“If Rosie Thomas, Yann Tiersen, Jars of Clay, Eisley, Sia, Damien Rice, Ray LaMontagne, Iron & Wine, Bon Iver, Nick Drake, The Weepies, Beirut, and Nickel Creek were drawn with a 256 Crayola pack on a huge coloring book and then melted down and mixed with the first flowers of spring, the early morning dew on a hot summer’s day, straw plucked from an old scarecrow, and clouds culled from a winter sky, then baked into a giant man-shaped flan that accidentally burned in the oven and could not be eaten by people so was driven to a park where it was scattered in front of a bramble bush and a flock of birds came down and ate it and started singing, then that song might sound like Claire Anthony.” –– DTAClaire Anthony
Look out the window at dusk in the dead of winter. Trees, long stripped of their colorful plumage, are stark and black against the blue of the darkening sky. All alone. Their branches reach for the stars, reaching for their small ancient light. The wood is dry and cracked from the harsh elements of a cold winter. Winds from every direction have seemingly battered the life out of the mangled organism. A branch or two is felled with every gust of wind, which are then covered over with the freshly fallen snow, and forgotten. Snow and ice coat the trunk and remaining branches like a well-worn fitted suit. The tree shakes in the blustery winds of arctic origin (where there are no trees, for good reason), like chattering teeth, the branches rattle together. The tree turns its attention anxiously to the east. Waiting with great anticipation as it shivers through the night. The night is cold. The sun breaks over the horizon and wraps it’s warm, yellow arms of light and heat around the cold, covered wood. The suit of frozen precipitation is melted; stripped away like a robe dropped to the floor. Branches, previously weighed down under the cover of snow and darkness, readjust & reach for the sky once again, like a good stretch after a long nap. Light gives heat gives life, yet light is born out of darkness.
I’ve known Claire Anthony for nearly ten years. Ever since I’ve known her, she has continually left me in awe, and even intimidated with her depth and incredible talent. There is a quality to her performance style that is hard to pinpoint. It is something that cannot be learned or taught. It is not something one can emulate. It is a quality that is inborn. There is a vocal quality that gently, yet firmly grabs your attention. It beats back at distraction like the deluge beats back conflagration, and guides your focus. Even with everything else fallen away, the honesty is disarming. Despite any nerves that may be present, the performance is still as if we have joined Claire in her bedroom at 3am, listening in as she sings and plucks her way through songs freshly copied from the tablet of her heart. I’ve found it is rare that a performer can combine talent with this honesty and vocal expressiveness. You believe every word because every word feels true, because every word is true. But I am biased, I suppose …
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Claire and her Taylor
It will be hard for me to not have this last paragraph sound exactly like Gina’s …
Her lyrics are steeped in poetic imagery and her voice conveys emotion where mere words fall short … just reread the first paragraph of this post … the scene I described is what her music is. Her songs wrap their long, loving arms around you and warm you back to life. Visit her myspace. Listen to the songs I’ve linked here, and the ones there. If you’re in Western Washington, go to one of her gigs. You will be in awe too. Listen:
I probably should not be the one pointing to this, but since W has seldomly been seen, I will excitedly and emphatically point (and link) to this gem:
We could definitely devote more posts to his related links, but, just check them out after watching. This guy is too talented to go undiscovered for this long.
Gina and Claire (whose post will be going up later this week) are awesome by themselves. Put them together, and well, the awesome is increased exponentially …
I’ll probably write a whole post about this soon, but for now, in the words Zach Galifianakis wrote for Natalie Portman, “I’ve got something I need to get off my chest.”
lil’ Wayne is NOT talented. You like dancing to his music, fine, that’s cool, but that’s a producer, not lil’ Wayne. I may dedicate my life to proving this. Normally, I’m not a guy who likes to hate on stuff in print. Yet, I’m just tired of people fawning over lil’ Wayne, calling him buuuulllshit like “best rapper ever,” when guys like Mos Def can write and freestyle circles around him. Have you heard The Ecstatic?!?! Not only does Mos actually speak of love, unity and faith while Wayne raps about nothing but crime, money and sex, but the Boogie Man sounds great doing it, while Weezie sounds like a drunk, self-conscious 12 year old trying to impress his big brother.
So, here is some freestyling from the gentlemen in question:
There are definitely a few clever turns of phrase in there, unfortunately they are separated by huge portions of inane nonsense that doesn’t actually mean anything.
It is normal to take breaks between thoughts, that is when you clutch. Clutching is when you use common rhyming schemes and patterns to fill space while you enter your next flow so you can keep freestyling without awkward gaps. Weezy seems completely unable to clutch, he also doesn’t have any extended flows but merely isolated phrases. The result is… annoying.
Now, time for one of the best freestyling emcees on the planet. Mos Def is a poet. Period.
Not really any clutching there either, but that’s because his brain seems to work really fucking fast and he doesn’t need to.
And, in case you thought Mos can’t do it every time:
Marty: “Okay, she looks like she is about 11 or 12 years old, but…”
Todd: “I can wait. I solemnly vow to save myself for her.” *
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Chloë Grace Moretz. Where the hell was she when I was 13? Had she been around, I certainly would have had the largest crush in the history of 13 year old boys. I think the 13 year old deep down inside actually does have a crush on her.
