The Mysterious Rantings of a Pop Culture Junkie

2009 in retrospect (part II)

2010-02-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't award any awards in that last post, did I? How foolish of me. Let's address that before moving on:

The Andy Roddick Memorial Award: Russian Circles - Geneva, Alice in Chains - Black Gives Way To Blue, The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love, Mastodon - Crack the Skye

The Spirit of Planet of Ice Award: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - The Century of Self

The Bourne Identity Soundtrack Award: Animal Collective - Meriwether Post Pavillion

The Phantom Award: Porcupine Tree - The Incident, Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown (maybe - we'll have to see where I stand further down the road)

The "Holy Shit! I Care About You Again!" Award: Kylesa - Static Tensions

The Samuel Beckett Memorial Award: He Is Legend - It Hates You

The '04-'05 Phoenix Suns Memorial Award: Torche - Meanderthal

[new for 2010] The Chairless Award (for my favorite comedy album of the year): Patton Oswalt - My Weakness Is Strong

Moving on... Actually, no. Before I move on, I'd like to look into an alternate reality for a moment and muse on the possibility of breaking my self-imposed rules.

2009 was, in a ridiculous number of ways, a year of rereleases, at least from my perspective. Since I bar rereleased albums from consideration for my favorite album of the year list, they didn't get to make their way onto the list. However, if I lived in the reality where I didn't care about my self-imposed rules, my favorite albums of 2009 list might look something like this:

1. Pearl Jam - Ten
2. The Beatles - Rubber Soul
3. Converge - Axe to Fall
4. Michael Giacchino's Star Trek soundtrack
5. Booker T. - Potato Hole

Now, it's seriously time to move forward and focus on film.

There were more than a few movies that were excellent this year, and all for a grand variety of reasons. Some were spectacularly well-done (District 9, Moon, Inglorious Basterds), while others were marvelous adaptations of source material long-thought unfilmable (Watchmen), while still more were fantastic character studies of men about to snap (Observe and Report, Big Fan), or proof positive that 3-D might be the next great immersive step in filmmaking (Coraline, Avatar), and others were just so fucking fun that gaffes and logical gaps didn't even matter (Star Trek, Zombieland). And, of course, Up continued Pixar's virtually inassailable track record as the single best film studio in the 21st century.

Now, if anyone were to ask me which movie I saw in 2009 should win the Best Picture Oscar, my answer would be immediately, "Inglorious Basterds was the best movie of 2009, by far. Tarantino's movies are always better than everyone else's, anyway, but Inglorious Basterds was the work of a master operating at the absolute top of his game. Everything about it was perfect, from the way it demanded its audience's full attention from the first moment to the last, to the music, to the way the camera moved, to the performances, to that final, beautiful, hilarious orgy of violence. Inglorious Basterds was filmmaking at its absolute best, and if no one else is willing to recognize it... It's kind of okay, because I know the truth."

Actually, there would probably be more cursing in my defense of what I feel was the best movie of 2009.

However, the most fun I had at a movie theater in 2009 was when I went to see Star Trek on opening night, no question. It was, to a grand degree, what I'd hoped the experience of watching the Star Wars prequels would have been like (if they'd been, you know, good movies). By the end of the film, I'd renewed my vows with Star Trek, and no movie released in 2009 could have any chance of competing with it.

I also found myself wrapped up in Moon more than I'd ever anticipated; it, and Observe and Report, were the two movies I wound up loving that I'd not expected to love. They were, after all, committed. Fully. District 9 was, too, but it didn't capture me on the basic level that I'd hoped it would.

In the interest of brevity, I'll say that my five most enjoyable moviegoing experiences of 2009 were as follows:

1. Star Trek
2. Observe and Report
3. Inglorious Basterds
4. Moon
5. Up (despite the fact that the fucking opening makes me cry every time)

2009 in retrospect (part I)

2010-01-25T15:17:00.001-07:00

I am so totally over this end-of-the-year list thing that it's not even funny. Why, then, you ask, am I compiling and submitting to the Internet my own list? Mostly, it's for the purposes of an historical experiment I'm attempting to run.

Let me explain. No, is too complicated. Let me sum up. I think the only way to truly know what was significant and good about a particular year is to look back five years after the fact. That way, you're emotionally distant enough that there is no way you can be caught up in the hype (*cough*AVATAR*hack*), plus, enough time has passed that you can see which stones cast into the pond created the most significant ripples. You can't do that right at the year's end. We have no way of knowing if a spate of alternate history revenge films will get kicked off by the success of Inglorious Basterds, or if elderly people are going to get leading roles in more films than Up, or if any kind of potential boycott of Jay's re-return to the Tonight Show will have any affect on NBC at all. We just don't know.

Five years ago, 2004 had ended. That particular year saw the release of:

 Patton Oswalt's Feelin' Kind Of Patton, 

The Dillinger Escape Plan's Miss Machine, 

Converge's You Fail Me, 

The Beastie Boys' To The 5 Boroughs, 

TV On The Radio's Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, 

Green Day's American Idiot, 

The Arcade Fire's Funeral, 

Devotchka's How It Ends, 

Isis' Panopticon, 

The Roots' The Tipping Point, 

These Arms Are Snake's Oxeneers or The Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home, 

that enormous Nirvana box set With The Lights Out, 

Mastodon's Leviathan, 

Kanye West's The College Dropout, 

and a shit ton of other music that I don't have in my iTunes library at the moment.

[ASIDE: In the interest of providing some perspective on how dramatically the contents of my iTunes library differs from the prevailing taste of the American public, here are the 10 best-selling albums of 2004 - thanks, Wikipedia:

Usher's Confessions

Avril Lavigne's Under My Skin

Britney Spears' In The Zone

Eminem's Encore

Norah Jones' Feels Like Home

Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography

Kenny Chesney's When the Sun Goes Down

Gretchen Wilson's Here for the Party

Tim McGraw's Live Like You Were Dying

Maroon 5's Songs About Jane

And here are some of the 2005 Grammy winners - thanks to CBS.com:

Album of the Year: Genius Loves Company, Ray Charles and various artists
Record of the Year: "Here We Go Again," Ray Charles and Norah Jones
Song of the Year: "Daughters," John Mayer
Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal: "Vertigo," U2
Country Album: Van Lear Rose, Loretta Lynn
Rap Album: The College Dropout, Kanye West
R&B Album: The Diary of Alicia Keys, Alicia Keys
New Artist: Maroon 5.
Rock Album: American Idiot, Green Day. 

END ASIDE]

 In the world of moving pictures, we got to see:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,

Collateral,  

Spider-Man 2,  

Anchorman,

Hotel Rwanda,

The Corporation,

Fahrenheit 9/11,

Shaun of the Dead,

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,

Control Room,

Dodgeball,

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring,

The Incredibles,

Friday Night Lights,

The Bourne Supremacy,

Kill Bill Vol. 2,

Million Dollar Baby,

Hellboy,

The Aviator,

Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead,

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,

Spartan,

and Team America: World Police.

[ASIDE: The 10 top-grossing films in America in 2004 were:

Shrek 2

Spider-Man 2

The Passion of the Christ

Meet the Fockers

The Incredibles

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The Day After Tomorow

The Polar Express

The Bourne Supremacy

National Treasure

And the major Oscar winners in 2005 were:

Best Picture: Million Dollar Baby

Best Actor: Jamie Foxx (Ray)

Best Actress: Hillary Swank (Million Dollar Baby)

Best Director: Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby)

Best Writing: Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

Best Animated Feature: The Incredibles

Best Foreign Language Film: The Sea Inside 

END ASIDE] 

The Apprentice, Deadwood, Rescue Me, Lost, Veronica Mars, Boston Legal, Joey, House, Pimp My Ride, Desperate Housewives and Drawn Together all premiered on television in 2004.

The point that I think I'm making with these oversized lists is that if you look back on 2004, there were some pretty damn good movies and albums released that year (and I'm sure I skipped far too many things), many of which were ignored in favor of... other fare (it's certainly the best that a glorified snuff film will ever do at the American box office), both when you look at the final financial tallies and at many awards lists.

It's like with those big award wins Avatar had a few weeks ago. For good or for ill, everyone can get caught up in the hype, the excitement of the moment, the anguish of death, and ignore things that were quieter/less recently released in favor of that overwhelming feeling. It happens every year, so it's not really worth complaining about that much, but this is why I'm advocating this five year plan of mine.

After five years, you know what influenced what, what you listened to steadily, rather than for six months and forgot about, what you thought was good enough to buy and regularly watch on whatever format you prefer, and what stands some variation of the test of time. You never know that at the end of the year, especially when some things have only been out for three months, rather than almost twelve. 

To this end, I'm going to fashion two sets of lists this year (and see if I can keep this up, so that in five years, I can compare lists and see how my tastes have morphed). One wherein I list off the things I enjoyed most this past year that were released in this past year (like everyone else), and the other wherein I try to define what's meant the most to me from five years previous. The really substantial stuff, you know? A critical list.

Part One will be the standard lists, music and film (actually, it'll just be the music list. Tackling music and film in the same posting smacks of overkill). I'd like to fashion some kind of "favorites in graphic fiction" list as well, but that's probably going to take a lot more work. So, that's forthcoming (except to say that Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of Richard Stark's first Parker book - The Hunter - was incredible. It's the kind of comic that even people who know nothing about comics should be impressed by). Part Two is also forthcoming.

Now, to the lists! First up, music:

[ASIDE: As always, this is in some kind of order, likely "Fifth Most Favorite" to "Most Favorite." And I reserve the right to mock myself incessantly if, at any point in the future, I discover I made a horrible decision. END ASIDE]

5. Pelican - What We All Come To Need

I love Pelican, almost as much as I love to complain about them. They're so hit-or-miss, when it comes to their releases speaking to me, that what I consider their finest work, The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw, becomes more appropriate as a career-defining work by the year; it's rather replete with stunning highs ("March To The Sea" - which is not as good as its longer twin, "March Into The Sea," which was available on the EP of the same name) and lackluster lows (most of Larry Herweg's stunningly inappropriate drum parts). Pelican's imperfect, but that's sort of what makes them awesome.

It was time for a great Pelican album with What We All Come To Need, since their previous record, City of Echoes, just didn't do it for me (they evened out the peaks and valleys from The Fire, but that made it infinitely less interesting). They succeeded pretty spectacularly with What We All; it reaches much further than City of Echoes, and since ambition's much of what defines Pelican's music for me (what can you do with two guitars, a bass and a drum kit? A hell of a lot, it turns out), that alone makes it infinitely better. I adore "Glimmer;" it's the kind of song you can only make without vocals (plus, it groves as well as any song anyone heard in 2009). "The Creeper" is like the perfect track 2 (building on what came in the first awesome track, while pushing the music out in new directions the rest of the album can explore." The last two tracks would've been enough to make me trek south for their show, if I'd purchased the album before the band's latest trek through Denver. And while Pelican's music is less cinematic than Explosions in the Sky's, there's a brawny, muscular quality to their music (even though their guitar players - Laurent Schroeder-Lebec and Trevor de Brauw - get exponentially better with every record. They were, unquestioningly, the saving grace of City of Echoes. I didn't care for the songs, but I did like hearing Laurent and Trevor play them).

A song like "Strung Up From The Sky" (far from the best track on the album) is made far more interesting because of its bookending by "Specks of Light" and "An Inch Above Sand." Pelican's at their best when they're being aggressive; the acoustic breaks on The Fire were iffy at best, but they made the music surrounding them better for their inclusion. "Strung Up From The Sky" is not much compared to the songs that precede and follow it, but it makes them better by its presence and placing on the album. I think that's kind of daring, and it speaks to me.

Also, and the importance of this cannot be overstated, Larry has figured out how to incorporate his drumming into the music, and not just string together nonsensical flourishes that do nothing to advance the song as a whole. He's figured out, well, what a drummer (a musician, really) is supposed to do. Now, if Pelican could just get back to playing 10+ minute epics...

4. Booker T. - Potato Hole

One of the first CDs I ever owned was The Best of... Booker T. and the MG's. My father bought it for me, and in the interest of being efficient with digital space, you can read the story (plus my initial reactions to Potato Hole) here.

Nothing about my opinion of Potato Hole has changed from the first time I heard the record. It became my default "released in 2009 album to listen to" when I didn't have anything specific I wanted to hear. That may not sound like a resounding endorsement, that it's the CD I preferred to listen to when I didn't have anything I desperately wanted to hear, but I'm going to stand by it. It almost brings me comfort, which is a strange thing to say about a recently-released CD, but there you have it.

3. Michael Giacchino - Star Trek (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

It's a matter of record that I loved J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (read my reaction to it if you don't believe me). It was not the best movie released in 2009, but it was, without question, the viewing experience I had that I enjoyed most. The boost that Michael Giacchino's music brought to the table cannot, under any circumstances, be undervalued. Hell, it even works without the onscreen action.

It's important to note, before I dive fully into my nerdgastic exploration of the Star Trek soundtrack, that I seriously doubt anyone not so terribly enamored with all things Star Trek would find nearly as much in this collection of music (and, of course, if you weren't in the pro-Star Trek camp, you likely won't enjoy reliving the aural component of the film). Giacchino's repeated tips of the hat to the musical history of Star Trek (the 0:09 mark of "Nailin' the Kelvin" one of many examples) nearly turns the Star Trek soundtrack into the musical equivalent of a Tarantino film, so replete with knowledge and self-awareness is it.

The greatest thing about Michael Giacchino's music is its rapacious sense of adventure. It infused the film with the scope that it demanded; Star Trek did, after all, rewrite over 40 years of entertainment history (it did not make them irrelevant, it simply spun them off in a new direction, and if you didn't like that, well, I'm sorry). The propulsive force of the music, always a moment away from bounding off in a new exciting direction, does just as excellent a job of holding my interest as a listener as it did when I was a viewer.

A song like "Does It Still McFly?" shows off Giacchino's composition skills like few others. In the span of two minutes and three seconds, he whips the listener from loud to quiet and back to loud again with the sort of flair nominally reserved for bands like Nirvana and the Pixies (but, of course, Giacchino also had to tailor his to support a motion picture). "Enterprising Young Men" reappropriates the title music to bring back memories of the introduction not only of this film's Enterprise, but of every miniature/digital ship to share her name. "Nero Death Experience" is like a little movie all in itself, with the highs, lows, crescendos and climaxes that every grand adventure film begs to possess.

My tense anticipation of Abrams & Company's second Star Trek is followed closely by my desire to hear Giacchino's score for the next film. I never thought Trek would be able to match Jerry Goldsmith (or James Horner), but clearly (and gleefully), I was wrong.

2. Converge - Axe To Fall

There's a lot that I can say about Converge (and I started to right here), but the upshot of all the things that I could say is that Converge was rather like the gateway drug that got me into the weird little world of metalcore/hardcore metal/whatever you want to call it. My affection for United Nations, or Dillinger, or The Refused, or Isis, or Intronaut, or Torche, or Yakuza, or any of these weird bands, all dates back to the first time I heard You Fail Me. So, thanks for that, Converge.

Despite the great debt of gratitude I owe Converge, Axe To Fall pretty much kicks the ass of every piece of music released in 2009 on its own merit. Sure, a familiarity with Jane Doe and When Forever Comes Crashing and the rest of their catalog would be handy when approaching Axe To Fall, but it's not entirely necessary. "Dark Horse" clubs you over the head with its on-all-fronts sonic assault and doesn't care if you were eagerly anticipating hearing it or stumbled upon it purely accidentally. The guitar solo on "Reap What You Sow" shreds you from top to bottom whether the words "Deathwish Inc." mean anything to you or not.

Compared to You Fail Me (which not only demonstrates the virtues of a smoldering introduction, but actually slows down for a song or two), or No Heroes (which saw the band experimenting within the boundaries of its style of music and pushing those boundaries out further than anyone might've imagined - but should've expected), Axe To Fall is a return to form of sorts (whether I'm actually going to where I fear I'm going to, which is to compare Axe To Fall to All That You Can't Leave Behind... Well, I guess I just did. I know Converge won't begin the slow slide into self-parody that U2 is coming precariously close to doing, but just like Bono and the lads, Axe To Fall does signal a return to the form that the band made its name on, just like ATYCLB did for U2), recalling the days of their masterwork, Jane Doe.

There's a lot of Jane Doe in the tracks from "Wishing Well" to "Slave Driver," actually. That album's fascination with the exceptionally close relationship between "music" and "noise," the exploration and tweaking of the riff, the emphasis on the sound produced by the band rather than different elements of it... The parallels are there, and they are most clear.

"Cruel Bloom" and "Wretched World" are probably as close as the band will ever get to recreating the epic nature of the title track on Jane Doe, but they attack it from a different angle. Instead of relentlessly crashing against you like a typhoon of music, "Cruel Bloom" builds to the freakout of its closing seconds gradually, before unleashing itself, and, just as quickly, bottling itself up again. Jacob Bannon's as intelligible as he's ever been in "Wretched World," morphing his mournful moaning into what has to be one of the top five or ten cathartic screams ever put to tape. And, considering how much screaming Jacob's done, I reckon that's saying something.

1. Thursday - Common Existence

I've come pretty far around on Thursday in a rather short span of time, I think. Oddly enough, this means that, for two years running now, I've declared a Geoff Rickly-helmed album as my favorite of the year. Appropriately, though, the circumstances conspiring to make United Nations my favorite album of 2008 are fairly similar to the ones that banded together to make Common Existence my favorite of 2009. Most of them, shockingly, are depressing.

At least in 2008, I had the somewhat tenuous hope that things were going to turn around. Maybe they wouldn't right themselves right away, but at least I was able to convince myself that the seemingly unending spree of disaster that the last eight years had brought was coming to a close. And yeah, when I look back on the words I wrote on November 5, 2008, I feel some of that old cynicism creeping back in, the stuff that I've worked so hard to expunge from, if not my script-writing, at least my daily life and attitude. I also feel guilty, that in less than a year, I've fallen back into my old smoldering fury towards that most ineffective of American political parties, the Democratic party.

