Things were looking grim for a while there, but with the WGA strike finally over, the Oscar ceremony will go on as planned. Tune in to ABC at 5 p.m. tonight to watch the show live. Or you could just read about it here!That’s right—I’ll be liveblogging the Academy Awards for your reading pleasure. Refresh your browser frantically for up-to-the-minute announcements of the winners. Sure, you could just check IMDB, but they simply can’t offer the same snarktastic commentary. (Snarktastic commentary contingent on the ceremony itself, but given how over-the-top the Oscars are every year, I think we can count on something to mock.)See you all in 40 minutes! Read the rest of this entry »

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We don’t consider it often, but music is really scientific. Although Paul McCartney often composed in his sleep, music is made up of many complicated elements—melody, rhythm, texture, and timbre among other things. It’s just as much about numbers as it is notes. This truth is expressed in the final scene of Amadeus when Mozart is dictating “Requiem” on his deathbed for Antonio Salieri. As you watch Mozart volley his ideas to Salieri and reach a mutual understanding of the piece with him, you acquire a good sense of how music follows certain rules and principles that allow musicians to open the doors to the rooms where their colleagues create music.

But the aspect that makes music special is the human element (yes, that’s from the DOW chemicals commercial). All art is a product of human thought, experiences, and, most importantly, feelings. And without emotion, music is just a computer program that has no function or a math equation that solves no problem. For all the utility of polyphony and poetry, music is nothing if it doesn’t move people.

It is in this realm that Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea succeeds like only the best records do. Read the rest of this entry »

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