Spango Dips

As preposterous as it is/was to have postponed it this long, it’d be unforgivable to draw it out past the end of January, so without further ado I humbly present my Top Twenty Albums of 2006.

I intend to review many or all of these albums individually, in much the same way that I’ve ardently tackled the movie-reviewing deal, but I need to figure out a few things first like formatting, and a ratings scale, and how technical I’ll allow my language to be, and whether or not I want to review these albums. Once I get that sorted out, I’ll retrofit this post to link each entry to its corresponding review.

Also the movie review cannon will be reloaded soon, because in addition to being David Lynch feverish-happy-time, it’s also Oscar season (as if that link served any real educational purpose; yeah, I know), and I’m behind.

1. Joanna Newsom: Ys
2. Mastodon: Blood Mountain
3. TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain
4. The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
5. Strength: Going Strong
6. Liars: Drum’s Not Dead
7. The Hold Steady: Boys and Girls in America
8. Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped
9. The Knife: Silent Shout
10. Thom Yorke: The Eraser
11. Clipse: Hell Hath No Fury
12. Mew: And the Glass Handed Kites
13. Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins: Rabbit Fur Coat
14. The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics
15. Justin Timberlake: FutureSex/LoveSounds
16. Hot Chip: The Warning
17. Scott Walker: The Drift
18. Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere
19. The Thermals: The Body, The Blood, The Machine
20. Sunn O)))/Boris: Altar

Only two general supplemental comments to contribute. 1.) Wow, what a better year than 2005. I mean, wow. 2.) Not a lot of hip-hop this year. Honorable mentions to a handful of B+ records that would’ve cracked this rarefied echelon in a weaker year: The Coup’s Pick a Bigger Weapon, Nas’ Hip-Hop Is Dead, and Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor. Also, I didn’t even listen to the Ghostface album. It’s probably great. That’s kind of unfair of me.

“this is totally gonna BLOW EVERYONE’S MIND.“

Blue Velvet (1986) C-120m. ★★★★ D: David Lynch. W: David Lynch. DP: Frederick Elmes. KYLE MACLACHLAN, ISABELLA ROSSELLINI, DENNIS HOPPER, LAURA DERN, HOPE LANGE, DEAN STOCKWELL, JACK NANCE, BRAD DOURIF. Straight-laced college boy Jeffrey Beaumont (McLachlan) returns to his idyllic Midwestern hometown to care for his bedridden father, finds a human ear in a field outside his house, and—through an innocent bit of private investigating—tumbles into a horrifying plot of sadism and psychological torture surrounding a local lounge singer (Rossellini). This stunning film about the dark secrets that fester beneath the veneer of the American small town remains Lynch’s best and most celebrated work, and one of the 1980s’ most provocative cinematic jewels. J-D-C Scope. [R]

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) C-101m. ★★½ D: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris. W: Michael Arndt. DP: Tim Suhrstedt. ABIGAIL BRESLIN, GREG KINNEAR, PAUL DANO, ALAN ARKIN, TONI COLLETTE, STEVE CARELL. Struggling middle-class family from Albuquerque decides to indulge its youngest, 7-year-old Olive (Breslin), in her dreams of becoming a beauty queen by entering her in titular beauty pageant in Los Angeles. Along for the ride are mom (Collette), for whom keeping everybody happy is a brutal ordeal, dad (Kinnear), whose dreams of getting rich off a self-help program are going up in smoke, uncle Frank (Carell), a celebrated Proust scholar recovering from a suicide attempt, grandpa (Arkin), who’s a perv and a doper, and brother Dwayne (Dano) who’s taken a vow of silence to focus on his goal of joining the Air Force. A pretty standard formula here—the miserable road trip which leads the characters to find themselves—elevated at least a little bit by pitch-perfect direction, photography, and set design, along with stellar performances from an able cast (Breslin pretty much steals the show). But for each poignant and authentic scene, there’s a ridiculous, contrived one not far behind. [R]

Idiocracy (2006) C-84m. ★★½ D: Mike Judge. W: Mike Judge and Etan Cohen. DP: Tim Suhrstedt. LUKE WILSON, MAYA RUDOLPH, DAX SHEPARD, ANTHONY ‘CITRIC’ CAMPOS, DAVID HERMAN, SONNY CASTILLO, KEVIN MCAFEE, ROBERT MUSGRAVE, JUSTIN LONG, ANDREW WILSON. Silly satire about two Americans of remarkable averageness (Wilson, Rudolph) cryogenically frozen for five hundred years, awakening to a nation where the average I.Q. has plummeted so far, that they’re now the smartest people in it. The story falls short of the premise in this one, but the leads’ likability keeps the momentum up, and a sea of peripheral sight gags inspires a great many chuckles. Try to look past the ‘special effects.’ Thomas Haden Church and Stephen Root appear unbilled. [R]

