Rewind 2013: Best albums

December 22, 2013December 22, 2013jeffersonbeavers Leave a comment

Sixto Rodriguez is my favorite musical discovery in 2013-- even though his first album, "Cold Fact," first came out in 1970. Photo via Sony Pictures Classics.

The folk rock of Sixto Rodriguez is my favorite musical discovery in 2013, even though his first studio album, “Cold Fact,” technically came out in 1970. Photo via Sony Pictures Classics.

I have always been a list maker, especially when it comes to music. I even have a whole separate category for lists here on my blog that includes past year-end best-of lists and tons of old playlists from a few years ago when I used to host a weekly college radio show. And don’t even get me started on the 20-plus years of mixtape and mix-CD playlists I’ve got tucked away in safe places– each one of them a little time capsule, ready to bring that moment back to me all over again.

But I’ve noticed something funny happening the past couple years: I’ve quickly grown out of touch with all the newest music, movies, and media that’s out there. Maybe the Internet is just moving too fast for me, but I now find myself mostly unaware of what’s new and hot. In some cases I’ve heard OF it, but I’ve never actually heard it. Or, in a growing number of cases, I’ve just plain missed it. I became overwhelmed with this feeling last year, so much so that I skipped making some kind of year-end music lists in 2012 for the first time I can remember.

This year, as several friends have put their own lists out there and have said they’re looking forward to reading mine, I decided to dip my toe back into the water and make a best album list. More than ever before, this is definitely not a “tops” kind of lists, since I haven’t actually heard much of what new music was officially released in 2013. But instead, I’m focusing on music that was “new to me” and that I found myself returning to over and over again throughout the year, music that I will keep returning to. You’ll see that several of these records were actually released or re-released in 2012, but I just got around to hearing them in 2013. I’m thankful that I did.

1. Rodriguez – Cold Fact
Label: Light in the Attic
For my best album of 2013, I picked a record that first came out in 1970. I learned about Sixto Rodriguez in late 2012 with the release of the documentary film “Searching for Sugar Man.” My uncle Jorge Garcia, a Professor Emeritus of Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, sent me a generous gift package early this year: a DVD copy of the film– which I’ve shown to my English 1 classes twice now, to rave reviews– and CD copies of the excellent 2008 Light in the Attic re-releases of Rodriguez’s two studio albums, “Cold Fact” and “Coming from Reality.” The hype about the mysterious Rodriguez being the long lost “Chicano Bob Dylan” is inaccurate in only one sense: Rodriguez is actually better.
Favorite track: “This Is Not a Song, It’s an Outburst: Or, the Establishment Blues”

2. Slow Season – Slow Season
Label: Easy Rider
This album technically came out in late 2012, but I didn’t discover it until October 2013 when I made my annual pilgrimage to the Orosi Memorial Hall for the homespun Spanspek Music & Art Festival. Slow Season hails from Visalia, Calif., and I knew a couple of the band members from their days in the folk/Americana group The Whiskey & The Devil Chaplain a few years back. At Spanspek, I got to experience Slow Season as they are surely meant to be experienced: up super close on the cold, hard floor, and at full force. At the time, I tweeted: “Goddamn these boys sound like sinister, creeping dread on a Southern back road.” Afterward, I listened to their debut full-length for pretty much two months straight.
Favorite track: “Heavy”

3. David Byrne & St. Vincent – Love This Giant
Label: 4AD
Ahh, here’s yet another late 2012 release that I didn’t get around to fully appreciating until 2013. I’ve always been a big David Byrne fan regardless of his strange projects, and this year I fully nerded out on him. Early in the summer, I read Byrne’s excellent nonfiction book “How Music Works” as a homework assignment before seeing him live with St. Vincent at the gorgeous Mountain Winery in Saratoga, Calif. Seeing one of my musical heroes live for the first time felt invigorating, and his collaborations with Annie Clark and their full traveling band were fun, funky, odd, and inspiring in a way that instantly made the baroque pop album into a living thing that I’ll never hear the same way.
Favorite track: “I Should Watch TV”