The nice thing about Common Existence is that it doesn't limit the target of its anger to ineffective politicians, or posing, fraudulent patriots, but anything that does a spectacular job of letting you down. It taps nicely into that high schooler inside of me who still loves nu metal, as well as the older fellow who's developed an appreciation for more out-there musical stylings, and the large aspect of my personality that will always and forever be able to find fifteen things about which to be disappointed.

There's still something beautiful to me about the music in this album. "Beyond the Visible Spectrum" and "Time's Arrow" sound almost fragile at times, and the hollow echo that drowns Geoff's voice in "Subway Funeral" is one of those rare moments where the literal becomes gorgeous.

Common Existence speaks to me on a variety of levels, and does so in a way that's easy to internalize. For that alone, it deserves my respect, but because it does everything and more so very well, I can't not name it my favorite album of 2009.

I'll follow up with my (abbreviated) list of movies as soon as I can.

conan o'bama?

2010-01-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

This might be stretching the boundaries of metaphor beyond repair, but might Conan's [soon-to-be] aborted run on The Tonight Show be compared to President Obama's time spent thus far in the White House? Unrealistic expectations, forces allied against them, unfortunate economic circumstances...

I'm still trying to figure out how the Masturbating Bear factors into this.

the not-completely-late-to-the-party movie review presents: avatar

2009-12-26T12:12:00.002-07:00

 It's taken me a couple of days to be able to sit down and write this reaction in one shot because, well, it has. I don't know if I should be blaming some of the reviews I've read (Devin and Nick, if I should, I blame you), or my sometimes aggravating ability to see both sides of an argument, or straight-up ambivalance, but for whatever reason, I'm writing this, hopefully you're reading it, and maybe we can have a good little discussion about it later.

 Avatar. The movie that's taken Jim Cameron god-only-knows-how-long to finish, cost anywhere from $17 to hundreds of millions of dollars, required the development of a new motion-capture system for film, and might just be the movie that saves cinema (financially) as we know it. It's billed as a movie that everyone needs to go and see (preferably on a 3D IMAX screen – if you have access to one and anywhere from $13-$17 to burn, yes, absolutely, go and see it this way) because it will. Change. Your. Perception. Of. Film. FOREVER.

 Let's jump to the end and back here really quickly: Is Avatar the best movie I've seen all year? In the last five years? In my life? In reverse order: No, no, and it depends on how you define “best.” Were I inclined to make a list of the five films I liked best that I've seen in 2009, the list would include (in no particular order) Inglourious Basterds, Star Trek, Watchmen, Moon, and Observe And Report (I need to see District 9 again to shake out how I really feel about it. The fact that Wikus is basically Michael Scott, and later action-hero Michael Scott, might still be too much for me. Or not. That's why I need to see it again. And I greatly enjoyed Up and Big Fan). I tend to weight writing more significantly than most anything else in the movie (being a “writer” myself), with acting coming in a close second, and everything else kind of getting jammed together after that (unless something really stands out – like the production design in From Hell. One really awesome aspect of a film can make up for some weaker ones, but that's not to say that I actually like From Hell. It's a pretty shitty movie, all things being equal, but that production design is fucking incredible). 

 There are, of course, those rare “perfect” movies, where everything's working in harmony and the film winds up being more than the sum of its rather impressive parts (perfect movies for me would include John Carpenter's The Thing, Galaxy Quest, Jackie Brown, Bringing Up Baby, Yojimbo, Bowfinger, Batman Returns, and certainly others that I can't recall at the moment). But, I know those when I see them, and that's usually on a repeat viewing. If you were to ask me if I saw any movies that were anything like “perfect” movies this year, I'd say the closest I got were either Observe and Report or Moon. But, ask me in five years, and I'll be able to give you a real answer that's not operating on a Seth Rogen/Sam Rockwell hangover (as much, anyway).

 By my rather ill-defined criteria, Avatar was not the best movie I saw in 2009. Now, to be fair, Avatar was probably the best looking movie I've seen this year, and in quite a few years. The movie's design is a tribute to Cameron's single-mindedness, and the team he put together to help him realize his vision. The film's tech cannot be denied – it's frankly kind of scary how good CG can be when it's placed in the hands of people who know how to use it (as my good friend Mister Tim Davids said, it's difficult to believe that the human base camp isn't one gigantic miniature). The facial expressions of the Na'vi blow away anything that motion capture has offered up in the past (a note that our friends at Marvel may want to consider closely as they prepare for the Avengers film); Zoe Saldana's Neytiri (a character who, by the way, dominates every scene she's in. Abams and Cameron have given us the next great lady action star; Hollywood better not fuck this one up) looks and moves the way I'd expect her to look and move as that character, as does Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine's Na'vi avatar (damn, does she ever do a great job as Cameron's Cassandra, once again). Pandora feels, to me, as fully realized as any world in the history of science fiction film.

 The story is pretty weak sauce, can we all just admit that? If there's ever been a retread of a story, Avatar's narrative would be just that. White guy from soulless society finds the true meaning of life among the tribal people that his own people are planning to ruthlessly exploit... This is not a groundbreaking sort of story that no one's ever tried to tell before. Admittedly, a movie as tech-focused as Avatar will, probably, push other aspects of itself off to the side in order to maximize that which makes it significant, and there's certainly nothing wrong with telling a story that's been told before, as long as it's done interestingly and well, but Avatar hits all of the expected beats perfectly. My problem with that was that it felt too easy (a point I'll try and touch on later) for a film of this magnitude; if you're going to set out and try to change movies forever, why not try and tackle every aspect of motion picture storytelling? Ambition in one focused area is all well and good, but ambition in all things is enviable and worthy of appreciation, even when it falls flat on its face. 

 Now, I know that no one has ever gone to see a James Cameron film because of the penetrating social insight, or his deep characterization, or any of the things that mark, say, an Ang Lee film (or a Spike Lee film, for that matter). Cameron's a different kind of filmmaker entirely, and that's not a bad thing. He does what he does very well. Would I love it if he recognized his limitations and got himself a writing partner who could say, “Jim, you've created an amazing world here in this script. Now it's time for you to let me populate it with compelling characters and for the two of us to work together to fashion a story worthy of our imaginations”? Hell fucking yes. But, the fact that he doesn't almost makes him more of an artist. He's committed to his vision, no compromises, no outside influences, no nothing. He's kind of like George Lucas in that way, except that Cameron's had more than two good ideas in his life (at least, he's shared more than two good ideas with the world. Okay, three).

 You see what I mean when I say that I'm still not sure what I can say about Avatar?

 “Unobtanium” is kind of a stupid word, but it seems like just the sort of shorthand dickhead space capitalists would come up with (and, by the way, Giovanni Ribisi is a great spiritual son to Paul Reiser's Carter Burke. Burke was a better character than Selfridge, but to complain would be the same as splitting hairs, and I'll do that plenty more later). None of the scientists in the film call the mineral that, and there's so much about the world of Avatar that's left unsaid (like the great science fiction films – Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, Alien, and so on – the world is so complete that it doesn't need to spend weeks and months and years explaining itself. It just is) that I can't imagine that real scientists would have been unable to fashion a better name that “unobtanium.”

 [ASIDE: The following paragraphs... I still have problems with them. They don't fit anywhere in the flow of my text, and I don't precisely know how qualified I am to write any of it, being a white guy, and all. That being said, the following points kept flashing in my mind during the film, and I'd like to think that, by writing them down, I can figure out what they mean. But, if that's the case, I haven't figured them out yet. Anyway, here we go:

 Now, I'm well aware that Cameron's never busied himself with much subtext in his movies. If it's there, I'm pretty sure it's there by accident (“greedy, moralless, monolithic companies are bad” is not subtext here any more than it was in Titanic or Aliens – hell, in Aliens, he was just picking up where the first film left off). And, yes, I imagine that, until now, the most significant performer who isn't white in any of his films would be Jenette Goldstein's Private Vasquez in Aliens was not by design. I doubt that factors into anybody's casting decisions, frankly. That's not why we watch his movies; he doesn't have anything to say about the persistent race issues on our planet, and that's fine, that's who he is.

 It's weird to me, though, that, with the exception of Michelle Rodriguez and Dileep Rao, every speaking human on Pandora is white, and the most significant ethnic actors are blue. Zoe Saldana, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi, Laz Alonso... They're all digital, they're all tribal. They're all great performers, who certainly help the movie soar where lesser actors would've brought it down, but if you have complete casting freedom with the mo-cap, the way Cameron and his people did, it seems... well, lazy to slide into stereotype territory with the Na'vi. It was so glaring that it almost blinded me at times.

 I also think something needs to be said about how it's the white man – in the body of a blue man – that unites the natives. I'm not the right person to do it, since I don't have cultural/philosophical baggage that would allow me to make a cogent and passionate point about it, but I think it's there (and that's not to say it hasn't been there before. Cameron certainly didn't invent that), I think it's significant, and I think it's worth recognizing.

 And, before I forget, there's this weird rape allegory that comes up when Sully captures his first flying lizard creature – the humans call them Banshees - and again with the gigantic second one, the one that he rides to unite the clans of The People against the human interlopers. It's not explored at all, but to me, it very much smacks of rape. I get that the nerve tendrils are a literalization for how the Na'vi are connected to Pandora – if there's one thing sci-fi is great for, it's making a point with the subtlety of a sledgehammer – but, in this case, it actually made me uncomfortable.]

 Seriously, though, there's a lot about Avatar to like, and to say that I wasn't caught up in the moviemaking for most of the film's runtime would be a lie. When Sully climbs out of the ship and emerges in the human base of operations, when the Na'vi clans wage all-out war against the private military forces of the Corporation/Company, the moments when Pandora unfolds itself to Sully and us... Much of the film was a spectacular theatrical experience. Avatar used 3D exceptionally well; it didn't force itself upon the audience so much as it drew us in. Like Coraline, it utilized the depth of the screen as well as popping the images out at us. It was, in short, a filmgoing experience unlike any I'd ever had before.

 The good, for me, most definitely outweighed the bad (the good, after all, was deliberate, while I think the bad was not. This isn't me saying that I don't think Cameron and his crew are smart enough to pick up on what was “bad;” far from it. I just think that they chose to focus their time and energy on how the film looked, rather than what it might've said). When I walked out of Inglourious Basterds, I remarked that no one makes a movie as well as Quentin Tarantino. Well, James Cameron makes himself one hell of a movie, too. I'm glad I've been able to see a Cameron sci-fi film in theaters; I would've felt cheated if my opportunities had begun and ended with Titanic. And, a Cameron sci-fi film scored by James Horner? I felt spoiled, in parts.

Despite my litany of misgivings with the film, I would not steer anyone away from seeing this film [while it's in the theaters. I suspect this'll be a King Kong-like situation, where I don't have much interest in seeing the film when it's not on a gigantic screen. Which seems to be what Cameron's going for, filling those seats]. Avatar was, in many ways, an experience unlike any I'd ever had before. I'd like to have it again, if I can scrape together the cash to do so.

 [SECOND ASIDE: I read in an interview that Sam Worthington would love the opportunity to test for, and play, the part of Captain America. If he can do a better job consistently reining in his Aussie accent, I don't think I'd have any problems with him playing Steve. He's got the physicality for it, and his speechifying late in the film was very promising. Assuming we can't travel back in time six years and get Nathan Fillion.]

arise, pop culture junkie, arise

2009-12-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

Well, hello blog, I didn't see you there. I'm sorry I've been more inattentive than a bad, alcoholic dad who arbitrarily decides he prefers one of his children to another. I've been working pretty hard to get my comic strip off the ground (though I don't know if you could tell that by looking at the artwork), and now that I've kind of got it chugging along (seeing as how it's viewable on blogger, DrunkDuck and Facebook), I think a return to the classic blog is overdue. I'm going to try to write more regularly here, but don't be surprised if I fail miserably in my endeavor with surprising speed.

In an attempt to kick things off with a less ambitious sort of posting, one wherein I spend a little time reacting to bits of media that I feel are worth taking some time to discuss. This is in no particular order of preference, or organized in any way, really. Just as much to help me get my thoughts in order as it is to provide some (hopefully) insightful words about things that are less important than, say, health care reform.

Movies (in the theater)

I haven't gone to see a movie in the theater in nearly two months; the last time, Vanessa and I went to see Zombieland when we were in Utah. Plenty of people have already written more than enough positive things about this television pilot-turned-major motion picture that I would just be restating prior points, so we'll just keep moving on (except to note that I appreciated everyone's respecting of the blackout on the identity of the celebrity cameo. That was a fantastic moment, particularly that it wasn't ruined by spoilers in reviews).

Moving pictures on plastic discs

The director's cut of Watchmen is even better than it was in the theater, Star Trek loses some of its awesomeness when it's not on a 40-foot screen (but is fantastic, nevertheless), Observe and Report is almost funnier at home, and I'm still hooked on How I Met Your Mother. I didn't see that coming, ever. I also didn't know that Will Ferrell's You're Welcome America was ever going to come to DVD. Thank god it did.

Music

There's over a month to go before I can even start thinking about assembling my top 5 favorite albums of the year, so everything here is preliminary, but candidates currently in the running include:

Thursday - Common Existence (having consumed their entire back catalog this year - thanks, United Nations - I can safely say that this record is the one of theirs that speaks to me the strongest. It's almost like a work of art, how it blends sounds together, and is so very, very topical. Plus, I'm always in favor of loud and angry. Less so than in the past, but I still enjoy it).

Converge - Axe To Fall (the band that got me into this whole hardcore/abrasive/whatever scene just can't release a bad album. Axe To Fall pretty much kicks the ass of any record that anyone released this year, and 2009 saw the release of new Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, BTBAM and Mastodon. It's not quite as "deep" as the Thursday record, but it kicks it in the face repeatedly).

Booker T. - Potato Hole (I'm going to let my response to the album from earlier in the year speak for itself. Suffice to say, it's only grown on me more and more).

Mastodon - Crack the Skye (Leviathan was mind-boggling because of its ambition and technical precision, Blood Mountain was a step back technically, though it had far greater fidelity to its concept, and Crack the Skye may well be the ultimate Mastodon album, fusing together bizarre ideas from every corner of the band members' brains. And, to continue on a theme, it rocks some pretty serious shit).

Pelican - What We All Come To Need (it's almost like a rule that I have to dislike every other Pelican release. The untitled EP? Fucking amazing. Australasia? Meh. The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw? Oh, I don't know, it only contains the best fucking song they're ever going to write (March to the Sea - extended on the March Into The Sea EP, which is 20 minutes of pure aural bliss). City of Echoes? Better than Australasia, and certainly slick, but it's too even for me. The Fire was ambitious as hell, with emotional peaks and valleys the likes of which few albums have ever matched for me. City of Echoes? I got bored. The new album throws all of that to the curb and frees me to love Pelican once again. I don't know if anyone has tracked such improvement on the guitar from album to album as Trevor and Laurent have. At least not since the heyday of rock).

Michael Giacchino's Star Trek soundtrack (I love Giacchino's music anyway, but this fantastically nerdy tribute to the history of Star Trek was one of the best parts of my favorite movie of the year. It takes a little work, and a familiarity with the audio that's come before - music and sound effects, both - but its secrets are virtually bottomless. I'm not going to make the same mistake I made with Eddie Vedder's Into The Wild soundtrack).

I was bullish on the Animal Collective album when it came out earlier this year, but now I'm not so sure. My interest has rather waned. At least I was big into it at some point, unlike the new Porcupine Tree record, or 21st Century Breakdown, with which I've never been able to connect.

It is worth noting that, were I to break my own rules and open this list up to remasters and rereleases, it's entirely likely that only the Star Trek soundtrack and Axe to Fall would make it onto my list, seeing as how it'd be filled with Beatles remasters and the Ten reissue. Maybe even Paul's Boutique, now that I think about it...

Television
It sure didn't take long for Dollhouse to get canned, did it? It's particularly sad, seeing as how the second season has (thus far) taken the great realizations and energy from the end of season 1 and just kept rolling with it. There were a lot of reviews of the last episode before the hiatus (the one that focused on Sierra, that was directed by Jonathan Frakes) that called it the best episode of the show thus far. It's certainly the best episode of S2, but for my money, "Epitaph One" is still where it's at. But, every episode has been remarkably entertaining and fascinating, which is saying quite a bit for this show that I've grown to adore. I just wish we'd had more time with it, and that Joss hadn't decided to go with Fox again. If he could temper down his imagination somewhat (in terms of budget, that is), I would really love to see what he could do with the creative freedom he'd find with the right cable network (since I don't know what the general experience is with SciFi/SyFy, I'm going to be less than specific here).

Not working nights has actually freed me up to watch some shows during the time they broadcast this year. My Thursday night comedy shows continue to treat me well (I choose them over Fringe, which I really do prefer to watch without commercials), and the freshman show Community has blossomed into the show I'm least likely to miss during the week. I knew from the get-go that it had a strong chance to be good, that it just needed time to find its legs, but I didn't know it'd become fantastically funny. Chevy Chase returned triumphantly to television, Joel McHale became that leading guy everyone kind of knew he was destined to be, and ensemble comedy rules over NBC for two solid hours every week.

I didn't care for the parts of FlashForward that I saw (trying too hard), and really didn't like V one little bit (if I don't like a single character on your show, that's - in the words of Liz Lemon - a dealbreaker). Sorry.

Video games
2009 has been some kind of banner year for awesome. The best Batman game ever made (which might be the equivalent of damning with faint praise, but Arkham Asylum would be a great stealth action game whether or not it had the license to accompany its top-notch design and gameplay), the best Halo game (ODST, or "Halo Without The Flood, and starring several actors from Firefly," did everything right in its story mode, and has already eaten up way too much of my time with Firefight), Brutal Legend (Jack Black being ridiculous and awesome in a world where everything sung about in every heavy metal album actually happened), Dragon Age (despite the fact that I felt like I might've felt while playing WoW at times, BioWare saved their best writing for an original IP. Man, was that ever the right decision), Modern Warfare 2 (not as jaw-droppingly awesome as the first one, it pushed mainstreams video games in a whole new way when the Moscow airport level began), Borderlands (first-person, multiplayer looting? More, please), and a little game called The Beatles: Rock Band (about which I do not need to say a single thing).

