BEST MUSIC OF 2004

Pitchfork's Best Albums of 2004 include

Iron & Wine
Our Endless Numbered Days
[Sub Pop]

Shake off your kudzu-confessional fantasies. Anyone first hearing former film-school prof Sam Beam's lo-fi 2002 debut could be forgiven for thinking they'd stumbled upon a reel of autochthonous, pre-Alan Lomax field recordings. The Creek Drank the Cradle panned across soft-focus Southern gothic scenes like a Civil War-era Zapruder tape, and Beam had the Robert E. Lee beard to match. But Brian Deck's limpid production on this year's follow-up Our Endless Numbered Days confirms old man Beamer is a living, breathing denizen of the aught-four. His songs about the Southland, let's-grow-old-together love and glowering Old Testament deities are as haunting as ever, but now they're sharper and more self-aware. The ostensibly autobiographical intimacy of songs like "Birds Stealing Bread" has scattered like a smoke ring into such Faulknerian parables as "Sodom, South Georgia" or "Cinder and Smoke". But you can still rock your firstborn to sleep with the delicate, melodic "Each Coming Night" and the transcendent back-porch philosophizing of "Passing Afternoon". The disc's freshly polished sound is a reminder that Beam, unlike the antebellum ghosts he evokes, can keep giving us new cinematic visions of the old South. This one's enough to cherish for now.

The Arcade Fire
Funeral
[Merge]

Funeral could open on a black winter night in any North American city, inside the mind of anyone trapped by youth and desperate for a way out. Its scene is set on the fantasy of escapism-- the urgent need we all face in teenhood to break from our parents' lives, to build our own and never look back-- but as the record progresses from its opening "Neighborhood" suite to face the trials and losses that come with adult life, its characters instead long for the security they once so badly wanted to surrender. Ahh, fatalism! How can something so miserable be such an infinite source of pleasure? No one seems to know, but in the few short months since its mid-September release, Funeral has quickly ascended to the status of indie rock's de facto album of the year, winning perhaps the most concordant praise from the underground since Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Famously recorded under the duress of three consecutive familial deaths, Funeral feels like emotional concentrate: It's wracked with grief, yet paradoxically uplifts through eventual reconciliation, acceptance, and hope. 2004 may have seen a crop of strong contenders for the first-place crown, but as our calendars prepare to release their final page in The Arcade Fire's year without light, no other album seems quite as deserving.

RUGS

Interesting article on buying rugs in Turkey: http://www.michaelspecter.com/pdf/rugs.pdf



FILM

One critic's Top 10 of 2004 list:

1. "Million Dollar Baby"

Classical filmmaking by Clint Eastwood, pure, simple and true. Great because of what it puts in, and great because of what it leaves out: No flash, nothing much in the way of special effects, no pandering to the audience, but a story that gains in power with every scene, about characters we believe in and care for.

Hilary Swank stars as Maggie, a waitress who dreams of becoming a boxer. She's 31, too old to start professional training. That's what Frankie (Eastwood) tells her. Besides, he doesn't approve of women boxers. He owns a rundown gym and runs it with the help of his oldest friend, Eddie (Morgan Freeman). Maggie will not listen to discouragement. She comes back every day, and finally Eddie takes mercy and shows her a few moves, and finally Frankie breaks down and agrees to train her.

So now you think you know where the movie is going, but you are wrong. It's not a boxing movie; it's the story of these people and what happens to them, and it goes deeper and deeper, never taking a wrong step, never hitting a false note. It touched me like no other film this year.

2. "Kill Bill, Volume 2"

The second half of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" is not only better than Vol. 1, but makes the earlier movie better by providing it with a context; now we can see the entire story, and it has exuberance and passion, comedy and violence, bold self-satire and action scenes with the precision of ballet. Tarantino is the most idiosyncratic and influential director of the decade, taking the materials of pop art and transforming them into audacious epic fantasies.

Uma Thurman stars as The Bride, whose groom and entire wedding party are massacred by Bill; seeking revenge, she did battle with the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in Vol. 1. Now we see her early training under a legendary warrior master, and her deadly conflicts with Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), one-eyed expert of martial arts, and Bill's beer-swilling brother Budd (Michael Madsen), who buries her alive. Her final confrontation with the legendary Bill (David Carradine) is great filmmaking, illustrating how Tarantino's dialogue uses graphic description to set up scenes so that the action isn't the point, but the payoff.

3. "Vera Drake"

Along with Hilary Swank and Uma Thurman, here's another brilliant performance by a woman, in a role that could not be more different from the other two. Imelda Staunton plays a cleaning lady in early 1950s London, where wartime rationing is still in effect and poverty is the general reality. Vera Drake has a another, secret existence, "helping out girls who get in trouble." She is an abortionist, but doesn't think of it that way, accepts no payment, is a melodious plum pudding of a woman whose thoughts are entirely pragmatic.

Abortion is illegal at this time, although Mike Leigh's film shows how easily one can be obtained by the wealthy, whose doctors sign them into private clinics. For poor and desperate women, there is Vera. Leigh creates the woman and her family with gentle perception and an eye for small details that build up the larger reality; the scene where the police come to call has an urgency in which silence, shame, grief and love struggle for space in the small lives of these people.

