Film critic David Edelstein

DATE December 24, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Analysis: Looking at some of the top movies of 2002
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. Terry Gross is out sick. I'm Barbara Bogaev.

Today we're looking back on the best films and music of the past year.
Later
on, we'll hear FRESH AIR music critic Ken Tucker's picks. But first, critic
David Edelstein weighs in on the best movies of 2002. Edelstein is the film
critic for the online magazine Slate and he reviews films for FRESH AIR.

TERRY GROSS (Host): David Edelstein, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let's start
with
the official reading of your 10 best list.

DAVID EDELSTEIN (Film Critic): All right. These are not in any particular
order and I want to emphasize that there is no best because I can't really
decide which movie I like best, and tomorrow it will be different than
today.
But they are: "The Pianist"; "Triumph of Love"; "Time Out"; "Chicago"; "Far
From Heaven"; "Talk to Her"; "Domestic Violence"; "Y Tu Mama Tambien"; "Igby
Goes Down"; "Lovely & Amazing." And that's 10, and this is a Spinal Tap 10
best list; it goes to 11, but I want you to put a little asterisk next to
this
movie, and it's "Gangs of New York." And I'll explain what the asterisk
means
sometime later.

GROSS: David, there's several foreign films on your 10 best list. Let's
start with the new Pedro Almodovar movie, "Talk to Her."

EDELSTEIN: Yeah, well, you know, this is one of the year's best romances
despite the fact that the women are in a coma.

GROSS: Literally?

EDELSTEIN: It begins--literally, yes. Yes. It begins in a very flat,
unassuming way and you have no idea if you're going to see Douglas Sirk or
it's going to be inspirational or if it's going to be campy. It just kind
of
pulls you in. So before you know it, you're in the heads of these two men
who
keep worshipful vigil besides of the beds of these two comatose women. And
the movie ends up being a kind of meditation on the way in which couples
communicate or don't, as well as a study in loneliness, as well as the story
of a friendship based on little but shared longing for the unattainable.

Now Almodovar usually kind of leads with his perversity, but this time, he's
very sneaky about it. So the movie kind of swallows you whole before you
realize just how outlandish the whole thing is.

GROSS: It's interesting. Almodovar seems to really love Douglas Sirk
melodramas, just as Todd Haynes, the director of "Far From Heaven," does.
So
do we have two films on your 10 best list this year that, in their own way,
pay homage to the melodramas of the '50s?

EDELSTEIN: We do, although I think they're very, very different because I
think that Todd Haynes--everything is framed, everybody is seen in mirrors
or
seen through glass. There's always a sort of ironic distance. Whereas
Almodovar is just completely inside his movies, whatever he's doing. He's
kind of thinking through them from the inside. He's allowing the movies to
find their own forum. And that's why his movies are all different. That's
why a lot of people are going to be surprised that this one is so, quote,
unquote, "straight," because it almost seems to sort of emerge out of his
passion for the ideas and for the people.

GROSS: OK. Two more foreign films on your 10 best list: "Time Out," a
French film, and "Y Tu Mama Tambien," a Mexican film.

EDELSTEIN: Well, "Time Out" is an interesting movie. It's the best movie,
I
think, in what I think of as the year of living fraudulently. I don't know
if
it's the upshot of the collapse of the new economy, but there are a lot of
really entertaining movies around like "Catch Me If You Can" and
"Confessions
of a Dangerous Mind" and "Chicago" that are about hustlers; some of them
deluded hustlers who actually believe their own scams. And Laurent Cantet's
"Time Out" sort of falls into that category.

It's about a con man, but not in the American, David Mamet, flimflam
tradition. This is a former hotshot consultant who now drives around and
sleeps in his car and makes appointments and sells investments in things
that
don't exist, and he kind of wanders the bars of international hotels in a
sort
of stupor because that's what he once did and that's all he knows how to do.
And the movie kind of implies that one's source of income has become so
disconnected from the physical world that there's no apparent difference
between what he does now mindlessly and absurdly and what he did as a real
consultant.

Lefty European directors can be very irritating when they rail against the
inherent injustice of capitalism, but sometimes I think they're the only
ones
who actually bother to scrutinize the system for all its absurdities.

GROSS: It's funny. So many people referred to that movie, "Time Out," as
being a movie about the alienation of contemporary work. And I thought,
`Well, maybe, but it seems to me this character's really having a nervous
breakdown that may or may not have anything to do with work.'

EDELSTEIN: Definitely. And yet, isn't it wonderful, though, when you find
a
movie in which somebody's neurosis or psychosis manages to dovetail with
something going on in the culture at large?

GROSS: Right.

EDELSTEIN: That's what I thought that movie was. I thought, in a way, that
they were inseparable.

GROSS: Can I confess? I found that movie just really tedious.