And, oh yeah, I guess I don't care about the Wii one little bit anymore (though I do very much want to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 when it releases next year).

That's plenty for today. I'll try to write something that's real, and not simply a list next time.

shauna macdonald might be the british sigourney weaver

2009-08-28T11:36:00.002-06:00

At least insofar as monster movies go. The Descent, which I think is a phenomenal film, didn't really need a sequel, but neither did Alien. I adore Aliens - I'd probably rank it in my 25 favorite movies of all time - and so maybe The Descent Part II will live up to its spiritual predecessor's achievement. There's a trailer out that gives me hope.

Frankly, I didn't even know Marshall was done making it, let alone that it'd be coming out in December (in the UK).

new project

2009-08-26T10:46:00.005-06:00

I realize I've been remiss in my postings for the month, but there's a halfway decent reason. After having once again tried, and once again failed, to get my long-stalled film project off the ground, I've decided to focus my energies in a different direction for a time. I've always wanted to write and draw a comic strip, and although I can't draw, I can certainly make up for a lacking form with content.

Attempting to combine my hatred of all things evil with my love for comedy and the ridiculous, I've fashioned the beginnings of what might be, well, something. A strip about drone workers at the most evil corporation ever (also the name of the strip, "Incorporated Hate" - Hate, Inc. is a rather shitty clothing company, it appears, and I'd rather not be associated with their product). Like "executive vice president of raping and pillaging" evil.

Come and pay the new project a visit if you like. I don't know if I'll be able to do it daily at first (or ever), but hopefully quality will (eventually - I'm quite aware that it's finding its legs) trump quantity.

moon

2009-07-27T09:10:00.002-06:00

2001, with Sam Rockwell in the Dave Bowman role, and Kevin Spacey playing HAL. That's the vague idea I had of Moon going into it, and I was sold based solely on that terribly wrong impression. Despite the facts that Spacey delivers all of his lines in his best HAL impersonation, the film ends with lights flashing across Rockwell's helmet, and he finds himself at the mercy of the technology of which he's supposed to be the master, Duncan Jones' (David Bowie's son, interestingly enough) smaller, more personal (and, frankly, infinitely more comprehensible) film sets itself far apart from 2001 that comparisons go out the window pretty quickly. Though, there were certainly parts that reminded me of Stephen Soderbergh's adaptation of Solaris, but again, not for long.

A lot of movies these days – far too many – lay everything out early on. By this, I mean that if a movie's structured A-B-C, C is revealed very quickly and the only question left to the audience is, “How is the movie going to get there?” Usually, that's not particularly interesting. That's not to say that such a story can't be told in an compelling way, it's just that I'm very rarely sitting on the edge of my seat wondering what in the hell is going to happen next, but Moon kept my head tilted through much of its runtime. Once I got into the film's groove, I could start to see what the big developments were going to be, but that didn't happen for a while.

Moon is, to be frank, quiet. It makes a good deal of sense, given that Rockwell's Sam Bell is the lone human (though you could argue that point pretty successfully) aboard a moon base that captures Helium-3 to send back to Earth to power fusion generators that've, more or less, solved the fossil fuel problem. There's a fantastic sequence where he's driving his moon rover out to one of the mobile harvesting stations, this massive machine that looks like a cross between a combine and a Jawa sandcrawler. It's kicking up all manner of moon rock as it trudges across the satellite's surface and, as Rockwell drives ever closer, he's caught in its wake, a shower of debris, a rain of rock. It's beautiful and understated, without a musical swell or camera flourish to call attention to it, a great moment of imagery that reminded me of the fireworks scene in Brokeback Mountain, another gorgeous cinematic moment made all the better because it didn't feel the need to announce itself. And, just like that part of Brokeback, something terrible was lurking underneath the surface. The rover crashes into the harvester, knocking him unconscious as rock pours over the small windows.

As a bleeding-heart, liberal, egghead communist, I have to admit that it was tough for me to suspect a company built on the socially progressive base of alternative energy to be, well, evil, but I should've, and right from the start. Between Cyberdine, and Weyland-Yutani, and OCP, there's a long history of corporate wrong-doing in science fiction. But... fusion power! From the moon! What's more awesome than that? How could they be evil? Well, the answer was staring me right in the face from the first moment Rockwell stepped onscreen, and believe me, it's a good one.

Speaking of Sam Rockwell, I don't really know if there are many actors that I genuinely like and enjoy as much as him. I like that he makes these choices of roles that keep him a step or two removed from mainstream acceptance and recognition; I hate it when a band (Isis), or a concept (“universal” health coverage), or a game (Dead Space) gets stolen from me and co-opted by people who don't understand or fully appreciate it as much as I do, and, at least for a little while longer, it doesn't look like Guy Fleegman is going to be taken from me and perverted into something that makes him less than he is. When I saw the G-Force trailer, I remarked that somebody needs to be put in charge of Will Arnett's career (beyond an agent... somebody who has the best interests of his talent in mind, not just his bank account). Rockwell doesn't need that person, at least not yet. He's able to run pretty much the full gamut in Moon, slipping in and out of fully-justifiable paranoia, and he doesn't disappoint. The video messages he sends back and forth with his wife and daughter back on Earth (Bell signed a three-year contract that's about up when the movie opens) are his only substantive contact with the outside world, and he clearly knows it, wrenching every little bit of human connection out of their video-phone tag that he can. In this way, I suppose the film could also be compared to Castaway, except that Moon remains compelling for its entire runtime, and not just a few minutes here and there.

Spacey, of course, is fantastic, even if he's never actually on camera. He's so good at running cool that his voice is the absolute and perfect counterpoint to Rockwell's constantly-bubbling emotions. You want to suspect GERTY from the get-go, but the AI is so convincing when it tells Sam that it's just here to help him.

For an (apparently) $4 million movie, the production value is fantastic. The CG sequences stay within the tone of the movie, always understated, never showy. The base is logical, efficient with its use of space, and GERTY, rather than a series of camera eyes installed throughout, is a physical mechanism that travels on rails set in the ceiling. A small display switches between variations on happy, sad, worried, uncomfortable, and even expressionless faces, so as to cue Sam in on the tone his computerized companion wishes to take with him.

I've tried to avoid spoiling what happens in the film precisely because I enjoy it so very much. I don't want to ruin it for anyone reading that might want to go and see it. That's something you should do, go and see it. As quickly as possible.

harry potter and the half-blood prince

2009-07-19T18:47:00.004-06:00

Until now, the only Harry Potter movie I've really been able to stand was The Prisoner of Azkaban, for a variety of reasons. It was an actual movie, not simply a crummy slapping of the book onscreen, that finally made Hogwarts as much of a character as the children I'd not been sold on until Alfonso Cuaron took them under his wing and showed them how to be actors. It probed the darkness that, in the books, was only starting to rear its head, and it pissed off a fanbase that I didn't particularly care for, so that was a serious mark in its favor. My heart was heavy when I found out Cuaron wasn't to direct The Goblet of Fire (but, let's be fair: Children of Men is a hell of a movie), and so I reconciled myself to the fact that there would never be a Harry Potter movie I enjoyed. Goblet of Fire was so badly paced that I'd probably rate it a worse experience than either of the Chris Columbus movies, and Order of the Phoenix only got interesting when the wizard gunfight broke out towards the end. Anybody who actually expected the Harry Potter movies to be any good was hoping for far too much, anyway.

It's still tough to believe that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has gotten the glowing reviews its received. Tough, not because it's an excellent movie (because it's very good, but I'm getting ahead of myself), but because it's a Harry Potter movie. It may well force me to reevaluate my impressions of the series as a whole (I doubt strongly they'll change much, but the simple fact that it may well do this is a high mark in its favor). It's still not Prisoner of Azkaban, but David Yates has clearly learned enough from his previous gig, and his predecessors, that it's entirely possible he could surpass that high water mark by the time the second Deathly Hallows movie comes out.

Yates has figured out how to play with the space that the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft provides him; he probes the shadows of the old castle to uncover those lying within the characters that have always been the movies' greatest assets. The literal differences between the high and low spaces in the castle, as Ron and Lavender run up the steps to begin their ill-advised relationship, while Harry comforts Hermione in the basement, have been so underused in most of the rest of the series as to be depressing. Bellatrix's destruction of the Great Hall at the end of the film, followed by her torching of Hagrid's cabin, are not mere desecrations of spaces, but deaths of characters, important as any other after six films.

Speaking of deaths (the series' worst-kept secret, after all), the time that Michael Gambon was given to shine was not wasted. The negative blowback that came from his arrival as Richard Harris' replacement to the part of Albus Dumbledore probably went a long way towards tainting the fanbase's perception of Prisoner of Azkaban, but I was never able to understand it. Harris was grandfatherly, for sure, but conveyed none of the power that Dumbledore had from the series' get-go, that would become so very essential as both the books and the films went along, reaching its high water mark here. Gambon has power in his presence; he always does. Sure, he's grandfatherly in that Obi-Wan Kenobi way that Dumbledore needs to be, and anyone with that bead would look bookish, like a professor, but Gambon conveys the strength that the Hogwarts headmaster calls upon when he has to go to war. He's at his highest and his lowest in this film, and those opposing moments come within seconds of each other when he's with Harry in the cave. As he's drinking the poisoned water, begging Harry to stop and, eventually, to kill him (isn't the ironing delicious?), he's fallen as far as he can go, but then, as Harry's pulled under water by the Inferi, he sets the world on fire and saves his young student's life. His silent communication with Snape, just before he's killed and falls off the tower, is a beautiful rendering of an essential moment in the book (for once, I'm happy with the series' overall fanatical fidelity to its source material).

Really, though, the Harry Potter film series' lasting contribution to the world will have everything to do with its acting. Not simply because it reminds an impatient society the virtues of patience (a big part of the reason this film is as good as it is, I'm convinced, is because we've had the chance to watch the principal actors really and truly grow into their roles. Rupert Grint, in particular, has fashioned himself in a fine comedic actor – not that anyone with a good eye couldn't see it coming, but it's awfully nice when potential is realized. Tom Felton has found the bit inside Draco Malfoy that's good, and has figured out how to mine it to great effect. Daniel Radcliffe has really learned how to be a subtle actor, particularly with his eyes, and Emma Watson, well, there's never really been any complaint I could make about her acting. She was perfect from the get-go, and she's just unfolded layer after layer of Hermione Granger as the years have gone by. I do hope she doesn't end her acting career with Deathly Hallows II. It would be a great loss), but because it's introduced a generation of young film-goers to a who's who of great British actors. Kenneth Branaugh, Ralph Finnes, Gary Oldman, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman (who's finally given more of a part to work with this time around), Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson, Julie Christie, John Cleese, Timothy Spall, David Tennant, Robbie Coltrane, David Thewlis, George Harris, Warwick Davis, Imelda Staunton, Helena Bonham Carter... The supporting cast members have been, without variation, extraordinary, and have hopefully inspired some curious members of the audience to check out some of their work that didn't have hundreds of millions of dollars behind it. Jim Broadbent, as Professor Horace Slughorn, upholds that tradition finely, and surpasses the bulk of those that have come before him. He's haunted by Voldemort from the instant he appears onscreen up until the moment he admits to Harry that, well, much of the student-formerly-known-as-Tom-Riddle's mad rise to power is directly attributable to something he once foolishly mentioned without thinking. To an audience that may only be best familiar with him from Moulin Rogue (another fantastic performance of his), he may well be startling in Half-Blood Prince, and that's a great thing.

The moments where the movie most clearly diverges from the book – the ones that feel most directly inspired by the tone of Prisoner of Azkaban – were certainly among the most compelling for me. Harry's final moment among the Muggles, where he flirts with a cute waitress who knows far more about the art of seduction than he, does a more than passable job of replacing the conversation between Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge and the “current British Prime Minister” that opens the book, grounding us in our own non-magical reality once again, and the Death Eaters' attack on the Weasley family's home at the Burrow, bringing home the danger of Voldemort's rise to power in a very Children of Men-esque way (from the completely-not-in-series-character shaky cam, to the instantaneous thievery of the power the characters felt only a moment earlier, to the senselessness of tragedy, to the lack of emotionally manipulative, bombastic music throughout). Not simply because I didn't have these moments committed to memory, but because they were the moments where the movie became its own entity, when it fashioned sequences well-suited to its form of storytelling, so different from a novel.

Since this was the last time we're going to see Quidditch (presumably) on the silver screen, I'm very glad they chose to send it off on a high note; Ron Weasley triumphant over all the naysayers (followed by the series' descent into Varsity Blues-like debauchery; I suppose teenagers really are the same, no matter if they're American, British, wizard, or Muggle) was a fine moment to end what was one of the best-shot Quidditch matches in the series' history. The speed at which the game unfolds, well, it still boggles my mind, and the constant lurking danger underneath an adventure, a game, was a great inadvertent metaphor for Harry's life both in school and out of it.

Actually, for a movie as dark as this one was (probably best comparable to Two Towers or Empire, seeing as how our heroes have been brought as low as they're going to be), there were a lot of laugh moments. It balanced the brightness and the shadows quite well.

As much as I'd like to unequivocally recommend this film to anyone that likes a good experience in the theater, I wonder how much of my enjoyment was fueled by the fact that I've invested so much time into these characters, this story, between the books and the films. I've slogged through over two hours of uninteresting movie for every hour of compelling filmmaking at this point; I've seen the stars grow from the time they were very small until now. It's an odd, nearly familial feeling I have at this point, so when the film is triumphant, that feeling is likely magnified for me a good deal. That's not to say Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince's filmmaking bona fides are in question; they're not. I just don't know if anyone who hasn't invested the time that a person like me has will feel quite as strongly about it. It's a fine film, for sure, but it may not be as fine to a viewer that's not seen the five preceeding ones.

Public Enemies

2009-07-05T17:09:00.004-06:00

I've heard plenty of people that I've introduced to Collateral, Manhunter, Last of the Mohicans, and even Heat complain that Michael Mann's films are far too cerebreal, that they lack the sort of emotional oomph that the best films use to transport you to another time and place. Up until Miami Vice, I disagreed, but the Colin Farrell-Jamie Foxx-Gong Li vehicle got me worrying that Mann had completely forgotten how to engage his audience on a level more visceral than, “Jesus, digital cinematography has gotten good.” He'd need something impressive to bounce back from his feature film retooling of the show that put him on that map, and fortunately, Public Enemies precisely that sort of movie. And, for the first time, I doubt anyone can argue that it does not punch you in the stomach, squeeze your heart, and cause you to step back for a moment or two to appreciate the craftsmanship, the artistry of the film.

At its best, a Michael Mann film is beyond meticulously constructed. Nothing is left to chance, not even the backstory of the principal characters (he'd assembled a full dossier, complete with pictures, for Tom Cruise's Vincent in Collateral before his lead actor ever showed up for rehearsals). Public Enemies reeks of the 1930s, from the weave of the suits, to the cadence of the conversations, to the music (oh, the music – Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday are all over the place, but the real treats are Diana Krall's version of “Bye, Bye Blackbird” and two songs from Otis Taylor, “Ten Million Slaves” and “Nasty Letter,” all of which bring an energy and attitude to the film that are indispensible). Nothing is out of place, not ever.

Mann wastes no time in introducing us to John Dillinger at the height of his powers, staging an elaborate breakout of his gang from the jail that holds them (while none of the break-out, or break-in, scenes approach the centerpiece heist of Heat, the clockwork precision with which they unfold, at least at first, illustrates Mann's skill at helming the crime film just as well as they do Dillinger's skill at helming, well, crime). Dillinger has allies all over the place, from the men at his side during the bank heists, to the people that hide him between jobs, to his fellow criminals in the Syndicate that launder his stolen cash and send bigger and better jobs his way. His list of allies slowly dwindles as the film winds on, until he's practically alone and finally brought down when one of the few people still close to him is forced to betray him by the FBI.

As usual, the casting is superb, even visionary. Christian Bale's Melvin Purvis is beyond dogged in his pursuit of “Public Enemy Number One,” and slaps J. Edgar Hoover (played by Billy Crudup in the actor's latest “really?” part) in the face with reality over and over again. Purvis is something of a contradiction here, a loner turned into the new face of the company, a man who never finds companionship or friendship as he races after the criminals terrorizing his country. Johnny Depp brings his rockstar charisma and total physical performance command to Dillinger, effortlessly modernizing yet another archetypical character in American film (first, the buccaneer in Pirates of the Carribean, and here the gangster). He grins and cracks wise with the press before he's thrown into prison, even putting his arm around the district attourney. His relationship with Marion Cotillard's Billie Frechette (she is more than Depp's equal as a performer – they're always fighting for the upper hand onscreen) is the emotional core of the film, and what really places it in the upper echelon of Mann's catalog. Never before has he so effectively rendered love (screwed-up though this particular love may have been) onscreen – the closing sequence of the film in particular (they were so close to escaping to South America).

Much of the film feels like a synthesis of great gangster films that have come before – Bonnie & Clyde and The Untouchables spring most readily to mind – but Dante Spinotti's digital cinematography adds a series of new wrinkles to the equation. Public Enemies virtually crackles with the sort of tension and excitement that can only come from immediacy, which is what digital provides in spades. Light doesn't need to be so overtly manipulated with a digital film, light can simply be, allowing shadows to fall, and fall off, in greater magnitude than ever before. The bright lights and colors of Havana and Miami were not the right locations to deploy the most recent generation of digital cameras; for all they do well, colors rarely pop in a digital film. The drab Chicago of the 1930s, well, that's a different story. Arthur Penn's version of the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow redefined crime films for the second half of the 20th century; I think Public Enemies could well do that for the 21st century.

short fiction (II)

2009-06-16T15:50:00.004-06:00

One supports the other. The clones grow in their pond, keeping the crew alive until the mission's completion, and the tubules transfer the sum total of their memories, ensuring each successive generation benefits from the life experiences of those that came before. Unable to improve the speed of their travel, but desiring a crew that would function for the length of the journey, humanity, as before, found a way to get what it wanted. Unsurprisingly, they failed to consider the cost. Not simply what a seemingly endless journey might do to a group, but to a mind.

