Mixed Up

Squat 3 Today I finally mailed out my compilation for Squat, a CD swap club of which I’m a charter member. Way back in the early days, like February 2002, the whole concept of a CD swap club — in which a small group of people each assemble their own compilation of rockin’ tunes, burn it to CD, and mail a copy to each of the other members — was rare and novel. I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure our club’s founder was one of the very first pioneers in the concept.

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Hot Squats

SquatSpeaking of media clubs, I can neither confirm nor deny that I’m lucky enough to be able to claim a charter membership in Todd Levin’s clever Squat CD-swapping club. If twenty or so members of this club each made nineteen copies of an eclectic mix CD full of show-offish, esoteric songs and distributed them to the other members, then I may or may not know anything about that. This CD design for Squat is unconfirmed.

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Moving Pictures

The Film MovementThe Film Movement is an idea with a lot of promise: once-monthly distribution of truly independent films on DVD or VHS to subscribers via U.S. Mail. “Film Movement scours the world’s top festivals to bring members 12 outstanding films each year.” One day we’ll be downloading our booty from these kinds of clubs and storing it on massive personal hard drives, but for now, the US$20 per month fee seems like a reasonable price to pay for a hard copy. The first movie ships in December.

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Mob Mentality

The SopranosIt’s nothing new to say that “The Sopranos” has got to be the best thing on television, but I have to addmy voice to the chorus nevertheless. Having recently caught up on the first three seasons via their DVD releases and watched the fourth season premiere at a friend’s earlier this evening, I have to say that almost everything written in praise of this show is actually true — it is a meticulously crafted dramatic tapestry, it is funnier and scarier than most anything ever seen on television, and it is just that good. What strikes me most about it is how perfectly balanced it is, how it’s constituted of exactly the right amounts of humor, pathos, drama and violence. Now, if only I had HBO.

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Death of a Party

24 Hour Party PeopleOh yeah, so two days ago I saw “24 Hour Party People,” Michael Winterbottom’s chronicle of Manchester impressario Tony Wilson and his Factory Records empire.The trailer was half wildly promising and half very worrisome, but I’m happy to say that the former part won out, thankfully. “24 Hour Party People” is consistently hilarious and restlessly inventive, engagingly manic and deeply comic. I had a great time watching it. And if director Michael Winterbottom fawns a little too much over the Ian Curtis character, the movie is still loaded with far fewer pretensions than the average pop history movie.

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