4. Scout Niblett – It’s Up to Emma
Label: Drag City
I first discovered Scout Niblett a few years ago via La Blogotheque, a French music blog that continues to produce stunning multimedia documents through their Concert à emporter performance series. Niblett’s 2007 episode remains one of my favorites. Her latest record features my favorite song and video of the year, the single, “Gun,” which juxtaposes fairy tale images with searingly murderous words and music. With the exception of an unfortunately botched TLC cover, this album feels like heavy, dirty, whining blues rock, but with an aching, folky troubadour subtext.
Favorite track: “Gun”

5. The Besnard Lakes – Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO
Label: Jagjaguwar
I’ve always been attracted to dreamy space rock. And so while everyone ranted and raved about the first My Bloody Valentine record in 20 years– which, sadly, I still haven’t yet heard– I chose to put my shoegaze love into one of my recent favorites, The Besnard Lakes. In 2011, they made the soundtrack to one of the most stunning multimedia stories I’ve ever seen, Welcome to Pine Point, a truly sprawling and interactive examination of memory curated by the National Film Board of Canada that remains way ahead of its time. And I love that their new album makes me feel like I’m on a train as the landscape slowly peels away, a little lullaby as the world rolls past.
Favorite track: “People of the Sticks”

6. Seanario – Resorts
Label: Way Grimace
I don’t know what the big summer party album was in YOUR house this year, but in mine it was this one. My prolific musician friend Sean Duncan from Modesto, Calif.– previously known for his work with indie bands Fiver, Kid Mud, and Thombie, among many other projects– made a retro/schlocky dancefloor concept record about Las Vegas in the early ’80s that has real narrative depth. Duncan got married in 2011 and had a daughter this year, and it seems to me that his kooky creativity is just now starting to hit its stride.
Favorite track: “The Strip”

7. Le Wolves – Melted Eyes EP
Label: self released
I don’t remember now who suggested I catch Le Wolves at this year’s Fresno Urban Sound Experience festival, but I’m sure glad I did. These four young lads from Fresno, Calif. wear their postpunk/goth influences on their sleeves, but with an element of creepy intensity that belongs entirely to them. Their three-song demo EP reminds me equally of Morrissey, the Buzzcocks, and Black Heart Procession. I’ve since learned that the group sounded more folk/rock when it first started a year or two ago, but now their sound has quickly evolved into more complicated territory. I cannot wait to see what’s next.
Favorite track: “I Laid Down and Died”

8. Dim Peaks – Time of Joy
Label: Gold Robot
I’ve been a fan of California singer/songwriter Niilo Smeds for nearly a decade. The Reedley, Calif. native seems to change musical incarnations almost yearly– from the mottled rock of the Magic Whores to the experimental machinery of Police Dog, and from the freewheeling Americana of Wheels of Fortune to the simmering folk of his one CD-R album released under his own name. Smeds lives back in San Francisco now with his wife and infant son, and his latest record, recorded with several new players and released under the moniker Dim Peaks, somehow stitches bits of all of those previous musical parts together into a thoughtful new manifestation of fear and hope for 30-somethings.
Favorite track: “Slumberland”

9. Charles Bradley – Victim of Love
Label: Daptone
The Screaming Eagle of Soul makes old-timey soul music in the present time, and his latest record sounds like a real gift. It always feels a little strange to me that Charles Bradley’s first record only came out in 2011. His songs feel so familiar, like they’ve existed for years. Bradley packs his second full-length record full of perfectly crafted love songs, each with big, crooning hooks. His live performance of the album’s title track on Netherlands radio shows the pure power of a well-traveled vocalist finally getting his due.
Favorite track: “Through the Storm”