Queen, The (2006-Great Britain-France-Italy) C-97m. ★★★ D: Stephen Frears. W: Peter Morgan. DP: Affonso Beato. HELEN MIRREN, MICHAEL SHEEN, JAMES CROMWELL, SYLVIA SYMS, ALEX JENNINGS, HELEN MCCRORY, ROGER ALLAM, MARK BAZELEY. Intimate, rather melodramatic depiction of HM Queen Elizabeth II’s crisis of irrelevance in the wake of Princess Diana’s death, with Mirren appropriately weighty in the title role. Walks a tightrope between venomous and forgiving in its tone, apparently striking this balance for balance’s sake; moreover, though this may have been the idea, the film perhaps suffers from being nearly as staid as its subject. A brave and capable cast keeps it afloat, however, with all performers tackling their no doubt intimidating roles with the required aplomb (Sheen portrays Prime Minister Tony Blair, Cromwell is Prince Philip, and Jennings is Prince Charles, all of them nearly as arresting as Mirren). [PG-13]

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006-Mexico-Spain-US) C-112m. ★★★½ D: Guillermo del Toro. W: Guillermo del Toro. DP: Guillermo Navarro. ARIADNA GIL, IVANA BAQUERO, SERGI LÓPEZ, MARIBEL VERDÚ, DOUG JONES, ÁLEX ANGULO. Transcendent fantasy about a fairy-tale-obsessed young girl (Baquero) in Franco’s Spain tormented by her widowed mother’s decision to marry a sadistic military captain (López). Parallelisms abound between this film and del Toro’s earlier THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, and the director himself has called this film an “informal sequel,” but this is the more successful of the two in mixing supernatural horror/fantasy with politically charged, potent moral drama. A deeply moving fable, visually majestic, and packed so tight with darkness and cruelty that the heartrending climax shines all the brighter. Obligatory warning: graphically violent, and not in a fun way. Original title: EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO. [R]

Mulholland Dr. (2001-US-France) C-145m. ★★★★ D: David Lynch. W: David Lynch. DP: Peter Deming. JUSTIN THEROUX, NAOMI WATTS, LAURA ELENA HARRING, ANN MILLER, SCOTT WULF, ROBERT FORSTER, BRENT BRISCOE, DAN HEDAYA, MICHAEL DES BARRES, BILLY RAY CYRUS, KATHARINE TOWNE, LEE GRANT, JAMES KAREN, CHAD EVERETT. A naïve small town actress (Watts) arrives in Hollywood, and is thrown by fate into the path of a high-class amnesia victim (Harring), in this, one of writer-director Lynch’s most spectacular achievements. The filmmaker’s usual supporting cast of weirdos is aboard, and his trademark devices are as plentiful as ever, but this one keeps special company with BLUE VELVET in how grounded, thoughtful, and emotionally engaged it remains throughout its forays into madness. At a glance, it’s a noirish mystery (if you’ll permit it, it’s really a sort of meta-mystery, in which the real mystery is determining what the mystery is), and yet on subsequent viewings the mystery elements—labyrinthine and luscious though they may be—are revealed to be no more than a thin layer of skin covering an extraordinarily fleshy, and affecting, tragedy. Genre aside, it’s a directorial triumph, and Watts and Harring deliver performances that absolutely burn the world down. [R]

Wild at Heart (1990) C-127m. ★★½ D: David Lynch. W: David Lynch. DP: Frederick Elmes. NICOLAS CAGE, LAURA DERN, DIANE LADD, WILLEM DAFOE, ISABELLA ROSSELLINI, HARRY DEAN STANTON, CRISPIN GLOVER, GRACE ZABRISKIE, J.E. FREEMAN, CALVIN LOCKHART, MARVIN KAPLAN, W. MORGAN SHEPPARD, DAVID PATRICK KELLY, FREDDIE JONES, JOHN LURIE, JACK NANCE, SHERILYN FENN, SHERYL LEE. Fantastical, though weirdly thin Lynch take on Barry Gifford’s novel about two young outlaw lovers, Lula (Dern) and her ex-con boyfriend Sailor (Cage), traveling across the American South, breaking parole, and tempting fate again and again as they endeavor to stay one step ahead of Lula’s disciplinarian mother (Ladd, Dern’s real-life mother). Dern and Cage are superb, and Ladd received an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the ruthless Marietta, but unlike in his other movies, here Lynch’s trademark shticks (nutty supporting characters, bizarre comedic interludes, episodes of audio-visual abstraction, gratuitous nudity and gore) seem to undermine the story’s substance rather than strengthen it. Gets by on visual flair, a high zany quotient, and sensational acting, but it’s essentially cheap pulp dressed up in the wrong clothes. Panavision. [R]

I’ve been on a huge David Lynch kick—revisiting the back catalogue—since I had my conscious mind sheared in twain by INLAND EMPIRE at the start of the month, and just moments ago I happened to check his imdb page and discover that he turned 61 today! So let’s all raise our coffee cups and cherry pie forks and toast this maverick, who’s still making perhaps the most vibrant and spiritually nourishing movies on earth. I’ll be posting reviews of his older pictures as I… well… re-view them, starting with Mulholland Dr. and Wild at Heart, both of which I watched for the first time in years just last week.

But let’s begin our celebration of his work by collectively relishing this utterly delightful clip of him on Leno in ‘92, promoting Fire Walk With Me.