EDELSTEIN: Yeah, I had a feeling. Well, it is a little boring. I think
you
have to kind of get on its wavelength. I mean, a lot of movies I liked this
year are a little bit boring. "Solaris," I maintain, is just a beautiful
and
devastating and tragic movie that, you know, you just have to kind of relax
and kind of go with the angst, go with the ennui. That's a movie that I
could
see a lot of people being very frustrated by.

GROSS: And what about "Y Tu Mama Tambien"? What did you like about that
film?

EDELSTEIN: Well, for one thing, it has the most creative use of narration
of
any film the entire year. As just an aside here, I'm--10 years ago when
narration was a big Hollywood no-no, I always made a point of saying there's
nothing inherently cinematic about it. You have movies like "The
Magnificent
Ambersons" and you have some of the great film noirs in which narration
works
in a kind of marvelous, ironic counterpoint to the images on the screen.
But
now that it's become a fashion, I mean, every single movie you go to is
narrated. It's just seems like we're watching a bunch of slide shows in
which
the screenwriters are telling you things that they ought to be showing you.

The exception to this, the most creative use of narration, is "Y Tu Mama
Tambien," which is about these two horny teen-agers who go on a road trip
with
a kind of dishy married woman to a remote Mexican beach. And along the way,
the narrator interjects things about the places they pass and the people
they
see. And the implication is that the boys have no notion of the corrupt
class
system and the economic exploitation that is, in fact, fueling their little
sex comedy. And by the end, Cuaron demonstrates, I think, that a teen sex
comedy, through the magic of cinema, can expand in ways that we never
thought
possible. It's a study of sexual mores, it's a political allegory, it's a
story about the impermanence of life and it's a great teen sex comedy.

GROSS: The Roman Polanski movie "The Pianist" is on your list. What's
Polanski been up to?

EDELSTEIN: Well, I think it's important before I talk about "The Pianist,"
which might be my favorite movie of the year, to say that, you know, the man
is a sex criminal and a fugitive from American justice. And, you know, I
feel
funny talking about what I think is a great and moral movie, maybe the most
moral movie about the Holocaust I've ever seen, while having very, very
unresolved feelings about the man who made it.

When you see a movie like this, you see that this man, who escaped from the
Krakow ghetto when he was a boy, he lost two families in one lifetime, you
can
feel he's been through a hell that few of us can imagine. And if he hadn't
screwed up his life--and also the life of a young girl, I should add--and
stayed in Hollywood with access to American capital, who knows what he might
have done.

That said, this is a great movie. It's a classical movie, but it's also
radical in its perspective. What it is is the Holocaust viewed from this
weird side angle. It's about a Jewish pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman, who
manages to stay in the Warsaw ghetto when his whole family is shipped off to
Treblinka. Then he manages to slip out of the Warsaw ghetto before the
uprising that kills virtually everyone that he knows.

Now Lina Wertmuller--you might remember a movie she made called "Seven
Beauties" in the '70s that presented a survivor as the ultimate moral
sellout.
But that's not what Polanski is up to here. This is a very non-judgmental
movie that respects the audience enough to know that the instinct for
survival
transcends moral categories and comes with its own set of horrors. And it's
also a real Polanski movie. You know, it's about being trapped, it's about
having this terribly limited vantage and going quietly mad. And Adrien
Brody,
who plays Szpilman, has this finicky refinement in the first half. He tries
to keep playing Chopin when the bombs are falling nearby. And watching him
reduced to a sort of animalistic state by the end is just overwhelming.

GROSS: Now another movie on your 10 best list is the musical "Chicago,"
which
is an adaptation from the Broadway musical. And this has, like, singing by
Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger. It seems to me it's
been a long time since a Broadway musical was adapted into a film, maybe
like
"Evita" being the most recent.

EDELSTEIN: Oh, God, I've tried to repress that. Yeah, this is the best
movie
musical in many a year. How's that? Is that a good ad quote?

GROSS: Hmm.

EDELSTEIN: It's important to say that the musical numbers are out to kill
you. I mean, it's one colossal showstopper after another. And I saw it at
a
screening that was like a big party. There were lots of musical comedy
queens, and I'm a bit of a repressed latent musical comedy queen myself.
And
I thought people were going to tear the theater apart.

And I'm not usually crazy about the kind of chop-chop-chop school of film
musicals, you know, where--Do you know those movies where all the dances are
cut into a million pieces and there isn't any gesture that's really allowed
to
be completed? That's what drove me nuts about "Moulin Rouge," which I
thought
was sort of a monument to attention deficit disorder. But the director
here,
Rob Marshall, he's a choreographer and he really knows how to edit the dance
so that the cuts kind of extend the dance gesture, which is the way Bob
Fosse
did it in "Cabaret."