The human brain is not built to go on forever; when the body dies, the mind goes quickly. If the spirit endures, translates itself someplace different, then could moving the mind from one body to another trap the soul? Does a soul ache for freedom, does it despise bondage? Philosophers and people of faith may ask these questions, but do men of science?

star trekkin' (part IV)

2009-06-07T14:06:00.004-06:00

As promised/forewarned, the text that follows is the opening (pre-title sequence) of the way I'd like to see Star Trek 2 (not II, which was already made) unfold. If anybody that reads this likes it, and knows J.J. Abrams, let him know that I have an entire story to pitch to him, and that I'm over 25% of the way done with my first draft. Or you can just enjoy it, or mock me for writing glorified fan fiction. Whatever.

Now, to the script for Star Trek 2...

FADE IN:

INT - KLINGON BATTLECRUISER - NIGHT

A corridor inside of a Klingon battlecruiser (IKS GR'OTH -
under the command of Captain Koloth). The tunnel is
comfortless, severe, without any decoration besides the tri
pointed emblem of the Klingon Empire. A fine mist hangs over
the deck; it plays with the harsh red lights that shine
overhead. An ALERT KLAXON BLARES.

Rapid CLANG-CLANGS sound from offscreen. Turning the corner
into this corridor are CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK, SPOCK and
DOCTOR LEONARD "BONES" MCCOY. PHASERS in hand and sweaty.
Spock carries a large PACK across his back; GREEN BLOOD drips
from a large cut on his jaw. McCoy pulls a TOOL from the
POUCH on his BELT.

MCCOY
Dammit, Spock, hold still and let
me patch you up!

SPOCK
Doctor, it is not logical for us to
delay while -

MCCOY
Look, you've already lost enough
blood for one day.

Both Spock and McCoy look at the Vulcan's side. ANGLE ON a
large, ugly BLOODSTAIN underneath his left arm. BACK TO SCENE

MCCOY (CONT'D)
Either we stop for a moment, or Jim
and I'll have to take turns
carrying you back to the shuttle.

Spock turns his head to face Kirk, who interrupts his vigil
looking down the hall to NOD casually. Spock turns back to
McCoy.

SPOCK
Very well, Doctor, but I do not
have to remind you that time -

BURSTS of bright, crimson KLINGON DISRUPTOR FIRE interrupt
their conversation - CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! - leaving smoking
holes in the wall.

KIRK
Is anyone hit?

SPOCK
The package is undamaged.

MCCOY
So are we.
(beat)
Barely.
(beat)
Cover me, Jim!

KIRK
Won't be able to give you more than
a few seconds.

Kirk advances down the hallway, hugging the wall, phaser at
the ready. From over his shoulder, we can see five KLINGON
SOLDIERS, dressed in heavy, ornate, leather battle armor
almost as impressive as the BONE RIDGES on their foreheads.
The one in the lead - first officer KORAX, the biggest and
nastiest of them all - holds a huge, shining BAT'LETH, the
two-handed, bladed weapon of choice for the elite Klingon
warrior. His men carry vicious-looking DISRUPTOR RIFLES.
Their steps CLANG much more ominously than those of Kirk and
his men.

The Klingons don't yet see Kirk. He FLIPS his phaser over to
STUN and FIRES a burst in their direction. Most of his shots
miss, but one finds its target. It BOUNCES off Korax's armor,
burning a small hole in the ceiling.

The Klingons follow the phaser blast up, and then its trail
back down. Their eyes focus on Kirk simultaneously.

KIRK
Son of a bitch!

MCCOY
What is it, Jim?

The Klingons take off at a dead run.

KIRK
Run!

Kirk zips off and comes upon Spock and McCoy just as the
doctor finishes closing the wound on Spock's face.

KIRK
How far to the shuttle, Spock?

SPOCK
Two hundred meters.

MCCOY
Exactly?

SPOCK
Yes.

KIRK
Can you lead?

SPOCK
Yes.

With Spock in the front, McCoy in the middle, and Kirk
bringing up the rear, the Starfleeters rush down the corridor
just ahead of the Klingons. They exchange disruptor and
phaser FIRE.

They wind up in

INT - KLINGON BATTLECRUISER SHUTTLE BAY - SAME

And go from a hyper-claustrophobic space to a cavernous one.
Three KLINGON SHUTTLES - each one resembling an ill-tempered,
armored animal - are closest to the men. Further down, we can
make out the classic STARFLEET SHUTTLE, nearly at the edge of
the shuttlebay. A gigantic door blocks them from the
nothingness around the ship.

Kirk and Spock look up; ANGLE ON the CONTROL TOWER built into
the far wall of the shuttle bay. It can only be reached by a
small open-air TURBOLIFT. BACK TO SCENE.

Kirk slaps a CONTROL PANEL, which causes a BLAST DOOR to SLAM
down in the Klingons' faces.

SPOCK
Captain, Doctor, if you will make
your way to the shuttle, I will
open the bay doors.

MCCOY
Like hell you will. Just twisting
the wrong way'll pop those
emergency seals open.
(beat)
I'll go.

SPOCK
Doctor, you were not trained on the
Klingon -

MCCOY
I can push buttons, dammit!
Besides, if you're the hotshot
pilot you're supposed to be, you
can come pick me up before you go.

Spock and McCoy look back at Kirk, a moment of almost
childish respite over the BOOMING the Klingons make on the
other side of the door.

KIRK
I think we should listen to our
doctor, Spock.

SPOCK
Very well.

KIRK
Bones, I'll cover you when they get
through.

MCCOY
How do you know they'll do that?

Kirk gives McCoy a, "Seriously?" look that the doctor
grudgingly accepts. OVERHEAD: Spock and McCoy rush off,
leaving Kirk by himself amidst the Klingon shuttles. BACK TO
SCENE.

Kirk runs and presses his back to one of the Klingon
shuttles. He peeks just above it to watch the blast door,
which HEATS and turns a burning red as the Klingons use their
disruptors to cut through it.

As Spock runs to the shuttle, we ANGLE ON the control tower
once again, where a KLINGON OFFICER has suddenly appeared! He
hits a few switches on his CONTROL CONSOLE. ANGLE ON the
AUTOMATIC DISRUPTOR TURRET positioned above the control
tower. BACK TO SCENE.

Before Spock can reach the shuttle, the turret FIRES,
BLASTING the Federation shuttle to pieces right before his
eyes. Spock has no time to process this; the turret starts to
fire on him immediately after. He ducks behind another
shuttle and immediately starts to fiddle with the CONTROL PAD
on its outer hull.

At the same time the shuttle EXPLODES, so do the blast doors
sealing off the shuttle bay. Korax and his men stride in
before any of the smoke has begun to clear.

McCoy throws himself into the turbolift cradle and punches a
button on the CONTROL PAD without even looking.
The cradle starts upwards. ANGLE ON the pad; all of the text
and symbols are in Klingon. BACK TO SCENE.

A few BOLTS of disruptor fire fly over McCoy's head before he
ducks down against the cradle's base.

MCCOY
They're shooting, Jim!

He hears his answer as Kirk pops out from behind cover and
NAILS a Klingon in the head with a stun bolt. As he drops to
the deck, the Klingons' return fire scorches the hull of the
shuttle that sits between them and Kirk.

Spock, meanwhile, has opened the door on his Klingon shuttle.

INT - KLINGON SHUTTLE - SAME

There are even harsher angles inside the little craft than
there were on the outside. There is no padding anywhere, and
with the exception of more nationalistic SYMBOLS, no
decoration.

Spock sits down in a hard, metal chair in the cockpit. He
looks down at its controls; varying shades and symbols of red
shine back up at him. His movements as he activates the
shuttle are more tentative than we've ever seen; does he
actually not trust his command of the Klingon language?

Phaser and disruptor fire FLASH in the window.

INT - KLINGON BATTLECRUISER SHUTTLE BAY - SAME

The cradle's taken McCoy up to the top of the control tower.
He FIRES his phaser at the Klingon officer a moment before
the cradle comes to a halt.

McCoy's luck seems to be just as bad as Kirk's; his BLAST
bounces off the Klingon's armor. Barely feet away, the
Klingon takes a swing at McCoy and knocks the phaser from his
hand, dropping it to the deck below. Another punch sends
McCoy sprawling against the back of the cradle.

Kirk lays out another Klingon with a stun BLAST, but Korax's
men are too close to Kirk now for him to aim carefully. The
barrel of his phaser FLIPS; he's set on the red KILL mode,
now.

The Klingon hits McCoy so hard that his uniform tunic TEARS.
McCoy falls to the bottom of the cage, inadvertently ducking
under a punch. The Klingon overextends himself, and McCoy
seizes his opportunity.
He SNAPS the Klingon's head back with a two-handed strikes as
he stands, a blow he follows up with a quick series of
punches right below the Klingon's brow ridge. This stuns the
Klingon long enough for McCoy to extract a SPRAY HYPO from
his pouch and press it against the Klingon's neck. With a
WOOSH, the powerful sedative contained in it puts the Klingon
out instantly.

McCoy walks, triumphantly, to the control console; his
shoulders slump when he realizes that it's all in Klingon. He
pulls out his COMMUNICATOR, and flips it open.

INT - KLINGON SHUTTLE - SAME

Spock's COMMUNICATOR CHIRPS. He opens it.

INT - KLINGON BATTLECRUISER SHUTTLE BAY - SAME

MCCOY
How do you work this damned thing?

SPOCK (O.S.)
You have realized that a control
console in a Klingon ship is
labeled in Klingon?
(beat)
Doctor McCoy -

Kirk SHOOTS the last two Klingon soldiers through their
armor, dropping them. He turns around to see Korax leap at
him from the shadows, bat'leth swinging. Kirk's barely able
to duck the attack in time.

SPOCK (CONT'D O.S.)
- you really must understand -

MCCOY (O.S.)
I learned their anatomy, Spock!

Korax's attack SLICES a civious line in the hull of the
shuttle behind Kirk. Korax swings his bat'leth around in a
backhand swing, but Kirk manages to interrupt it and SMASH
the Klingon in the face with the BARREL of his phaser. Korax
steps away, a nasty BURN smoking.

INT - KLINGON SHUTTLE - SAME

SPOCK
...then the third toggle on the top
row.

MCCOY (O.S.)
And that'll open the bay doors?

SPOCK
No, that activates the disruptor
turret controls.

MCCOY (O.S.)
Spock -

SPOCK
You must use it to save the
Captain, Doctor.

INT - KLINGON BATTLECRUISER SHUTTLE BAY - SAME

McCoy looks in Kirk's direction; Korax's BATTLECRY is audible
even across the shuttle bay. A small CONTROL STICK emerges
from the console. McCoy grabs it and swings the turret in the
direction of Kirk and Korax.

The ROAR of the disruptor turret splits the air again, and
tears through the space between the human and the Klingon.
Korax's eyes WIDEN in realization, then he runs. McCoy
stitches the deck with BLAST after BLAST, but Korax manages
to escape.

Kirk looks up at McCoy and exhales. McCoy points toward
Spock, who simply nods.

MCCOY
Now, how the hell do we get out of
here?

CUT TO:

EXT - KLINGON BATTLECRUISER - SAME

The classic design, with the bridge, the neck, and the large
secondary hull all on a line. ANGLE ON the SHUTTLE BAY DOORS
at the rear of the ship; they've slid open, and a KLINGON
SHUTTLE has slipped through them.

CUT TO:

INT - KLINGON SHUTTLE - SAME

Kirk sits at the pilot's controls; Spock on a bench as McCoy
tends more thoroughly to their wounds. A light on the control
panel FLASHES ominously in time with an ALERT SIREN.

MCCOY
I think they're coming about, Jim.

KIRK
Not quickly enough.

Kirk sets his COMMUNICATOR down next to the flashing light

CUT TO:

EXT - KLINGON SHUTTLE - SAME

The Gr'oth has nearly finished its turn; the TORPEDO LAUNCHER
underneath its bridge heats up. The shuttle looks so very
small.

As if willed into being, the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE, flagship of
the Federation fleet and Kirk's command, drops out of WARP
expertly between the Gr'oth and the shuttle. The Klingon
battlecruiser looks almost stunned for a moment, then opens
FIRE on the Enterprise.

CUT TO:

INT - ENTERPRISE BRIDGE - SAME

SULU and CHEKOV in front of the empty CAPTAIN'S CHAIR, UHURA
at her station.

UHURA
I'm opening a channel.
(beat)
Captain?

CUT TO:

INT - KLINGON SHUTTLE - SAME

KIRK
It's us, Uhura.

SULU (O.S.)
Do you have the package, Captain?

ANGLE ON the pack Spock carried; it sits in the chair next to
Kirk.

KIRK
Yes, we do.

CUT TO:

EXT - ENTERPRISE - SAME

The captured Klingon shuttle enters the Enterprise's SHUTTLE
BAY as PHASERS and PHOTON TORPEDOES EXPLODE around them. The
instant the shuttle bay doors close, the Enterprise goes to
WARP, leaving the Klingons behind.

ROLL CREDITS

star trekkin' (part III)

2009-06-03T09:29:00.001-06:00

In what should be the final entry in my series of Star Trek-related postings, I'm going, as I threatened to do not very long ago, to "pitch" what I think would be a fantastic idea for Star Trek 2 (not II - they already made II. They've not yet made 2, but they will). Thanks for bearing with me.

The movie needs to be about (again, I've said this before) the "formation" of the Big Three: James Tiberius Kirk, Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy, Spock. By formation, of course, I mean the forging of the friendship that will get them through thick, thin, and everything else in between. Bones provides the emotion, the heart and the passion, Spock the cool detachment, reasoning, and, yes, logic ("the beginning of wisdom, not the end"). What Kirk manages to do is take the input of his two closest friends and distill these separate ingredients into something uniquely himself, and that's really what makes him the incredible leader he is. In the movie, something needs to have happened that's the catalyst for this development, that can only be overcome by these three men putting their heads together, and, by the end, the bright, shining triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy has emerged. That's our... arc.

Now, in order for this to work, they need to face a great villain. Kirk, specifically, needs to face a great villain, because, as much fun as Nero was, and what a great idea he was, he wasn't Kirk's villain in the way that Khan Noonian Singh was, or even General Chang. If anything, Nero was Spock's villain, which is fine, but a Spock villain has to be so driven by emotion that the only way to counter him is with the immutable Vulcan logic that he really can't be anybody else's adversary. This foe they face has to be someone who's so much better than Kirk that he has to rely on his friends, he has to develop that ability where he becomes the (wait for it... wait for it...) Best of Both Worlds.

But, I think this could stand to be a halfway decent setup for the third movie, which, I think, should feature the biggest, baddest and best space battle in Star Trek history. In order for that to happen, I think it's prudent to shred continuity a little further (but, really, after collapsing Vulcan into a synthetic singularity, how much further can you go?) and reignite the Klingon/Romulan alliance against the Federation. That'd be one goddamn good fight, don't you think (particularly after J.J. & Co. showed what they could do with two ships going up against each other)? We've had the Romulans in the first movie, so in order to make this work, we'll need Klingons in the second.

I have just the Klingon villain. Captain Koloth, master of the IKS Gr'oth, and played to absolute perfection by William Campbell in the original series episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." Why Koloth? As he was in TOS, he was debonair, calculating, charming, deceitful and very, very evil. In other words, everything a good Kirk villain needs to be. Like Khan, only with a desire to bring down the entire Federation, and not simply the captain of the Enterprise. Koloth should be perfect, particularly if he can be "tweaked" a bit to fit in with our new counter-Trek universe, or whatever we're calling it.

With a storytelling goal, and now a villain, I think there needs to be a threat. As uninterested as I am in continuing the cycle of "madman hellbent on galactic destruction with his [weapon name here]," I have what I think is a pretty decent idea: The Sword of Kahless. Of course, it's not a real sword (though it might be if this film were set in the Buffy/Angel-verse, but that's another idea for another time), but something akin to a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Stick with me, here. Say that, long ago, during one of the bigger civil wars that rocked the Klingon Empire, someone decided that, well, they needed to develop the Klingon version of the Final Solution. So, in the spirit of Kahless, who killed not only his enemies on the battlefield, but wiped out their entire bloodlines so as to excise the potential for any further dishonor to the Klingon species, the Sword was developed, a weapon designed to wipe out as many, or as few, as s/he who possesses it desires (I haven't figured out the specifics of it). Whether or not it was used, it has since been broken apart and scattered across the galaxy, in the hopes that no one ever uncovers it and attempts, once again, to do the unthinkable.

Because quest movies are fun, I thought the Sword as a device could be split into three parts: the Hilt, the Blade, and the Scabbard. So, the Federation and the Klingons (and maybe even the Romulans) have to run around to try to gather all the pieces so as to assemble it/possess one piece that can be protected or destroyed to prevent it from ever getting used. Whether the overarching goal is to use it to cement power in the Klingon Empire or to wipe out enemies external, doesn't really matter. Genocide is genocide, and it's not good, ever (see what I just did there, UN Security Council?).

I know I said this was going to be my final entry, but I'm going to do one more, where I post the first few pages of my first (probably only, too) draft of the script I'd like to see.

Hey, maybe I've found a new theme for the blog: sequels and films I'd like to see made, complete with my own proposals and script excerpts.

banging my head against a wall...

2009-05-22T14:52:00.004-06:00

...and the wall finally gave a little this week.

In the first place, the sports-writing website has returned from the dead, and I will go back to writing about basketball. I liveblogged Game 2 of Nuggets vs Lakers, and while I'm certain that it will take a lot of practice for me to get better at producing insight and comedy in equal measure with this sort of writing, it's a start.

Also, I've discovered this website, Examiner.com. People write for it at the local (Denver Concert Venue Examiner) and national (Politics Examiner) level. I came across a solicitation for new writers on craigslist, and one of the open positions was for a "Star Trek Examiner." Of course, I got on that stuff right away, but, alas, to no avail. I was informed the position had already been filled.

