I've been having a pretty good weekend so far. Work has been pretty good, aside from having to deal with the usual gaggle of cheap fucks and dumb fucks that come into our store (I still can't believe the large number of people I've encountered while working at a bookstore that have absolutely no idea what the words "fiction" and "nonfiction" mean).

Friday Night: went back to the Tempe Cinema on Guadalupe & McClintock to attend another One Night Cinema event. The people who organize/sponsor this event should be canonized, considering the kinds of films they've been able to get into our cinephile-hostile environment. After watching Charles Burnett's astounding "Killer Of Sheep" at Tempe Cinemas, I've been making a point of trying to attend as many future One Night events as possible. The film they screened on Friday, "Day Night Day Night" was just fantastic. The film's premise: following around a young girl, who is mentally and physically preparing to kill herself in a suicide bomber attack on Times Square. What makes this film work so well is the tremendous amount of tension it gets out of its story. You know from the get-go that the girl is a terroist, and rather than try and demonize her, the film just depicts her as humanely as possible, which is what it makes it deeply uncomfortable. You get to see her ordering egg rolls, bashfully asking her co-conspirators (clad in ski masks) to join in her in eating her last pizza because she doesn't like to eat alone, taking a bath waiting for the bombmakers to arrive (this scene in particular is really unnerving, because they make the sound of her scrubbing her skin with soap sound incredibly loud and harsh, like two stones grinding together). There's no music in the film, just a very astute use of sound effects to create literally nail-biting suspense (another scene ups the volume on the click of a car turning signal, making it sound like the ticking of a bomb). Its an extraordinary film, shot on a cheap budget, but it looks and sounds great. Its also quite funny in parts, although it uses the darkest kind of comedy (while shooting her farewell martyr video, the film crew/terroists keep interrupting her and make her put on different outfits, try different backgrounds and poses to make her look more heroic).

There was a post-screening talk and Q&A with Steven Corman, an ASU professor who has worked on counter-terroism advisory panels. He gave a mini-lecture on the psychology and motives of a suicide bomber which was quite enlightening. The Q&A, though, was pretty uncomfortable. The One Night crowd was pretty... old, to say the least. A lot of senior citizens in attendance, many of whom used the Q&A as an opportunity to vent about the evils of Muslims and ask such probing, even-handed questions like "why does Islam breed so much hate" (part of the irony of the Islam-bashing in the Q&A is that the bomber in "Day" is never outed as a Muslim; indeed, the identity and motivations of the bomber and the cell she works with is never revealed). Still, in spite of some of the ugliness of the Q&A (which was no fault of Professor Corman), it couldn't sour my mood after watching such a great piece of film art.

Watch it when it comes out on DVD, people. Its slow in places, but its definitely worth it.

Day Night Day Night trailer:



Saturday:

Went to Modified to catch the John Vanderslice/Bowerbirds show. The Bowerbirds were great. Its not the type of music I'm all that keen on normally (very folky, guitar/accordion/violin/some hollow and bouncy percussion) but they won me over, so much so that I bolted over to their merch table after their set to pick up their album. What I liked about them most was that they weren't twee, even when they sang songs with goddamn bird calls in the lyrics, they did it all with the utmost sincerity. 2/3rds of the band played barefoot like freakin' hippies... I should hate the Bowerbirds, but I can't. They were just great. Vanderslice, on the other hand.... he plays guitar well, his lyrics sounded pretty good, and he seems like a really sweet guy (he was handing cookies out to the audience between songs), but something about his voice and music just didn't connect with me. It was music that sounded artful and tasteful and good by most standards, but it just didn't move me. I actually tried to leave 1/2 through the set, but the parking lot was so packed there was no way I could've backed my Civic out without hitting somebody's car, so I was pretty much inside the unusually hot-and-sweaty Modified building, sipping on root beer, and waiiting for Vanderslice's set to end. Still worth going to see the Bowerbirds, though, so the night wasn't a bust.


A final public service announcement: the new M.I.A.album absolutely kills. I can't stop playing the damn thing.