It's an ugly movie, it's overcrowded at times, but, boy, Catherine
Zeta-Jones
has--she really has musical comedy chops. You know, you don't expect her to
have that hunger. And, really, the whole cast just looks like they're, you
know, working their butts off and having a great time. And so did I. I
think
audiences are going to go crazy for it.

GROSS: OK. And then finally, you have your asterisked film at the...

EDELSTEIN: My asterisk, yes.

GROSS: ...very bottom of your 10 best.

EDELSTEIN: Yes.

GROSS: "Gangs of New York."

EDELSTEIN: The asterisk.

GROSS: Yes. Why are you hesitating to commit?

EDELSTEIN: Well, OK. I don't really think it's one of the year's 10 best,
but I want to reserve the right if I ever see Martin Scorsese's
three-and-a-half-hour cut or four-hour cut to kick something else off my
list.
Fiddling with one's 10 best list is one of the great onanistic pleasures of
film criticism, and so I--normally, I like to deal with what's on screen.
But
in the case of "Gangs of New York," you have this strange, tribal, blood
feud,
melodrama with hints of something so much larger around the edges. The
movie
builds to the New York draft riots, which Scorsese seems to think
effectively
dealt a mortal blow to the sort of medieval tribalism that had marked the
previous era and that we'd been watching for three hours. And the problem
with the movie is that all the stuff building to the draft riots has been
snipped per, I assume, Harvey Weinstein or someone at Miramax, to bring out
the romance and Cameron Diaz and the blood feud. And so the climax seems to
come out of nowhere.

Even though in its truncated form, I can't think of many other American
movies
that attempt to portray the sweep of historical forces in the manner of
Bertolucci or Visconti the way this one does. Also, it's pretty
entertaining.
It's especially fun to see Daniel Day-Lewis back as this bizarre,
top-hatted,
psychotic dandy.

GROSS: David, one of the films that is not on your list, one of the most
surprisingly successful films of the year, is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."
I'm
sure you've seen the movie. What do you think of the film, and what do you
think its success says either about movies or about moviegoers?

EDELSTEIN: Well, I should say I liked the movie. I think it's in a long
and
honorable tradition of very broad, ethnic, intermarriage comedies. And I
was
so pleased to see Andrea Martin, who's one of the great underused comic
geniuses, have a chance to cut loose in the role of Aunt Voula.

But what's most interesting about the movie is, in fact, its success. It
was
adapted from Nia Vardalos' one-woman show, and it has a very public, live
theater feel to it that really appealed to an older, more middlebrow
audience
hungry for the sort of community theater experience that the big,
youth-oriented blockbusters aren't giving them. They love the way the movie
reached out to them and they loved that they could reach back and make it a
$200-plus million phenomenon. In a bizarre way, I think it's audience found
it an empowering movie.

BOGAEV: Film critic David Edelstein, talking with Terry Gross. We'll hear
more of their conversation about the year in film after this break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of "Frosty the Snowman")

BOGAEV: If you're just joining us, we're featuring an interview Terry
recorded with film critic David Edelstein about the films of the past year.

GROSS: Do you have a runners-up to your 10 best list?

EDELSTEIN: Yeah. I think it's been a great year for Steven Spielberg. I
think seven-eighths of "Minority Report," you know, until it has this sort
of
"Murder, She Wrote" whodunit ending, is just a really exciting and fun kind
of
fantasia on themes of Philip K. Dick. And the new one, "Catch Me If You
Can,"
is just a sort of delightful parable about a hustler who ends up being
absorbed by the system and then becoming somebody who chases hustlers, with
some terrific performances.

I liked "The Believer," Henry Bean's film about a neo-Nazi who also happens
to
be a Jew. It's a movie that I wouldn't want to diagram. It's really--this
guy's psyche is just all over the place. But I've never seen a movie sort
of
grapple--sort of fetishize self-hatred and the sort of strange contortions
that somebody goes through trying to get away from their own religious
identity and embrace it at the same time in a way that movie does. Talk
about
a fearless and unresolved movie.

And then, of course, there's "Spirited Away," which is a full-length
animation
by the director of "Princess Mononoke." And this is an extraordinary
animated
film that is in some ways a sort of allegory of Japanese business, Japanese
corporate practice, which actually happens to be about a young woman who
kind
of falls through the looking glass. Her parents turn into pigs and she
enters
into what's sort of a kind of brothel that caters to monsters and has to
sort
of fight her way through it and get her parents back and returned to
normalcy.
It's still a movie that I'm still trying to figure out what it meant. You
know, I'm still trying to--but I've never seen anything like it.

GROSS: A lot of people like to stay home on the holidays and rent videos or
DVDs. So, David, I'm wondering if there's a particular movie that you feel
really helped shape you, that you've watched over and over and over again
over
the years that you'd maybe want to recommend as good home viewing.

