A few days ago, I was trying to think of cool songs to add to the mix CD of 50's, 60's, and 70's music that I was making as a belated Christmas gift for my sister, and I decided to download "Sukiyaki" on itunes. It's a pretty cool song and was on an episode of Mad Men that I had particularly liked, so I figured it was worth buying.
Itunes has introduced me to some awesome music in the past through the suggested songs that show up after you download a song, so I decided to listen to the samples they offered; lo and behold, the first one to come up was THE song that I had heard more than three years ago and been searching for ever since. Except that it wasn't Elvis (even though he actually did record a cover of the song), it was a guy named Terry Stafford. I have to say though, I think Terry's version is way cooler than Elvis' take.
In a way, it's a little creepy that itunes knows my musical tastes so well, but you know what, it's kind of cool, too. Thanks itunes for reuniting me with this gem. I salute you.
Winter break has unfortunately come to an end, and I have just completed my first week of the winter quarter. The break was fun while it lasted, though. Christmas and New Year's were lovely, even though the weather was unusually cold by LA standards. Daniel and I drove to Palm Springs on New Year's Day to spend a couple of days with a few of Daniel's frat brothers and their girlfriends. It was quite strange driving through miles and miles of barren desert to suddenly come upon this man-made paradise of immaculate green lawns and palm trees out in the middle of nowhere.
Apparently, there's not a whole lot to do in Palm Springs except golf or go hiking, and it was far too cold to do much of either, so we stayed pretty close to the hotel except for a minor excursion to the downtown area. I had never been to Palm Springs before, but I somehow had this image of a cool, kind of funky, retro desert resort town in my head. Stars like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and Sinatra had owned vacation homes there at one point, so there had to be something worth checking out, right? Not so much... the downtown area was mostly made up of your average middle America strip malls: Petcos, Targets, and Michaels craft stores galore. Everything that the retired Palm Springs residents might need, I suppose. I was pretty disappointed. Regardless, it's still nice to get out of the city once in awhile, so the change in scenery was appreciated.
The other highlight of my break was finally getting to see Django Unchained, which I had been looking forward to for months. I hadn't been very impressed by Quentin's last film, Inglorious Basterds (I can't pinpoint exactly why, it just didn't feel like a Tarantino movie), so I wasn't sure what to expect with Django. Thankfully, the movie exceeded my expectations and then some. It's still not older Quentin, or even on par with Kill Bill, but at this point, I have accepted the fact that Quentin is evolving as a filmmaker. My favorite Tarantinto films are Jackie Brown and Kill Bill vol. 1, but I can't expect every Quentin film to be like those two; he made his Pam Grier blaxploitation and spaghetti western kung fu flicks, and now he's moving on.
I had a couple of minor issues with Django, mainly regarding how historically accurate it is (my readings from my early African American lit class were really fresh in my mind since I had just finished the course a couple of weeks prior), but I understand that that's not the point of the movie. Quentin has never claimed to be historically accurate. Django is basically a fantasy revenge western, so Quentin was going to take whatever artistic liberties he saw fit to make the film the way he wanted. I think that it would be interesting to see more films about slavery in the future... there are just so many stories that have the potential to become really great films. Frederick Douglass' "Narrative" especially comes to mind. He even has a kind of "Django" moment when he decides to finally fight back against his slave driver, Mr. Covey. If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend Douglass' work.
I won't spoil any of the main plot points for those who haven't seen Django, but I will say that I found Samuel L. Jackson's character highly amusing for multiple reasons. For one, it was just totally unexpected to see him in that kind of a role since he usually plays the badass vigilante type, but secondly, it made me think of the spat between Jackson and Spike Lee back in the 90's when Jackson shot off an angry response to Lee's criticism of Tarantino's use of the N-word in Jackie Brown, to which Lee replied by calling Jackson a "'House Negro' defending the master."
Were Tarantino and Jackson taking a swipe at Lee by basically making Jackson's character a house slave defending his beloved master Candy, played by a super-creepy Leonardo Dicaprio? Maybe it wasn't intentional, but it sure made me chuckle. Speaking of Leonardo Dicaprio (or as I fondly referred to him during my tween years, Leo), Daniel does a seriously uncanny imitation of the weird Texan plantation owner accent that Dicaprio uses in the film. Considering that Daniel looks absolutely nothing like Leonardo Dicaprio or a Texan plantation owner, it's downright freaky (much to his delight and amusement).
The acting performances really were great, it's a shame that neither Jamie or Dicaprio were nominated for Oscars this year. Hopefully Christopher Waltz will win the Best Supporting Actor nom, though.
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