However (however!), they felt my writing was so phenomenal that they wanted me on board in some other capacity. A little analysis of open positions and submission of a brief writing sample has landed me the position of National Marvel Comics Examiner. I'm going to try my best to make this actually something worth reading, so wish me luck as I blind email writers/artists begging them to let me interview them over email.

So, yeah. The wall gave a little this week. I can only hope that bodes well for the eventual future.

star trekkin (part II)

2009-05-21T14:30:00.000-06:00

I've made my decision: I'm placing Star Trek on the much-bandied-about third slot of my all-time favorite Star Trek films. I am, now, officially, discounting the TNG films in favor of anything with the original characters. As someone who grew up while first-run episodes of TNG were being produced, that's kind of heartbreaking, but that's the way it is.

In Part III, I pitch the story for the sequel.

jesus christ, what a bad movie that was (the phantom menace memorial)

2009-05-20T08:20:00.014-06:00

Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace could not have come at a more opportune time in my life, or so I thought at the time. It was my freshman year of high school, and I was in the process of forming fast friendships, some I cherish and others I and miss to this very day. Friendships with people who, among other things, like me, LOVED Star Wars. people who could quote the movie from memory with me, people with whom I could discuss the significance of Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, Kevin J. Anderson, Aaron Alston, and the others that made up the vast menagerie of writers who'd contributed to this great American institution we called Star Wars.

More than that, though.., there was this girl. She knew EVERYTHING about Star Wars, tons about Buffy, played the odd video game.., plus, I was convinced she liked me (oh, high school, how simultaneously exhilirating and excruciating you were... "liking" people, and barely knowing what that meant). If it was possible for this girl to get any more awesome, I couldn't imagine how.

[ASIDE: The Star Wars Celebration, the first one, at the old Lowry base in Colorado, was easily the high water mark of my first year in high school, for many reasons, not the least of which, at the time, had to do with this very same girl. But, there's not really even a story there, so I won't try to force one. It was the weekend I figured out what sort of person I really was, and intermittently fought against embracing it for years. END ASIDE]

Turns out... The Phantom Menace. While we were both disallowed from dating until our 16th birthdays by both our sets of parents (perhaps for the best, the way things turned out),we still made plans to go see the movie together. A "non-non-date," perhaps.

Purchasing the soundtrack a month before the film's release (a soundtrack I feel ranks pretty highly with others Williams has produced - it's the only part of the film that doesn't flat-out disgust me) allowed the movie's truest dramatic moment - the death of Liam Neeson's Qui-Gon Jinn - to be ruined, but that was kind of okay. It was still Star Wars; I could still be hopeful.

The magical moment came (walking into the theater, filled with anticipation), and the magical moment went all too quickly, partly the result of a lack of genuine romantic chemistry (which I myself would not admit, sadly, for years - she was much more on the ball in that regard), and partly due to the fact that the movie we sat in the theater to watch was FUCKING TERRIBLE. From the shitty opening crawl (economic downturn, planet on the edge of the Republic... as Patton Oswalt might say, "Who gives a shit?"), to the bad fake Asian accents that Nute Gunray and the rest of the Nemoidians sported, to Ft. Collins, Colorado's own Jake Lloyd's god-awful performance as Anakin Skywalker (sure, he's a little kid, but so was Haley Joel Osment. And he was a great child actor), to the fact that the pod race went on too goddamn long, to the unforgivable underuse of Darth Maul, to the fact that Lucas obviously forgot everyone from the original trilogy (not to be a continuity whore, but well, I'm a continuity whore. Star Trek explained it away. Two lines of dialogue. Come on), to, yes, Jar Jar Binks.

Oh, Jar Jar. If the movie had come out only one year later, common perception could've been that he was the worst idea in popular entertainment in the 21st century (still, I'd contend). Instead, we had to close out the 90s with the most minstrel-show-ized character I'd yet seen in a film (not saying much, sure, but I was 15 at the time. Sue me). [ASIDE: My friend Travis and I, at the Star Wars Celebration, sat close to Ahmed Best - the man behind Jar Jar Binks - during Anthony Daniels' - C-3P0 - presentation. We were excited when we recognized him. We felt stupid for feeling that way once we saw the movie. END ASIDE] He destroyed every single scene he was in, including the less-than-climactic final battle between the native Naboo forces and the droids of the Trade Federation Army. Jar Jar would've been acceptable (well, not really - one could only hope we've moved past non-ironic race-based humor in this day and time, but as we've seen, that's not the case) in one of Disney's stupider animated films, but this was STAR WARS. Anything less than a total recapturing of the spirit of the first films was unacceptable. As a result, the film was unacceptable.

So, that's what I remember about my one and only viewing of that piece of unadulterated shit in the theater. In the words of Randall Graves, "I want my eight bucks back."

All apologies to the potentially-misrepresented and unnamed female party in this story. If you remember it differenty, and you read this, well, I'm all for setting the tale straight. Though, I doubt rehashing is high on either of our priority lists.

21st century breakdown

2009-05-15T15:11:00.006-06:00

I wish I wanted to write a big, ethralling piece about the latest Green Day album, but I just can't. It's not that I don't think it's good, because I do... I just don't feel any great, overpowering desire to share my thoughts on the subject.

Maybe it's because so many other people already have (Rolling Stone's review says quite a lot), or maybe because it just didn't punch me in the face like American Idiot, which was a validation of my long-held opinion that Billie Joe Armstrong was a hell of a lot smarter than everyone gave him credit for being. It was my, "See, motherfuckers? I was right!!" moment, and that just can't be duplicated.

This isn't to say that I don't like the album; it's quality. "Epic," as my friend Adam said. I think it's more... Green Day-y than American Idiot; the song lengths are more manageable, the snark is more present, but nothing really comes out and grabs me the way the title track does (and that, not as much as any track on American Idiot, despite what I wrote in my reaction to "Know Your Enemy").

American Idiot was, I dare to say, a once-in-a-lifetime record. It's tough to get two of them, no matter how hard you try.

Perhaps this requires more listenings. Sometimes things don't punch you in the face right away; they take their time, sidle up, get you nice and comfortable, and then... BAM!

I wouldn't put anyone off listening or purchasing, though. Perhaps it will speak to you more thoroughly than it does me.

short fiction (I)

2009-05-11T15:12:00.004-06:00

All right. Work's slow, there are 45 minutes left in the day (47, I guess), and I feel a strong desire to do something I've not done for a long time: write some prose. Let's see what happens.

The halls of the Faustus, like the halls of a hospital, smell vaguely of cleaning chemicals, the kind deadly to bacteria and sensitive nasal passages. More like a hospital long-since closed, but still maintained by a manically dedicated cleaning staff. Spotless. White, in the sections lit brightly enough to see by. Flat, from the uniform overhead light that shines in those spaces. Sterile.

The workers that do not sleep, that have not slept since their ship left the other side of the galaxy for its return trip, float through its passages, the light following them, inch by inch. The monolithic constructs look perfectly at home among the passages; they share the same absent color palette, the same missing definition. From time to time, the workers stop. Air wooshes from their underbellies, clearing a buildup of dust before sucking it inside. They patrol in solitude; it is unlikely that one would recognize a mate if they crossed paths.

The walls of these long hallways find themselves only broken up by sealed doors so flush with those walls that it would be all but impossible to differentiate one from the other, were it not for the labels adorning them. Here, too, spartan is the order of the day. MEDICAL. SERVER STORAGE. MAINTENANCE. RECREATION.

To see the Faustus only from the inside would be to miss much of what makes her special. Examining the exterior reveals a design of extraordinary grace, one that swims through the vacuum. For every harsh angle on display inside of her, a curve softly makes its presence known on the outside. The running lights that cross her long axis reveal a scheme of blended colors that would not look out of place on an earthbound marine mammal; the same for the lighting on her short. The lights form a pattern on Faustus' skin, drawing the eye to it rather than ushering attention away.

Beauty has been taken from the people inside the ship, and put on display for a lifeless void. Why shouldn't it? They have, after all, been locked inside their offices for centuries, alive now only because of the ship's twin triumphs: the cloning pond, and the memory transference tubules.

(God, can already you tell I've been writing screenplays, and haven't touched prose for years? Yeesh.)

star trekkin' (part I)

2009-05-11T10:02:00.009-06:00

This was the first time I'd not been worried about a movie's quality since Iron Man, or The Dark Knight. That sounds kind of stupid, but it's true.

I don't know why I wasn't worried; J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot could be a perfect storm of failure. Between recasting some of the most iconic characters in American popular culture with a bunch of no-name, Abercrombie-model-looking 20-somethings, releasing trailers focus-grouped to appeal to the audience that will go see a space action movie featuring Abercrombie-model-looking 20-somethings, ignoring 40 years of enduring, if at times shaky, continuity, beating the magic flashback even further into the ground than its already been, and promising that the most lovably nerdy of American institutions, Star Trek, would appeal to people who don't know/care about the ridiculousness of the subject of the first time Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy uttered the immortal words, "He's dead, Jim" (said about a poor little lizard dog who died as the result of a transporter accident), it sure looked like Abrams & Co. were readying their own petards for hoisting.

There was not a moment of this movie that gave credence to anyone's fears. Star Trek is precisely the sort of movie that made Hollywood an economic force to be reckoned with globally: adventurous, fun, filled with great character moments, engaging, smart, ambitious, and even memorable. It's everything a summer movie could hope to be, and, in a lot of ways, everything Star Trek movies have been trying to be from the very beginning.

I'll get my complaints out of the way, pithy though they may be, before singing the movie's praises at an unreasonably loud volume. Foremost, it really was popcorn Trek. That's not such a bad thing, because it serves the "accessible Trek" mantra, but it's something I should address, as a person who, just like Philip J. Fry, had the friend void filled many a time by the officers & crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The plot holes that other people have brought up (some here, and a hell of a lot here - Devin's nitpicking is impressive almost to a fault) would be obnoxious, but a) this is Star Trek, and b) I was having too much fun to care. If Star Trek were a bad movie, sure, the fact that black holes don't behave like black holes ought to would piss me off, but I loved this movie, so I don't care. I found myself far more distracted by Spock's five o'clock shadow, to be honest. The lens flares (about which the DP said, "There's something about these flares, especially in a movie that potentially could be incredibly sterile and overly controlled by CGI, that's just incredibly unpredictable and gorgeous." - thanks, IMDb) could've gotten obnoxious, but I think J.J. & Co. learned their lesson from Cloverfield (that is, just because something works for five minutes, doesn't mean it'll work for 90). That, really, is it.

[ASIDE: Vanessa made a neat point as we drove back from our second viewing of the film. We were talking about the lens flares, and she mentioned that, many times, they worked in a transitional capacity, specifically citing when Kirk and McCoy were flying up to the Enterprise. The light washed over the screen - Kirk and McCoy were looking out the window at something we the audience could not see - and then, BOOM! Enterprise. An interesting transition, to be certain, and one that recalls the end of Undiscovered Country, when the Enterprise flies into the sun and disappears in a white light? END ASIDE]

Star Trek is/was phenomenal. From the first frame to the last, I was completely enraptured. The casting was far and away, above and beyond, anything I could've ever hoped for (and I remember back during the time people were saying Matt Damon was going to play Kirk, Adrien Brody would be Spock, and Gary Sinese was up for McCoy). These are characters I've known and loved since I was a small child, so the fact that I cannot find anything to bitch about speaks, to me, volumes. Karl Urban, awesome though he was in LOTR (one of the few pieces of those movies that still hold up, in my humble opinion), knocks it completely out of the park as Leonard McCoy. Who knew he was a gifted comedic actor? The scene where he's introduced is easily one of my favorites in the movie ("All I've got left are my bones"), and while he doesn't fall prey to the "impression" that I've read people chalk his performance down to, I think he captures the essence of McCoy. I'd heard people complain about Anton Yelchin's Chekov, but for my money, he nailed the fish-out-of-water, youthful exuberance that made Chekov such a great character on the show. John Cho, an actor I couldn't have cared less about, turned Sulu into the badass we all knew he was, just beneath the surface. Zoe Saldana, well, she was Uhura, and the same goes for the single actor I had no concerns about from the get-go: Simon Pegg's Montgomery Scott (pitch-perfect casting and performing - just the right level of Scotty exasperation the whole time). I've never watched Heroes (see here for why), so I knew nothing about Zachary Quinto, but I must admit that he rode the line that a young Spock needed to ride skillfully, almost perfectly (emotional control vs emotional release). You could see it behind his eyes, that he was always thinking in his scenes (a trait, in case you've not noticed, that I adore in actors). As long as we're on the subject of Spock, let me just say that Leonard Nimoy's still got it.

And, of course, there's Chris Pine, who famously modeled his Kirk not so much after Shatner, but after Harrison Ford's two best-known characters (Indy and Han Solo, naturally) and Tom Cruise's Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, from Top Gun. Again, sounds like a recipie for disaster, no? Somehow, though, they coalesce into something that's so perfectly Kirk that it's almost frightening. Cocky, aggressive, thoughtful, alert, charismatic... Everything that makes James Tiberius Kirk the man that women want, and that men want to be, is on display from Pine's swaggering into frame at the Iowa bar, to the moment he barks out his first official order as the duly designated captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Pine is, well, perfect, and not once does he stutter-step his syllables (he said he felt that'd be slipping into parody, and not only is he totally right, he also would've ruined the movie had he done that).

Eric Bana plays himself a great villain, certainly one of the most interesting a Star Trek film's seen in a good long time (he's really more a foil for Spock than Kirk, which is something I hope they'll address in the sequel). Bruce Greenwood [ASIDE: Here's my single moment of bitching, with regards to continuity. The movie says explicitly that Chris Pike was the first captain of the Enterprise. He wasn't, Robert April was. I understand why they took this route, using a character we actually know something about rather than one we don't, but they could've taken an opportunity to really grow a character the audience knew next to nothing about. Oh, well. Roads less taken and all that. END ASIDE] is a standout Chris Pike, a great father for the boy who, thanks to Nero, never had one. His, "I am relieved," from his wheelchair (!!!) is exemplary of a performer truly understanding his line, and selling it.

The production design, from the Apple store bridge of the Enterprise, to the dank and cavernous Romulan ship, to the IDIC chair/control console aboard Spock's ship, to the functional updating of the classic costumes, to the "flip" effect on the phasers as they switch from stun to kill, all of it grooves in the spirit of the original series. The design of the movie is optimistic, somehow, a future to which (for the first time in a good long time) we can actually look forward. It's bright and clean, and the way is led by men and women in bright, clean uniforms and ships.

One review of the film I did read (can't recall whose now, sadly) mentioned something very interesting, about how the camera's frenetic motion (which I rather liked, particularly once they got in space, as it set me, as a viewer, as askew as I imagine I might be in the weightless vacuum of space) slowed down once Simon Pegg arrived onscreen, as though Abrams no longer felt he had to compensate for his cast of [virtual] unknowns once his friend popped onscreen. Pegg is a gifted comic and a great performer, for certain, but I feel that sheds too negative a light on the rest of the cast. The movie slowed down on Delta Vega; there's no reason the camera shouldn't, too (besides, they weren't in space anymore).

Now, I've come across more than a couple of articles online (I've not read any, having been mostly away from the Internet this weekend, and not wanting to have any more of the movie spoiled than I'd already had) drawing explicit comparisons between Star Trek in the '60s and Star Trek today, how we're once again in the midst of a transformative time in national/world history, where the old paradigms (we can hope) no longer hold true, where we, at long last, get an opportunity to redefine ourselves, hopefully for the better. The original Star Trek (or TOS) put on display a time where humankind had put its differences aside, finally realizing there was more than united us than did the other thing, and pushed off into space alongside plenty of other people friendly to our cause of exploration, discovery, and camaraderie. A time when poverty, disease, war... all of it had been stripped away. A utopia among the stars, in short, was what Gene Roddenberry showed us (and that which was not utopian... well, we'd do our best to make it right, as long as we stuck to the cultural tenents enshrined in the Prime Directive). It gave us hope. J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot is similarly of its time, with a focus on the power of the team (equally appropriate to the origin-story-nature of the film - here's how the officers of the starship Enterprise came together for the very first time - and to the post-Obama campaign that proved, once and for all, that the young people of this country can accomplish what was once thought impossible. With some appropriate guidance, at times), of youth (or at least fresh thinking), and of proper, respectful, insightful use of the new (in this case, the freshly-minted Federation flagship), there's nothing that's out of our reach. A lesson worth appreciating, methinks. [ASIDE: there might well be way too much reading into this, seeing as how the movie was written long before the big political events took place. But, the fact that they were on the writers' minds at the time speaks, I think, to their potency. You can't just ignore these parallels, is what I'm trying to say. END ASIDE.

Speaking of youth, actually, that's one of the things that interested me most about the film. I've said before that my biggest complaint with the TNG cast films, particularly as opposed to the TOS cast's films, is their lack of an overarching theme. The films were all, to one degree or another, about aging, about finding a place in a world that was in the process of passing you by, about legacy. The TNG cast's movies had nothing like that (and might have if they'd had six movies to work with, but we'll never know. I doubt it, anyway. The writing was never as good). Abrams' Star Trek, though, is all about youth and potential, about taking an active hand in writing (or rewriting, depending on your level of bitterness) your story. Bruce Greenwood's line to Kirk, about settling for a less and ordinary life over reaching for something more, perfectly encapsulates this. Even Original Spock takes the opportunity that time-travel has afforded him to place his mark on what remains of his people in a very indelible way - he even selects the planet on which the new Vulcan colony will settle. I'm excited to see how they explore this in the future.

I've complained at length (not so much here, but in person... "Talking," if you will) about movies that take big chances, almost enviable ones, taking them back in the last few moments (Brett "I Can Have All The Endings I Want, Motherfuckers" Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand killed Professor X, but brought him back, erased Magneto's mutant powers, but brought them back... Tropic Thunder took a huge chance with what it might've tried to say about race in entertainment, except that it decided it didn't want to say anything at the end). Star Trek, to its unending credit, doesn't do any such thing. When that black hole destroys Vulcan, it destroys it, taking with it Spock's mother, Amanda. When George Kirk is killed aboard the U.S.S. Kelvin, dooming his son Jim to a youth of juvenile delinquency (presumably, George was the only person that could've guided Jim onto the correct path early, but then we wouldn't have had what passed for Kirk's hero journey, would we?), he dies, ramming his ship into the belly of Nero's oversized Romulan mining/war ship. After all, the best method I know of for creating drama is raising the stakes, and Star Trek does this unerringly well (really, that's the Abrams stock in trade, but it works particularly nicely here).