EDELSTEIN: There are two films I would watch above all others during the
holiday season. One, of course, takes place during the holidays, and it is
"The Shop Around the Corner," which I believe has just come out in DVD, with
James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan as these people who work side by side in
a
perfumery in Budapest who detest each other, but, in fact, are, as it turns
out, soul mates and correspond blindly with each other and bare their souls
and say all the things that they can't say when they're side by side. It,
of
course, was remade as "You've Got Mail," but we don't have to think about
that.

GROSS: Yeah.

EDELSTEIN: We can repress that, if we choose. And I would like to repress
it. And it also was remade as a rather nice musical called "She Loves Me."

The other is Preston Sturges' great "The Lady Eve," in which Barbara
Stanwyck
plays a card shark who falls, in spite of herself, for Henry Fonda as this
young and endearingly helpless rich boy. And it really is about how the
person that we fall in love with is never quite as good as we think they
are,
but they're never quite as bad as we think they are, either, which is, I
think, the most wonderful thought that we can all take into the holidays.

GROSS: Well, David, I wish you happy holidays, and thank you so much for
being with us.

EDELSTEIN: Thank you, Terry.

BOGAEV: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate, and
he
reviews films for FRESH AIR.

Coming up, we'll talk about the best music of the year with rock critic Ken
Tucker.

Joe Strummer, leader singer, songwriter and guitarist of the punk band The
Clash, died Sunday of a heart attack. He was 50 years old. Strummer, whose
real name was John Graham Mellor, was the hoarse-voiced vocalist with the
choppy rhythm guitar who bawled out lyrics railing against apathy, police
brutality and cultural imperialism. Here he is on the 1977 Clash hit "White
Man In Hammersmith Palais."

I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of "White Man In Hammersmith Palais"; music)

THE CLASH: (Singing) Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh.

Mr. JOE STRUMMER: (Singing) Midnight to six man for the first time from
Jamaica. Dillinger and Leroy Smart, Delroy Wilson, your cool operator. Ken
Boothe for UK pop reggae with backing bands sound systems. And if they've
got
anything to say there's many black ears here to listen.

But it was Four Tops all night with encores from stage right charging from
the
bass knives to the treble. But onstage they ain't got no roots rock rebel.
Onstage they ain't got no roots rock rebel.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. STRUMMER: (Singing) Dress back jump back this is a bluebeat attack
'cause it won't get you anywhere fooling with your guns. The British army
is
waiting out there and it weighs 1,500 tons. White youth, black youth,
better
find another solution. Why not phone up Robin Hood and ask him for some
wealth distribution?

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

BOGAEV: Coming up, the year in music with rock critic Ken Tucker. He'll
talk
about what's new in hip-hop and rock and the phenomenon of the TV show
"American Idol."

(Soundbite of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town")

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Analysis: Top 10 albums of the year
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.

On today's show, we've looked back on the films of 2002; now it's on to
music.
We asked FRESH AIR rock critic Ken Tucker to give us his music picks for the
year. He's critic at large for Entertainment Weekly. When Terry spoke with
him last week, they started with one of Ken's favorite songs of the year,
"Lose Yourself." It's from the soundtrack of Eminem's film, "8 Mile."

(Soundbite of "Lose Yourself" by Eminem)

EMINEM: (Rapping) Look, if you had one shot and one opportunity to seize
everything you ever wanted, one moment, would you capture it or just let it
slip? Yo, his palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there's vomit
on
his sweater already, Mom's spaghetti. He's nervous, but on the surface he
looks calm and ready to drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting what he wrote
down. The whole crowd goes so loud, he opens his mouth, but the words won't
come out. He's chokin', how everybody's jokin' now. The clock's run out,
time's up over, bloah! Snap back to reality, oh, there goes gravity, oh,
there goes Rabbit, he choked. He's so mad but he won't give up that easy.
No, he won't have it, he knows his own back's at his ropes. It don't
matter,
he's dope. He knows that, but he's broke. He's so stacked that he knows
when
he goes back to this mobile home, that's when it's back to the lab again,
yo.
This old rap shit, he better go capture this moment and hope it don't do
better. Lose yourself in the music...

TERRY GROSS, host:

Ken, did the movie "8 Mile" change your impressions one way or another about
Eminem?

KEN TUCKER (Rock Critic): They didn't change it so much as kind of place
him
in a different context for me. I thought that--Eminem I still find to be a
very unsavory character. I find that, you know, he certainly is an
extremely
talented rapper, very inventive. I thought that the acting that he did in
"8
Mile" was, you know, surprisingly nuanced and subtle. But at the same time,
this was a very homogenized Eminem you were getting. This was a very
carefully, I think, orchestrated--Curtis Hanson, the director, you know,
knew
just how to tone down Eminem. Eminem is, you know, a pretty volatile
character. He calls his tour the Anger Management Tour. And he really
can't
control his temper, and what I find basically offensive is that when
anything
annoys him, he immediately reverts to insulting either women or homosexuals.

