I haven't listened to Thievery Corporation or, more importantly, The Mirror Conspiracy in a long time. I read an article a couple years ago that talked about how Rob Garza and Eric Hilton shouldn't be held responsible for the "Coffeehouse Chillwave" muzak that their style created. I don't know - maybe they can, maybe they can't. Doesn't matter to me. I can tell you that after discovering The Mirror Conspiracy back in 2000/2001, I quickly became obsessed. I waited anxiously for the 2002 follow-up The Richest Man in Babylon and then again for 2005's The Cosmic Game, which is when they officially jumped the shark for me. Looking back at Babylon (which is Apple Music's only "Essential Album" on the group's discography), I can't say I really care about that one, either. For me, The Mirror Conspiracy is "the work that transcends the genre," and plugging into it last night, I was happy to find it still carried the same weight. I was in desperately in need of something to mellow me out, and this did the trick and kind of recaptured my mind with that same fascination it did going on twenty-five years ago.
No small feat.
Watch:
I bought most of the Cohen Brothers' filmography on DVD during the '00s, and one film I could never find was 1994's The Hudsucker Proxy. I previously saw this film one time circa 1997, and after that, it just kind of hung around the outskirts of my Cohen list. During my aforementioned Cohen DVD purchasing expeditions, I never once saw this film on a store's shelf and would still swear I'd read it never made it to DVD, but a quick glance at the internet tells me that was either short-lived or erroneous. Either way, eventually, I resigned it to a kind of lost-to-the-aether list, what Mr. Brown referred to in a recent text as The Secret Cohen list. As hyperbolic as that might sound to some ("How could such big names in Hollywood have a cache of lost or secret films?"), this moniker instantly struck me as exactly right. Hudsucker, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Lady Killers, Crime Wave (which, like Hudsucker, the Cohens wrote with Sam Raimi, but in Crime Wave's case, Raimi directed)... yes, there is definitely a 'Secret' Cohen Brothers list. Now that I've established that, at least for my own purposes, let's get back to The Hudsucker Proxy because I hadn't seen this in twenty-seven years before Friday night when I saw it on the Criterion Channel.
We ended up watching Hudsucker Friday night and again on Saturday, this time with K's Mom and my folks after a family dinner. This film is just fantastic; seriously wondering if this might rank higher than Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing or The Big Lebowski. I mean, this film is dynamite.
Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Leigh smolder when they're not running rings around each other in dialogue, and Paul Newman chews the scenery in the best way possible. That voice! Never mind John Mahoney and Bruce Campbell pitching in to make this one of the the fastest dialogue sharks since Double Indemnity. And they even manage to throw in a literal Deus Ex Machina and a catwalk fight and not ruin the film.
Playlist:
Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium
Drug Church - Prude
Zeal and Ardor - GREIF
Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere
Turnstile - GLOW ON
Antibalas - Where the Gods Are In Peace
Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time Are Vast
Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
Pilot Priest and Electric Youth - Come True OST
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