Monthly Archives: September 2005

Going Back To Davis Tomorrow

School starts soon — the begin­ning of another year at col­lege. I’m not sure what to expect. Will I meet the girl of my dreams? Will I win the lot­tery? Will I find a job that I love? I doubt either, but I cer­tainly won’t turn any of these down. We’ll see.

Oldboy (2003)

Asian, specif­i­cally Chi­nese, Hong Kong and Japan­ese, film has recently crept into the Amer­i­can con­scious­ness. Films like Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Dragon to Hero to the more recent Asian hor­ror films of Ringu and Ju-on [which were remade by Hol­ly­wood into The Ring and The Grudge respec­tively] have made big bucks at the North Amer­i­can box office. Old­boy, directed by Park Chan­wook (Sym­pa­thy For Mr. Vengeance, If You Were Me), is a South Korean import drip­ping with music video style.

The Sting (1973)

In life, there is always one big oppor­tu­nity that we think is wait­ing out there for us. We pre­pare all our lives for it. The Sting hap­pens to be that one big oppor­tu­nity (big con) for Johnny Hooker (Robert Red­ford) and Henry Gon­do­rff (Paul Newman).

Brendan Benson — The Alternative To Love (2005)

I must admit that lis­ten­ing to Bren­dan Ben­son makes for one very upbeat time. It might seem that pop rock might be mak­ing a come­back. With John Mayer as its poster boy and with Gavin DeGraw on the rise, Ben­son might be join­ing the two. With the open­ing track “Spit It Out,” Ben­son — with his calm vocals and patient rhythms — sounds very much like DeGraw, albeit mellower.

D&L Update

Finally, I’m done updat­ing dorksandlosers.com. It took a while, but all my nit­pick­ing, I think, has paid off. The site looks great and there aren’t any major kinks. Although I think there might be a prob­lem with view­ing the site in Inter­net Explorer. Some­one, who uses IE, might need to tell me.

Raging Bull Soundtrack (2005)

Mar­tin Scors­ese has always had a deep love for music: “At other moments, they would blend into the scene out my win­dow, or in our apart­ment, the way a color blends into a palette, chang­ing the tone, the hue. It was as if my life was scored with an on-going movie sound­track” (liner notes).

Ahmad Jamal — The Legendary OKEH & Epic Recordings (2005)

Lis­ten­ing to Ahmad Jamal is like eat­ing. It’s some­thing that’s needed for sur­vival. Ahmad crafts sophis­ti­cated beats and tones into seem­ingly sim­ple melodies. The tracks are so seam­less that, even though this album is a com­pi­la­tion, the tracks seem nat­u­rally juxtaposed.