“It’s all an elaborate hoax.” The reported final words of film critic Roger Ebert frame a haunting new song by Clem Snide, the artistic alias of songwriter Eef Barzelay. The track is the first release off an upcoming album by Clem Snide, Forever Just Beyond, produced by the Avett Brothers’ Scott Avett.
Avett lends harmony vocals to “Roger Ebert,” a pretty, probing ballad that contemplates the mysteries of life. It’s a heavy topic, to be sure, but Clem Snide uses Ebert’s epiphany to make something that is...
Avett lends harmony vocals to “Roger Ebert,” a pretty, probing ballad that contemplates the mysteries of life. It’s a heavy topic, to be sure, but Clem Snide uses Ebert’s epiphany to make something that is...
- 1/24/2020
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
Earlier this year, actor William H. Macy made his feature-length directorial debut with “Rudderless,” a music-based drama starring Billy Crudup, Selena Gomez and Anton Yelchin. About a man (Crudup) trying to forget a past full of tragedy, when he stumbles across a box of unpublished music from his former life, it spurns him on to form a small band. These experiences lead to local success and ultimately changes his life. Lakeshore Records will release the Rudderless – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on September 30th and on CD October 28, 2014. The album features songs performed by Crudup, Gomez, and the Rudderless band (featuring Crudup, Yelchin, and American indie rocker Ben Kweller). The original score was written by Eef Barzelay of the band Clem Snide, and the songs in the movie were written by Simon Steadman and Charlton Pettus, and indie musician Ben Limpic. “Rudderless” played to strong acclaim earlier this year (read...
- 9/4/2014
- by Edward Davis
- The Playlist
The end of 2010 is almost upon us, which is why MTV News is rounding up the Top Songs of 2010. We has over two dozen MTV News staffers submit their own personal lists of their 25 favorite songs, and from those lists we derived a master list whose top 10 will be slowly rolling out over the course of this week. Check out one of the 25 lists below, with an argument or two for the greatness of some of the under-appreciated tunes of the year.
Don't let "Blah Blah Blah" fool you — 2010 was an awesome year for music. When I was asked to contribute a list of my 25 favorite songs to James Montgomery and Kyle Anderson (who were compiling a master list for the department using fancy math stuffs), my first draft was well over 100 songs. (Seriously!) From singles by "Idol" faves like Adam Lambert, Kris Allen and Fantasia to deep cuts from...
Don't let "Blah Blah Blah" fool you — 2010 was an awesome year for music. When I was asked to contribute a list of my 25 favorite songs to James Montgomery and Kyle Anderson (who were compiling a master list for the department using fancy math stuffs), my first draft was well over 100 songs. (Seriously!) From singles by "Idol" faves like Adam Lambert, Kris Allen and Fantasia to deep cuts from...
- 12/7/2010
- by Jim Cantiello
- MTV Newsroom
“The Yellow Handkerchief” is what you are afraid of when you go to see an independent movie.
Big studios follow overused patterns and saturate us with ads, teasers and trailers, but we always know what we are going to see when we buy a ticket for a movie. Famous stars and Oscar-winning directors are familiar brands that tell us what to expect of the film, even though they don’t guarantee its quality. Watching an independent film is a slightly different experience. There is not so much disappointment here, because you are never sure of what you are in for in the first place. What you get is a sense of hope – and fear. Since you don’t expect a lot, a good independent movie is not only pleasant but surprisingly so, and it adds to its charm and appeal. The fact that it is small and you’re one...
Big studios follow overused patterns and saturate us with ads, teasers and trailers, but we always know what we are going to see when we buy a ticket for a movie. Famous stars and Oscar-winning directors are familiar brands that tell us what to expect of the film, even though they don’t guarantee its quality. Watching an independent film is a slightly different experience. There is not so much disappointment here, because you are never sure of what you are in for in the first place. What you get is a sense of hope – and fear. Since you don’t expect a lot, a good independent movie is not only pleasant but surprisingly so, and it adds to its charm and appeal. The fact that it is small and you’re one...
- 2/28/2010
- by Clara Viola
- ReelLoop.com
When Clem Snide broke up in 2006, it was after they'd written and recorded what would have been their sixth proper studio album, Hungry Bird. It was a rough year for the band with rumors of bitterness between members and with their management team. Bandleader Eef Barzelay left to pursue a solo career and score the film Rocket Science, and Hungry Bird was left to die.