The film's plot, while imperfect (head-scratchingly so, at times, and in serious retrospect), is frequently an afterthought, so caught up was I in the breathless rush from one great set-piece of action or character development to the next. The frequent tips of the hat the film makes to everything that has come before is mostly more than fan service (only once or twice did I feel the explicit quoting of past dialogue was ham-handed... When Original Spock says to Kirk, "I have been, and always shall be, your friend," it came at precisely the wrong time for me. If he'd used it to reassure Kirk that, yes, his plan to transport Kirk and Mr. Scott aboard the in-warp-space Enterprise was not intended to kill the young man, but to help him, well, that I could've gotten behind. Would've been a much cleaner, smoother use of the line), and serves to nicely punctuate scenes and exchanges (My favorite? Easily McCoy's, "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!"). Showing us, after decades of wondering, what Kirk's victory over the impossible test, the Kobayashi Maru, was a stroke of genius (and Pine's completely lackadaisical attitude towards the proceedings somewhat foreshadows the ease with which he assumes command).

Now that this film has come to its close, now that I've seen it twice, I feel the need to muse on what might come after, what I might try to contribute to the story. We've seen how the main characters came together to overcome the seemingly impossible, we've seen Kirk grow into himself (complete his hero journey, if you will), but there's one thing we haven't seen, and that's how the Big Three (Kirk/Spock/McCoy, not Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman) grew into their roles with each other. Kirk bounced off Spock and McCoy often enough, and McCoy and Spock had their moments, but the three men didn't have a moment like, say, in Star Trek II, in Kirk's quarters, where they learned about and discussed the ramifications of Carol Marcus' Genesis device (Spock logically detached, McCoy attacking the problem from his gut, and Kirk synthesizing the two men's approaches into one uniquely his). That's what I want to see from the next film; how the Big Three became precisely that. I think I know how to do it, too. But that's going to take some brainstorming.

It's a crime that the film is only going to be in the IMAX for two weeks, for that really and truly is the way to experience it (and preferably with a crowd that recognizes as many of the in-jokes as possible, and is receptive to Abrams' retooling). It's the sort of movie I'd consider in blu-ray, in fact.

The real question I'm left with, here at the end of my piece, is, where does Star Trek fall in my listing of the pantheon of Star Trek films? I'm inclined to place it either third or fourth, after Undiscovered Country and Wrath of Khan, for sure, but is it truly better than First Contact, a movie to which time has been less than kind, but was awesome in the years shortly after its release? The issue with placing it ahead of First Contact is that I would be summarily discounting every one of the TNG films, and by association, their cast. I don't know if I'm comfortable doing that.

podcast?

2009-05-06T10:04:00.002-06:00

I'm thinking of trying to do a weekly podcast. I seem to drift away from my mission statement of ranting about things in popular culture, and I think maybe half an hour of talking every week about aggregate... everythings, really, might be a way to salvage that part of the plan.

I'm figuring I just make up a list of things that caught my eye over the course of the week (movies, music, video games, comics, a photograph, whatever), research them a bit on Saturday, record on Sunday, and post on Monday.

The real ranting could begin that way. I could have guest ranters from time to time, too.

Might there be a reaction out there in ever-so-small-reader land?

starbase: where no turtle has gone before

2009-05-04T15:26:00.003-06:00

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (on the Super Nintendo) was something I spent a lot of time playing when I was younger. It probably got to the point where I could get through that first time-travel level (the one with the dinosaurs, where you had to fight Slash - the evil mutated snapping turtle, trained by Shredder to, well, shred the Turtles) without opening my eyes, so well did I know the patterns of the Foot-Clan-Soldiers-Riding-Dinosaurs and the falling (exploding?) stalactites. I miss the side-scrolling, beat-'em-up games pretty badly, truth be told (Final Fight 1-3, Double Dragon, Battletoads, The Simpsons arcade game... If you could run around with one or more of your friends and hit robots/ninjas/robot ninjas/Sideshow Bob, I was more than willing to play it); that's why I got so into Castle Crashers when it made its way to the XBox Live Arcade. Violent and funny is a perfect recipie for a video game, I've always thought.

So, upon hearing that an HD revamp/release of TMNT IV was imminent (well, it'll happen this year, anyway), I couldn't be anything but excited, right? Look here; the video quality is crummy, but it's still Leonardo (who still battles with Donatello daily for the #1 Turtle in my heart), on a pirate ship, with Foot Clan soldiers. He steps on the wrong plank and it hits him in the face! His foot catches on fire and he jumps around! Just like I remember! And it looks better than before... Maybe! I don't know!

The idea of playing this game with friends with whom I still speak is very compelling. Plus, I just have to know how the futuristic surfing level looks... I want to beat Krang senseless. I want to blow up Metalhead... I want my Super Nintendo back.

Please tell me I'm not in the "nostalgia" market already. There should be so much more awesome stuff ahead that I can leave the past in the past. Who the hell am I kidding? I'm going to buy this the second it comes out.

Oh, and if you've not seen this video, dear reader, take a moment. You will never regret it.

tinted windows (or, this is what passes for a supergroup these days?)

2009-05-01T08:19:00.012-06:00

I'm going to make a quick point, and then come back to it later: that which is easiest is not necessarily the most rewarding.

Moving on... A little over a year ago, I devoted some digital space and some words to Fountains of Wayne's latest album, Traffic & Weather (read it here. You know you want to). In that time, my affection for that album has waned somewhat, but that's been more than compensated for by a rebirth of my appreciation for Welcome Interstate Managers (which I might well place on a list of favorite albums of the '00s, but we'll wait and see on that).

Despite the fact that I devoted much of my college (and post-) life to discovering the most obscure, abrasive, inaccessible music I could get my hands on, I've retained a soft spot for the well-constructed pop song. I've written before about why, so I won't compose something dissertation-length today, but let me just restate what I think is my most important point: it doesn't waste time. A weird thing to say from a guy who's listened to more than a few all-instrumental heavy metal albums that fall in the 50-70 minute range, but as I regain that part of my personality that doesn't really care what other people think of the things I like, I realize how important, and how special, a song like "Maureen" (from the B-sides collection Out-Of-State Plates) is. Smart, touching, honest, fun to listen to, and it starts and finishes in three minutes and thirteen seconds. There's a lot to admire about something like that.

It was a little over a month ago when I first found out about Tinted Windows. I was flipping through the channels on Vanessa's DirecTV when I uncovered a direct feed from SXSW. Performances from weird and obscure (only not that obscure, since they're deemed significant enough to air on a weird DirecTV channel) bands at the Austin festival (one I've always wanted to go to). The Airborne Toxic Event? Hell yes. Tinted Windows? The new power pop "supergroup" featuring James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins, Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne, Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick, and Taylor Hanson from... Hanson? What the fuck?

I had to record it. When I watched it, I had to admit, I wasn't all that taken with it. A lot of reviews of the record, and reactions to this and other live performances, talked about how the band seemed to lack, well, it. Iha (like D'Arcy), back in his Pumpkins days, was a charisma black hole, and nothing's changed, as near as I can tell. Schlesinger (despite the fact that most of the music and lyrics were his) seemed just as uninterested. Bun E. sure looked to be enjoying himself, but the performer's enjoyment doesn't translate to the audience as well as that of the crowd to the band (I believe). Taylor was trying hard, and clearly having a good time too, but he just didn't ever have an opportunity to get the audience off (as Jeff Bebe might've said), so relentlessly plowing ahead was the band's set.

Before I get into my reaction to the album (much more positive than the one I had to the live broadcast), I want to take a moment to talk about the term "supergroup." Only in this age and day, when every marketplace for creativity (whatever your favorite sort is) is so splintered that it's virtually impossible for a random sampling of people to have experienced anything that could unite them (save, perhaps, the Obama election), only in this age and day could James Iha, Adam Schlesinger, Taylor Hanson and Bun E. Carlos constitute a "supergroup." Oysterhead (Les Claypool, Stuart Copeland, and Trey Anastasio) were more a "supergroup" than Tinted Windows, and even that's pushing it. Cream is a supergroup, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are a supergroup, the Traveling Wilburys were a supergroup. People didn't refer to Tom Petty as "that guy from the Heartbreakers;" in talking about Tinted Windows with anybody, I've referred to Mr. Schlesinger as "the bass player from Fountains of Wayne. He writes their songs... Yeah, the 'Stacy's Mom' guys." That's not to knock these guys, who've achieved far more in their lives than I have in mine... I'm just saying that it's overly generous to refer to them as a "supergroup."

Now, to the music (I should really kick this "prefacing, story-telling" thing to the curb in my reaction/response posts - it just makes them overlong and probably doesn't provide any useful information, but you never know. We'll see if I can junk the habit). On the first listen, it seemed... overly generic (a fault I lay at the aforementioned Mr. Schlesinger's feet, seeing as how he's responsible for the lion's share of the song-writing). Only two songs really stood out to me, "Without Love" and "Take Me Back." It certainly wasn't a Welcome Interstate Managers-type listening experience, where it seemed like each and every song smacked me with its own kind of awesomeness. I was prepared to be as disappointed and bitter as the guy who reviewed the album on Pitchfork (the website gave it a review score of 3.5 out of 10).

The songs are overly generic (though that's apparently by design - Schlesinger did't want the band to sound like an off-brand Fountains of Wayne, so he had to alter his writing style... not that going from insightful and witty to generic is something to condone), but they're earnest (Taylor Hanson deserves all the credit in the world for pulling that off; clearly, the most talented Hanson brother has decided to make the most of his opportunity to grab the spotlight)

Something started to happen, though. Something I hadn't quite expected. The songs... well, they wormed their way into my brain. Even songs I didn't think I'd liked at all, like "Dead Serious," or "Nothing to Me." I'd feel them reverberating in my brain, digging their claws in and refusing to let go. Only snippets, though, not full songs. Phrases got stuck in my head, to the point that I had no choice but to cue the album up again and go through it, start to finish.

I think the advent of the iPod (and digital music in general) has lessened people's appreciation for the art of ordering songs on a record. With something like American Idiot, it's pretty essential (the importance of the story unfolding in the correct order can't really be overstated), but with something like the Tinted Windows album, it's a bit more subtle. It's not about narrative so much as it's about feeling. In this case, it's like following Rob Gordon's rules for mix-tape making (ones I'd inadvertently adopted myself long, long before I know about Nick Hornby, let alone John Cusack).

Turns out, my biggest issue with Tinted Windows is its lackluster track arrangement. "Kind of a Girl" to "Messing With My Head" to "Dead Serious" is not really a great opening 1-2-3 punch (something every good album needs... actually, a 1-2-3-4 is pretty key). "Kind of a Girl" isn't much of an album opener, frankly. The last track, "Take Me Back," is an album opener. "Messing With My Head" is a pretty good 2, but it suffers because the 1 track isn't grabby enough. It doesn't give you any reason to put a little more effort into the second song; you haven't been pulled in. "Dead Serious" is absolutely not a 3 track, either (doesn't let you absorb the first two songs or overwhelm you enough to blow them out of the water. It's just kind of there). "Can't Get a Read On You" is a good 4; it brings the energy back. But, from where? "Dead Serious" didn't do anything to require "Can't Get a Read On You" to exist where it does.

Track order is like a batting order; arrange your players, or your tracks, in a way that maximizes their potential individually and collectively. I've taken it upon myself to reorganize the tracks on Tinted Windows to allow them to maximize themselves. Here goes:

1) Take Me Back (way too catchy and, well, awesome to have to wait the whole album to hear it. This is a power pop record, for god's sake)
2) Messing With My Head (like I said, a good 2 if it had a good enough 1. Now it does)
3) Back With You (slows things down a little bit, lets Taylor's vocals really take center stage. Not really a power hitter of a song, but you can't always hit home runs. Sometimes you need to pack the bases)
4) Can't Get a Read On You ("Back With You" slows things down, so we pick it up here)
5) Dead Serious (keeps the energy going right into...)
6) Cha Cha (feels like more of a classic pop song; head bobbing-ly so)
7) Kind of a Girl (bring the heavy hitter in here; take things up yet another notch from where they were)
8) Without Love (probably my favorite riff in the whole album, which is a great way to follow up "Kind of a Girl," which just sort of STOPS)
9) We Got Something (rocking)
10) Nothing to Me (the second half of the record is kind of shaping into the "cool" half, which is good, I think. Good to have similar feelings on each side)
11) Doncha Wanna (instead of loading the record's best song at the end, we've now got the song that reminds me of one of the best album closing songs ever - "All Mixed Up," off The Cars' first album. I really don't know why it reminds me of that; there's not a good reason. But, there it is. It also builds/explodes/fades out better than any other song on the record, and that's how you end an album, I think)

I've given Tinted Windows a markedly better record, I believe. Someone want to get ahold of them and let them know?

It's weird, that I had to work to like a pop album. But, I do now. And I'm glad. Happy, even.

on the subject of green day

2009-04-30T10:02:00.002-06:00

I'll attempt to conserve words here: American Idiot is an amazing album. It just goes to show you that you never really know what people are capable of (well, I did, but that's kind of beside the point).

Based solely on "Know Your Enemy," a song I've listened to about nine times this morning (another perfect three minute Green Day song, with lyrics so simple and potent that they're white-hot), I feel pretty confident in Green Day having learned the virtues of competing way above your expected weight class. That is to say, 21st Century Breakdown, which was a hotly anticipated album of mine, is now the big thing for me this summer, with the exception of the release of the new Star Trek movie.

Go here. Listen to it. Don't even watch the video (which is a great video, by the way - it's smart, simple, and beats you over the head and through the heart with its point, just like the best Green Day songs). Listen to it again. Maybe even one more time. If you still don't feel it, well, you can't say I didn't try.

potato hole?

2009-04-22T08:22:00.016-06:00

I think the first steps I took down the road of music geek-ery were when I purchased, sight unseen, George Lucas' American Graffiti for my parents (I think I was in middle school - there was a Blockbuster close to our house, and I'd walk there during summer vacation. Perhaps I have the long talks with the guy that was there every day to thank for the film geek-ery, too. That's worth some consideration). I don't know why; we only watched it the one time, and I'm pretty sure they've not looked at it since. Most of the presents I've bought for people have gone over as well as the proverbial lead zeppelin, so I'm certainly not surprised.

I believe the song that started it all was Booker T. & the MG's "Green Onions." I'd heard it before, in The Sandlot, but in the same way I'd later have to get a Dire Straits album after watching Spy Game ("Brothers in Arms," while used better in the last episode of Season 2 of The West Wing, was a great soundtrack choice for the end of Spy Game, a movie I feel not enough people appreciate, but again, that's for another time), I found myself filled with the need to seek out the people who'd created the nearly-three-minutes-of-perfection that is "Green Onions." I've yet to meet a person that disagreed with me on that, actually...

We have my father to thank for the next step, for he was the one that went out to our favorite local records store (Twist & Shout) and picked up The Very Best Of... Booker T. & The MG's for my listening pleasure. While it's important to note that I was raised on a lot of bluegrass, classic Capitol records releases, Lyle Lovett, and more jazz artists than I can possibly remember, but it really was Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper (who, along with "Duck," appeared in The Blues Brothers, and the significantly weaker Blues Brothers 2000), Donald "Duck" Dunn (who learned the bass guitar because it had the smaller number of strings), and Al Jackson, Jr. (who was murdered in 1975) that caught me. I know for sure they're responsible for my lifelong love affair with the sound of a keyboard, what I'm going to call a "groove," and absolutely opened the door for me to fall head over heels in love with Dave Brubeck (something I would love to thank Booker T. for, should I ever meet him).

But, as usual, I'm getting off topic. On March 30th, I was perusing the Huffington Post, when I came across a posting from one Mister Booker T. Jones. A Huffington Post "premiere," as he called it, of a song from his new(!!!!!!) album. Honestly, though I had no information to confirm it, I thought Booker T. was dead, and had been, for a while. It was nice to learn I was wrong.

"Native New Yorker," the track that was posted (that featured Neil Young on guitar), hit me, and hard. It sounded a lot like an MG's song, but with the rocking edge (more than an edge... a core, really) that only Mr. Young could provide. Every part of the song rang out clear and true (reminiscent, in that way, of the Brendan O'Brien remix of Pearl Jam's Ten), and grooved in that fantastic way that songs written and performed by guys who really know what the hell they're doing can.

In case you couldn't tell, I was taken from the start. And if all that wasn't enough (Booker T! Neil Young! An awesome song!), I found out that if you preordered the album from the store his website linked to, Booker T. Jones himself would autograph it. That was a pretty dramatic shift for one day, going from thinking he was dead to ordering a CD that would soon bear his signature.

Well, it's arrived, and, indeed, has his signature on its front. Let me just start by saying that it's a fantastic record, one I didn't even know I'd been waiting almost half my life to hear. It lives up to the promises made by "Native New Yorker."

"Pound It Out" is probably my favorite song on the album; the way it effortlessly shifts from hard-rocking to hard-grooving is just something to envy. Booker T's keyboard dances around the backing band the way Gene Kelly shines in front of a troupe of dancers.

"She Breaks" reminds me the most of an MG's song (perhaps with the exception of the title track); the minimalist nature of the song probably does that for me. Nothing really tries to draw attention to itself at the expense of any other instrument. Everything's working towards the common goal, up until the 2:40 or so mark where Booker T. just gets to unleash the gods of the keys for a few glorious seconds, until they rein everything in. Again, this is like a master's thesis in "how it's done."

