The Consumption

COMEDY: Louis CK: His second set of the day, and he did seem a bit worn down, but that didn’t particularly detract. Aside from seeming to drop one anecdote, everything was pretty much spot on, with the usual knack for finding the right vulgarity for any situation and the right mix of insight and depression. It’s odd: he mostly does jokes about kids and there was a good chunk of airline humour at the start, but he makes it all work.

CD: Maxwell – Black Summer’s Night: God, it’s good to hear a genuine horn section again. Neo soul with a bit of Curtis Mayfield falsetto, but when he kicks into the regular register, it hits the groove much harder. Solid stuff.

FILM: NFB Shorts: I’ll lump these all together for brevity’s sake. Cordell Barker’s Runaway just has me more confused about his career — how has he only made 3 shorts in 21 years? Great bit of slapstick with not-so-subtle social commentary. Also of note: Spare Change, which moves from a conversation between two homeless people (probably taken from late animator Ryan Larkin’s real experience) to an odd, impressionistic musical number; How People Got Fire, more for the gorgeous pencil-sketched portions than the other, rotoscope-looking bits; and Land of the Heads, a nicely macabre little ditty about a vampire-thing, his picky wife and the innocent girls whose heads they steal.

FILM: Damned Rain: First of four films I have to watch for the Hidden Gems film fest I’m judging. The tone is odd, focussing on a struggling farmer and his wife, who is worried that he’ll commit suicide. I’m still not sure if her constant monitoring of him is supposed to be funny or worrying (or both), and the story arc is downright depressing, but well told. The musical interludes feel like they’re there mostly out of deference to Bollywood tradition (there’s no song and dance, but the lyrics read like they exist solely to reinforce the mood), which drags it down a little.