Pop Week: Parquet Courts leads off a rock 'n' roll week

The definite highlight of my week was seeing Parquet Courts at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. It was such a rocking show that I think it actually made me sick for much of the latter half of the week.

That's the power of rock 'n' roll, and also presents the sad facts that I must be getting older and it's been way too long since I've been to a concert.

Regardless of how long it's been since I've seen a show, there was no denying how awesome this one was. Also, despite the fact that the Courts didn't play my very favorite song, "Stoned and Starving," it was far from any kind of let down. Here's their set list, and definite highlights were "Human Performance," "Dear Ramona," "Berlin Got Blurry," and "One Man No City," to somehow name a few.

Parquet Courts is my favorite contemporary rock band these days, alongside long-time titleholder Wilco and Foxygen, which I'm seeing next month. Stay tuned on that one. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

And if rock 'n' roll was the theme of the week, then this Archie Andrews thing is fitting right in. I can't get enough of Riverdale on the CW. So I took to the new era of Archie graphic novels as well, reading the final issue of Life with Archie, where he dies in highly dramatic fashion. The first half of the double commemorative issue leads up to Archie being shot at Jughead's restaurant during a fundraiser for political upstart and acclaimed gay Senator Kevin Keller. the storyline also makes us wonder who Archie has been married to for the past several years. Is it Betty or Veronica?. The second half, which I'm still reading, takes place a year later. Also stay tuned. Five out of five star

Despite all his problems in recent years, I still consider Woody Allen pretty rock 'n' roll. Although not among my favorite of his prime-era classics, 1982's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, received a rewatch this week, and it holds up relatively well as a Shakespearean take-off. It didn't make my top 21 Woody Allen films, and it's a little slow by today's movie standards, but it's somehow still 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Another classic I rewatched this week, since my son is now old enough to start watching some key film milestones, was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Little needs to be said about this 5-star flick that came in 17th on my list of all-time favorite movies.

The Age of Innocence, lastly, offered some rock 'n' roll via the classic novel. I still love the 1993 film version with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, but really, how could those actors mess up with a script this juicy? Newland Archer battles his whole life over cousins May and Ellen, in true Betty and Veronica love-triangle fashion. However, the "innocence" of the era's social structure makes it impossible for him to ever end up with his true love. This may sounds rom-com, but oh no, everyone should read this page turner before they die. 5 out of 5 stars.

Cate Blanchett Cracks Up in Blue Jasmine

For last year's Blue Jasmine, Director Woody Allen was clearly inspired by the whole Bernie Madoff financial mess. It's a dramedy about a woman named Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) whose mental state is collapsing from years of fooling herself into thinking her husband (Alec Baldwin) is a good and honest man.

At the start of the film, Jasmine is leaving her once-lavish life in New York to go live with her distant sister in San Francisco. It opens as she is trying to rationalize her living-in-denial life to a complete stranger in the airport. Through a series of flashbacks, we see how she got to this point as she tries to pull it back together out west. 

Some critics said the movie is Allen's dig at his ex-wife Mia Farrow, with whom he has had an ugly, lengthy, public falling out. Whatever the case, Blanchett is nothing short of spellbinding as a cracked person. It's no wonder she won just about every best-actress trophy last year, including the Oscar.

As for where Blue Jasmine fits within my list of Woody Allen's best films, I say it's his eighth best, right after Vicky Christina Barcelona and before Everyone Says I Love You.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Hannah and Her Sisters Provides a Glimpse of Woody Allen's Future Direction

One of those Woody Allen movies that somehow escaped my notice until this weekend is 1986's Hannah and Her Sisters. And while I have to say that it doesn't quite make my list of the top 21 Woody Allen movies, it takes a valuable look at a strange post-disco-swinger, hungover-from-AIDS era and highlights typically great acting from Woody himself, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, and many others.

Farrow is Hannah, who has sons with an impotent Allen, but they've divorced, and Farrow has remarried Caine. They love each other, but Caine has an affair with Hannah's sister. Allen later gets married to Hannah's other sister. That's really all you need to know about the story. The rest is completed nicely by the usual talkiness injected into Woody's movies.

This is a period when he seemed to be moving from more humor to more drama. The excessive drama of this one is admittedly a little off-putting, and I think the best parts remain Allen's scenes, where his neurotic humor is front and center.

Interestingly, Hannah and Her Sisters was Woody's biggest box-office success until last year's Midnight in Paris. It was nominated for best picture, and Caine and Diane Wiest took home the rare double-Academy Awards for best supporting actor and actress. At the time of its release, Roger Ebert called it Allen's best movie.

***1/2 out of ***** stars

Midnight in Paris a Literary and Artistic Delight

Midnight in Paris would land somewhere in the middle of my list of the best Woody Allen films. The famed director is clearly still at the top of his game, with the only difference from his work of the 1970s being that other people besides him play the "Woody Allen role."

This time it's Owen Wilson as the neurotic protagonist. He does a great job navigating an era (1920s Flapper expat Paris) that has been fascinating to me ever since my two favorite novels became F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

And the performances of the actors who play the legends of that time are wonderful. When Owen Wilson, playing an L.A. screenwriter on an extended vacation to the City of Lights with his non-supportive fiancee and her lousy rich parents, slips into a time warp each night, he comes alive befriending the likes of a respectively sensitive and crazy F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, a surreal Salvador Dali, an unthoughtful Pablo Picasso, an artistic guru Gertrude Stein, and a rowdy Hemingway (with this movie released in a timely way, close to the 50th anniversary of Hemingway's Idaho suicide).

Allen's brilliance balances on his humor (Side Effects and Without Feathers are still two of the greatest comedy essay collections ever known to mankind) and his insight into how the times we live in never seem as interesting as other historical periods. We're disillusioned, and that's a big part of what makes Midnight in Paris so timeless.

Not to mention, the opening sequence is almost as good as a round-trip ticket to Paris. All the sights are included.

**** out of ***** stars