I was at the MTV Video Music Awards this year, and I don't know if you saw
it,
but that character that Robert Smigel does on the Conan O'Brien show,
Triumph
the Insult Comic Dog, was there, and he was talking to Moby and they were
insulting Eminem. And what was truly spontaneous was that Eminem came from
backstage and ripped the puppet off of Robert Smigel's hand. And I happened
to be sitting in a row with some of Smigel's friends, and they said,
`Robert,
Robert, what happened?' afterward, and he said, you know, `That idiot,
Eminem,
I told him that I was going to do this comedy stuff with Moby, insulting
Eminem, and then I was going to go to Eminem and he could say whatever he
wanted to,' he said, `but the guy just went off. He just couldn't control
himself.'

So I think that, you know, he's a guy who really I don't think is--he's a
true
loose cannon, in a way, and I think it's going to eventually catch up with
him
in the music.

GROSS: When you have to attack a hand puppet, I think you've got real
trouble.

TUCKER: I think so, but you know, it's a pretty tough puppet, you know, I
mean, you know, the great line that Triumph uttered to Eminem was, `Hey, my
mom was a bitch, too, but I don't write songs about her.'

GROSS: Yeah. You know, you're talking about how the movie presents him
differently than he presents himself in his music, than he seems to be in
real
life. One of my favorite lines--and you'd have to have a heart of stone to
not respond to this--and this is from the soundtrack album, he says--this is
from his track "Love Me"--he says `Now I'm here, so shut your M-F'ing mouth
and show me love, bitch.'

TUCKER: I think that's it, you know, and it's a very kind of domesticated
Eminem that you're seeing, and I think that the movie was almost a vehicle
to
get adults in who are curious about Eminem, who might have hated Eminem, and
this was the Eminem that kind of showed them, `Oh, OK. That's what the kids
are listening to, and now I understand.' And I don't think you really
understand the true Eminem. I think you really do have to listen to his CDs
to truly understand what's going on there.

GROSS: Well, Eminem's on your 10 best list. Who's your favorite woman
rapper
this year?

TUCKER: Missy Elliott, I think, put out an amazing CD called "Under
Construction." I mean, Missy Elliott, I think, was kind of on the verge of
kind of turning herself into a cartoon. She had done these kind of
elaborate
videos where she wore these outlandish costumes and stuff, and I think she
really reined it back in and put out some terrific music on this album,
working with her producer and her best friend, Timbaland. They really have
a
production style that's very unique, I think, in hip-hop. It's extremely
percussive. It's kind of built around not so much the rhymes of the lyrics
that Missy Elliott is delivering, so much as the kind of rhythms of her
speech
and the kind of percolating beat that Timbaland kind of echoes underneath
that. I think that's very clearly evidenced in the track we're going to
play
called "Work It."

GROSS: Oh, let's hear it.

(Soundbite of "Work It" by Missy Elliott)

Ms. MISSY ELLIOTT: (Rapping) This is a Missy Elliott one-time exclusive.
Come on, come on, is it worth it, let me work it. I put my thing down, flip
it and reverse it. (Reversed portion of vocals plays) If you got a big
(elephant noise plays) let me search ya, to find out how hard I got to work
you. (Reversed portion of vocals plays) Come on, come on...

GROSS: That's Missy Elliott from her CD, "Under Construction," one of the
CDs
on Ken Tucker's 10 best list.

Is it just me, or are rhymes getting quicker in the sense that sometimes I
think like every four syllables or every eight syllables, there's another
rhyme, and to my ear, it becomes kind of sing-song, because the space
between
rhymes is so short?

TUCKER: I think you're on to something there, yes. And I think that's
definitely why so much hip-hop becomes tiresome so quickly, and I think
that's
really the influence of Eminem, who's able to deliver these things so
rapidly
and so fluently; it's, you know, what they call flow. But it becomes this
kind of pile-up of very simple rhymes that really don't work, and I think in
a
lot of ways, the Southern rappers, the Goody Mob, I think, have kind of
slowed
the beat down--Missy Elliott to some extent does this--and decided that you
don't have to rap. You know, there are such things as quatrains, and you
can
have, you know, alternating lines and you don't have to--everybody always
says
that Eminem's rhymes are iambic pentameter when they're really not. It's an
anapest beat, to be technical about it, and it's much more, I think,
disruptive to the flow of a song, really.

GROSS: Well, let's move on, on your 10 best list, and I see The Hives are
on
your list, and where do they fit in to what happened this year in pop music?

TUCKER: Well, they fit into--The Hives are a Swedish group that are kind of
part of this renaissance of pop-rock, that kind of quick, post-punk Ramones
sort of--harking back to the '70s, the two-and-a-half minute pop song,
you're
in and you're out kind of thing. There are other groups, like The Vines and
The Hives and there was a whole kind of groundswell of these groups that
came
along, and I think The Hives really did it the best. I mean, they hark
back--you certainly can't say that they're particularly original, but
they're
very, very funny.

