Dexter - Season One

I remember reading about Dexter before it aired and being mildly interested; a show about a forensics expert who kills other serial killers by night sounded like it had promise. I was also intrigued by the show's star, Michael C. Hall. As a fan of HBO's fantastic series Six Feet Under, I was really interested to see how much range Hall had. As it turns out, he's got a lot.

Dexter is the first Showtime original series I've ever watched, and after watching series after magical series on HBO I consider being "HBO quality" the yardstick by which all shows are judged. After watching the entire first season, I've got to say that Dexter is HBO quality in every way; the acting is top-notch, the production values are high and the writing is great. Heck, four of the actors happen to be from Oz, another HBO show that I love, and to top it all off Dexter even has an extremely clever credit sequence accompanied by a quirky and memorable theme song.

The main plot arc of the first season revolves around a serial killer that is striking Miami and baffling its police squad, and by the end of the pilot the killer makes a personal connection with Dexter. I won't say more than that, though my one remaining fear for the show is that each subsequent season will follow a "serial killer of the season" formula and get stale. By the end of season one, however, the characters and relationships have unbelievable depth, so I think there's plenty to work with going forward without relying on a new diabolical killer each season to keep things going.

Dexter himself was traumatized as a child and taken in by foster parents. Even at a young age he found himself devoid of normal human emotion, a bad trait to have given that he also discovered in himself a compulsive desire to kill. By the time of the show's current-day narrative Dexter has trained himself only to kill those who deserve it (murderers who got off on technicalities, immigrant slave traders, serial rapists), which he sees as a righteous application of his unique "talents." He's still emotionless, though, which leads him to fake his way through his relationships and social obligations (think Patrick Bateman in American Psycho); every now and then you'll even hear his inner monologue, when he says things like, "everyone else is smiling, so I should laugh and pretend I'm having a good time." He does a pretty good job of faking things, too, as only a few people detect the slightest hint that something is wrong under the surface. This aspect of the show alone offers a lot of interesting things to watch.

The depth of the show, however, comes not only from Dexter's complex character but also from the people surrounding him: his loving, earnest and somewhat dopey detective sister, his aggressive and overbearing police superiors, and his equally damaged girlfriend. Since he has no sex drive whatsoever he defines his relationship with his girlfriend as the perfect relationship; she's the victim of repeated rape and abuse and is horrified of ever opening up emotionally or sexually again. They both fake their way through what they see as a "normal" relationship and are happy to do it. Things get interesting, of course, when Dexter's pitch-perfect nice-guy act begins to put his girlfriend back into her comfort zone, which ironically moves Dexter out of his. Brilliant.

The details of Dexter's job as a blood spatter expert are fascinating, especially when we get a chance to see the reconstruction of a crime scene as he pieces together what took place. It's all the more interesting knowing that by night he's spilling blood himself. Meticulously careful, he kills without a trace and does enough research to be absolutely certain that he's killing someone who deserves it; to take an innocent life would be wrong.

It's the balancing of these elements that makes Dexter such a quality show, as does the fact that the characters go through changes and grow in different ways over the course of the first season. Shows begin to stagnate when the characters stop changing (I'm looking at you, Sopranos), and so far Dexter is doing an admirable job of putting well-realized characters into interesting situations and showing what happens. The beginning of season two will find the characters in new places with new dynamics and challenges, which is all you can ask of the establishing season of a series. I know I'll be there with my Showtime HD subscription, ready to see where Dexter goes next.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Children of Men

Children of Men is one of the best films I've seen since....

I keep starting that sentence when I tell my friends about the movie but have yet to finish it because I can't remember the last time I left a theater feeling that affected. All of the friends I saw the film with were blown away as well, and I'm counting the days until the film is officially released in America (I was lucky enough to attend a special screening at the Alamo Drafthouse, the best movie theater on earth).

When I first saw the trailer for Children of Men I remember being immediately drawn in by the sense of utter despair in the future portrayed by the film, a world in which women have stopped giving birth and humanity is living out its final years before extinction. I'm a big fan of Clive Owen, and I was into the trailer right up until the point it switched gears and revealed that there was, in fact, one woman who could apparently still bear children. At that point I tuned out, cynically certain that the film was just another "gritty" Hollywood movie that lacked any sense of integrity or guts, where everything eventually worked out happily for all of our favorite household movie stars.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I don't know where to start praising Children of Men. Every performance was fantastic, not only due to the brilliance of the actors but also due to the well-crafted, unique and memorable characters created by the film's team of writers. Alfonso Cuarón's direction was visceral and mind-blowing at times, with a few unbroken shots so long and enrapturing that I almost forgot to breathe. The art direction and set design of the film made it feel much more like a world than a linear narrative; I felt like I lived there with those desperate people. I was sucked in, experiencing the despair of the characters and identifying with their utter and complete lack of hope.

