Happy Leap Day! And welcome to the first installment of 3 & 30. At the end of every month, we’ll each be sharing one record, one film, and one other wild card cultural product beyond those categories we’ve been loving (or thinking about) over the past 4ish weeks. That’s the 3 — we have more on the 30 part if you scroll to the end, which will properly debut next month. For now, here’s what we’ve been enjoying in February:
Record of the month
Elliott: Velour 100 - Of Color Bright (1997)
Have loved Velour 100 for a few years now so I was pumping my fist when Keegan Bradford mentioned them on the Godcast episode of Endless Scroll (a must-listen for fellow recovering evangelicals/current music fanatics like myself). Much of my favorite music is ‘90s shoegaze/dream pop, but what sets Velour 100 apart from the greats of that era (other than being Christian) is their impassioned vocals, paired with an almost naked yearning in the lyrics. Karin Oliver and Tess Wiley rotate singing duties; one gentle, the other more commanding, both lovely. Behind them, the guitars range from heavy and sludgy (“Pressed Flower”) to light and jangly (“Sky From Underwater”, “Dolphin Grey”). Sometimes you get both (“Tumble”).
This record has always sounded like spring to me so you could say I’m going Punxsutawney Phil mode and trying to jumpstart the season early.
Shawn: Friko — Where we’ve been, Where we go from here
“Everyone is talking about this” can often translate to 10 Music Twitter personalities popping off in a given week, so it bears repeating for everyone beyond the bubble: the Friko record feels special. This Chicago duo, which usually sound like far more than that, recall the try-hard, halcyon days of blog rock. It’s hard to overstate how much of an antidote Where we’ve been, Where we go from here registers as to the stasis of songwriter-centric contemporary indie (cool, overly literal downtempo detachment — to say nothing of the bands who used to trade in this stuff but then chased Springsteen or Neil Young). Singer Niko Kapetan’s voice warbles and frays throughout the record, but when it finds a money refrain and repeats and crescendos and builds and builds and builds on a song like “Get Numb To It!”, there’s nothing more galvanizing. I’ve rarely felt more confident in a new band bringing the heat live from what we’ve got on the first record. (No pressure :))
Film of the month
Elliott: Hotel Monterey (Chantal Akerman, 1973)
I’ve fallen in love with what they call “slow cinema” and it doesn’t get slower than this folks. Hotel Monterey is so simple on paper (65 minutes of mostly still shots of the inside of a hotel in ‘70s New York), but few artists could make something as moving and gripping as what Chantal Akerman and DP Babette Mangolte do here. Their compositions and lighting captured on 16mm film generate something ghostly; you can sense the souls that have fleetingly occupied these spaces. Hallways, windows, and hotel rooms (sometimes occupied, usually vacant) all speak their own story.
People love to point out how Orson Welles was 26 when he made Citizen Kane, or PTA was 27 during the filming of Boogie Nights. Chantal Akerman firmly belongs in that group. She was a mere 23 when she made this eternal documentary; a film that feels both of this world and not. “Less is more” has never felt more true.
Where can I watch? The Criterion Channel
Shawn: After Earth (M. Night Shyamalan, 2013)
Was it the best new-to-me movie I watched this month? No, that’s probably The Passionate Friends. But it’s gotta be the one I will most disproportionately defend, compared to its dire reputation, for the rest of my days. I fully expected this to test my M. Night Shyamalan boosterism like no other (still haven’t seen Last Airbender yet…soon), and yet I found myself waiting with bated breath for the trainwreck to start.
Instead, I found a convincingly earnest, post-Avatar blockbuster with ample subtext to its intense father-son star pairing, who crash land on Earth’s hostile surface after the planet’s become fully uninhabitable. I’ll concede some ground to the haters on Jaden Smith’s performance and the overall weirdness of those transatlantic accents, but that’s mostly it. Shyamalan’s a stronger action filmmaker than he’s credited for — but the stillness in between and the seriousness with which he handles the family drama are where this really won me.
Where can I watch? (HBO) Max, rental
Wild Card
Elliott: SSX Tricky (Nintendo GameCube)
I tend to rag on people who watch the same movies over and over again. This is mostly because I’m a film psychopath who has nearly 5K titles in my Letterboxd watchlist (ask me in a year if that number is bigger or smaller) and frequently endures an existential crisis when trying to pick out a movie to watch.
Well, the gamer purists can rag on me in their world because I play the same video games over and over. I’ve beaten Toy Story 2 on the N64 and Sonic Adventure 2 on the GameCube more times than I can count. I’ve put hours upon hours into the Backyard sports franchises in each decade of my life. Last spring, I had a dream I was buying Rock Band drums at GameStop only to wake up in devastation that I was living in a Rock Band drumless house. What did I do the next day? You bet your ass I bought (and paid a lot) for Rock Band drums on OfferUp.
The latest title that I’ve been revisiting from my formative years has been the EA Sports Big Hall of Famer SSX Tricky. It’s a banger of a game, jampacked with quirky characters that perform gravity-defying stunts. Just like when I was a kid, my dude of choice remains JP, the swaggy Frenchman who spins on his head. I’m not as good as the freak in the video above but I’d kick 9-year-old Elliott’s ass at this point no doubt.
I love stepping into phenomenal contemporary games like Bloodborne or Ghost of Tsushima. But more often than not, I just end up going back to Steele Stadium, to Rainbow Road, to Less Talk More Rokk.
Shawn: The Traitors (US Season 2)
I’m not great with TV — it’s often taken me full calendar years to finish a season of 30 Rock, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Better Call Saul or basically anything with more than 10 episodes. The reality competitions are a different beast entirely, with the urgency of not missing the tiny window to keep up. And with a flop season of Love Island: All Stars kicking off the year, The Traitors had a natural opening to seize my attention and it certainly did. Combining the physical challenges and deception of The Mole with bona fide reality stars (Survivor, Bravo, British Parliament alums), this modified game of Mafia, in which “traitors” and “faithful” are quietly battling to stay alive and stay on the show, thrives on its voting format (when the producers adhere to it) and genius casting. We have all these characters and alliances: Bachelor Peter (savvy, overzealous, annoying), Trishelle (hideously styled, annoying), Parvati (squinty, iconic), Phaedra (the most intimidating living orator, iconic). As a relative novice to this specific breed of reality shows — never seen Big Brother, The Challenge, or any prior Traitors season — I’m coming into the final episodes with fresh eyes and, obviously, pulling for the bad guys.
Stay tuned for the first installment of our 30 for 30 series in next month’s 3 & 30. We both recently turned 30 and each made a list of our 30 favorite movies. We’ll be going through them all, one movie at a time.