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82 Articles

Letter From The Editor

As long as I can remember movies have been a huge part of my life. Growing up in the 1980s and ’90s with parents who were both cinephiles, formative cinema experiences include seeing TRON, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the alien mind controlling bugs that were placed in ears really freaked me out), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (equally traumatic was when a beating heart is pulled out of a man’s chest before he’s lowered into a swirling pit of fire), the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and, of course, the original Star Wars trilogy. Once when I was probably five or six years old I was plopped in front of a TV alone at a relative’s house and unbeknownst to my mother, the next thing to…

Letter From The Editor

Staff Photos from 2001 and Favorite Albums of 2001

Mark Redfern (Publisher/Senior Editor) 1. Back to the Future (1985) 2. Blade Runner (1982) 3. Superman (1978) 4. Withnail and I (1987) 5. Brazil (1985) 6. Trainspotting (1996) 7. Back to the Future Part III (1990) 8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 9. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) 10. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 11. Secrets & Lies (1996) 12. The Living Daylights (1987) 13. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) 14. Bowfinger (1999) 15. Pump Up the Volume (1990) 16. Fearless (1993) 17. Wonder Woman (2017) 18. Midnight Cowboy (1969) 19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) 20. Wings of Desire (1987) Austin Trunick (DVD and Games Editor/Senior Writer) 1. Cemetery Man (1994) 2. Revenge of the Ninja (1983) 3. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) 4. Dawn of the Dead (1978) 5. Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987) Mike Hilleary (Senior Writer) 1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) 2. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire…

Staff Photos from 2001 and Favorite Albums of 2001

MARLON WILLIAMS

Marlon Williams is beaming in from London. Fresh off the plane, he’s in the UK and Europe for a string of shows opening for fellow New Zealand singer/songwriter (and massive pop star) Lorde. “Small New Zealand, all paths eventually meet,” says Williams with a grin. Williams is excited to be on the road again, after nearly two years of isolation in New Zealand. The 31-year old singer/songwriter and actor (2018’s A Star is Born, Netflix’s Sweet Tooth) has a half hour set before Lorde, which he says will give him a fun opportunity to try some of the new songs from his third solo album, My Boy. “I’ll try a set the first night and then completely swap it out on night two,” he says. This is the kind of relaxed energy Williams…

MARLON WILLIAMS

Marlon Williams on Once Were Warriors (1994, directed by Lee Tamahori)

More and more I think about that movie. I don’t think that movie would get made today, and maybe for good reason. It’s a dark, dark piece of work. Alan Duff, the writer [of the book the film is based on], is a dark dude with a lot of, especially now, extremely controversial views on Māori and how they haven’t helped themselves and all this. It is a brutal film, and every time I watch it, it’s the one film (aside from Dancing in the Dark with Björk) that will just absolutely destroy me every time I watch it, where I’m in the fetal position. It’s the crowning jewel of New Zealand film, and film in general. And Temuera Morrison’s horrible and ugly portrayal of Jake “the Muss,” it’s Brando-esque, it’s…

Marlon Williams on Once Were Warriors (1994, directed by Lee Tamahori)

“I Was Neon,” the third single from PRE PLEASURE, the third album by Australian singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin, is a catchy, largely guitar-driven examination of oneself, exploring a dichotomy between acceptance of self and fear of losing that very acceptance. This track’s refrain—“Am I gonna lose myself again?/I quite like the person that I am”—perfectly encapsulates the themes and rhythms of PRE PLEASURE: an album all about openness and self-acceptance. “Songwriting is all a process,” Jacklin says, “processing things and hoping that you will write a song and emerge at the other end with more understanding. This is true sometimes but I think most of the time, it’s not that cathartic.” The pitfalls of “pre pleasure”—meaning if you work hard enough on things (music, relationships, life), you’ll eventually get to enjoy them—guide the…

Sipping Blue Rev, a sweet alcopop, at the local skating rinks in Cape Breton—an island in Nova Scotia, Canada—is a much cherished memory of singer, Molly Rankin, from Toronto-based dream pop band, Alvvays. It suggests a time of innocence and simpler pleasures and felt like the right antidote when Rankin, her partner, guitarist, Alec O’Hanley, and their keyboardist, Kerri MacLellan were writing their third album in the garage of their home, during the dark days of the pandemic. Blue Rev is also the title of the album. “I think I just like the idea of being transported back to another era of your life by taking a sip of something,” explains an upbeat Rankin, who cites two polar opposite “Strawberry Wine” songs, one a 1996 country hit for Deana Carter, and…

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

Over the course of a two-and-a-half-year pandemic thousands, if not millions of people across the country—and the globe—were forced into an extended,existential crisis, resulting in all kinds of self-reflection and reevaluation on our emotional and mental wellbeing, the importance of a healthy work/life balance, and how we even want to interact with the rest of the world. Contrasting this inner focus was the even greater attention we placed on what was happening outside the confines of our quarantined homes in and around our local and national communities. Like so many others, Death Cab for Cutie frontman and songwriter Ben Gibbard watched events around him play out with a heightened sense of dread. “We in America had kind of taken for granted this idea that everything was just going to keep working,”…

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

Death Cab for Cutie’s Nick Harmer on Raising Arizona (1987, directed by Joel Coen)

Much like your favorite album, where so much of it is your mood and circumstantially dependent on where you’re at and what you want to experience. Sometimes you want a movie to make you think, and sometimes you want pure entertainment. I would say that one movie that’s had a lot of resonance for me in my life, and in a new way—I’ve always loved the film, but a movie that I the layers of its brilliance more and more—is Raising Arizona by the Coen brothers. I loved it when it came out. I thought it was hilarious. And now that I am a parent, it is absolutely, to me, the most spot on movie about parenting in so many ways—the madness and the chaos of it. It’s got so…

Death Cab for Cutie’s Nick Harmer on Raising Arizona (1987, directed by Joel Coen)

Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard on Do the Right Thing (1989, directed by Spike Lee)

A movie that I continuously come back to, that I’m always kind of amazed by and inspired by is Do the Right Thing. I just think it’s one of the greatest films ever made. The cinematography is incredible, the characters are incredible, just the scope of this movie taking place over the course of one day, the hottest day in New York in the summer with just all the tension that is occurring. And it’s just so multi-layered. You know I watched it relatively recently, and it was shocking how relevant it still felt. Sometimes when movies are kind of commenting on societal conflicts or whatever it might be, they sometimes can feel frozen in a particular time, where someone could say, “I’m so glad we’re past that,” or “I’m…

It’s funny; sometimes the closer you are to something, the harder it is to remember how special it can be. It’s the root of the phrase, Absence makes the heart grow fonder. For the Swedish-born folk duo, First Aid Kit, they know this maxim well. Comprised of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, the group is known for its precise lyrical songwriting and blissful, angelic harmonies. But growing up, as the two sang together around the house, they didn’t think much of their vocal blend. It wasn’t until audiences raved and offered standing ovations that they knew they had something unique and lovely. “I don’t think we realized it until we started playing live,” says Johanna. “Just from people reacting to us singing together in a venue. We were like, ‘We’re just…

First Aid Kit on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, directed by Michel Gondry)

Sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, who comprise the acclaimed Swedish folk duo, First Aid Kit, can recite lines from the Michel Gondry film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from memory. The film, which stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, was named as one of the American Film Institute’s Top 10 movies from 2004. Written by legendary screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich), the romantically focused work features any number of great moments of dialogue and drama. “It’s my favorite film,” says Johanna, who says she rewatched it again recently. She’d originally seen it as at 14 years old but now, at 31, the movie hits differently. She knows the wounds that heartbreak can offer more acutely. She knows the sorrow at lost chances and how time never goes in reverse.…

First Aid Kit on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, directed by Michel Gondry)