They've apparently been covering "Hey Ya" for a while on their tours (Booker T. & the Drive-By Truckers), but this is the first I've heard of it. I'm kind of glad, because this came as a fantastic surprise. This is the first time on the album that the guitars and the keys really get to play together, taking turns replacing and ripping around Andre 3000's vocals. And, frankly, it rocks.

The next track is "Native New Yorker," so let's just jump ahead to "Nan," which is where things slow down for a bit, but only about two minutes. It's speaks to me mostly as a bit of a break in the action, so I'm going to jump ahead again to "Warped Sister," which is kind of a spacy song. I kind of lose my head in the guitar fuzz when this comes on.

"Get Behind the Mule" kind of pounds it out again, but in a less rocking and dancable way than the first song. It's kind of like the band plays more for itself than the audience this time. "Reunion Time" chills things down again, and fuses a little more of what I associate with the Drive-By Truckers (Southern twang, basically) with the Booker T. keys. The slide guitar in concert with the keyboard fashions a beautiful sound, almost like a church song.

"Potato Hole" is where things start to grab me again, where everybody sort of gets their turn in the center of attention (a seven minute song helps to make that happen). "Space City" takes things down again, and slowly slides away, leaving you fat and happy from the generous helping of great music you've just ingested.

Potato Hole is kind of like a throwback album, a record made for real music fans, where the songs might work well by themselves, but are far better in sequence, where they can feed off each other and grow into something all too uniquely themselves. It's a great experience, this album, and one I think many, many people should seek out.

As great as these songs are on the record, I imagine they'd be even better live. I'll have to make my way out to Salt Lake in September to see. Wish me luck.

unpackaging (or, the latest photoblog) (or, man, is my girlfriend ever cute)

2009-04-20T14:37:00.012-06:00

A few months ago, Vanessa and I learned about a website called EntertainmentEarth.com, that sells all manner of nonessential, but awesome, stuff (like a scale replica of Captain Malcolm Reynolds' sidearm). They were, at the time, taking preorders for the toy replica of the Starship Enterprise ("no bloody A, B, C, or D") from the new movie. Having so many fond memories of Star Trek toys, I wanted to recapture that feeling, and thus begged her to preorder it for me (I don't precisely recall why she was nice enough to do so, which means I had best repay her in some exceedingly dramatic fashion). Well, it arrived on Saturday, and a short, photographic essay follows, documenting its "unboxing" and subsequent display atop a bookshelf. Enjoy.

Shameless promotion. They didn't even pay me.

In the parlance of our times... "OMG!"
The blurred photo here conveys the excitement, and the urgency, of the moment.
The box promises flashing lights. I wasn't aware I'd be receiving such technological treats.
The U.S.S. Enterprise, in all its cardboard-boxed glory.
The stages of Enterprise-getting: 1) Excitement
2) Affection
3) Love
4) Willingness to die to protect it

Almost... there...
Shades of movies past!
The stand. It's an arrowhead (surprised?).
I like the nacelle design. It strikes a nice balance between the original series and the refit/Enterprise-A. They're also bulkier, which I think befits it.
The design of the ship in general strikes a good balance between old and new.

Ensign Luna, reporting for duty?
Yes, that is a Portal(tm) poster you spy on the wall. Product placement is just everywhere!
Almost there...
Ooh... pretty...

This shot kind of reminds me of the end of Star Trek VI, only with the Enterprise emerging from the sun, rather than sailing off into it.

It does light up! It does light up!

Note the red impulse engine light.

the exceptionally late-to-the-party-movie-review presents: observing and reporting

2009-04-20T14:30:00.011-06:00

Most everyone that knows me has heard my rant about "committing to the joke" before, particularly if we've worked together in some sort of filmic capacity. If you've not had the pleasure before, it goes something like this: commitment to "the joke" (which is kind of an overall thematic concept, one that shines through in specific moments of the film), is, for my money, the most important element of any comedy. Your production value can be shit, your acting can be subpar, your script can be all but incoherent, but if you commit yourself to "the joke," with no reservations, I'll be on your side forever (mostly).

This is more difficult than it might seem at first grok (though, naturally, the difficulty level is fluid, depending on the nature of "the joke"). If you want an example of a movie that doesn't commit to the joke well, I'll give you Tropic Thunder (or any Ben Stiller movie, really. Except maybe Dodgeball). The "red band" trailer was fully committed to the skewering of everything its stars had ever accomplished, and the masturbatory nature of event films in general (though, I must agree with my friend that said Tug Speedman would've been better served as played by a legitimately washed-up action star, and not Ben Stiller. Some of the self-reflexivity was gone, right there). It was a far better experience than the film itself, whose commitment to "the joke" wavered in the second half, and was completely repudiatedby the end, as RDJ all but apologized to the camera for his blackface performance.

Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance as Kirk Lazarus/Sgt. Lincoln Osiris was [obviously] the most extreme of the lampooning choices the movue made (not to discount Tom Cruise's career-saving turn as producer extraordinaire Les Grossman), but what's important to note about it is that it's a great performance. It had to be; he could not have wavered for an instant if he wanted to be believable as a man who had his skin dyed so that he could play a black man, an actor who doesn't break character until the DVD commentary. He pulls it off until the very end, when he (predictably - this is a Ben Stiller movie. He doesn't make the money he makes by making truly edgy, bizarre comedies - he knows how to play it safe) takes off his afro wig and screams to the heavens about how he knows he's not really a black man. When the movie doesn't respect its jokes enough to commit to them, that's when it loses me, and Tropic Thunder lost me but good in that instant.

The problem with a full-throated commitment to "the joke" is that, in the case of movies that really require it, such a commitment is probably going to consign you to "cult movie" nights on TCM, or at the very least, box office oblivion (not so much in the case of Borat, but there were other factors at play there beyond Mr. Baron Cohen's total commitment to his joke). It's like RDJ.'s speech about how you never go "full retard" in Tropic Thunder, like Stiller knew the movie was going to take back every powerful statement it'd made in the last 10 minutes, and wanted us to prepare for it.

The reason I've spent so much time on a movie that I don't much like and that doesn't even really matter is so that you understand me when I say that Observe and Report commits to the joke as well as any movie I've ever seen, and that it will forever have a place in my heart because of that. Its conviction does not waver for an instant, it doesn't take a step back to make you more comfortable, ever, and there is absolutely no way that any moment of the film ever takes place inside the fantasy realm that exists between Head of Mall Security Ronnie Barnhardt's ears (but more on that later).

[ASIDE: It's worth making the somewhat tired point that it's tough to imagine a much worse time for Observe and Report to get released to theaters. Between the [depressing] success that the Kevin James "vehicle" Paul Blart: Mall Cop already experienced (it's like the Capote to OaR's Infamous...), the Seth Rogen overexposure (I certainly enjoy watching him in films - even the movies I don't find all that compelling, like Pineapple Express), the ubiquitous "economic downturn" that's giving everyone cause to pinch pennies everywhere they can (and for a movie with a marketing campaign as lackluster as Observe and Report, that's not even remotely exciting), and a time of year that I could probably best describe as the calm before the shitstorm, I wouldn't have a whole lot of hope for this film to make a lot of waves at the box office, were I a person whose life was defined by such things. END ASIDE].

The "lovable loser whose reach exceeds his grasp" is a template for a main character so familiar that it borders on the obnoxious. How many times have we been introduced to a guy (sometimes a lady, but not as often) who yearns for something more than his menial station in life, who knows that, given the proper opportunity, he could rise up, phoenix-from-the-ashes style, and turn everything around in the most delightful way, only to see his hopes and dreams crash around him as we laugh ourselves silly (and he finally manages to realize how good he had it in the first place)? The answer is probably, "too many," but the important thing here is that Observe and Report turns that needlessly overdescribed trope and flips it with such dedication that it finally becomes something worth watching.

Now, in the above paragraph, I pretty much outlined for you the arc of OaR's story, except for one crucial omission: Ronnie Barnhardt's reach does not at all exceed his grasp (or wouldn't, were it not for those pesky mental health issues that plague him, Travis Bickel, Rupert Pupkin, and their ilk). The movie proves this point again and again, as he demonstrates his capacity for, well, violence (a necessary part of the law enforcement game, though certainly not the only element of it). This is really what sets Ronnie apart from many other characters cut from the same comedic mold; when it comes time to separate the men from the boys, he won't run away, he won't go down easily, and he just might shoot your ass if you push him too far.

The fact that Ronnie's big break (to recycle an old Simpsons quote, did you know the Chinese have the same word for crisis as they do for opportunity? "Yes, crisitunity!") comes in the form of a flabby male flasher (who puts Jason Segal in Forgetting Sarah Marshall to shame, actually) is interesting, to say the least. It finally gives him the opportunity to protect the helpless from a fairly appalling threat, a chance to shine, to be a beacon of hope at this otherwise helpless time in which he sees himself. Obviously, he's exemplary of the "any means necessary" culture that's been apparently grown these last 7.5 years, nurtured Keifer Sutherland and the rest of the people involved with 24. George W. Bush had Osama Bin Laden, and Ronnie Barnhardt has this fat guy running around with his dick hanging out.

Of course, no one takes Ronnie seriously, so he has to prove his mettle. A motivated Ronnie Barnhardt is a dangerous Ronnie Barnhardt, as a group of skateboarding children soon discover. Along the way, he has to find that true love was staring him in the face all along (and is bossed around/verbally abused by Patton Oswalt. Patton Oswalt!), that the people closest to you aren't always the people you can trust, and that maybe, just maybe, everything you really needed was right inside you all along. Is one of those plot points an egregious lie, you think?

Devin Faraci over at CHUD.com, in his review, writes enough about the "tone" of the film that I won't waste your time saying that I agree with him, and then spending three paragraphs restating everything he's said that I agree with. I will say, though, that I appreciate a movie that understands the balance of light and dark that's supposed to exist within it. Observe and Report should be one of those movies that causes you to reexamine contemporary life, or to consider how devastating a shattered dream can be, or even just why you shouldn't fuck with authority, but you're laughing too hard to notice (assuming you get "the joke").

Seth Rogen's performance... well, I will think twice before ever again accusing him of having played basically the same character since Freaks & Geeks. Maybe it's just that he's such a comfortable performer that I don't really appreciate the nuances that go into his performances, or haven't until now. That's really one of the most jarring choices Jody Hill (director) made, and probably the one that got his movie greenlit: casting Seth Rogen as a smoldering psychopath. You will believe that Seth Rogen could take down a motherfucker or two diving out of the Black Beauty by the time the film is done (maybe I'll start referring to this as his "audition tape" for the part of the Green Hornet, minus the fact that he was signed on to write/star in the film for a while before the release of Observe and Report). Of course, Ronnie is far more mentally unstable than a man who dresses up in a uniform and beats criminals to a pulp (hey, wait a second...), but the point remains: Seth Rogen, action star, just might work.

But, that's not doing him justice. Every character in Observe and Report has a very fine line to walk between being dislikable because they're a totally pathetic, retrodden joke and being dislikable because they're just such fucking horrible people (with the exception of Collette Wolfe's "God, I Look Too Much Like Tara Reid" Nell - she's absolutely adorable). Every actor rides that line perfectly, but no one moreso than Seth Rogen. He retains just enough of that difficult-to-describe Seth Rogen...ness to command our attention, but he knows exactly when, and how, to let the rage and hate that lie within Ronnie bubble to the surface, like some kind of magma-spewing geological force. He's not a wholly bad guy; he's stuck with his disaster of an alcoholic of a mom, after all (the scene where he places the blanket over her after she's collapsed to the floor is actually kind of sweet, as is the scene where she tells him she's switching from drinking hard liquor all day to beer).

Anna Faris is a pretty close second to Rogen, in all fairness. There's nothing about Brandi that's even remotely attractive, except what's on the very outside of her, and why Ronnie thinks there's something inside of her that's worth discovering is totally beyond me, but it's not like she's actively a bad person or anything. She's exceptionally funny, and at least honest. [ASIDE: The uproar over the sex scene in the movie, I honestly don't quite understand. I understand that "date rape" - which I don't think it is - isn't as intrinsically as funny a subject as, say, alcohol poisoning or a monkey in a tuxedo, but that's precisely what I'm getting at when I talk about committing to the joke. A Ben Stiller movie would've jumped right over that; Observe and Report doesn't. She didn't even look passed out to me, frankly, just... inactive. Everyone's had an inactive partner before, right? She's drunk, by her own doing, not Ronnie's, so she's not going to be jumping up and down on him or something. END ASIDE] I certainly don't like her, especially when she's compared to Nell, but I just as certainly don't hate her, either. She's a good character in a good movie.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Ray Liotta looks like he's lost about 15 years of age between Narc and Observe and Report. The wonders you get from dropping weight and an amazing goatee.

Observe and Report is one of the best subversive films I've seen in years, but not in what I consider the traditional sense, not the sense I'm accustomed to. It's not pushing a skewed political agenda (though I guess I've made some pretty overt parallels between Ronnie and George W. Bush... I think I'm reading too much into it that way), it just lures you into thinking you're going to see one sort of movie, and has shoved a totally different one down your throat by the end. And it's so much better for it.

quickly

2009-04-14T12:12:00.003-06:00

I've been reading a lot of articles talking about how Congressional Democrats are the victims of dropping approval ratings, while the President's remain quite high, and how that's (obviously) bad for any attempts at pushing a truly progressive agenda. And, once again, instead of charging full-speed ahead into the Republicans, countering their unconscionable misinformation ("lies") with truth, justice, and a John-Wayne-haymaker-sized dose of reality, many of those who purport to "lead" the progressive contingent are still trying to placate the crazies on the other side of the aisle.

Health care, unemployment insurance, environmental protection, reimagining/fixing capitalism, social security... That's actually what got the wheels in my head turning. "Social security." It's a tried-and-true Republican tactic to hit liberals/progressives/Democrats on national security, since we (I say this like I'm a contributor to the "movement" as a whole) often seek to cannibalize the military budget to pay for big, sweeping social welfare programs, and if you don't want to fund development of the Multiple Kill Vehicle (may it rest in peace), well, you might as well just bend over for Osama and his little rascaly band right now (even though the radical, fundamentalist, evil wing of Islam hates homosexuality with a fire that the reddest of necked people could only dream to).

Why don't we just expand the definition of national security, "reframe" (to steal a line from a fellow much smarter than myself, Jeffrey Feldman) the argument to make the case that security really should involve more than explosives, body armor and huge rubber tires. Keeping Americans secure should involve all of those causes nearest and dearest to the hearts of the progressive. A secure America is one that isn't worried about losing its home from medical bills, or having a child grow up severely disabled because of environmental contamination, or needing to work well into their 80's because people concerned only with next quarter's profit outlook played fast and loose with their retirement fund. If we're safe, but not secure, what have we gained?

There has to be a way to make people understand. Maybe this'll help?

[ASIDE: I imagine someone else has already thought of this. Perhaps it's been tried, and failed. Perhaps not, though. END ASIDE]

thanks, seattle

2009-04-07T09:39:00.003-06:00

for being (mostly) awesome, for putting on a great convention, and for being a great place to spend some time. I absolutely did not want to leave on Monday.

Good things that came out of the convention experience include (in no particular order):

- meeting Wil Wheaton, purchasing two of his books, and getting him to sign the aforementioned books (as well as one of my TNG DVDs). He wrote in Dancing Barefoot about how important it is to him that the convention-goers that come to talk to him/get him to sign autographs have a good experience when they're with him, and that absolutely bore itself out. He was a spectacularly nice guy, who even remembered us when we came back to his table on the second day (had to tell him how much we loved his books - they're fantastic), had great conversations with us, posed for pictures, and even indulged me in a little story-telling of my own (plus, Tim got him to laugh by proxy. That's got to make Tim feel good).

I think I've developed a man-crush on Wil Wheaton. Wesley Crusher. I don't know how I feel about that.

- meeting Ed Brubaker. Captain America's been my favorite superhero since I was quite small (I think it initially had something to do with the shield, but who knows after 20 years), and the fact that Brubaker's writing great issue after great issue means a lot to me. More than I can say, really. Even though he killed the Red Skull, killed Steve off, brought Bucky back from the grave, turned Bucky into Captain America... He's just written it so deftly, and with such palpable enthusiasm, that I just get sucked in and can never escape. Brubaker's "Captain America" is spectacular, there's no other word for it.

I told him all of this, and he listened quite intently, and actually reacted pretty well to my ramblings. Turns out we have a favorite superhero in common. What a surprise.

I got to meet a guy who's basically a hero of mine, and he wasn't a dick. That was a big deal, my dream not getting shattered.

- discovering "Sheldon," a phenomenal comic strip about a 10 year-old Internet billionaire (the titular Sheldon), his grandfather, a talking duck (boy genius Sheldon's doing), a pug (who does not talk), and a lizard that thinks the talking duck is his father (who only says, "Squee!"). It's geeky at times, drawn very nicely, and exceptionally funny. Plus, Dave Kellett (who writes and draws the strip), is one very nice guy. He drew us sketches of the pug and the duck.

- purchasing a shit-ton of really awesome stuff, and for not a whole heck of a lot of money. A lot of guys were selling off prints of their artwork for cheap, or bundling a couple of prints together, or made up a bundle on the spot (thanks again, Mike Hampton and Dexter Vines). As Vanessa says, "The awesome room keeps getting more awesome." President Evil, Hot Zombie Chicks, ROM the Spaceknight, Batman's gallery of foes, Iron Fist, Mouse Guard, Tiny Titans, the Goon, Usagi Yojimbo, Monster Commute, and more... all will adorn the walls in the new apartment. Oh, and the Blue Sun t-shirt. And the Invaders mini-mates (Cap, Bucky, original Human Torch, Namor). And the Blue Beetle action figure.

- seeing Bruce Timm draw Harley Quinn.

- watching Vanessa work her short/cute magic on all of the people we met, with the exception of the guy who drew cartoons for Playboy. That's all right, though, because the conversation she had with Howard Chaykin afterwards was priceless.

- winning a can of Nite Owl coffee (organic!).

- being surrounded by so much joy, so much overwhelming happiness, for two solid days. Does the spirit wonders.

- rekindling my desire to break into the comic industry some way, somehow...