10. Mehreideran – As Seen on MySpace
Label: Sweet Sea
My favorite reissue of the year is this messy, imperfectly perfect Mehreideran odds-and-ends compilation from audio communication wizard Reid May and now Virginia-based Sweet Sea Records. May was one-third of this Fresno, Calif. garage rock trio circa 2005, back in the day when MySpace bulletins were king and all the Central Valley indie kids rallied around Rademacher and Tokyo Garden for a few glorious Fresno Famous years. The thing I adore about these recordings nearly a decade later is that they still feel loose, experimental, and right on the edge of some kind of discovery.
Favorite track: “Hedonist”

Honorable mentions:
Julianna Barwick – Nepenthe
Light Thieves – Spirit Homes
Neko Case – The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight …
Restaurnaut – Singles and Besides (released in 2012)
Sparklejet – Phonovella (not out officially until 2014)
Werebear – Devil’s Deal

Please share your lists of 2013 best albums in the comments.

Foodies fond of delectable French films

November 23, 2013jeffersonbeavers Leave a comment

Jean d’Ormesson stars as the President and Catherine Frot stars as Hortense in Haute Cuisine, the latest movie about the bittersweet pleasures of French cooking. Via The Weinstein Company.

This post was originally published on the Film Forum blog at FresnoFilmworks.org. Disclaimer: I serve as President on the Filmworks board of directors.

Movie lovers have long developed a hearty appetite for films about international food.

The Danes have Babette’s Feast, the Mexicans have Like Water for Chocolate, the Italians have Big Night, and the Japanese have Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Of course, there are many others.

The status of French cuisine around the world has left its imprint on foodie movies, too. For more than a century, French cooking has symbolized intricate preparation and gourmet taste.

On Dec. 13, Filmworks presents the latest film about French food, the political comedy Haute Cuisine. The movie – loosely based on the memoir of Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, who served for several years as private chef to French president François Mitterrand – tells the story of Hortense, a no-nonsense cook with exacting standards but deceptively simple taste and technique. She becomes the first woman to prepare food in the Elysée Palace, as she navigates the jealousy and backbiting of the all-male kitchen staff.

Haute Cuisine comes from a long line of recent movies about French food that have inspired popular international productions.

Based on a 1999 novel by British author Joanne Harris, the 2000 comic fable Chocolat stars Juliette Binoche as a chocolatier who arrives in a repressed French village and changes the lives of the townspeople with her rich chocolate concoctions.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström, the movie makes the chocolate itself into a sort of sensuous character. Critic Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune calls the film “tantalizing, delectable, and randy – a movie of melting eroticism and toothsome humor.”

Produced by the renowned Pixar Animation Studios, the 2007 animated comedy Ratatouille tells the story of an ambitious young rat named Remy who befriends a bumbling garbage boy. The unlikely pair joins forces in their mutual aspiration to become the finest chef in Paris.

Directed by acclaimed American animator Brad Bird, the movie celebrates the simplicity and the necessity of learning how to create handmade, wholesome food. Critic David Denby of The New Yorker says, “Remy has his own version of the omnivore’s dilemma: He’s afflicted with a refined palate. Refusing the [rat’s] usual repast of garbage, he realizes that in order to eat well, he needs to cook.”

Based on two books – a 2005 memoir by blogger Julie Powell and the 2006 autobiography of renowned chef Julia Child – the 2009 dramatic comedy Julie & Julia stars Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. The movie, directed by American novelist and filmmaker Nora Ephron, weaves together the story of Powell, who in one year cooked her way through all 524 recipes in Child’s famous cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, with the story of Child, the master cook and TV personality largely credited with introducing French cooking to the United States.

Streep nails the no-nonsense, never-apologize gusto of the fearless Child, while Adams embodies every home cook’s insecurities about learning (and failing) in the kitchen. Again, critic David Denby of The New Yorker calls the movie “one of the gentlest, most charming American movies of the past decade. Its subject is less food as something to cook than food as the binding and unifying element of dinner parties, friendship, and marriage.”