“I always feel my process for making records is figuring out what I like and don’t like about making it, and then correct the course of the ship into the other direction,” John Ross ponders on the other end of a grainy Zoom connection. It might be a cold day in hell before the Wild Pink frontman records the album he initially sets his mind to making. You see, the Brooklyn band’s previous outing, 2021’s A Billion Little Lights, was supposed to become this expansive concept double album ruminating all the vast peripheries of the American West. Instead, it became a compelling spectral echo of that idea: one foot in grounded heartland rock, and another in ethereal synth explorations. It was both serendipitous and strange for Ross to witness the rollout…

CASSANDRA JENKINS on Wayne’s World (1992, directed by Penelope Spheeris)

We asked musicians and actors one simple question: “What’s your all-time favorite movie?” For some it’s a classic they discovered in childhood, for others it’s a film that influenced their music or one that found them at just right time later in life. On the following pages there are horrors films watched at too young an age via irresponsible babysitters or while snowed in with friends, and another film that was first viewed while skipping school. And while quite a few artists couldn’t answer our question or narrow it down to just one movie, the following gave it a try. As a Cassandra who was coming of age in 1990s America, I walked through the world in the shadows of two mythological figures—the cursed Greek oracle known for her tragically denounced…

CASSANDRA JENKINS on Wayne’s World (1992, directed by Penelope Spheeris)

Sometimes people pick a favorite movie, and just kind of stick to it just because it’s like what they decided, which is fine. When I ask myself, “What movie can I watch over and over?,” it remains Brazil. It still resonates. Especially during the early 2000s when there was so much paranoia about terrorism and stuff. “It’s funny how our lives really have turned out that way with little devices that are supposed to be really efficient, but really they’re not.” When it came out, I was in college. People can be pretty impressionable when you’re in college and everything just seems so new. First I read about it, and I was like, “Oh I have got to see this movie.” I like anything about England. The fact that it was called…

Mica Tenenbaum of MAGDALENA BAY on eXistenZ (1999, directed by David Cronenberg)

My favorite movie right now is eXistenZ, a Cronenberg sci-fi from 1999. Couldn’t walk you through the plot if I wanted to, as it’s a wildly convoluted story within a story within a story. The gist is that an electronics company is showing its new fleshy VR gaming consoles (imagine an Xbox that looks like a gently pulsing flesh sack) to a focus group. There’s a group of assassins committed to destroying the devices, there’s the world-renowned game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) trying to escape them, and everybody’s entering the game via “bio ports” that are surgically inserted into their spines. One of the things I love about the movie, and Cronenberg films in general, is how there are philosophical factions in his universes that extremize debates we…

Mica Tenenbaum of MAGDALENA BAY on eXistenZ (1999, directed by David Cronenberg)

LUCY DACUS on The Fall (2006, directed by Tarsem Singh)

I felt like I should say Citizen Kane or 8 1/2, but I’m actually going to go with The Fall, which is a movie by the Indian director Tarsem Singh that came out in 2006. Just because it’s a movie I would watch over and over and over. I think it’s really that good and a lot of people haven’t seen it. Lee Pace is in it along with this five-year-old Romanian girl, Catinca Untaru. Pace plays a stunt double in the 1910s and gets injured. He ends up in the same hospital with the girl who broke her arm picking oranges with her family. It’s a beautiful film. Basically the two of them strike up a friendship and he tells her a story. So it goes from the hospital to…

LUCY DACUS on The Fall (2006, directed by Tarsem Singh)

GWENNO on The Color of Pomegranates (1969, directed by Sergei Parajanov)

It seems that there weren’t many who didn’t watch Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates during 2020/21 if you consider the sudden new burst of references to it in music videos and film over the past couple of years. I was also one of the many who came across it on the BFI Player during the first lockdown of 2020 and was utterly dumbfounded by its sheer scale and beauty. I had watched Parajanov’s Ukrainian international hit Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors many times as a child, mesmerized by its folkloric imagery and music, even though I was missing a vital piece of the film—its color, due to only having a small black & white TV to watch it on. But despite that, its impact was huge and it stayed with me,…

GWENNO on The Color of Pomegranates (1969, directed by Sergei Parajanov)

SUFJAN STEVENS on Immersion in and Obsession with (Horror) Films

The Grammy Award-nominated 47-year-old songwriter, Sufjan Stevens, says he has a fixation with films. Yet, even more than most, Stevens can take that love of movies to another level. Stevens, who in 2021 released an entire record he co-wrote with fellow musician Angelo De Augustine called A Beginner’s Mind, inspired almost entirely by more than a dozen movies, can become subsumed by them. It’s as if the light emanates from the screen and both pulls in and melds with his eyes and ears and entire body. “It’s such a full-on immersive experience,” says Stevens. “I think that’s where we go to lose ourselves and enter into another world and become infused with the world completely and entirely. It’s really a beautiful and full-on visceral, tactile experience.” “Because the babysitter watched [The Exorcist],…

SUFJAN STEVENS on Immersion in and Obsession with (Horror) Films

TIM BURGESS of THE CHARLATANS on The Worst Person in the World (2021, directed by Joachim Trier)

I’ve had many, many favorite films throughout my life. Once Upon a Time in America. Jaws. The Exorcist. Lost Highway. Blue Velvet. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But the film I’m going to choose is The Worst Person in the World. My friend saw it in Los Angeles and she said it was a fantastic film and that I should see it. I went to see it in London, but I got a phone call halfway through that meant I had to leave. It was really important and kind of upsetting. A couple of days later, I went to watch it again, so I’ve seen it one-and-a-half times. I like it a lot because it’s modern. It’s a tale about love and life and loss and the things you have to do…

TIM BURGESS of THE CHARLATANS on The Worst Person in the World (2021, directed by Joachim Trier)

James Krivchenia of BIG THIEF on Memoria (2021, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

One of my favorite films right now Memoria, which is by this director whose name is super hard to pronounce as an English speaking American [Apichatpong Weerasethakul]. I was a huge fan of other movies of his; this one had Tilda Swinton in it, and it was his first non-Thai movie, and it just happened to be playing the day before I left on this tour. And it was so amazing. One of the main characters in the film is this sound that one of the characters is hearing, that only exists in her head. It’s a lot of things, but in the broadest sense, it’s this echo from the past invading her consciousness. There are so many amazing things about it: the film talks about memory, loss, and technology.…

James Krivchenia of BIG THIEF on Memoria (2021, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Louis O’Bryen of SORRY on Pig (2021, directed by Michael Sarnoski)

This might seem like a weird choice, and in many ways it is, but something about this movie has stuck with me for many months after watching it. I love war movies like Apocalypse Now or The Deer Hunter, they stir something in me. I also love Ryan Gosling in Drive. Asha [Lorenz] (my colleague in Sorry and bff) has a more acquired taste and loves Gaspar Noé, especially Enter the Void, and when younger Requiem for a Dream. I remember being 13/14 and finding it very cool and kinda weird that she, from such an early age, liked stuff as intriguing and complex as those movies, and then in turn taught me to be open to that leftfield side of culture. When you as a young human discover stuff…

Louis O’Bryen of SORRY on Pig (2021, directed by Michael Sarnoski)

SHAMIR on Mistress America (2015, directed by Noah Baumbach)

Mistress America is definitely in my top five movies. I’ve probably seen it 10 times and most recently watched it with my aunt and sister over the holidays in 2020. It’s similar to a lot of [co-screenwriter/director] Noah Baumbach and [co-screenwriter] Greta Gerwig films, but I feel it’s one of the more underrated ones. The dialogue reminds me of a 1940s or 1950s film with how fast paced it is, and I love that about it. I lived in New York [where the film is set] for about three months to record my debut album, Ratchet, before I moved to Philly. I lived in Brooklyn and I just came across so many people, specifically women, but not necessarily gender-specific, that reminded me of Greta’s character [Brooke]. And I was also the…

SHAMIR on Mistress America (2015, directed by Noah Baumbach)

Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr. of KHRUANGBIN on Beverly Hills Cop (1984, directed by Martin Brest)

When I got the call to contribute to this, I jumped at the opportunity. I said to myself, “This will be easy; a lay-up!” I was wrong. I did not anticipate having to put serious thought into this endeavor. There are a few movies that I could’ve gone to for this (honorable mentions being Coming to America and The Devil Wears Prada), but when I contemplated my overall enjoyment, and personal impact of a film, Beverly Hills Cop swiftly reached the top of my list. This classic is set in 1980s Detroit and Los Angeles. Undercover police officer Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) goes rogue and uses his vacation time to investigate the murder of a childhood friend, which leads him to Los Angeles. Once there, he enlists the help of childhood…

Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr. of KHRUANGBIN on Beverly Hills Cop (1984, directed by Martin Brest)

DAVE ROWNTREE of BLUR on Sleuth (1972, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

Many interviews these days involve talking about my favorite this or that. But the truth is, I don’t really have lists of favorite things. In the early days of Blur, bass player Alex [James] memorized the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He was able to rattle off a pithy line about pretty much any topic a journalist fancied. I should have done the same with favorites lists. It would have saved me any number of awkward opening paragraphs… But I do have films I love—films that I’ve watched again and again. They’re comfort films, where I can retreat from the chaos of life into the predictable and the familiar. My first of these was the thriller Sleuth—the 1972 version, not the 2007 remake. I probably saw it on TV when I was…

DAVE ROWNTREE of BLUR on Sleuth (1972, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

John Rossiter of YOUNG JESUS on The Matrix (1999, directed by The Wachowskis)

My favorite movie is The Matrix. Specifically I love the scenes where: 1. Morpheus breaks free of his chains while Neo and Trinity are waiting in a helicopter outside the window. 2. Because of Love, Neo stops bullets and says, “No.” There is something extremely goofy about The Matrix. Some performances are very strange. Some choices are super uncomfortable. But I love that it tries and fails. There’s a lot of beautiful art that is extremely controlled, meticulously crafted, and expresses some truths about the beauty or nastiness or weirdness of the world. I’m thinking of Andrei Tarkovsky or Michael Haneke. And there’s some art that lets beauty in through the cracks, through the mistakes, creating a space for life to sneak in. But I think there is something specifically Midwestern…

John Rossiter of YOUNG JESUS on The Matrix (1999, directed by The Wachowskis)

JOHN LITHGOW on His Favorite Roles Direct Direction

What is John Lithgow’s favorite role, among the eclectic 60-plus movies he’s been in since the 1970s? Action fans would advocate for his scenery scarfing villains in Ricochet and Cliffhanger (which were less nuanced than his current nebulously intentioned antagonist on the FX TV drama The Old Man). Millions of children grew up hearing him voice Lord Farquaad in Shrek. Not forgetting Footloose, Harry and the Hendersons, Interstellar, and TV’s 3rd Rock from the Sun. And of course there’s his ahead-of-its-time and Oscar nominated portrayal of transgender character Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp in 1982. Aside from ranking high among many movie buffs, and being one of his most memorable experiences as a film actor, Garp also helped Lithgow realize his preference for being directed. The 1982 movie,…

JOHN LITHGOW on His Favorite Roles Direct Direction

Tessa Murray of STILL CORNERS on Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, directed by Peter Weir)

My all-time favorite film has to be Picnic at Hanging Rock, directed by Peter Weir. It’s a lean film that’s mesmerizing and hallucinatory. I only have to listen to the first few notes of the title theme and I’m transported to the hazy desert, wearing a Victorian smock dress and holding a parasol. The film tells the tale of a girl’s boarding school day trip that goes terribly wrong when three of the girls and a teacher vanish at Hanging Rock, a geological outcropping near the school. There’s not a huge amount of action in the film, instead Weir creates a force you feel while watching. As the film progresses you’re pulled in by this magnetism and enveloped by the heat and languorousness of an Australian afternoon. There’s a lovely juxtaposition…

Tessa Murray of STILL CORNERS on Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, directed by Peter Weir)

Alexis Taylor of HOT CHIP on The Producers (1969, directed by Mel Brooks)

I think I watched it as a teenager at home. My stepdad really liked it and introduced it to me. Maybe rented it from the video shop. I was hysterical (to quote the film) on watching it the first time. The opening scene of this film is just something I could watch forever. The script and the interplay between Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, and the way the scene gets more and more intense and funny, and wild and hysterical, is something that I just love. I find myself quoting Zero Mostel a lot. His asides such as “I’m wearing a cardboard belt,” for instance. I really like the music. I used to often play the song “Love Power” in DJ sets at university. I think that track is a prototype for…

Alexis Taylor of HOT CHIP on The Producers (1969, directed by Mel Brooks)

Orono of SUPERORGANISM on The Birdcage (1996, directed by Mike Nichols)

I just watched it because my best friend heard about it. The person who wrote it, Elaine May, I’m more familiar with. She’s done A New Leaf and some other great things. I haven’t watched too many of her films, but she seems very cool and I like all the stuff that she’s done—the one’s I’ve seen at least. I was also familiar with a lot of the cast. It’s just so funny to me. Humor is so important to me. If a movie makes me laugh, I’ll love it. I saw Jackass Forever when it came out, and it made me laugh so hard. I don’t remember laughing that hard in a movie theater in a long time. When I watched The Birdcage, I actually had pneumonia. I just randomly…

Orono of SUPERORGANISM on The Birdcage (1996, directed by Mike Nichols)

30 MOST ICONIC PERFORMANCES BY REAL BANDS IN FICTIONAL FILMS

The 1980s were a golden age in regards to amazing real life musicians showing up as themselves on the silver screen. We’re talking scenes where fictional characters are in a club or at a concert and in the background some buzz-worthy musician is performing. Such performances are often superfluous to the plot, but add atmosphere to a scene or allow a director to show off his or her hip musical tastes. We have combed through decades of movie clips to highlight the 30 performances that were most iconic. To be clear, this isn’t about scenes featuring fictional bands or moments from music documentaries. This is a young Madonna performing “Crazy For You” as Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino dance for the first time in Vision Quest . Wilson Phillips singing…

30 MOST ICONIC PERFORMANCES BY REAL BANDS IN FICTIONAL FILMS

ERIC APPEL ON DIRECTING WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY Deconstructing Biopic Tropes

Of course song-parody master “Weird Al” Yankovic wouldn’t be interested in a normal biopic. He instead satirizes biopic tropes with Weird: The Al Yankovic Story , mainly (but not only) by casting Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, despite the Harry Potter star’s lack of resemblance to the accordion wielding comedic musician behind hit spoofs such as “Like a Surgeon” and “Eat It.” Yankovic co-wrote the Roku Channel movie with director Eric Appel, with whom he’s been friends since the latter made a faux biopic trailer about a clichéd hard partying, hard rocking Weird Al for Funny Or Die in 2010. So what does the director think of some of the biggest films of the genre he and Yankovic are skewering? One that isn’t deserving of such barbs, according to Appel:…

ERIC APPEL ON DIRECTING WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY Deconstructing Biopic Tropes

30 ALL-TIME BEST MUSIC BIOPICS

Music biopics are notorious for fudging the facts a little, but the most enduring ones capture the true essence of an artist, even if things didn’t happen exactly the same way in real life. And the most memorable ones are often anchored by a magnetic star performance, one that goes deeper than simply copying the mannerisms and stage movements of an icon. This is our list of the 30 all-time best music biopics, voted on by our writers and stretching, by release date, from 1953’s The Glenn Miller Story all the way to this year’s Elvis. (Note: Our writers were not able to see Weird: The Al Yankovic Story prior to putting together this list, so it was not eligible.) By Mark Redfern 1. 24 Hour Party People (2002) Also known as…