The story itself moved forward at blinding speed, kicking off from the first scene and never slowing down until the final frame. I won't go into spoilers, but let me say that the trailer takes you through about the first third of the film and doesn't give away half of what makes the movie so engrossing. It's killing me not to go into specifics, but this really is the kind of film you should go into with an open mind and no more foreknowledge than the trailer provides.

When I try to think of a single word to describe Children of Men, I can only come up with "powerful." It's a dark and bleak movie, but I wouldn't call it depressing. There are moments of tenderness and levity, but I wouldn't call it funny. It addresses ethnic tensions and the current climate of international conflict and unrest, but I wouldn't call it political. I keep coming back to thinking of it as simply powerful, nothing more and nothing less. You can't ignore it or tune it out; it's there and it will get under your skin. You'll think about its message and its ambiguities and its ability to hit you when and where you least expect.

This is a film that will stay with you.

Just go see it.

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Cormac McCarthy - The Road

I'd never read any of Cormac McCarthy's books before tackling The Road, but I decided to pick it up after seeing it mentioned in 3 or 4 different places as the newest and arguably best work of one of America's greatest living authors. I don't read a ton of high-quality literary fiction, to be frank. I generally read books for shameless entertainment, for edification, or to give in to my fair share of intellectual peer pressure. The premise of the book (a father and son's long trek across an apocalyptic wasteland) and the provocative title were enough to get me to order it from Amazon, though, and with great curiosity I dove into the work of a new writer.

The Road is a short book, clocking in at 241 pages; I read it cover to cover in one day while traveling. In addition to being short, however, the book also has an ultra-stark and minimalist writing style. McCarthy eschews quotation marks altogether and sometimes ditches the apostrophes in contractions as well, but those are merely formatting anti-flourishes; the more jarring and arresting characteristics of the writing are its utter simplicity and immediacy. To illustrate, here's a brief passage from the first chapter of the book:

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.

The story itself is just as immediate as the writing style, which gives the entire book a distinct unity of effect. While the narrative brushes over a few uneventful days here and there, it's essentially the chronicle of a few weeks of a father and son's journey across the dead post-apocalyptic wasteland of an unknown country. There's very little in-depth description of....anything, really, but McCarthy is neither lazy nor unimaginative; he's just smart enough to trust his readers to fill in the blanks. The sparseness of the writing also underscores the sparseness of the nuclear wasteland in a very real way.

The source of the devastating apocalypse is discussed only briefly as "a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions" glimpsed through a window, and the backgrounds of the characters receive only slightly more coverage. Again, the lack of superfluous detail serves to highlight what's immediately important in the tragically small family's life: What are we eating today? Will we make it through this frigid night, unable to light a fire for fear of being spotted and attacked by someone who would kill us for a can of beans? Are bands of marauders following our tracks? Will the next person we meet on the road greet us kindly or try to murder and eat us?

The book uses nothing but a few carriage returns between scenes instead of breaking the events up into traditional chapters, which further lets the events blend into one long dirge on survival. The reader can almost hear the lone reverb-drenched twang of a single dying guitar. If this isn't the world that the music of Godspeed You Black Emperor describes then I don't know what is; the opening monologue from 'The Dead Flag Blues' would be right at home in The Road:

The car's on fire. And there's no driver at the wheel. And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides. And a dark wind blows.

Cue lonely 6-string.

The bleakness of the setting and the situations in which the characters find themselves set the stage for a few bright moments, however, mainly through the stark contrast; after reading 30 pages about such a miserable, ash-covered world the reader feels a genuine swell of joy when even the smallest ray of light shines down on the father and his son. Not that they've actually seen the sun in years, mind you.

The father and son, whose names are never revealed, meet relatively few other humans in the course of their journey, but their interactions with the other near-extinct humans reveal volumes about them. The father's unconditional, unquestioning, unbreakable love for his son is made manifest time and again in the least uncertain terms possible, while his son's mixture of childlike innocence and heartbreaking weariness reveals all too much about the terrible state of the world around them. Ultimately this is a small story set in a huge, mean world, and by the time the duo reaches the end of their journey the reader is left as weary as the characters, a credit to McCarthy's writing and his ability to convey a great deal with a few words.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Buy It!

