
The Signal
The Signalâs brief theatrical run was met with lukewarm critical reaction and scant box-office business, which I think is mostly due to the fact that viewers felt a little burned by its twisty ending. But going into the science-fiction thrillerâwhich was just released on DVDâknowing that it doesnât stick the landing actually makes it easier to enjoy the 85 tense, weird minutes that lead up to it. Three MIT students on a cross-country road trip decide to take a detour to locate a hacker whoâs been baiting them; their skills lead to a cabin in the woods and eventually some sort of creepy, Twilight Zone-esque observation facility, manned by Laurence Fishburne. From there, The Signal gets stylish and dreamlike, and youâre never sure which one of a hundred directions it might take. The one it chooses is a little silly and convenient, but the journey is intriguing enough to mitigate the destination. [Josh Modell]
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Goodbye To Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood
Iâm not totally sure why I picked up Christopher Isherwoodâs Goodbye To Berlin the last time I was at a used bookstoreâcertainly, itâs a slim volume, and thatâs appealing when I know Iâm going to be carrying something in my bag while commuting, or trying to finish a book in the 10-minute increments I get a chance to read before I have to do something else. But Iâve also been interested in stories from the Weimar Republic era in Germany after reading The Artificial Silk Girl, which I picked up on a trip to Chicago well before I realized Iâd be moving here. Both Goodbye To Berlin and The Artificial Silk Girl are narrated with a distinct sense of sadness, as theyâre looking back on a period of cosmopolitanism and cultural vigor that would be utterly destroyed by the rise of the Nazi movement and the subsequent carnage of World War II.
Isherwoodâs Goodbye To Berlin is the basis for Cabaret, perhaps the most well-known story about losing Berlin. The play and then film is based on his sketch âSally Bowles,â and most cover designs for this book have some interpretation of Sally on the cover (hereâs the one on mine). Cabaret has long been one of those cultural artifacts that seemed to affect other people differently than it did me, but âSally Bowlesââand the entirety of Goodbye To Berlinâdoes a lot more for me. Some of that comes from Isherwoodâs narration, which is beautiful and lost, as so much writing is from the â30sâand some comes from what Isherwood wonât say, too. Though he later came out, Isherwood was only out of the closet in an implied way on the page in 1939ânobody every says âhomosexual,â but itâs a crucial part of every story. Isherwood is the inspiration for Clifford Bradshaw in Cabaret, though it might be more fair to say that Isherwood is both retiring Cliff and the flamboyant, grasping Emcee at the same time. After the Nazis took over Germany, homosexuality became a crime, thus destroying the fragile world that Isherwood and his companions lived in. Goodbye To Berlin, indeed. [Sonia Saraiya]
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The Beatles In Mono
Like just about everyone else under 65 living today, I grew up loving the Beatles. They were my first favorite band (tied with The Monkees, maybe), and I spent my lonely adolescent years reading Beatles biographies, histories, and track interpretations. And while, like any good Beatles completist and record nerd, I had copies of the Beatles LPs before last yearâs The Beatles In Stereo LP box set came out, I still picked it up when it hit stores. But now thereâs The Beatles In Mono, a box set featuring monophonic copies of every single damn Beatles record, and hot damn, itâs nerdy. The theory behind the box is pretty simple: Most of the Beatlesâ catalogue was mixed and recorded in mono, with stereo recording only becoming popular in the late â60s. Sgt. Pepperâs Lonely Hearts Club Band, for instance, was mixed in mono by the Beatles themselves, and only later mixed in stereo by George Martin. And while stereo recordings are great and everythingâespecially for modern ears that are used to the dual-speaker soundâif you want to hear Sgt. Pepperâs how the band originally intended (and I do), then you need that monophonic recording. (George Harrison has famously said that Martinâs stereo mixes sound ânaked.â) Itâs a nitpicking and totally ostentatious set to have, of course, but itâs also a must for all real audio nerds. [Marah Eakin]
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