30 ALL-TIME BEST MUSIC BIOPICS

VALERIE JUNE on What Dreams May Come (1998, directed by Vincent Ward)

What Dreams May Come is one of my favorite movies. Initially, I was drawn to watch it because who doesn’t adore the actor, Robin Williams. He was so incredible in every film. It’s very difficult to capture the magic of other planes and realms of existence in the brilliant way this fave of mine does. The movie also captures the power of co-creation and imagination at its height. It implies that we are able to co-create our own reality both while we are alive and when we die. Chris meets Annie, they have children, and viewers have their classic love story, but it’s when their family is torn apart by death and grief, that the true movie begins. Eventually, Chris dies and goes to the heaven that he created with his…

VALERIE JUNE on What Dreams May Come (1998, directed by Vincent Ward)

SKULLCRUSHER on Spirited Away (2001, directed by Hayao Miyazaki)

My all time favorite movie is Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki. I chose this because it is a film that has been with me since I was very young and sort of grew with me through the years. I think it captures change in such a beautiful way: Chihiro’s development throughout the film is so subtle but immensely powerful. I think I’ve always related to her and appreciated the portrayal of this small, anxious, slightly annoying little girl having to make her way in an unknown world. She is alone and has to forge her own path and I think I’ve always related to that. I’m very drawn to art that illustrates the complexity of childhood and this is something I explore greatly in my own creative process. One of my…

SKULLCRUSHER on Spirited Away (2001, directed by Hayao Miyazaki)

John Darnielle of THE MOUNTAIN GOATS on Fiddler on the Roof (1971, directed by Norman Jewison)

“Those songs are seared into me. I mean, I start crying when the movie starts now,” John Darnielle says as he settles onto his couch, having just sung a line from “Sunrise, Sunset.” The Mountain Goats frontman, known for his richly detailed songwriting (as found on the band’s latest album, Bleed Out, released on Merge in August) and deeply human not-quite-horror novels, was five years old when his mom and aunt saw Fiddler on the Roof at the movie theater without him. A devastated young Darnielle was appeased with a vinyl recording of the musical, which he became obsessed with. “That was good compensation because I would listen to the soundtrack and try to piece the story together from the songs and be thrilled by these Jewish melodies, which are not…

John Darnielle of THE MOUNTAIN GOATS on Fiddler on the Roof (1971, directed by Norman Jewison)

OCEANATOR on Heathers (1989, directed by Michael Lehmann)

There’s a scene in T he Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent where Pedro Pascal’s character asks Nicolas Cage, “What’s your favorite movie?” Nicolas responds that it’s an impossible question to answer because it depends on so many factors—mood, timing, etc. I feel the same. It’s hard to pick a favorite movie. There have been a lot of movies I’ve loved and gone back to over the years. The top position has been fairly nebulous. But one that came into my life at probably the exact right time and has really stuck with me is Heathers . I first saw Heathers on TV one afternoon in high school. Flipping through channels, I landed on it, and something about it caught my eye. I caught it pretty close to the beginning and I…

OCEANATOR on Heathers (1989, directed by Michael Lehmann)

MIKI BERENYI of PIROSHKA on Prick Up Your Ears (1987, directed by Stephen Frears)

I was 20 in 1987 and studying English Literature at North London Polytechnic (now the University of North London), where one of my units covered Joe Orton, so it seemed like kismet when Prick Up Your Ears came out, a biopic of the playwright with a screenplay by Alan Bennett. Plus I’d just that week seen one of its stars, Wallace Shawn (who plays Orton’s biographer John Lahr), on the tube who, noting my wide-eyed celebrity-spot, smiled at me warmly, which wasn’t the usual response I got from commuters given my punky looks. Director Stephen Frears had already made a hit gay romance with My Beautiful Launderette, making a bleach-blond heartthrob of Daniel Day Lewis. But Prick Up Your Ears still felt risqué—documenting the exploits of an openly gay man (who…

MIKI BERENYI of PIROSHKA on Prick Up Your Ears (1987, directed by Stephen Frears)

WILL SHEFF of OKKERVIL RIVER on Slap Shot (1977, directed by George Roy Hill)

I don’t know if I’m comfortable calling this my “favorite” movie (honestly, I’m don’t know if I’m comfortable calling anything my favorite anything), but I’m fairly certain the movie I’ve seen the most times—and laughed at every time—is the 1977 hockey comedy Slap Shot. I honestly don’t give a shit about hockey or pretty much about any sport, but Slap Shot isn’t really about hockey. Depending on which angle you look at it from, Slap Shot is about owners versus freelancers, about the pitiful pageant of manliness, about the capitalist ransacking of small-town America, about the zen-like meaninglessness of pretty much any endeavor, and—crucially to me—it’s about New England. Although if you were from Canada you’d think maybe it was about Canada. It’s also about hockey. Going further: If you’re a beer-swilling…

WILL SHEFF of OKKERVIL RIVER on Slap Shot (1977, directed by George Roy Hill)

MOONAGE DAYDREAM

“My work is not me,” utters David Bowie about three quarters into Moonage Daydream, the latest music documentary from Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck director Brett Morgen. It’s a startling revelation as up to that point, we mostly see Bowie, as the consummate performer: On stage in London at peak Ziggy Stardust—in various guises but always flame-orange hair, kabuki-make up, and skinny unitard—singing over deafening screams, whilst outside emotional fans profess their adoration to him. It’s pandemonium again when he performs at packed arenas Stateside. One Los Angeles clip shot inside a limousine has a gaunt and cocaine-addled Bowie admit that he detests the city that he resided in for a year, and all it represents. He later confirms what lengths he will go to for his songwriting when he…

MOONAGE DAYDREAM

40 ALL-TIME BEST MUSIC DOCUMENTARIES

Music documentaries tend to fall into two categories: ones that aim for some greater truth about a musician, movement, or scene and films that hope to capture a notable performance or festival. And some try to do both. It’s hard to truly replicate the live music experience for cinema or home audiences, but the best performance films not only make you feel like you were actually there on the night, but also give illuminating context to the event. Would the original Woodstock festival be so iconic without Michael Wadleigh’s documentary, released less than a year after the hippie event? Our writers watched or re-watched many of the most notable music docs and we came up with this list of the 40 all-time best. (Note: Most of our writers hadn’t yet…

40 ALL-TIME BEST MUSIC DOCUMENTARIES

WIL WHEATON on Stand By Me

In a scene toward the end of Stand By Me, the 1986 Rob Reiner-directed adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body, Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton) and Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) stand side-by-side. They discuss the future and wonder what junior high will be like. As Chris walks away, the adult Gordie narrating the film tells the viewer that Chris tries to break up a fight years later, forever the peacemaker, and is stabbed in the neck and killed. The Chris on-screen holds up a hand to wave goodbye, and then vanishes from view. The moment is quietly devastating, made more painful with the knowledge of Phoenix’s actual death in 1993. “That scene always landed on me really hard, even before River died,” says Wheaton, 36 years after the film’s…

WIL WHEATON on Stand By Me

UNDER THE RADAR’S WRITERS ON THEIR FAVORITE MOVIES

Arrival (2016, directed by Denis Villeneuve) By Ben Jardine Although a fairly recent release, Arrival combines everything I love in a movie: believable science fiction, provocative themes, aliens, an incredible ambient soundtrack, and non-linear timelines. When I first saw Arrival, I was 21 years old and it blew my mind. The film’s premise is simple. Aliens come to Earth. They use a complex form of circles to communicate, and linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is recruited by the military to decode the aliens’ message and learn what their purpose is here on Earth. What got me so excited about this movie is the way it pulls off the reveal that Dr. Banks is seeing visions of her future: her life is predetermined, and she handles this with such aplomb that…