DJ Krush - Stepping Stones: The Self-Remixed Best (Soundscapes)

In the pantheon of great ideas, this one falls somewhere between Google and the wheel: Pick a selection of DJ Krush's best songs and have them remixed by....DJ Krush. How can you go wrong when that's your jumping-off point?

This album is as good as the concept sounds, though to be clear I'm only reviewing the second disc of this 2 CD set. The first CD is comprised of remixes of tracks that Krush did with rappers, and I've never been a fan of Krush's work with lyricists; having a rapper over some of the best, most textured downtempo beats in the business just seems like an unnecessary distraction. Whether that makes me a heretic or a purist is up for debate, but I'd like to believe that I'm the latter.

The selection of songs is skewed fairly heavily toward his later stuff (lots of representation from Jaku, Zen and Kakusei), but the selections from his early work are stellar, notably Meiso's 'Duality' (with a classic guest performance from a pre-Endtroducing DJ Shadow) and Strictly Turntablized's 'Kemuri'; I'd be hard-pressed to think of a better song off each album. I would have loved to have seen at least one track from Ki-Oku, but for all I know that collaborative album is tied up in a rights battle.

For an album with songs covering such a long time period it feels surprisingly cohesive. I've seen Krush live a few times, and this record seems to really capture his live sound. While the songs are mostly downtempo, the methodical pacing and dense atmospherics give the collection a very unified vibe. Surprisingly, one of the highlights of the album is a song almost entirely without drums, the ultra-mellow 'Day's End (After-Dusk Mix)'. Though it originally appeared on Zen, the track's off-kilter trumpet work could have easily been from Toshinori Kondo's performances on Ki-Oku.

'Drum' and 'Duck Chase (Double-Up Mix)' are the album's only truly up-tempo songs, and while they're okay they detract from the overall moody vibe of the record; at least they're next to each other in the track listing and thus only disrupt the flow once. 'Kemuri (Untouchable Mix)' is frankly a bit of a letdown, but then again the original is one of Krush's best songs ever, so maybe improving it is too lofty a goal even for the Zen master himself.

Aside from 'Day's End (After-Dusk Mix)', the album's other standout track is clearly 'Duality (2006K Mix)'. The original, like 'Kemuri', is one of Krush's most classic moments, though to be brutally honest the 2nd half of the song (created by DJ Shadow) blows Krush's half out of the water. Thus, you've gotta give credit to Krush for recognizing greatness and highlighting the 2nd half of the song in the remix, getting to it quickly and letting its original brilliance shine with some added texture that never strays too far from the original track's intent.

At the end of the day I'd recommend this album to any DJ Krush fan and to any fan of downtempo music in general, though that recommendation is honestly based on the highlights of the album, as some of the filler tracks are skippers. You can buy the Soundscapes CD by itself as an import, but it's actually cheaper just to get the 2 CD set and throw the first disc in the trash can.

3.75/5 Stars

Buy It!

Converge - No Heroes

I have a lot of respect for this band. For the last 15 or so years they've been playing heavy music, and at this point I believe in everything they do. You can't play this kind of music and tear yourself apart on stage every night for that long and not love the hardcore lifestyle, and with No Heroes they reiterate why they're one of the most respected heavy bands out there.

The album takes a while to find its stride, mainly because it starts off with 5 songs that range from 0:58 to 1:43 long. The tracks are all great, but they're over almost before you get a chance to experience them. I would have appreciated at least one set of songs that were clearly meant to go together, like the 'Drop Out' / 'Hope Street' combo off the band's previous album You Fail Me, but when the title track kicks off in the 6 spot you know it's a full-on Converge album.

Despite the fact that the main riff could come from a mid-term project in a Metal Riffs 101 class, the unflinching intensity of the song, which bounces from chorus to bridge to verse to breakdown in a nonstop flurry, ultimately drives it home as a song worthy of the album's title. The next track, 'Plagues', serves as a sludgy meltdown after the craziness that preceded it. While it's a surprisingly effective opener live, the greatness of the following track basically turns it into a skipper; when you know that 'Grim Heart / Black Rose' is just around the corner there's no reason to wait through a 5-minute meltdown.

