Movie, Music, Book
Here are your three must-haves for the week:
Film: The Five Obstructions. Lars Von Trier's doc films the results of a challenge he makes to his directing mentor, Jurgen Leth, to re-make his short film "The Perfect Human" five times, with a series of obstacles designed to make him fail miserably. It's completely engrossing and completely cool.
Music: The Notwist- Neon Golden. This record puts the Postal Service to shame with it's seamless blending of live instrumentation and electronic drum beats, with Markus Acher's plaintive vocals echoing less cheesy lines than that Death Cab guy. Is "mesmerizing" an okay word again?
Book: Blindness, by Jose Saramago. This book won the Nobel Prize for literature, and there's a reason. Writing with possibly the most emotionless, flat, and detached style humanly possible, Saramago forces you to consider what bearing witness from an outside perspective means with this book-length rumination of human cruelty and compassion. Nobody does epic like the Spaniards.