And with that, the only way to properly send off a blog post about French cooking would be to invite foodies and film fans alike to enjoy the delicious Haute Cuisine while channeling the voice of the great Julia Child in your ear: “Bon appétit!”

Portrait project finds two new homes: Fowler and San Francisco

November 2, 2013November 3, 2013jeffersonbeavers Leave a comment

Intersection for the Arts interns install the 100 Days, 100 Portraits prints alongside the work of artist Joan Osato in late October for the Califas Festival, which runs Nov. 1-17 in San Francisco. (Photo by Rebecca Ahrens)

This past spring and early summer, I gave myself a photography assignment: Make 100 portraits in 100 days. After falling off the personal creativity wagon around the first of the year, while I immersed myself instead in teaching at Fresno City College and volunteering for Fresno Filmworks, I felt like I needed the challenge.

My friend and colleague Jes Therkelsen, a talented photographer and documentary filmmaker who came to the Central Valley this past January to teach digital media at Fresno State, inspired the assignment. In his intro to photojournalism class, he asked his students to make 100 portraits of strangers over the course of the semester. At the end of the term, their best photos were featured in a show at Arte Américas downtown. Jes’s students used his prompt to help them break out of their shells socially and get tuned-in to their visual literacy skills. I decided to modify the prompt a bit to allow myself to make photos of whomever I’d like — some strangers, and some people I knew — but I added the photo-a-day regimen to build self-discipline.

My portrait of AP journalist Gosia Wozniacka kicked off the series. (Photo by me)

I posted my first portrait on Feb. 24, a photograph of my friend and colleague Gosia Wozniacka from the Associated Press, while she worked on a documentary shoot with her new DSLR. (I served as her production assistant that day.) I decided to make all of my photographs using my iPhone 4S, to emphasize intimacy and mobility. I first published the photos on Instagram, using minimal filters and corrections, to emphasize immediacy. I also shared the photos with family and friends on Facebook and Twitter, and I collected the full project as I went along on Tumblr, where I also occasionally post to my ongoing Drugstore with Dad series. Occasionally, I worked ahead a few days, but I promised myself that I would not fall behind (and miraculously, I didn’t!). Most people, when I explained the project and asked if I could make their portrait, said yes without hesitation. Only a couple folks, most notably Jes, my sister, and my veterinarian, declined. I posted my last portrait on June 2, a selfie that I fittingly made while driving home past the rural intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Golden State Boulevard, north of Selma.

I had a vague idea that I might like to try and get the project into a local gallery for an Art Hop show at some future time, but I wasn’t sure how I would prepare and present 100 individual photographs. So I let the portraits sit there on my Tumblr for a few months, as I returned to making artsy fartsy, heavily filtered snapshots of my dog, my wife, and random still lifes from my day.

And then, performance artist Nikiko Masumoto called.

Performance artist and friend Nikiko Masumoto, at the Pixley community garden. (Photo by Andre Yang)

Yes, THAT Nikiko Masumoto, of Masumoto Family Farm fame. Nikiko calls herself an “agrarian artist and farm apprentice,” and her family is one of the most high-profile farm families in the Central Valley. I’ve been lucky to know her father, David Mas Masumoto, through his books over the years and through my time in the MFA program at Fresno State. I’ve also been lucky to eat the Masumoto family’s delicious organic peaches and nectarines. And in spring 2012, I was beyond lucky to produce a public radio feature story on Nikiko’s inaugural Valley Storytellers Project performance, two collaboratively written plays about hunger facilitated by Nikiko that included the voices of nearly two dozen community actors.