- 12/17/2008
- Pastemagazine.com
Eef Barzelay's first album since he officially scrapped his long-running band, Clem Snide, bears little relation to his first solo disc, the pared-down Bitter Honey. This one's a full-band affair, which is a bit of a shame: Alone, Barzelay sounds more pleasurably, well, bitter. "Girls Don't Care" is pretty, its lazy jangle harkening to the best of '90s college-rock, but Barzelay's assault is equal parts silly. ("The girls don't care that you ache to be free") and sap ("The girls just want a sweet melody.") The lengthy wailer "True Freedom" is pure miss: Barzelay's voice with minimal musical backing has never been his strongest point. The minor apocalypses are better: The opening Merge-rock crunch of "Could Be Worse" and the ever-present agnostic angst of "Apocalyptic Friend" work great. Better still are the bonus Clem Snide tracks at the end: the unreleased "Me No," from a scrapped album, and.
- 6/17/2008
- by Vadim Rizov
- avclub.com
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- Three unlikely companions, all misfits in their own minds, take a road trip through the backwaters of post-Katrina Louisiana to New Orleans in The Yellow Handkerchief, a sometimes insightful and other times sentimental slice of Americana.
Four terrific performances make the transition to a U.S. setting go smoothly for British director Udayan Prasad. William Hurt, back in a lead role after a succession of smart supporting turns, makes the most of his opportunity. He anchors the drama with an acutely observed, nicely nuanced performance as a man just out of stir and uncertain of his bearings. Maria Bello, seen almost entirely in flashbacks, and young actors Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne (a British actor with a spot-on Yank accent) create memorably idiosyncratic characters that round out this four-hander.
The film is too slow-moving to engage many outside of art houses. The film also seems overly eager to emphasize its regional identity, slipping in a 'gator, water snake and a boat ride through the bayou. Otherwise, cinematographer Chris Menges and composers Eef Barzelay and Jack Livesay superbly catch the mood and characters of that countryside torn up by Katrina.
Released from prison after six years, Brett Hurt), a quiet -- some would say withdrawn and uncommunicative -- man drifts into a small town looking for a bus heading south. In a small restaurant, he watches the interaction among a group of teens. He senses that one of them, Martine (Stewart), has been spurned by a boy and that another, Gordy (Redmayne), is both self-conscious and defiant over his geeky awkwardness.
When he sees them again at a river ferry, Martine has gone with Gordy as her "ride" to make the other boy jealous -- unsuccessfully it would appear -- and now she is stuck with the geek. She eagerly invites Brett to join them, just to have another person in the car.
Circumstances, including a pouring rain, cause the three to spend several days on the road together. This gives everyone time to spill their guts about what ails them. This can be summed up in Gordy's line: "I never felt part of anything either." No one here does.
A confrontation outside a general store with a white-trash couple and Brett's subsequent arrest -- both somewhat contrived situations -- alert the two teens that their passenger is an ex-con. So when he is released by the cops, he relates his sad tale as a reclusive, blue-collar guy who fell for a boat seller, May (Bello), yet blew his one chance at happiness.
Meanwhile, Martine is mostly ignored by her dad and feels generally unloved. Gordy is all too aware of his nerdiness yet aggressively pushes his most unattractive characteristics at people.
Brett proves to possess an innate wisdom that belies his own troubles in life. Martine is at times herself wiser beyond her years, and even Gordy shows flashes of normalcy beneath his deliberate facade of abnormality.
Of the four, Bello's May never comes fully into focus in all the flashbacks, but she too is someone who has made her share of mistakes and is never sure whether to blame herself or the person who wants to get close to her.
The script by Erin Dignam from a short story by Pete Hamill is a little too slick in how it works everyone's troubles out, leading to a tearful happy ending presaged by the film's own title. (Think Tony Orlando and yellow ribbons.) Dignam overly crafts her scenes with characters coming up with just the right words at the most telling moments. Consequently, the well-made polish of her writing sometimes works against the backwater naturalism established by Prasad.
But his actors save the day. There's a painful honesty in all the performances that gets across the hurt everyone endures in life and the helplessness one feels when the remedy is never clear, even when it's close at hand.
THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF
Arthur Cohn Prods.