UNDER THE RADAR’S WRITERS ON THEIR FAVORITE MOVIES

40 ALL-TIME MOST ICONIC FICTIONAL BANDS IN MOVIES

Cinema history is filled with a multitude of fictional bands we wish we could experience in real life. A select few have even leapt from the silver screen to the concert stage, but most have remained trapped in celluloid. Some make-believe bands only appear in the background, such as The Weird Sisters (a supergroup fronted by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and also featuring Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway), who perform at a school dance in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Many others are interregnal to the plot, such as Blackgammon in The Sound of Metal, an Oscar-winning film about a metal drummer going deaf that featured a cameo from Under the Radar, with the band appearing on a fake cover of our magazine. We took stock of all…

40 ALL-TIME MOST ICONIC FICTIONAL BANDS IN MOVIES

Theo Ellis of WOLF ALICE on Dig! (2004, directed by Ondi Timoner)

Number one, I know fuck all about films…but I’ve chosen Dig! because it brought loads of people that I’m friends with together. It’s a documentary about The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols in the ’90s. It’s kind of less that I want to talk about the film and more how the film brought me into having loads of great friendships with other musicians. I remember watching it at my best friend’s house on YouTube broken into parts, so you have seven minutes at a time. I remember there was a group of about seven of us lying on the floor watching it and just being in awe of how cool it was and how great the music was. I feel like it’s one of those things where if you’re…

Theo Ellis of WOLF ALICE on Dig! (2004, directed by Ondi Timoner)

ROSE ELINOR DOUGALL on Walkabout (1971, directed by Nicolas Roeg)

I think I first saw this when I was about 15 years old. Obviously, the director Nicolas Roeg has such an incredible eye and it’s also scored by John Barry, who is one of my all-time favorite composers. There’s something about those tremulous strings that only he can do, and the Walkabout main theme is my favourite piece of music ever, which is why I picked it! It’s such a rich piece of work, it’s so brutal, tragic, visceral, sexual, and sad. There are these huge vast landscapes highlighting the brutality of nature set against a kind of primal human endeavour but it’s done in such a subtle intimate way. And of course, it’s a coming-of-age movie, which really resonated with me when I first saw it. (Rose Elinor Dougall is an…

ROSE ELINOR DOUGALL on Walkabout (1971, directed by Nicolas Roeg)

JOHN GRANT on Adaptation (2002, directed by Spike Jonze)

Adaptation was sort of unlike anything else I’d ever seen. I loved every character, and I thought the story was really incredible. I connected with both of the twins [played by Nicolas Cage] really deeply, but mostly the main one, Charlie Kaufman [also the name of the film’s screenwriter]. I suppose it was just one of those really selfish things where I saw myself in that character, and so I connected deeply with it. When my last album came out during COVID, people were like, “Okay, well, this is the way the world is now, and this is what you’re expected to do.” I was supposed to get a TikTok account and start doing that. I was like, “I’m not going to become a different person. It’s not happening.” That really sent…

JOHN GRANT on Adaptation (2002, directed by Spike Jonze)

TOP 100 MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS OF ALL TIME

When putting together a list of the Top 100 Movie Soundtracks of All Time we set out some rules. Firstly, albums that were purely a film’s orchestral score were out (sorry John Williams, Ennio Morricone, et al.). The soundtracks had to feature songs used in the film (a few score tracks added in as well was fine). In general, musicals were out, especially those based on Broadway stage shows (although at least two musicals snuck on the list). The albums didn’t just have to include songs written especially for the film; plenty of great soundtracks consist of mainly pre-existing songs curated by a music supervisor and director. Soundtracks featuring the songs of just one artist (looking at you Prince, Badly Drawn Boy, Curtis Mayfield, Air, Madonna, Queen, and Björk) were…

TOP 100 MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS OF ALL TIME

THE LINDA LINDAS on the Japanese Film That Inspired Their Name

Between school, cat care duties, releasing their 2022 debut album Growing Up, and being the buzziest new punk band on the planet, the teens in The Linda Lindas don’t have much time to watch movies. “Oh, I haven’t watched a movie in a while,” guitarist/vocalist Lucia de la Garza admits when asked for their favorite big screen pick. But those familiar with the band’s backstory—or Japanese alternative cinema—will know that one film is an integral part of their existence. “We were named after this Japanese indie film called Linda Linda Linda, that actually has Korean actress Bae Doona in it,” bassist Eloise Wong reveals. The 2005 movie was directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita and features an original instrumental score by The Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha. “It’s where a bunch of high school…

THE LINDA LINDAS on the Japanese Film That Inspired Their Name

Colin Meloy of The Decemberists on Dr. Strangelove (1964, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

I just think that it’s brilliant. It’s funny—it’s sort of, you know, it’s incisive. It cuts to what it is. I feel like it’s timeless in a way that even at the time, as a kid, seeing it for the first time, I couldn’t believe it had been made in the ’60s. It felt very current and I think it continues to. I think Kubrick is a genius. I could also say 2001: A Space Odyssey might be my other favorite. I just think he’s a visionary. (Colin Meloy is the frontman of the Portland, Oregon indie rock band The Decemberists. Their most recent album was 2018’s I’ll Be Your Girl. Meloy also wrote The Wildwood Chronicles, a children’s fantasy book series that was illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis.)…

Colin Meloy of The Decemberists on Dr. Strangelove (1964, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

Stella Donnelly on Relatos salvajes (2014, directed by Damián Szifron) and Six Shooter (2004, directed by Martin McDonagh)

I very much like dark comedies, there are two films that I recommend to people all the time, Relatos salvajes (aka Wild Tales) which is an Argentinean movie directed by Damián Szifron and also Martin McDonagh’s short film Six Shooter. Both of these films capture human chaos in really sly and hilarious ways. I love films where you’re not sure who the hero or the villain is. (Stella Donnelly is an Australian singer/songwriter. Her most recent album, Flood, came out in August via Secretly Canadian.)…

Stella Donnelly on Relatos salvajes (2014, directed by Damián Szifron) and Six Shooter (2004, directed by Martin McDonagh)

Yannis Philippakis of Foals on There Will Be Blood (2007, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) and No Country for Old Men (2007, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen)

In terms of recent stuff, there’s two really in the last five or ten years that I fell in love with. There Will Be Blood, I watch that a lot. It’s not the lightest of viewing, but I think it’s one of the best pieces of cinema, it’s an all-time great movie. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead did the soundtrack. It mainly revolves around Day-Lewis’s performance. It’s well-worth watching. It’s based on a book by Upton Sinclair called Oil. All about greed in America, oil and capitalism in the early 1900s. It’s bangin’ man! Around the same time was No Country for Old Men. That was astonishing from the Coen brothers. That was such an amazing year for movies with the combination of the…

Yannis Philippakis of Foals on There Will Be Blood (2007, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) and No Country for Old Men (2007, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen)

Jason Lytle of Grandaddy on Cool Hand Luke (1967, directed by Stuart Rosenberg)

I would have to go with Cool Hand Luke. I could watch that movie every day for the next year. It’s so deep, and it’s so good. It’s so profound. The actors, and the characters—it’s poetry. It’s a symphony. I just love it. (Jason Lytle is the main creative force behind the Modesto, California band Grandaddy, whose 2020 album, The Sophtware Slump, is considered a key turn-of-the-millennium record. Their most recent album was 2017’s Last Place.) The Linda Lindas photo by Zen Sekizawa. alt-J photo by George Muncey. The Decemberists photo by Holly Andres. Stella Donnelly photo by Olivia Senior. Foals photo by Edward Cooke. Grandaddy photo by Koury Angelo.…

Jason Lytle of Grandaddy on Cool Hand Luke (1967, directed by Stuart Rosenberg)

Shannon Lay on Dazed and Confused (1993, directed by Richard Linklater)