Nikiko invited me to present my 100 Days, 100 Portraits project as part of her second Valley Storytellers Project performance, a Central Valley Art-guided Bus Tour that took place on Oct. 19. The tour started at the Fowler branch of the Fresno County Public Library, where I helped kick off the day by projecting my portraits on the wall of the community room and reading the names of the participants aloud, like a poetic incantation. We then boarded the bus and made stops at the grassroots community garden in Pixley and at the Phillip S. Raine rest area along Highway 99 in Tipton. At each stop, the day’s six other artists — including Nikiko, my wife Tracy Stuntz, and my Chicana sister Teresa Flores — shared their creative offerings. You can see how the day unfolded live on Twitter by checking out the #ArtBusCenCal hashtag.

I take a walk through the rows of tomatoes, squash, and basil at the Pixley community garden. (Photo by Andre Yang)

I take a walk through the rows of tomatoes, squash, and basil at the Pixley community garden during the art bus tour. (Photo by Andre Yang)

The art bus was made possible by the folks at The Triangle Lab, an experimental art organization based in San Francisco, as part of their two-part Califas Festival, which celebrates the people and stories of the Golden State. The Triangle Lab’s director, Rebecca Novick, contacted me shortly after the bus tour and commissioned my portrait project to be included in the second half of the Califas celebration, which runs from Nov. 1-17 at Intersection for the Arts at 5th and Mission in San Francisco. The show includes an original play called Alleluia, The Road by L.A.-based Chicano performance artist Luis Alfaro. I was completely bowled over! The Triangle Lab folks even offered to make prints of all 100 portraits for the show, and the prints will be returning home to me in Fresno after the show’s run ends later this month. The portraits were installed last week next to the work of accomplished Bay Area visual artist and youth activist Joan Osato.

I am beyond grateful to everyone who has given my 100 Days, 100 Portraits project such warm feedback, both while it was first being produced and now that it is enjoying its second life. I am particularly grateful to Nikiko and to Rebecca for giving the project its first two physical homes, in Fowler and San Francisco. Where will these faces appear next?

Shakespeare on film

March 2, 2013jeffersonbeavers Leave a comment

Vittorio and Paulo Taviani call their latest movie, Caesar Must Die, “a fiction film in which the reality of the prison is physically palpable.” (via Sony Pictures Classics)

This post was originally published on the Fresno Filmworks Film Forum blog. Disclaimer: I serve on the Filmworks board of directors.

In March, Filmworks will screen the Italian drama Caesar Must Die, a film that The Hollywood Reporter calls “a fascinating encounter between theater and reality.” The selection coincides with the Rogue Performance and Art Festival, which celebrates its twelfth year in 2013.

The Italian filmmaker brothers Vittorio and Paolo Taviani might not be a household name in the United States. But their latest award-winning movie’s unorthodox mix of fiction, documentary, and theater produces a fresh new take on the classic Shakespeare tragedy Julius Caesar.

Filmworks asked its Facebook fans and friends to tell us about their favorite all-time Shakespeare films. Here’s what they had to say:

Via Movie Farm

Filmworks fan Michael Borrero says: “I enjoyed Richard III with Ian McKellan (pictured right). His character was beyond menacing.”

Fan Claire Lynette prefers Twelfth Night because “it’s a great story, and also because of Helena Bonham Carter.”

Filmworks advisory board member Paula Singer favors Sir Lawrence Olivier’s Hamlet as well as his Othello. “The acting is extraordinary and they were cinematic,” she says. “When bringing Shakespeare to the screen, I think it is important to remember that the screen is not the stage. It shouldn’t look like a film of a play.”

Via The Telegraph

Filmworks fan Scott Sutherland loves Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (pictured left). He says: “It does for every war since Vietnam what Olivier’s version did for World War II.”

Fan Greg Birkel likes the 1993 Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing “just because it’s so joyous.”

Filmworks president John Moses notes Peter Brook’s King Lear from 1971, with Paul Schofield as Lear and Jack MacGowran as the Fool. “The adaptation was inspired by what I consider the best interpretation of the play in Jan Kott’s ‘Shakespeare Our Contemporary,'” he says.