I mean, I think the lead singer, Pelle Almqvist I think is how he pronounces
his name, has this wonderful way around him. He struts around the stage
like
Mick Jagger, you know, kind of puffing out his chest, and he makes these
announcements in broken English, and he'll say, `That song was the very best
song that we just completed the entire evening, and you all enjoyed it, I am
sure.' And you know, then they'll deliver some incredibly fast, you know
terrific little pop song, and you know, their concerts last about 30 to 40
minutes.

The song I'd like to play, actually, is a terrific song from that album
called
"Veni, Vidi, Vicious," and the song is called "Main Offender."

(Soundbite of "Main Offender" by The Hives)

THE HIVES: (Singing) I'm on my way. Can't settle down. I'm stuck in ways
of
being an ass, and I got a lot of nerve that I'm ready to pass. I'm on my
way.
Can't settle down. I'm stuck in ways of sadistic joy, my talent only goes
so
far as to to annoy. I'm on my way. This is my main offender. This is what
I've got and it's got me saying, why me?

GROSS: That's The Hives from their CD "Veni, Vidi, Vicious," which is on
Ken
Tucker's 10 best list for the year.

Very punk. I'm wondering if you think that this band, for instance, is
interested in punk because it was in their parents' record collections?

TUCKER: I think it probably was. It was probably now, you know, stuff they
grew up on. The grew up listening to, you know, the Ramones and Television
and Blondie and Talking Heads. I also think that it's a reaction against
rap,
which, you know, there are a lot of long, expansive rap songs. I think kind
of the return of melody and beat, and saying, you know, `We're not going to
try and imitate black artists. We're white and this is another kind of rock
music that hasn't been heard in a while.'

BOGAEV: FRESH AIR rock critic Ken Tucker. We'll be back with more of
Terry's
conversation with him after the break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: Back with Terry's interview with Ken Tucker about his music picks
for
2002.

GROSS: Queens of the Stone Age are on your 10 best list, and it's a kind
of--What?--hard rock, grunge kind of band. Is this the kind of music that's
kind of disappearing?

TUCKER: I think that it certainly has its audience. I mean, this album
sold
quite well, and part of the reason was that Dave Grohl from Nirvana, the
drummer in Nirvana, joined the group, where he was so enthused about them
that
he decided to join the group momentarily. He's got his own band now called
the Foo Fighters, which also put out an album this year which was very good.
This year, if you look at those kinds of things, Queens of the Stone Age,
the
Foo Fighters, the release of the previously unreleased Kurt Cobain-Nirvana
single, the publication of Cobain's diaries, there's this kind of almost
spontaneous resurgence of grunge music, and I thought it was best
exemplified
by this Queens of the Stone Age album. I mean, there's always going to be
this audience for hard rock, and I think Queens of the Stone Age are a
particularly intelligent, well-made record in that sense.

GROSS: Well, let's hear it.

(Soundbite of music)

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: (Singing) We get some rules to follow that enlist
these and those no one knows.

GROSS: That's Queens of the Stone Age from their CD "Songs for the Deaf."
Great title. And the rhythm line on that, I could easily imagine a rap
group
sampling.

TUCKER: Yes. Yeah, I think that's true. It had a very strong bass line.
You know, the drums and bass--it's interesting that the rhythm section is so
important both to that and to rap.

GROSS: What happened in country music this year that you want to take note
of?

TUCKER: Almost nothing.

GROSS: Oh, great.

TUCKER: You know, I mean, when I find myself looking around and saying,
`Well, gee, the Dixie Chicks album was pretty good,' you know--so much
country
music has just become so bland, either that or very reactionary. There's
the
Toby Keith song, "Let's Hear It for the Red White and Blue," you know. It's
either--it's very, very boring. I mean, it's so sad that in the year that
when Merle Haggard died that country should be in such sad shape, and that
in
fact my favorite country album kind of harked back to old country material.
It was Pam Tillis, whose father, Mel Tillis, wrote lots and lots of hits for
country stars in the '50s and '60s, like Webb Pierce and Ray Price, and she
covered those songs on this album of hers as a tribute to her father, and I
thought it was the best country record I'd heard all year.

GROSS: Why don't you play us a track from it?

TUCKER: Sure. This was a hit for Patsy Cline. It's called "So Wrong."

(Soundbite of "So Wrong" by Pam Tillis)

Ms. PAM TILLIS: (Singing) I've been so wrong, oh, so long, thought I could
live without the love that you give. I was wrong, so wrong. I've been so
wrong...

GROSS: That's Pam Tillis from her CD, "It's All Relative: Tillis Sings
Tillis," paying tribute to her father, the late Mel Tillis.