I was hesitant to put Dazed and Confused as my favorite because it’s portraying a ’70s vibe [before my time], but it feels like such a ’90s movie. It fits in with that crowd for sure. I just love how it feels very fly on the wall, just watching these kids growing up and evolving. Nothing about it is over the top. It feels like this is happening right now somewhere. And the number of actors in it that are now huge is crazy. Parker Posey is great in it. Ben Affleck is in it as the bully and he’s such a good dick. An amazing douchebag. I didn’t think of him at first because everyone thinks of Matthew McConaughey. I feel like the guy Matthew McConaughey was playing [David Wooderson]…

Shannon Lay on Dazed and Confused (1993, directed by Richard Linklater)

Mdou Moctar on The Fast and the Furious (2001, directed by Rob Cohen)

The Fast and the Furious, to me, is like what’s happening around me. I love racing, and I’m a nomad. It’s a tradition for us. We already have a well-respected tradition of camel racing and horse racing. So I love watching racing. And there are a lot of people who are skilled at driving in the desert as well. (Mdou Moctar, real name Mahamadou Souleymane, is a Tuareg singer/songwriter/guitaritst based in Agadez, Niger, who fronts a band also named Mdou Moctar. The most recent Mdou Moctar album, Afrique Victime, came out in 2021 via Matador.)…

Mdou Moctar on The Fast and the Furious (2001, directed by Rob Cohen)

Ruth Radelet on The Godfather (1972, directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

I can’t remember when I first saw The Godfather, but it’s been a part of my consciousness for almost all of my adult life. I’ve watched it countless times and it never gets old. With each viewing I notice new details, and I still can’t imagine a more perfect film. Every shot is magnificently crafted, and the story plays out like a Greek tragedy. Al Pacino and Marlon Brando’s performances are masterful, and Nino Rota’s score is hauntingly beautiful. The movie takes us on a journey through a multitude of emotions, and although few people can relate to the specifics of the storyline, there are universal themes in the film that resonate deeply with many: family, loyalty, honor, love, loss, betrayal, sacrifice. Who holds the power and why, and at…

Ruth Radelet on The Godfather (1972, directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

JOEL MCHALE on Not Being Able to Choose His Favorite Movie

Oh my gosh! It’s a tough question because there’s so many good ones. You know, in my head always pops Dr. Strangelove. Through my childhood and adolescence, I always loved that movie. Obviously, Stanley Kubrick is one for the ages. Blade Runner is another one that is always in my top 3-5. But, you know, I love the movie Green Room, which was just a revelation when I first saw it. And Back to the Future! So, I’m not very good at—if I have to choose, I will. But there’s quite a number. (Joel McHale is an actor and comedian, best known for hosting The Soup and starring as Jeff Winger in the beloved NBC sitcom Community, a forthcoming movie of which has recently been confirmed. He also plays Sylvester Pemberton/Starman…

JOEL MCHALE on Not Being Able to Choose His Favorite Movie

GRUFF RHYS of SUPER FURRY ANIMALSon The Holy Mountain (1973, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

The history of the film is kind of seeped in connections to the pop world. I suppose there’s so many musical connections in that it was funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in part and it’s got the Don Cherry soundtrack. And Finder’s Keepers Records released [the soundtrack] a few years back. In a way it’s a kind of movie that feels like a music video in a sense. There’s not much dialogue and it’s a kind of pop film in its own weird way. What I love it about it as well is that it’s shot in Mexico City, which is probably one of the greatest cities that I’ve ever gotten to visit. It kind of uses the building from Mexican modernism back to the colonial cathedral and then…

GRUFF RHYS of SUPER FURRY ANIMALSon The Holy Mountain (1973, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

HAYDEN THORPE on Lost in Translation (2003, directed by Sofia Coppola)

I was 17 years old, I’d just passed my driving test and I would sometimes skip school to drive to Manchester in my mum’s car. I’d look around the upmarket shops and restaurants with a kind of detached fascination—city life was highly exotic to me. On one occasion when Manchester’s weather was typically apocalyptic, I found shelter in a nearby picture house. (I was up for watching anything so long as it was warm and dry inside.) The film that I opted for was Lost in Translation—I figured it seemed arty enough to fulfil my excruciatingly poetic aspirations at the time. I was about to experience a piece of cinema that would ingratiate me into a whole new genre of inner feeling—an emotion which I knew was there but couldn’t…

HAYDEN THORPE on Lost in Translation (2003, directed by Sofia Coppola)

Murray Lightburn of THE DEARS on Blade Runner (1982, directed by Ridley Scott)

My memory of seeing Blade Runner for the first time is fuzzy. After all, I was only 11 years old when it came out and I didn’t see it in the theater. I’m pretty sure my older brother Peter did and later hipped me to it. Over time I’ve come to watch the film on a regular basis. It has become a “comfort film” for me. I have watched it so many times that I know most of the dialogue by heart. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I’ll put it on headphones and only listen to the film; by the time we meet Rachael, I’m out cold. This is the only film that I watch this way and I like a lot of films. Of course: We could talk about Blade…

Murray Lightburn of THE DEARS on Blade Runner (1982, directed by Ridley Scott)

JOHNNY MARR on His Favorite Bond Film and Working with Hans Zimmer

“Ping! Ping! Ping!” go the message notifications on Johnny Marr’s speakers, interrupting his answers during a Zoom interview until the Mancunian guitarist says, with faux indignation: “Go away, Hans Zimmer!” His friend and collaborator on a number of blockbuster movie soundtracks was messaging Marr in the weeks before audiences could finally see the long delayed new James Bond installment, No Time to Die, and hear the duo’s fittingly debonair and dangerous accompanying music. Keen as Marr was for 007 diehards to finally see the new movie after it was pushed back several months throughout the pandemic, current Bond Daniel Craig isn’t ex-The Smiths’ guitarist’s favorite to take on the role. Instead, he loves the 1969, George Lazenby starring classic On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. There are a few reasons why that film,…

JOHNNY MARR on His Favorite Bond Film and Working with Hans Zimmer

SPELLLING on The Wiz (1978, directed by Sidney Lumet)

SPELLLING (stage name of musician Chrystia Cabral) makes music that feels like what the inside of a crystal ball would sound like. Her most recent album, 2021’s The Turning Wheel , is a theatrical wonder, draped in red velvet curtains and jewel tones, that simultaneously pulls from soul and R&B and more avant-garde pop artists like Kate Bush. It’s no surprise, then, that her favorite film is the 1978, Motownproduced version of The Wiz , based on the Broadway musical. “My mom was a big fan of the movie and we would watch it around Christmas time with family. I became instantly obsessed,” Cabral says. “I also loved Labyrinth with David Bowie. Those together kind of forged my early fascination with musicals and fantasy and costume.” The Wiz, now considered something…

SPELLLING on The Wiz (1978, directed by Sidney Lumet)

WHITNEY on Another Round (2020, directed by Thomas Vinterberg) and Chungking Express (1994, directed by Wong Kar-wai)

Leave it to the duo of Whitney to choose favorite movies from far-flung corners of the Earth—as wide ranging as the sounds from their latest album, SPARK. Drummer/singer Julien Ehrlich’s mind has been on Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, while guitarist Max Kakacek leans towards Chungking Express, directed by the Hong Kong cinema master Wong Kar-wai. Wong’s freewheeling film and Vinterberg’s more sobering one seemingly have little in common outside of one scene of alcoholic overindulgence in Chungking Express. A constant state of inebriation is the glue that bonds the characters of Another Round together, led by Mads Mikkelsen as a washed up high school history teacher. Kakacek shares of Wong’s classic 1994 film: “I first watched it when I was in my early 20s. And then more recently when…

WHITNEY on Another Round (2020, directed by Thomas Vinterberg) and Chungking Express (1994, directed by Wong Kar-wai)

Brian Weitz (aka Geologist) of ANIMAL COLLECTIVE on The Shining (1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