4. "Spider-Man 2"

Here's the best superhero movie ever made. The genre does not lend itself to greatness, although the first "Superman" movie had considerable artistry and "Blade II" and "The Hulk" had their qualities. Director Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie was thin and the special effects too cartoony, but the sequel is a transformation. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst bring unusual emotional complexity to comic book characters, Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is one of the great movie villains, and the special effects, while understandably not "realistic," bring a presence and a sense of (literal) gravity to the film; Spider-Man now seems like a human and not a drawing as he swings from the skyscrapers, and his personal problems -- always the strong point of the Marvel comics -- are given full weight and importance. A great entertainment.

5. "Moolaade"

From Senegal, the story of a strong woman who stands up to the men in her tribe when four girls come to her for protection. The custom in the land from time immemorial has required women to be circumcised, their genitals mutilated so they feel no sexual sensation. Men will not marry them otherwise. But Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly) has refused to let her own daughter be cut, and now she evokes the tribal rule of moolaade, or "protection," to shield the other four.

This story no doubt sounds grim and will not prepare you for the life, humor and energy of the film by the African master director Ousmane Sembene. He creates a sure sense of the village life, of local characters, of men and women using tribal law like the pieces in a chess game. An important film, since ritual circumcision is common in Muslim lands, although most Islamic teaching forbids it.

6. "The Aviator"

Martin Scorsese's hugely enjoyable biopic tells the story of a man whose risks, victories and losses were all outsize. Howard Hughes was a golden boy with a Texas tool-making fortune who conquered Hollywood, made spectacular epics, loved spectacular women, built airplanes including the largest in history, bought an airline and went bankrupt several times in the process of becoming the world's richest man. Leonardo DiCaprio embodies this mercurial legend, and Scorsese re-creates a lavish Hollywood world of glamor and power. At the same time, they show Hughes battling obsessions that finally overcome him; the king of the world becomes the captive of his own fears.

DiCaprio doesn't look much like Hughes, but we forget that as he embodies the character's obsessions. He leads a lonely life, playing a public role as a successful winner while knowing, deep inside, that he is going mad. There is a scene at the height of his glory when he stands inside the door of a men's room, afraid to touch the doorknob because of a phobia about germs. Against this dark side, Scorsese balances a glorious portrait of a fabled era, and Cate Blanchett does an impersonation of Katharine Hepburn that's just a smile this side of wicked.

7. "Baadasssss!"

Not your usual movie about the making of a movie, but history remembered with humor, passion and a blunt regard for the truth. Mario Van Peebles' film tells the story of how his father, Melvin, all but created modern independent black filmmaking with "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," a 1971 exploitation film that won critical praise and unexpectedly grossed millions. Made by, for and about African Americans, it contained harsh truth and gritty irony that hadn't been seen on the screen before.

The production was fly by night on a shoestring, and Mario, who was present for most of the original film and played Sweetback as a boy, doesn't sugarcoat his memories. Melvin did what was necessary to get the film made and never has there been such a knowledgeable portrayal of how money, personalities, compromise, idealism and harsh reality are all part of any movie -- but especially those that cost the least.

8. "Sideways"

A joy from beginning to end, with occasional side trips into sadness, slapstick and truth. Paul Giamatti stars as a 40-ish sad-sack loser, an alcoholic whose best friend (Thomas Haden Church) is getting married in a week. As best man, he treats him to a vacation in California wine country, where they meet two friends (Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh) and many delightful bottles of wine. Church shamelessly cheats on his fiancee and deceives Oh; Giamatti and Madsen find a gentle, tender, tentative romance, describing grapes in the way they might describe themselves. Alexander Payne's film moves easily from broad to subtle comedy, from emotional upheaval to small moments of romance. It's the kind of movie you want to go see again, taking along some friends.

9. "Hotel Rwanda"

In 1994 in Rwanda, a million members of the Tutsi tribe were massacred by members of the Hutus, in an insane upheaval of their ancient rivalry. Based on a true story, Terry George's film shows how the manager of a luxury hotel (Don Cheadle) saved the lives of his family and 1,200 guests, essentially by using all of his management skills, including bribery, flattery, apology, deception, blackmail, freebies and calling in favors. His character intuitively understands that only by continuing to act as a hotel manager can he achieve anything.

As the nation descends into anarchy, he puts on his suit and tie every morning and fakes business as usual, dealing with a murderous Hutu general not as a criminal, but as a valued client; a man who yesterday orchestrated mass murder might today want to show that he knows how to behave appropriately in the hotel lobby. With Nick Nolte as a U.N. peacekeeper who ignores his orders to help Cheadle and the lives that have come into their care.

10. "Undertow"

The third film by David Gordon Green, at 29 the most poetically gifted director of his generation. Jamie Bell and Devon Alan play two brothers in rural Georgia, one a rebel, one a sweet, odd loner. Their father mourns for their dead mother and chooses for them to live in virtual isolation; then their ex-con uncle arrives, and everything changes. There is a family legend about gold coins that leads to jealousy and bloodshed, and the boys escape the uncle and try to survive during a journey both harrowing and strangely romantic; the film has the form of an action picture but the feel of a lyrical fable, and Green's eye for his backwoods locations and rusty urban hideaways creates a world immediately distinctive as his own.

His style has been categorized as "Southern Gothic," but that's too narrow. There is a poetic merging of realism and surrealism; every detail is founded on accurate observation, but the effect is somehow mythological. Listen to his dialogue; his characters say things that sound exactly like the sort of things they would really say, and yet are like nothing anyone has ever said before.