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Song of the Day #999: ‘Poses’ – Rufus Wainwright

I fell for Rufus Wainwright in San Francisco. Appropriate, I guess.

I already owned Wainwright’s debut album, and loved it, but it was the release of his sophomore effort, Poses, that solidified him as one of my favorite artists. It’s that second album that separates the one-record wonders from the true contenders.

I bought Poses while on vacation in San Francisco (with my wife!) and listened to it for the first time on headphones in the hotel room. Wainwright had taken his sound in a new direction, somewhere exciting and cosmopolitan. It was more sleek than ornate, but just as passionate.

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Song of the Day #998: ‘I’ve Been Delivered’ – The Wallflowers

I did a creative writing assignment for one of my high school English teachers that consisted of a collection of poems and short stories. I’m not a real fan of poetry, but I enjoyed taking a stab at it. I actually still have the project and it’s almost painful to read now… a reminder of how tragically earnest and superficially deep I was at that age.

I still remember a comment my teacher wrote on one of those poems. Next to a particular turn of phrase he scribbled this: “Great line! Could drive a whole poem… and doesn’t, yet.”

I think it’s the “yet” that made that comment stick in my brain. Such an odd formulation. Wouldn’t most people write “and yet it doesn’t.”?

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The Lincoln Lawyer

Matthew McConaughey has earned a lifetime pass from me for his performances as two very different but equally iconic characters in two of my very favorite films. I’m referring, of course, to Wooderson in Dazed and Confused and Sheriff Buddy Deeds in Lone Star. That’s a career right there, man, and no amount of shirtless People covers or bland romantic comedies can diminish it.

I root for McConaughey the actor to shed the heartthrob thing and get more selective about the films he makes. He’s had memorable turns in many quality movies (among them A Time To Kill, Contact, U-571, Frailty, We Are Marshall and Tropic Thunder) but I believe he’s more instantly associated with the likes of The Wedding Planner and Failure to Launch.

It’s my hope that The Lincoln Lawyer will change that perception. This is a smart, fun, adult crime drama of the sort you don’t see made very often these days, and it contains some of McConaughey’s best work.

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Song of the Day #997: ‘The Model’ – Belle & Sebastian

This week I’ll feature my 1,000th Song of the Day. That’s 1,000 consecutive days of blogging… haven’t missed a single one. Even if the content was crap, I’d be proud of the consistency.

A few people have asked me if my 1,000th song will be my last. I’ll be honest, I’ve considered it. At times writing this blog has been like entering the numbers must have been for Desmond in Lost. It’s something I have to do, even when I don’t want to.

But most of the time I do want to. Most of the time I get a lot out of it: a good debate, a chance to share something that means a lot to me, the opportunity to flex the writing muscles that might have atrophied long ago without this outlet.

So no, my 1,000th song won’t be my last. It will just be my 1,000th. The next day will be my 1,001st.

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Movie review roundup

My attention to the Song of the Day series, as well as general laziness, has kept me from honoring my promise to review every movie I see. I find that if a movie is destined for my top ten list I usually review it pretty soon after I see it, but if not, I let it sit. And if it sits long enough, it’s in danger of never being reviewed at all.

So I skimmed the list of 2010 movies I’ve seen in recent months and realized a full ten of them have gone undocumented on Meet Me In Montauk.

To remedy that situation in one fell swoop, I’m going to write capsule reviews of each of them in this post.

So here goes nothing (titles are presented alphabetically):

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