Ken, a lot of veteran artists had CDs out this year. What did you find most
impressive in that category?

TUCKER: I found a number of people did surprisingly good work. I was
shocked
that, say, Elvis Costello was able to return so easily to his ferocious
early
rock 'n' roll days. I thought he put out a terrific album. Bryan Ferry's
"Frantic," I thought, was a wonderful romantic, extravagantly beautiful CD.
And Bruce Springsteen came back with an album called "The Rising," which I
thought was a very interesting record. It was in part a response to the
events of September 11th. A number of songs were written directly about
that.
But I also thought it was interesting the way Springsteen kind of reinserted
himself into the pop music industry. I mean, this was his first album in a
number of years; it reunited the E. Street Band; he went off on this
triumphant tour which, you know, got rave reviews.

But he also had to do things that he never had to do before or never felt
that
he had to do to sell this record because the industry is so economically
depressed and I think he wanted this record to sell. So he did things like
the "Today" show, you know, and appeared with Katie Couric. He did things
like went on the show after "Nightline" that Ted Koppel had started up to do
two nights of, you know, head-scratching interviews with Ted about the deep
meaning of his songs. This is always the problem with Bruce, really, in a
sense that, you know, he's always called upon to kind of carry the weight of
popular music on his shoulders. And he brings it on himself by doing songs,

you know, about subjects like September 11th, and I think some of those
songs
were wonderfully crafted. I think it was a very uneven album, but it was a
good effort overall.

GROSS: Had he been planning to make another CD, or was it September 11th
that
inspired him to go back into the studio and do something?

TUCKER: I think from the interviews that I've seen and read that he had had
a
number of songs that he'd been kind of sketching out, but I think that he
wrote supposedly a number of these September 11th songs kind of in a rush of
kind of thoughts and emotions about it and knowing that this kind of music
was
going to be written about probably elsewhere and he wanted to kind of make
his
own mark on it.

GROSS: What do you want to play for us?

TUCKER: I'd like to play the title song called "The Rising."

(Soundbite of "The Rising")

Mr. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Can't see nothing in front of me, can't
see
nothing coming up behind. Make my way through the darkness, I can't feel
nothing but this chain that binds me. Lost track of how far I've gone, how
far I've gone and how high I've climbed. On my back's a 60-pound stone, on
my
shoulder a half-mile of line.

Come on up for the rising. Come on up for the rising tonight.

Left the house this morning...

BOGAEV: Rock critic Ken Tucker talking with Terry Gross. We'll hear more
after the break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of "Jingle Bells")

BOGAEV: If you're just joining us, we're featuring an interview Terry
recorded with rock critic Ken Tucker about the music of the past year.

GROSS: Well, one of the music phenomenons of the year was certainly
"American
Idol," a TV show which had a--sold a whole lot of records and made a big
splash. Did you actually watch "American Idol" when it was on?

TUCKER: I did. I felt it was my duty as a, you know, pop culture sheriff
to
sit through...

GROSS: Not to mention TV critic and...

TUCKER: That's right.

GROSS: ...pop music critic. You...

TUCKER: Yeah, I had to. It was...

GROSS: I guess you would be arrested if you didn't watch it.

TUCKER: It was inescapable. You know, I found it initially kind of
interesting because they showed all these tryouts of these songs--these
singers who wanted to become the American Idol. This was a British import,
and they also imported one British judge, this guy Simon Cowell, who
initially, I thought, was kind of amusing because he was the first person in
ages on television who would actually tell somebody that they were mediocre,
you know. That's just not done in America anymore. Everybody has to be
told
that they're good, you know, and they tried really hard, and that was proven
by the other judges, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul, who had the most
blandest
comments even when a contestant would leave the room and they'd grimace and
groan and the same. Cowell would say right to their faces that, you know,
`You have no future. You really should go get a job in a fast-food
restaurant
immediately. Thank you.'

But then the ultimate winner, Kelly Clarkson, I think it was proof that the
kind of music that "American Idol" sought and thought was valuable was, you
know, if you could sing like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston, if you could
sing these kind of knockout ballads that kind of crammed as many ululations
of
your throat that you could possibly put into every syllable. I thought they
were perfectly awful songs. I was shocked at how many people would try out
using material from, say, Whitney or Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera.
That
kind of balladry is not my idea of what an American idol should be.

And true to form, Kelly Clarkson won with the song called "A Moment Like
This," which, you know, I think is one of those big, bombastic ballads that
ended up selling quite well. And it remains to be seen whether she has a
career beyond this.

GROSS: I thought it had a remarkably '80s sound to it.

