As 2013 comes to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.
Perhaps it’s poetic license that has seen They Might Be Giants—Johns Flansburgh and Linnell—through a voluminous series of ups, downs and holding patterns over its three decades in operation. TMBG’s second adult album in five years and its 16th overall, Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce) boasts 25 new songs. Much of Nanobots takes advantage of what is now a fully acclimated quintet that also includes guitarist Dan Miller, bassist Danny Weinkauf and drummer Marty Beller. “We’d been functioning as a two-piece for 10 years, and we really just sort of talked ourselves into it,” says Linnell of the bumpy transition, which began in 1992. “It’s still John and I making the decisions, but we lean heavily on the other guys for a lot of the musical resources. It’s a benevolent dictatorship.” Flansburgh will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new TMBG feature.
Flansburgh: If you, like me, find commercial movies super-fake, and too often find independent cinema cute and predictable, you gotta check out John Cassavetes. While he’s probably best known as Mia Farrow‘s husband in Rosemary’s Baby—where he seems typecast as a controlling satan-worshiper—Cassavetes did even more magnificent work behind the camera than in front of it. From the mid-’60s through the ’70s, Cassavetes was a pioneer in independent cinema. His films are largely improvised and break countless Hollywood conventions. The subject matter is totally adult—often dealing with sexual desperation, vanity, alcoholism, emotional collapse and madness. They are rough—the sound is terrible—and their aesthetic is almost anti-commercial. Unlike indie movies of today, which often seem like the efforts of farm teams auditioning for the big leagues, Cassavetes’ films work entirely by their own set of rules. The action can be explosive or flat, and the arc of the stories will leave people studying screenwriting shaking their fists. But his films are bolder, braver and more original than anything you’ll see at Sundancenext year. Faces, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie and Opening Night are all strange, singular films well worth viewing.
Video after the jump.