I'll say right now that 'Grim Heart / Black Rose' is one of the best songs Converge has ever written. The first half of the song is a slow, dark dirge sung by guest vocalist Jonah Jenkins. What?! Clean vocals on a Converge album? Yep, and it works. While I find the first portion of the song a little cookie cutter due to the lack of variation in the vocal line, the riff at 3:48 hits you like a sledgehammer in the chest, and the fact that the clean vocals continue instead of breaking into screams only highlights the power of the song. From here on there's no turning back. The song melts down into a minimalist mix of guitar and bass with just a touch of cymbals before the build of builds begins. While not quite on par with the greatest of GYBE!'s climaxes, the final third of 'Grim Heart / Black Rose' is pure post-rock. And it's unreal. It's hard to believe that the same band that started the album with 5 tracks shorter than a commercial break has the patience to let a song grow to a boil like this, but they do. And when the bottom finally drops out the closing explosion is ridiculously brutal. I get excited just typing about it.

The next two tracks, 'Orphaned' and 'Lonewolves', are standard Converge songs, which is fine since a filler track on a Converge album would be the crowning achievement of some wannabe band's career. Once those two are out of the way, 'Versus' comes out of the gate with burning intensity and never lets up. Even the measure-ending triplets are on fire, and the time-cycling chorus riff at 0:49 incorporates a high note that I can only describe as crazy. It's not any sort of virtuoso performance, it's just a super-interesting choice that somehow makes the high/low metal riff thing sound fresh again. Every time I hear that note I wince in pleasure and tilt my head, trying to get inside the note. It's a good thing they did something interesting with 'Versus', because the next song is a disappointment.

Along with 'Plagues', I feel like 'Trophy Scars' is the album's only other misstep. It starts off well enough, but as soon as it devolves into the way-too-emo palm-muted all-out whining I have to skip to the next track. The lyrics are just too trite. Later parts of the song are quite good, but the constant returns to the seemingly never-ending emo-whining are just too much to overcome. It's just not good.

Luckily the song is followed by 'Bare My Teeth', which reminds me of a longer version of 'Hope Street' from You Fail Me. It's got a great melodic hardcore opening riff and a brutal stop/start bridge, but it's also longer than a minute long and is thus a nice gem found toward the end of the record. 'To The Lions' is a perfectly competent closer (and it gets extra points for the gratuitous use of the pick slide), but on some level the entire second half of the album feels like the afterglow of 'Grim Heart / Black Rose'. On previous albums, 'To The Lions' would have been a standout, but on No Heroes it's merely a very good song, which is really just a credit to how amazing the high points of the album are. By the time the song fades out with what can only be described as a guitar lead edging suspiciously close to guitar solo territory (I think of it as a pseudo-solo) you feel chewed up and spit out. But in a good way.

Production-wise, this is the best-sounding album that the band's guitarist, Kurt Ballou, has ever turned out. He's produced and engineered numerous albums at his own GodCity Studios, but this is the first time that he's taken the reigns on a Converge album. Maybe that's what it took to finally nail the sound that showed promise on Jane Doe but sounded a little too thin and noisy on that outing. You Fail Me got closer to the signature Converge sound, but Ballou finally nailed it on No Heroes. Every element of the music is well-represented, and this is hands-down the best that Ben Koller's drums have ever sounded; the bass drum finally sounds thundering but tight, and the snare and cymbals have all sorts of crispness. The guitars and Nate Newton's bass of course sound wonderfully dirty, and the vocals are as raspy and brutal as always. Put together, the distortion and blending of the elements makes the entire band sound like one huge angry instrument, not a collection of 4 guys each doing their own thing. It's amazing.

Lyrically there's not much to say. Jacob Bannon has apparently had some unfortunate experiences with women, and the track names alone should be enough of a clue that Converge is still singing about pain, failure and betrayal. The album art is also classic Converge; Bannon went nuts with the muted colors, dark imagery and Photoshop filters. It works, but it seems a little too well-composed when compared to the group's ultra-raw sound.

All in all this is a fantastic, powerful album, and if it weren't for a few throwaway songs I would give it 5 stars in a heartbeat, since the best songs on the album are life-changers. The centerpiece songs really give the album a heart that I've never experienced this fully on a Converge record; it doesn't just feel like brutality for the sake of it, which is what helps this album transcend into the land of the classics.

4.5/5 Stars

Buy It!