As it stands, I am not 13. However, I think it may be possible that, in an unprecedented perfect storm of talent, charm and the fickle circumstances necessary for good filmmaking, that Ms. Chloë Grace just may be my favorite actress before she can legally drive. Seriously.
It started when she played the knowing, no nonsense little sister in (500) Days of Summer. It was a good start, and set a strong foundation in my movie-watching experience of her. Yet, had that been followed up with nothing more than her performance in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I probably would have forgotten she existed, (In large part because I will never see that movie and all accounts I have read make it sound like it should have been more accurately titled Diary of a Selfish, Unlikeable, Manipulative, Lying Little Asshole).
Had her career following her turn in (500) Days resulted in the all too common relegation to the typical little kid roles, of which she has done plenty, I would have thought of her only in terms of the hopes that she become one of the child star success stories and not one of the horrifying tales we so often hear.
Fortunately, her role in Diary was more a sign of her range than a true sign of what every role she took would look like. Instead, as mentioned above, there is very good reason to think that Chloë Grace Moretz is going to be entertaining the hell out of us for many years to come, and equally good reason to think that, if things fall the right way, she may be my favorite actress by the time she can get her Learner’s Permit.
Scott, that is a pretty bold claim, what are these reasons of which you write? Well, I’m glad I asked myself that, here is my answer.
First is the primary reason I decided to write this post. It is the fact that she stole every single scene in which she appeared in Friday’s remarkably fun Kick-Ass. In a film filled with immensely entertaining characters, she flat out ran away as the most entertaining. Her performance as an actress simply felt older than she was. Her sense of the moment, of the scene, of what makes a line funny or poignant simply reaches beyond her years. Most young folks deliver lines, Moretz acts. This is something that is quickly becoming a common theme for her.
So far, she is my favorite character in my favorite movie this year. That might change thanks to upcoming movies like Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Still, the fact that it is true at the moment is crraaaazzzyyyy!
<As a brief aside, I LOVED Kick-Ass!
I completely understand where some people are coming from in their arguments that the film sexualizes teenagers while placing them in the midst of unbelievable violence and profanity, they are right. However, the reason I still loved the movie is because of my experience when I was a teenager. The film wasn’t a false sexualization, it wasn’t profanity you wouldn’t hear every day at every school in America, and it was a violence fantasized and role-played by every boy and some of the girls I knew. It was indicative of what the brains of America’s youth are really like.
Thus, if the content of Kick-Ass disturbs you, don’t rail against the film. Instead, hug a kid (yours or one you know well enough to hug), take them out for ice cream, become a mentor, tutor a kid, listen to a teenager as they talk about the overwhelming anger and helplessness some of them feel in the face of bullies and circumstances they can do nothing to change, which the movie nailed.
Also, if us adults can learn to fight our own bystander apathy, then kids won’t have to feel like they are the only ones who might change things. However, to go into more detail would require another post, so, back to Chloë Grace.>
Second-of-ly (to quote Tobias Fünke), another reason that I think Ms. Moretz will continue to rock out with her socks out, is great roles on the horizon. Hit Girl was that special confluence of a great role/character and exciting talent. This is something that can be fickle, plenty of great actors and actresses have been cast in doomed roles that make them look like utterly awful actors (the first example that jumps into my head is Gene Hackman in Behind Enemy Lines).
We know Chloë Grace has the talent, but she needs to land the right roles too, and there are some pretty fantastic roles that she has already been cast in, increasing the chances that the future looks bright.
Most obviously, there is her role in the next Scorsese film, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. This will mean a starring role, in an adaptation of strong source material (the book only takes about an hour to read for those interested), in a Martin Scorsese Picture. Hello! That sounds like a hanging curveball just waiting to be knocked out of the park by Moretz.
There is also Let Me In, the American adaptation of the amazing Norwegian film Let The Right One In (if you haven’t seen Let The Right One In, stop reading my stupid post and go watch it RIGHT NOW, it is available on the instant queue through Netflix. [If you don’t have Netflix… well, I don’t really know how to help you]).
Originally, Moretz being cast in Let Me In wouldn’t fill me with any sort of hope, because Let The Right One In is a movie that should be left alone in its original form. Usually, Americanizing a foreign “horror” film results in gore, stupidity and schlock.
However, like Homer Simpson’s urge to kill, my urge to hope is rising. The Departed proved that an Americanization can be smart and well-crafted. More importantly, a fairly recent interview with the adaptation’s director over at Cinematical gives significant reason to believe he really gets it!
This could mean that her role as the little girl damned to exist eternally as a terrible predator in the form of a child will present another source of dark, poignant, troublingly entertaining material to let Moretz flex her acting muscles. That may be a wonderful prospect.
So much can happen in the next few years. Chloë Grace may decide she doesn’t want to act anymore, or these roles could hit production problems and go the way of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman or At World’s End. However, if her perfomances as a precocious young orphan and a lonely vampire go as well as they could, thus leading to even more great job offers for her, then Chloë Grace Moretz just may join Leonardo DiCaprio, who is probably my favorite actor, as the actress most likely to get me to the theater based purely on her presence. I must admit, I’m rooting for it to happen.