Via Creative Loafing

Fan Aileen Imperatrice says: “The Franco Zeffirelli version of Romeo and Juliet has a definite spot in my heart. It was the first Shakespeare movie I was introduced to in junior high.”

Filmworks advisory board member Teresa Flores also likes Romeo and Juliet, but she prefers the 1996 Baz Luhrmann version (pictured right) over the many others. “The aesthetics are so weird and bright and beautiful, and my teenager self was able to connect with the words like I had never imagined,” she says. “And it sells out EVERY YEAR when it’s screened at some romantic old theater in Hollywood for Valentine’s Day.”

So now, let’s see if Caesar Must Die wins any Shakespeare lovers’ hearts when it plays at the Tower Theatre.

The worldwide revival of short films

January 27, 2013jeffersonbeavers Leave a comment

A scene from the first Wes Anderson film Bottle Rocket, via the blog Ultimate Classic Rock.

This blog post was originally published on the Fresno Filmworks Film Forum blog. Disclaimer: I serve on the Filmworks board of directors.

Some filmmakers prefer to keep things short.

Famed auteur Wes Anderson got his start by making a short movie called Bottle Rocket, a roughly edited film about a crew of bumbling, over-analytical crooks. It debuted at Sundance in 1994.

Two years later, Anderson expanded his thirteen-minute short, starring baby-faced newcomers Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson, into a full-length feature. Bottle Rocket went down as a commercial flop at the time, but it was quirky enough to grab the attention of critics and eventually launch the careers of Anderson and his buddies.

Director Wes Anderson at work, from The Hollywood Reporter.

While the highly polished Oscar-Nominated Short Films might not have the grubby, film-school feel of Anderson’s first movie, the do-it-yourself aesthetic of the Fresno-grown Swede Fest, or the downright oddity of Sundance spinoff Catdance, it’s no secret that short films are now enjoying a renaissance with the movie-going public.

According to The Independent, Britain has entered a “golden era” for short films, as festivals expand to meet demand and new YouTube channels pop up and compete for millions of viewers.

According to the Los Angeles Times and also the digital culture blog Gizmodo, the short film competition at Sundance grew so big this year that the festival signed an exclusive deal with YouTube to make the finalists available online.

And according to The Telegraph, the current accelerated consumption of short films has, in many ways, come full circle from the earliest days of cinema. “Solitary viewing on the Internet is not so far removed from [Thomas] Edison’s Kinetoscope,” says film critic Rebecca Davies.

The Oscar-Nominated Short Films 2013.

For Fresno Filmworks, 2013 marks the eighth-straight year of showcasing the world’s best short movies at the historic Tower Theatre. Filmworks will screen the Oscar-Nominated Short Films on Feb. 8 and 9, just weeks before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces its winners Feb. 24.

The Oscar shorts programs, co-distributed by the short-movie channel ShortsHD and longtime Filmworks film source Magnolia Pictures, have enjoyed a swell of success. The movie news blog Slash Film reports that last year’s theatrical release of the Oscar shorts broke records. The 2012 programs earned more than $1.7 million in the United States and finished as one of the top-grossing independent film releases in all of North America.

ShortsHD and Magnolia will debut a new aspect to the 2013 programs: A past Oscar winner in that category will introduce each nominated film, with filmmaker details. From ShortsHD:

Hosting the Live Action program will be director Luke Matheny, who won the 2011 Academy Award for his short film God of Love. Hosting the Animation program will be Bill Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, who won the 2012 Academy Award for their short film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. And hosting the Documentary program will be Daniel Junge, who co-directed the 2012 Academy Award-winning short film Saving Face.

Regardless of the presentation, audiences in the central San Joaquin Valley, who made the 2012 Oscar shorts one of the most highly attended Filmworks screenings of the year, seem likely to turn out again in strong numbers to see the 2013 picks.

Maybe they’ll get a short glimpse of the next big thing.

Jefferson Beavers

chicano / pocho / literato

Category Words