly justified, it wasn't the only remastered reissue of classic music material to come out back in early September. In that same week Dr Dre's landmark debut solo 1992 album The Chronic was reissued in a new remastered and repackaged form.

Retitled The Chronic Re-Lit & From The Vaults and released by Wideawake/Death Row, the new reissue offers much more music -- over twice as much as the original! The new two disc set includes all of The Chronic’s original sixteen tracks remastered, plus liner notes from producer Quincy Jones III. More importantly, the new reissue includes a DVD entitled From The Vault, which features music videos for singles from The Chronic, a half hour Dr. Dre interview, plus various promotional pieces. The new package also includes seven unreleased songs featuring Snoop Dogg, CPO, Jewell, and Kurupt.

The Chronic, released in late '92, forever changed the direction of popular hip-hop and made Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he was then known) a star. It also propelled the careers of Daz Dillinger, Nate Dogg, Kurupt, and (Dre's step-brother) Warren G. And its singles, including "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" (see video below), "Fuck wit Dre Day (and Everybody's Celebratin'),” and "Let Me Ride," were hits and ruled the airwaves for quite some time.

It must be good being Yoshimi P-We. It seems to me that she's had a pretty great year, what with her Boredoms gig at All Tomorrow's Parties in New York, her ambitious sounding project aboard a Russian ferry, soundtracking this past summer's solar eclipse off the southern coast of Japan, two releases on the side: Bar-Cozmik (as Yoshimio) and Tingaruda (as OLAibi), not to mention the big fat recent new release from my favorite branch of the Yoshimi tree -- the all-girl, always exciting OOIOO. Amidst all this artistic activity, Yoshimi also gave birth to her second child this year. No wonder Wayne Coyne named a record after her. 

When OOIOO released Taiga a few years back I fancied that listening to it was a lot like journeying into an hour long, aural tour de la nature -- a sonogram for one of those excellent macrocosmic David Attenborough documentaries where frozen, aurora-enshrouded forests of the North exist minutes from warmer climes where glacier-fueled rivers rush chuckling over rock and mud towards temperate seas. What stellar programming like Planet Earth does for your eyes in the comfort of your home, extraordinary sounds like that of OOIOO do for your ears within the infinite expanse of your mind. This may come across as cheesy (only the easiest cheese, please), but it reminds me of something Obi-Wan Kenobi explained to Luke as he struggled to find his bearings with the Force: "your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them...stretch out with your feelings." Listening to OOIOO, for me, is like letting the Force flow through you, no blast shield required.