TUCKER: Very '80s, yeah. And also the fact that, you know, sort of the
subtext of this that nobody talks about is that whoever won that competition
was immediately hit--his or her soul was sold to Simon Cowell, whose record
company partly sponsored this competition and you become his client for
his--so he was out to devise and to narrow down the contestants who would
sell
the most records. And it had a--he has, obviously, a very kind of European
sensibility. So it's a kind of throwback to that '80s Abba kind of pop
music
that sells very well worldwide.

GROSS: Yeah. It's the kind of song that it builds to the key change with
the
big crescendo at the end.

TUCKER: Yeah. It's really--it drives me nuts after a while hearing it over
and over again on the radio. It's like one of those songs that you
immediately start turning the radio the instant, you know, it comes on.

GROSS: Well, now that we've torn the record apart, let's hear it.

TUCKER: Yes.

(Soundbite of "Before Your Love")

Ms. KELLY CLARKSON: (Singing) I wonder how I ever made it through the day.
How did I settle for the world in shades of gray? When you go in circles,
all
the scenery looks the same. And you don't know why, and I looked into your
eyes. And the world stretched out in front of me and I realized...

I never lived before your love. I never felt before your touch. I never
needed anyone to make me feel alive. But then again, I wasn't really
living.
I never lived before your love.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Oh, that's Kelly Clarkson, the American Idol. And, you know, the
single of her CD, which is all that's out just yet, has this great ad on the
back. If you look on the back of the single, it says, `Coming soon,
"American
Idol: Greatest Hits," Kelly's debut album, "American Idol: The Search for
a
Superstar."' So it's a song whose purpose is, in part, to just keep
advertising more stuff.

TUCKER: Yeah, it's a big franchise. I mean, the new "American Idol" starts
already in January. So, you know, this is just something that the Fox
Network
is going to play up, and Simon Cowell will become meaner and meaner as the
show goes on.

GROSS: Were there any parts of 2002 that you found particularly
frustrating?
You know, you mentioned that country music was a big disappointment this
year.
Any other real disappointments that you had, or any moments where you felt
like you were just very out of sync with the popular taste of the moment?

TUCKER: I think that I wish that more radio airplay could have been given
to
bands like The Hives and The Vines and The Strokes. It just seemed to me
that
just as much as Kelly Clarkson--if you talk about catchy pop songs, I mean,
with more of an edge, this was the kind of music that really could have
taken
radio by storm and didn't. And I guess it's because it is a throwback--I
think, you know, radio programmers are now--they look at that stuff as kind
of
oldies music. They can't look at it as something kind of fresh and building
on itself. So that I found kind of frustrating.

On the other hand, I felt that there was so much good hip-hop music that--I
just find that area of both production and performance to be so interesting.
There are producers--the production team called The Neptunes who are just
all
over the place. There's a group called N.E.R.D. that put out a terrific
album, and also Justin Timberlake from 'N Sync--they produced a couple of
his
songs, and they sound terrific. So there are a lot of really interesting
kind
of behind-the-scenes creative people that are making an impact, I think,
right
now.

GROSS: Any old music you've been returning to or catching up on this year?

TUCKER: I'll tell you, you know, I hadn't thought about this till just now,
but there's a two-disc Mamas & The Papas retrospective which is the most
sustained beautiful music I've heard in a while. It made me completely
reconsider The Mamas & The Papas. It includes all their greatest hits plus
B-sides and album cuts that I hadn't heard before, and they're just
remarkable
for what John Phillips achieved both as producer and as an arranger.
There's
a certain majestic harmony to what The Mamas & The Papas did that I think
kind
of stands alone and can stand beside people who get more credit like Brian
Wilson and The Beach Boys.

GROSS: Well, Ken Tucker, I wish you happy holidays and a very happy new
year.
Thank you so much for sharing your best records of the year with us.

TUCKER: Well, thanks a lot, Terry. I appreciate it.

BOGAEV: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly and rock
music
critic for FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Who's got a beard that's long and white?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa's got a beard that's long and white.

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Who comes around on a special night?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa comes around on a special night.
Special
night? Beard that's white? Must be Santa. Must be Santa. Must be Santa,
Santa Claus.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Who has boots and a suit of red?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa wears boots and a suit of red.

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Who wears a long cap on his head?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa wears a long cap on his head. Cap on
head? Suit that's red? Special night? Beard that's white? Must be Santa.
Must be Santa. Must be Santa, Santa Claus.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Who's got a big, red cherry nose?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa's got a big, red cherry nose.

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Who laughs this way, `Ho, ho, ho'?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa laughs this way, `Ho, ho, ho.' Ho, ho,
ho? Cherry nose? Cap on head? Suit that's red? Special night? Beard
that's white? Must be Santa. Must be Santa. Must be Santa, Santa Claus.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Who very soon will come our way?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa very soon will come our way.

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Eight little reindeer pull his sleigh?

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Santa's little reindeer pull his sleigh.
Reindeer, sleigh? Come our way? Ho, ho, ho? Cherry nose?
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.