As it relates to the music that I make and that Animal Collective makes in general, it was really an eye-opening experience the first time I saw it. We were like 15, it was Dave [Portner, aka Avey Tare] and me, and we were snowed in at a friend’s house. There were a bunch of people there. Dave and I had some mushrooms and we took them, and somebody suggested, “Oh we should watch The Shining.” We were snowed in and this was ’94 or ’95. It was before cellphones, and nobody made plans or looked at the weather so we all just called our parents and said, “We’re stuck here.” So, we watched it and it was really amazing, and everybody kind of left to go outside. And Dave and…

Brian Weitz (aka Geologist) of ANIMAL COLLECTIVE on The Shining (1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

SOUND AND VISION A Conversation About Balancing Acting and Music withWILL OLDHAM, MAYA HAWKE, MARLON WILLIAMS, JASON ISBELL, MCKENNA GRACE, and NEKO CASE

Once showbusiness rang hollow for a young Will Oldham, he went from aspiring actor to a seemingly even tougher second act in indie music. But the challenge made sense to the would-be avant-garde Americana cult favorite after acting in John Sayles’ 1987 movie Matewan. So “extraordinary” was the independent movie maverick’s set says Oldham—not to mention castmates like James Earl Jones and a young Chris Cooper—that he later sorrowfully learned “it was the complete exception, in terms of the respect of everyone involved in the production.” He grew disillusioned enough to stop pursuing the craft he’d shown so much promise in since his boyhood performances at the renowned Actors Theatre in his native Louisville, Kentucky. “I gradually began to realize most of my energies outside of acting had been put toward…

SOUND AND VISION A Conversation About Balancing Acting and Music withWILL OLDHAM, MAYA HAWKE, MARLON WILLIAMS, JASON ISBELL, MCKENNA GRACE, and NEKO CASE

MAYA HAWKE Bravely Cringing

“What else have I failed at recently?” Maya Hawke smiles and asks rhetorically about the seemingly unthinkable. She’s talking about guttering during her first crack at bowling. But fans would be forgiven for thinking she can do no wrong. After all, Hawke had a winning summer with both the new season of the widely watched Netflix drama Stranger Things and with her sophomore album MOSS , 13 tracks of gently strummed and whisper-sung folk-pop . Both left fans and critics raving. Those triumphs built on her role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood . And her fans have plenty more to look forward to, such as her upcoming roles in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. But success hasn’t gone to the musician/actress’ head. Or at…

MAYA HAWKE Bravely Cringing

SOLO COLLABORATIONS THE TRANSITION FROM THE MAIN STAGE TO THE BIG SCREEN

John Barry’s first score as a composer came in 1960 with the British coming-of-age romp Beat Girl starring teen idol Adam Faith. Performed by the composer’s own band, The John Barry Seven and Orchestra, Beat Girl’s soundtrack, incidentally the first British score to be released on vinyl LPs, boasts a fanfare horn section and a distinctive lead guitar amongst other typical orchestral elements. At this point in cinematic history, what role music served was still in flux. The earliest silent pictures—showcased as the pioneering Lumiere Brothers’—were in exhibition spaces, came accompanied by live musicians, photo-play music taken from repertory scores and improvised to suit the mood of each screening. The oft-told, but apparently apocryphal origins of film compositions—that they were merely implemented to cover up the sound of the projector—survives…

SOLO COLLABORATIONS THE TRANSITION FROM THE MAIN STAGE TO THE BIG SCREEN

DAN DEACON on There Will Be Blood (2007, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

I used to have this thing on tour called Dan’s DV days, where I would buy a DVD every day on tour, particularly from gas stations, because that’s the number one place you go as a musician on tour is to a gas station. And they used to have these massive bins of DVDs, some of legitimate films, like There Will Be Blood, but most of the time I was trying to buy knockoff title movies you could only see if you bought a DVD at a gas station. My favorite is The Lord Protector, made to look like Lord of the Rings. Transmorphers is really good. Billy Owens and the Secret of the Runes is a Harry Potter ripoff that’s really good. And I buy one of these a day.…

DAN DEACON on There Will Be Blood (2007, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

DANNY ELFMAN on Composer Bernard Herrmann and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, directed by Robert Wise)

I literally don’t have a favorite film. I’ve got 10 categories of favorite films that do different things in different places. Favorite films tend to be, with everybody, it’s about the age we encountered something. Way up on the list of favorite films would be Psycho, way up on the favorite films list would be so many films, Polanski films, Kurosawa films. What I tend to notice, when people talk about this stuff, I’ll say, “You know, what was the scariest film you ever saw,” for example, they’ll tell me a film they saw at a very specific age. If you’re a certain age, and you saw Jaws, it’s like, “Oh, my God, I couldn’t go in the water for years, the ocean.” And for me, I didn’t think twice about…

DANNY ELFMAN on Composer Bernard Herrmann and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, directed by Robert Wise)

KEVIN MORBY and JASON SCHWARTZMAN Discuss RUSHMORE

We interviewed many musicians for the My Favorite Movie Issue, but what we might not have seen coming was the deep connection that some artists have with their favorite film. There are some hilarious comedies that people claim as their favorite, but for some the impact of their favorite movie goes much deeper than that. Such as Ezra Furman’s lifelong relationship with Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, and seeing herself in Harvey Keitel’s character. Or in this case, how Kevin Morby resonated with Jason Schwartzman’s character, Max Fischer, in writer/director Wes Anderson’s 1998 film Rushmore, the first time he saw it as a teenager. Morby and Schwartzman made an immediate connection over our nearly two-and-a-half hour Zoom interview. Ironically, both of their partners, Schwartzman’s wife Brady Cunningham and Morby’s partner Katie Crutchfield…

KEVIN MORBY and JASON SCHWARTZMAN Discuss RUSHMORE

On brief hiatus between a cut short U.S. tour in support of her new All of Us Flames album and an upcoming string of European dates, Ezra Furman’s mind is on anything but herself. We connected via Zoom the day after Hurricane Ian made landfall not far south of my Tampa home and before its devastation was fully known. Furman was in her Massachusetts home, comfortably casual but focused on going deep on what drove the creation of her latest work. Furman considers her most recent album her least personal even if it weaves in aspects of her Jewish faith and her identity as a trans woman. Its themes and concerns may be her own, but the songs themselves are focused on the collective. Whether it’s the historically persecuted Jewish…

EZRA FURMAN on Mean Streets (1973, directed by Martin Scorsese)

I first saw Mean Streets when I was in college. I was already in love with Taxi Driver and there was a time I would say Taxi Driver was my favorite film. And then I saw Mean Streets and I just think it’s a superior film. The main character, Charlie [played by Harvey Keitel], is quite repressed. He’s waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and thinking about eternal punishment in hell. He’s trying to be some version of a spiritual person, but he’s in this world [of gangsters] where he’s completely blocked by the culture he’s in. And that is where I was a lot of my own life. I’ve been trying to reach toward beauty as something I’m not allowed to have. I’m not…

EZRA FURMAN on Mean Streets (1973, directed by Martin Scorsese)

SHARON VAN ETTEN

We’re barely a minute into saying hello to one another when Sharon Van Etten’s small terrier Lindy decides to introduce itself with a volley of attention-seeking barks. Naturally this all-too-familiar sounding call prompts my own clueless canine into delivering a frantic response, going so far as to rush to a window to see if her possible new best friend is somehow outside on the lawn. Unfortunately for my overeager labradoodle, Van Etten—and her dog—are roughly 3,000 miles away, connecting via Zoom from the kitchen table of her Los Angeles home. Van Etten—who spent years cutting her teeth and building her musical career as a resident of New York City—moved to L.A. in 2019. The seeds of the address change occurred the year prior when Van Etten was put on retainer for…

SHARON VAN ETTEN

SHARON VAN ETTEN on The Sandlot (1993, directed by David Mickey Evans)