Credits:
Director: Udayan Prasad
Screenwriter: Erin Dignam
Story: Pete Hamill
Producer: Arthur Cohn
Executive producer: Lillian Birnbaum
Director of photography: Chris Menges
Production designer: Monroe Kelly
Music: Eef Barzelay, Jack Livesay
Costume designer: Caroline Eselin
Editor: Christopher Tellesfen
Cast:
Brett: William Hurt
May: Maria Bello
Gordy: Eddie Redmayne
Martine: Kristen Stewart
Running time -- 103 minutes
No MPAA rating...
PARK CITY -- Three unlikely companions, all misfits in their own minds, take a road trip through the backwaters of post-Katrina Louisiana to New Orleans in The Yellow Handkerchief, a sometimes insightful and other times sentimental slice of Americana.
Four terrific performances make the transition to a U.S. setting go smoothly for British director Udayan Prasad. William Hurt, back in a lead role after a succession of smart supporting turns, makes the most of his opportunity. He anchors the drama with an acutely observed, nicely nuanced performance as a man just out of stir and uncertain of his bearings. Maria Bello, seen almost entirely in flashbacks, and young actors Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne (a British actor with a spot-on Yank accent) create memorably idiosyncratic characters that round out this four-hander.
The film is too slow-moving to engage many outside of art houses. The film also seems overly eager to emphasize its regional identity, slipping in a 'gator, water snake and a boat ride through the bayou. Otherwise, cinematographer Chris Menges and composers Eef Barzelay and Jack Livesay superbly catch the mood and characters of that countryside torn up by Katrina.
Released from prison after six years, Brett Hurt), a quiet -- some would say withdrawn and uncommunicative -- man drifts into a small town looking for a bus heading south. In a small restaurant, he watches the interaction among a group of teens. He senses that one of them, Martine (Stewart), has been spurned by a boy and that another, Gordy (Redmayne), is both self-conscious and defiant over his geeky awkwardness.
When he sees them again at a river ferry, Martine has gone with Gordy as her "ride" to make the other boy jealous -- unsuccessfully it would appear -- and now she is stuck with the geek. She eagerly invites Brett to join them, just to have another person in the car.
Circumstances, including a pouring rain, cause the three to spend several days on the road together. This gives everyone time to spill their guts about what ails them. This can be summed up in Gordy's line: "I never felt part of anything either." No one here does.
A confrontation outside a general store with a white-trash couple and Brett's subsequent arrest -- both somewhat contrived situations -- alert the two teens that their passenger is an ex-con. So when he is released by the cops, he relates his sad tale as a reclusive, blue-collar guy who fell for a boat seller, May (Bello), yet blew his one chance at happiness.
Meanwhile, Martine is mostly ignored by her dad and feels generally unloved. Gordy is all too aware of his nerdiness yet aggressively pushes his most unattractive characteristics at people.
Brett proves to possess an innate wisdom that belies his own troubles in life. Martine is at times herself wiser beyond her years, and even Gordy shows flashes of normalcy beneath his deliberate facade of abnormality.
Of the four, Bello's May never comes fully into focus in all the flashbacks, but she too is someone who has made her share of mistakes and is never sure whether to blame herself or the person who wants to get close to her.
The script by Erin Dignam from a short story by Pete Hamill is a little too slick in how it works everyone's troubles out, leading to a tearful happy ending presaged by the film's own title. (Think Tony Orlando and yellow ribbons.) Dignam overly crafts her scenes with characters coming up with just the right words at the most telling moments. Consequently, the well-made polish of her writing sometimes works against the backwater naturalism established by Prasad.
But his actors save the day. There's a painful honesty in all the performances that gets across the hurt everyone endures in life and the helplessness one feels when the remedy is never clear, even when it's close at hand.
THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF
Arthur Cohn Prods.
Credits:
Director: Udayan Prasad
Screenwriter: Erin Dignam
Story: Pete Hamill
Producer: Arthur Cohn
Executive producer: Lillian Birnbaum
Director of photography: Chris Menges
Production designer: Monroe Kelly
Music: Eef Barzelay, Jack Livesay
Costume designer: Caroline Eselin
Editor: Christopher Tellesfen
Cast:
Brett: William Hurt
May: Maria Bello
Gordy: Eddie Redmayne
Martine: Kristen Stewart
Running time -- 103 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/21/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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