My Month of Entertainment – October 2006

May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006

October was another relatively slow month of entertainment for The Boy...at least in comparison to the high standard set over the summer.

Books

Bob Dylan, Performing Artist: 1974-1986, The Middle Years, Paul Williams
Bob Dylan, Performing Artist: 1986-1990 and Beyond, Paul Williams

As I mentioned in a previous post, I absolutely loved Part One of this series, so I thought the sensible (and nerdy) thing to do would be to nab the next two. Williams is a Dylan fan, and it shows, but he’s both adoring and critical, and he really knows his stuff.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Charles Kindleberger
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Peter Bernstein

What can I say? I’m trying to, like, expand my horizons or something.

Music

Z, My Morning Jacket
The Tennessee Fire, My Morning Jacket
At Dawn, My Morning Jacket
Live at the 9:30 Club: 08-16-2002, My Morning Jacket

I got Z way back when during August’s Chicago music exchange...finally got around to listening to it near the end of September, and holy crap was I blown away. There’s not a single 5-star song on the album, but every song is 4 stars. It’s the kind of album that sneaks up on you...you get about six songs in and realize, “Wow, I really like every one of these.” So I did the thing I normally do in this situation...as soon as I realized how good Z is, I hopped onto eMusic and downloaded the three albums available there. I haven’t worked my way through all of them yet, but...it had been a while since a band caught me off-guard like this. I should have known they were good, though...Eddie Vedder’s been hyping them for a while. But apparently I have to discover bands on my own terms.

John Wesley Harding, Bob Dylan

Somehow I never had bought this one. I have almost all of the other albums (even some of the crappy ones), but this one had eluded my grasp. So I fixed that. Strong material here. I obviously knew “Watchtower,” but “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “Dear Landlord,” and the title track were favorites of mine. This isn’t Highway 61 or Blood on the Tracks, but it’s worth owning.

Movies

This month’s Netflix rentals: Thank You for Smoking, Inside Man, Lucky Number Slevin, X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

We didn’t quite crank through them at as high a pace as we were going. Homecoming at Mizzou can likely be blamed for that. But anyhoo, I made some comments about Thank You for Smoking in a previous post. Inside Man and X-Men 3 were both strong, though my favorite of the month was actually Slevin. The trailer for Slevin made it look like a pretty interesting movie, but the reviews just weren’t that great. Well, screw the critics, I guess. There are plenty of twists and turns in this movie, but they come at a rate you can anticipate. To me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If the twists are still satisfying, who cares if you saw them coming? But Josh Hartnett did a credible job, as did Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, and everybody else. The random henchmen were quite entertaining.

(Next up: American Dreamz and Man on Fire)

Oh, and I bought Red Dragon at Target for $5. Not a wonderful movie, but it’s a decent adaptation of a wonderful book. And it was $5.