In the midst of making this new record one of the biggest memories I’ll have is just having family movie nights [during the pandemic], and us clutching each other, you know, my partner and I just not knowing how to express our fear, but also feeling strangely calm. We went through a bunch of classics like Bad News Bears to The Karate Kid, sharing with our son all our favorite films. I remember a particular day—and we had watched this movie a bunch because it was his favorite, and has become mine—but on this particular day we were watching The Sandlot. It was during one of those moments where things were looking better in the pandemic and then something else happened to set things back, and so we were in this…

SHARON VAN ETTEN on The Sandlot (1993, directed by David Mickey Evans)

Archers of Loaf Reason in Decline (MERGE) After 24 years away, Chapel Hill’s Archers of Loaf return with their fifth album, the follow up to 1998’s White Trash Heroes. If you arrive at Reason in Decline expecting a continuation of the loose-limbed, wild-eyed, and reckless Loaf of old, you will be surprised at what you find. Their appeal back then lay partly in their delectably haphazard nature, Eric Bachmann’s screamed melodies and vicious lyrics striving to surface through crashing waves of Eric Johnson’s guitar. Here, though, slacker cynicism has turned to focused stoicism; fast and loose now measured and taut. There’s no pretence of recapturing the shabby, shimmering thrills of the past—this is absolutely, definitively not a nostalgia record—instead offering a modern, masterful document of the personal and political, turning its dark, hard themes fearlessly…

Elizabeth Stokes of THE BETHS

To conclude, we ask Elizabeth Stokes of The Beths some questions about endings and death. The New Zealand band formed in 2014, with vocalist/guitarist Stokes originally meeting guitarist Jonathan Pearce in high school. The current lineup also features bassist Benjamin Sinclair and drummer Tristan Deck. The band’s harmony-laced indie pop backs up Stokes’ often-wry and autobiographical lyrics. After all, the band’s 2018-released debut album was amusingly titled Future Me Hates Me and their recently released third album is titled Expert in a Dying Field. The new album was launched by “Silence is Golden,” a decidedly loud and energetic first single in contrast to its title. “The song is about stress and anxiety manifesting as an intolerance to noise,” said Stokes in a press release announcing the album. “Where each new sound…

Elizabeth Stokes of THE BETHS

Esmé Dee Hand-Halford of THE ORIELLES on The Night of the Hunted (aka La Nuit des Traquées) (1980, directed by Jean Rollin)

After watching a good film I often find that my memory falls victim to an unrelenting force and I am unable to interface with my mind, now assailed by the audiovisual stimuli that has pleased it so for the 100 minutes just passed, in order to extract any kind of cohesive gleanings. It’s that experience of a mood, so intangible and too challenging to really put into words, that I love about cinema and music and all forms of art that I often end up calling my favorite. That beautiful feeling of when a film causes the brain fog to supersede any understanding of a world that is barely presenting itself as real, and to be understood. I want to talk about a film that I saw recently that I fell…

Esmé Dee Hand-Halford of THE ORIELLES on The Night of the Hunted (aka La Nuit des Traquées) (1980, directed by Jean Rollin)

Ian Devaney of NATION OF LANGUAGE on Phantom Thread (2017, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

To begin with, Phantom Thread might be the most beautiful looking movie I’ve ever seen. That was the first thing that drew me in, followed closely by the presence of Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps, both of whom are so striking in their look and intensity that it’s hard to turn away. After my second viewing I came to the conclusion that a lot of my love for the film is not only how it looks, but how it sounds. The whole movie has an almost ASMR-type quality to it. A lot of time is spent focusing on people quietly and carefully doing things with their hands, harnessing their craft: designing and making fine clothing. Such a thing is not generally an interest of mine but there is something about watching…

Ian Devaney of NATION OF LANGUAGE on Phantom Thread (2017, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

Maria Elena of SPECIAL INTEREST onAll About My Mother (aka Todo sobre mi madre) (1999, directed by Pedro Almodóvar)

We’re all huge Pedro Almodóvar fans in Special Interest. Truly. Deeply. I have Rossy de Palma’s face tattooed on my body. Despite my love for so many of Almodóvar’s films I’d have to say my all time favorite movie is definitely Todo sobre mi madre [aka All About My Mother]. It truly has it all: torrential maternal emotions, psychedelic color, extreme wit, sensitive mundanity, fabulous costumes, a woman named Smoke, an errant nun, dyke drama, drug drama, problematic dialogue, Spanish guitar as a train traverses the countryside montage, cryptic noir-esque monologues performed by strong hurt women! Life, death, forgiveness, hope! Ceclia Roth is utterly captivating as the flawed, perfect mother, but for real, the performances across the board are just incredible. Agrado (played by Antonia San Juan) is, in my opinion,…

Maria Elena of SPECIAL INTEREST onAll About My Mother (aka Todo sobre mi madre) (1999, directed by Pedro Almodóvar)

TJ Freda of GIFT on The Matrix (1999, directed by The Wachowskis)

The Matrix is my favorite movie of all time. I first saw The Matrix when I was 11 (maybe a bit too young?) and loved it for the sci-fi and fighting scenes. The soundtrack of the movie exposed me to industrial and nu-metal music at an early age. Mainly The Prodigy, Rage Against The Machine, and Rob Zombie—bands that were fusing noise and rock with electronic music. Those bands turned me onto bands that I would deep dive into during most of my childhood, like Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein. Those bands were a segue into earlier bands like Joy Division, New Order, and Gary Numan. The intersection between electronic music and rock music has always been a big interest of mine, which had a big influence on [GIFT’s debut…

TJ Freda of GIFT on The Matrix (1999, directed by The Wachowskis)

Charlie Burchill of SIMPLE MINDS on Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979, directed by Werner Herzog)

I’ve thought about it long and hard. I’m a big fan of Werner Herzog, the director who did Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre , the Wrath of God. However, I would have to say Nosferatu, with the actor Klaus Kinski, would be at the top of my list. It was the music in it that got me. Popol Vuh is the artist who did the soundtrack and it was the first time I had heard this enchanting, weird musical soundtrack that had this sound. It was a horror movie, but it was more like a silent horror movie, which of course, it was in its original form in the 1920s. Herzog has a particular atmosphere that he always has in his movies. Just the way that he combined the music, the way it was…

Charlie Burchill of SIMPLE MINDS on Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979, directed by Werner Herzog)

Chardine Taylor-Stone of BIG JOANIE on Pretty in Pink (1986, directed by Howard Deutch)

It’s always difficult to answer the question “what is your favorite film” because it all depends on where my head is at that moment. However there is something to be said about the impact a film can have on you as a teenager, a time when you are starting to work out who you are and your place in the world and the movie that I still hold close to my heart is John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink. In my fuzzy memory I first saw it when I was about 12 years old on a random cable channel as a re-run 20 or so years after it had first been released. It was repeated every week and I watched it each time. The opening scenes of Andie [Molly Ringwald] getting dressed…

Chardine Taylor-Stone of BIG JOANIE on Pretty in Pink (1986, directed by Howard Deutch)

Kelcey Ayer of LOCAL NATIVES and JAWS OF LOVE. on The Fifth Element (1997, directed by Luc Besson)

My all-time favorite movie is a bat-shit sci-fi film called The Fifth Element. It’s one of the most creative, fun, insane movies ever made, and I can’t believe this was only Luc Besson’s second English language film (he went from Léon: The Professional to this). It’s got all the hallmarks of a great adventure film: humor, some scary moments, incredible action sequences, romance, but with all these wild quirks that only a cocky French filmmaker could pull off. It’s so colorful in every sense of the word, from the expansive sets to the garish costuming, plus some of the cutest, wobbly, chunky alien robot guys you’ve ever seen. And while Besson should be canonized for taking the chances he took, it’s the performances that seal the deal. Every side-character had enough…

Kelcey Ayer of LOCAL NATIVES and JAWS OF LOVE. on The Fifth Element (1997, directed by Luc Besson)

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