- meeting Aaron Douglas, and discovering that the Chief isn't leaving television soon.

For all of this, the great music, and so much more, thanks, Seattle.

back on topic (or, why I've come to my disdain for Battlestar Galactica)

2009-03-24T11:56:00.007-06:00

Vanessa and I have been making our way through the portions of the show that I like (miniseries, S1, S2, Razor, and the first few episodes of S3 - we're on the first disc of the "Season 2.0" DVD at the moment), and I thought it might be good if I tried to get back to my titular popular culture rantings by attempting to explain, in a long form, why I don't watch Battlestar Galactica anymore, and why I don't care (this could be the first in a series of complaints about television shows that I used to like, but don't anymore - maybe I'll do one on Lost).

Actually, I didn't plan to care from the get-go. Why would I give a shit about a remake of Battlestar Galactica, even if it was spearheaded by the architect of some of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation ever, Ronald D. Moore? Who would be able to say, let alone do, anything interesting with the impossibly cheesey, wanting-terribly-to-be-Star-Wars source material that was the original Battlestar?

Of course, when I saw my first episode ("Bastille Day," the showing of which I was dragged to under vehement protest), I quickly reckoned I was wrong. Dead wrong, in fact. Moore & company did what the best remakes/reimaginings/covers do (Tool's "No Quarter," The Magnificent Seven): they took what was best from the original material, and twisted it into something... different. Something significant. Something their own. Sure, it was a little heavyhanded, but aren't most of the best episodes of Trek, no matter the era, just the same?

And this Galactica (BSG from here on, to save time) was fucking dark, man. No compromises. When Apollo got beaten down by dozens of Tom Zerek/Mark Rudd's (or William Ayers', depending on who your favorite member of the Weather Underground is) flunkies aboard the prison ship, you could feel every. single. punch. That's what you get with that faux-doc style that BSG apes from Bourne so well: the fantastic anchored in the real. Real people disagree with each other, even hate each other. Even when things are bad, or at their worst, people still find ways to hit rock bottom and keep digging. Colonel Tigh. Starbuck. Case closed.

That's what made Adama and Roslin such fascinating and magnetic characters. They never lost sight of the real stakes of the situation, and nothing, nothing was going to get between them and giving humanity its best chance to survive. Not friction between civillians and the military, not fuel, not supplies, not democracy, not even their closest friends and family would distract them from that most important of missions: keeping as many people alive as possible.

"Hand of God" is, and was, without question, my favorite episode of the show. It was practically perfect in every way, bringing things to a head with such aplomb, such tangible joy (Helo figures out that Caprica Sharon's a Cylon, Baltar's uncovering more of what might be in store for him, the combat scenes that've mostly only been hinted to so far finally get a chance to shine) that I couldn't help but be swept up in it. Plus, and this was kind of a key thing, the story started at the beginning of the episode, and ended at the end of it. I miss that in this post-24, post-Lost world, television shows that understand what an "episode" really is.

I watched the rest of the first season pretty much in order, from "Bastille Day" forward. Then I watched the minieries (out of order, but sue me. I didn't care at first). The miniseries is good, I think, in that it doesn't really fuck (frak) around or waste a whole lot of time. Most of the questions it raises are interesting (particularly the stuff about fate, which is different from religion, in my mind - Baltar, Sharon, even Adama's speech where he says that you can't run from the things that you've done anymore... or something), and it shows us what the show will consistently be best at: the space battles. While some people (most people, probably) will tell you that Galactica's at its best treading in the waters of moral ambiguity and questionable judgment, I will say that, for me, the only thing the show did that didn't start to grate on me after a while was have spaceships shoot at other spaceships. And, I think it got better at it as it went along.

Season 1 moved at such a breakneck speed that it was virtually impossible to avoid getting pulled in. All the right elements were there: intrigue (political, military, and romantic), action, less-than-subtle-social-commentary-that-I-thought-would-get-better-as-the-show-went-along, dynamite characterization, and a hell of a lot of interlocking short- and long-term goals (which any show flat-out requires for any sort of longevity, particularly in this post-Buffy and -Angel world we're in). When the Chief, Cally, Baltar and he-who-would-eventually-be-Vader's-secret-apprentice-in-The-Force-Unleashed crash-landed on Kobol, BSG Sharon found out she was a Cylon and shot Adama not once, but twice, on the bridge of the ship, Apollo and Roslin got arrested, and Starbuck found Helo and Caprica Sharon (later, "Athena," I think)... Man, that had to go on a list of awesome season-ending episodes. It could not be denied.

The above paragraphs detail, for me, what I'm going to refer to as the "rise" of Battlestar Galactica. With a couple of little hiccups along the way, I'm going to start addressing the "fall," and I'm going to begin with what I think most damaged the show for me: the jump in the episode order following the first season's conclusion. For illustrative purposes, I'll begin with a list:

Season 1 - 13 episodes
Season 2 - 20 episodes (with a 3.5 month break in the middle)
Season 3 - 20 episodes
Razor TV movie (technically the first 2 episodes of S4)
Season 4 - 20 episodes (with a 6 month break in the middle - not entirely their fault, due to the Writer's Strike, but still. It also started 1 year and 1 month after the conclusion of Season 3)

On paper, 7 extra hours of television probably doesn't appear too demanding/affecting, and, at the time, was terribly exciting to me and my friends as now-dedicated fans of the show. "7 more episodes of Battlestar for Season 2? Fuck (frak) yes!" However, that decision (which I'm sure was motivated more by $$ than anything resembling "art") gutted what I've said before (and will likely say again) was most noteworthy about the show, that it was lean and mean. 13 episodes don't give you any time to fuck (frak) around, not if you have a plan (which it sure seemed they did in that first season); you have to accomplish precisely what you set out to accomplish. That set the tone for the show; the plot moved forward in every episode, sometimes two or three times. Galactica, unlike every other show on television, wasn't interested in wasting my time in the pursuit of more advertising dollars. A few episodes can bog a show down terribly (take Season 3 of The Office versus Season 2), but when a show races ahead the way that first season of BSG did? Forget about it. Season 2 would remind me only perfunctorily of Season 1.

[ASIDE: Okay, fine, I'm ascribing a level of artistic and moral dedication to an industry, and a network, that's been scrambling for dollars from the moment it was birthed. I understand that doesn't make perfect sense, or much sense at all. What I'm complaning about probably ranks up there on the level of "retooling," if it ranks anywhere at all. Shows, and people, and networks, change - "Sy Fy," right? However, dear reader, when a show is called "the best thing on television," when its stars go to the UN building to talk about human rights and their program's relevance to our society today, it had better be one bulletproof fucking (fraking) show. I had better not be able to poke any holes in it that I'm not willing to overlook/forgive, and those holes sure as hell better not be able to deflate it to the point that it starts to come back to earth. I'm the first to idolize something when I love it; I'm rarely interested in seeing my false deities crash and burn in front of me. This isn't being written out of spite. Well, it is, but not because I feel a need to be the douchebag that ruins Battlestar for everyone. Now that it's over, I just feel like I can finally say my piece. END ASIDE]

I found little compelling about the first half of Season 2. I never thought Tigh was a strong enough character to carry storytelling weight on his shoulders (and don't even get me started on that wife of his... I know you don't have to like characters in order to enjoy watching them, but when they're as flat-out uninteresting as Ellen Tigh, and eventually get resurrected in one of the stupidest scenes I've ever seen in any television program, ever (I'll admit to watching the "Catch the Frak Up" segments on the SciFi webpage, and to catching snippets of episodes online, and to reading synopses online - IMDb's synopsis for the final episode is a thing of nerdy beauty)... I get it, she brings out the worst in her husband, and without Bill Adama around to counter her, she becomes some sort of low-grade Lady Macbeth. And she sleeps around. And she's the final Cylon model (I was utilizing my "low readership = I write what I want" philosophy right there). So what? Make her interesting. No? Shit.

I didn't like how the show came to a dead stop for episodes on end while the fleet lingered around Kobol, and Starbuck/Helo/Caprica Sharon kept dinking around on Caprica while they "tried" to get back to the ship. Sure, we might've lost Sam Anders (a likable character in a show with far too few of them), and the Lucy Lawless fauxumentary episode, and maybe even "Downloaded" (the first step towards humanizing the children of humanity, you say? An excruciatingly important episode, you say? Fuck (frak) that, I say. Beginning of the fucking (frakking) end, I say), but if they were that important to the story, they would've found a way to work them in during a 13-episode run. We for sure would've lost "Black Market" (sadly, I would be willing to sacrifice Bill Duke), but not "Scar."

I particularly like that in "Scattered" it's revealed that the Galactica's computer is less advanced than even Star Wars' beloved R2-D2. R2 units, it's stated in the Essential Guide to Droids, can hold multiple sets of hyperspace jump coordinates in their active memory. The Battlestar Galactica, though, can only hold one set, and apparently purges all the others once it's made a lightspeed jump, requiring them to return to their previous location and recalculate the numbers if they want to go anywhere else (like, say, find the rest of the fleet). Kudos, Galactica. I think that's even less advanced than some of today's nuclear submarines.

The second half of S2 was a marked increase in quality, thanks to the arrival of Bizarro Jerry [the Battlestar Pegasus, and the "Big Bad Harv" to Adama's District Attourney Dent, Admiral Helena Cain (formerly Ensign, and later Lieutenant, Ro Laren on TNG and Lynne Kresge on 24, Michelle Forbes)]. Like the best zombie movies (or anything that inverts the "other as enemy" conceit in favor of exploring what it means to have dissent in the ranks), the Cylons all of a sudden stopped being the most pressing threat. Instead, our humans had to watch their backs to make sure the new humans didn't stick some sort of military-issue knives in them (particularly when Cain transferred Apollo and Starbuck over to Pegasus, and installed her own guy as deck chief on Galactica). Sure, they had to put that all aside in order to take out the Resurrection Ship (one of the flagging good ideas the show had before the end of the season), but that just ratcheted up the tension even further.

I also reached a turning point in my feelings for Gaius Baltar, and, more significantly, Imaginary(?) Six, when he went aboard the Pegasus to interview their Cylon prisoner. Face-to-face (sort of) with a tortured, barely-functional "sister" of hers, Imaginary(?) Six flies off the handle, screaming at Baltar about the abused woman with whom he's confronted, about how no one has the right to treat anyone else this way. She makes a decent, if generic, argument against prisoner torture, until you remember that this is the mental imprint of a woman who was a prime player in the genocide of fucking (frakking) humanity. Once you help wipe millions (billions?) of people out, you've lost the moral high ground. Period. And Baltar never even considers throwing this back in her face (I guess he wouldn't, but still); some fast-thinking genius.

This actually ties directly into one of the other things that frustrates me greatly about the show, the legions of missed opportunities. Sure, Baltar and Imaginary(?) Six don't throw down over what actually constitutes moral behavior, not to mention superiority, and maybe if I asked Ronald D. Moore about it, he'd tell me that was intended to spark conversation among audience members, but I'd just call it lazy. [ANOTHER ASIDE: I've never read an interview, listened to a podcast, or emailed Ron Moore about the show. Perhaps he's addressed these issues I'm raising. I don't care. END ASIDE] But, this storyline failure isn't really what irritates me the most. The fact that they ran through commanding officer upon commanding officer of Pegasus, until it became more than clear that the plan was to put Apollo in charge of his own Battlestar, sacrificing who knows how many interesting stories about trying to move on, to reunify the last pieces of humanity, or even just more awesome space battles (!!!) in favor of advancing a plot point that, in retrospect, doesn't really matter, that's not even the most aggravating thing.

What still chaps my ass is what they did with what was, at the time, one of the most amazing plot twists I'd ever conceived of. Instead of following the year that humanity attempted to make the best of a bad situation on New Caprica (and, truly, all the positive comments in the world with regards to Adama forcing Roslin to accept the outcome of the election, for good or for ill. One of the best moments of a character being true to himself in TV history, I think), in the waning moments of the S2 finale, BSG jumps ahead a full year, to the Cylon occupation of the human settlement on New Caprica. Anders and Starbuck, married. The Chief and Cally, married (with a baby on the way). Apollo and Dee, married (and both working aboard the Pegasus). When the Cylons come, the Battlestars get the fuck (frak) out of there - an interesting coda to Adama's initial desire to fight the war to his bitter, bloody end at the show's start, leaving the rest of humanity to fend for itself until they can come back for them.

Here's my problem: at this point, the show was clearly going to be about the Iraq occupation, only it made the ballsy decision to cast the characters with whom we were most invested as the occupied, not the occupiers. The "Resistance" webisodes were fascinating, and I'd put them up against almost anything else the show had ever done. They asked a very heavy version of the "What if?" question, and got some good answers (particularly from Duck - the Wash-looking suicide bomber - and Colonel Tigh). I was prepared for an interesting occupation, except that, at the beginning of S3, they pressed the reset button. Admittedly, Galactica & Pegasus' rescue of humanity was fucking (frakking) amazing; the show deserved the special effects awards it won, unquestioningly. Baltar gets left behind with the Cylons, and Lee sacrifices his command to save Galactica, and humanity. Once again, the fleet's on the run, with only the Galactica and its rag-tag crew to defend humankind from the Cylons.

All well and good, except that I refuse to accept the fact that you can press the reset button again after having pressed it so soon (actually, it seems like they pressed the reset button a few times during S2, and the first parts of S3. There are only so many dramatic, show-altering twists that I can take before I stop caring, and the show becomes Lost or 24). It's just like a Brett Ratner ending ("Don't like this one, bro? Then try this one, or this one! It's all good; it doesn't matter anyway!"). And from there, well, my interest waned, and quickly. I didn't care that Baltar uncovered dissent among the Cylon ranks, I don't care that Starbuck and Anders were going through some stuff, and I sure didn't care about the "revelation" of the remaining Cylon models. I mean, come on.

After this, after sidestepping what could've been a total redefiniton of the show (here's my thought: if it was all going to wind up being the same anyway, why not just make the S2 finale another hour longer, and end up with humanity on the run again? There's not a single part of the first few episodes of S3 that couldn't have been done in flashback, and this way the show wouldn't have had to lie to me), it just meandered until I totally gave up (around the time Starbuck "died"). I stopped watching Lost because it just felt like they were filling time, too.

The show hit a wall, insofar as pacing goes, and for a show so defined by its unrelenting speed in the beginning, this was pretty much unforgivable. I mean, didn't you jump over a year of trying to make a life on New Caprica just so that you could get back to running from the Cylons, and, hopefully, towards Earth? Now you expect me to deal with... walking-through-molasses-slow storytelling (the folly of having to fill 20 episodes, and not just 13)? Fuck (frak) that. I can watch Angel, or The Wire, or Deadwood, or practically any other show on HBO (or made by Joss, for that matter) if I want to watch a show that asks big philsophical and metaphysical questions, that tries to have a relevance right here, right now.

I'm not saying that the show betrayed me as a viewer, or that it lost sight of what it was supposed to be, or anything like that. Clearly, it did enough to captivate an significant segment of the TV-watching population. Cool. If there are that many people that love it, I can step aside and not be missed.

Joss once said that, "The audience matters." To me, it just felt like BSG ignored, or forgot, that (particularly in regards to the audience for the beginning of the show). I'm not a dumb guy; I challenge myself with the media I consume (mostly; sometimes it's fun to watch the original Transformers animated movie). This has nothing to do with BSG going over my head (quite the opposite, I think; that "ham-handed" commentary that I hoped would improve from the first season? Based on everything I've read/seen/heard, doesn't look like that improved one little bit, particularly based on the series finale). It's done, and I'm done with it. Maybe I'll grow enough as a person some day to give it another chance, but, in truth, there's so much other stuff out there that I enjoy, that engages me, that I have no interest in fighting with something that I just don't care about. I've worked out what remaining emotion I had regarding the show in this piece here; that's all he wrote. Mostly.

[ASIDE/CODA #1: I bought Razor because it was on sale for cheap this past summer. I actually found it very interesting, because it added new wrinkles to what had come before. It almost made me question some assumptions I'd made, and certainly turned Admiral Cain into a more sympathic character. It also made me more furious at the missed opportunities that could've come from Baltar/Imaginary(?) Six and the Pegasus vs. everyone else dynamics that just sort of slid by, ignored. It was overwrought in parts, sure, but it felt like the BSG I loved.]

[ASIDE/CODA #2: While "frak" is fairly awesome, it's just an illustration of how hypocritical the people that police the media in this country are. If "frak" = "fuck," why can one word be said on television, but not the other? This is undeniable proof that it's the word itself that is apparently offensive, and not anything that the word indicates. Good work, arbitrary signifiers. Bad work, FCC.]

regarding brendan o'brien

2009-03-23T14:19:00.003-06:00

albums produced:
Stone Temple Pilots - Core, Purple, Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, No. 4, Shangri-La Dee Da
Pearl Jam - Vs., Vitalogy, No Code, Yield,
Neil Young (f. Pearl Jam) - Mirrorball
Paul Westerberg - Eventually
Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire, The Battle of Los Angeles
Korn - Issues
Bruce Springsteen - The Rising, Devils & Dust, Magic, Working on a Dream
Incubus - Alive at Red Rocks
The Wallflowers - Rebel, Sweetheart
Audioslave - Revelations
The Nightwatchman - One Man Revolution, The Fabled City
AC/DC - Black Ice
Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Albums re/mixed:
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magick
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Pearl Jam - No Code, Yield, Binaural, Riot Act, Lost Dogs, rearviewmirror, Ten Redux, the new album (2009!?)
Audioslave - Out of Exile
The Living End - White Noise
Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream
Limp Bizkit - Significant Other

Albums engineered:
Kansas - In The Spirit of Things
RHCP - Blood Sugar Sex Magick

Ever want me to make a list of people I'd like to be (or meet)? He'd be up there.

the expensive movie that looks like a little movie

2009-03-17T13:52:00.003-06:00

Usually I hate it; this time I don't.

Why not? It's simple, really: Sam Mendes. Why is it that the British seem to do a better job deconstructing America than we do?

John Krasinski (whose back I will always have because of The Office) looks like he may well have found his gateway into feature films - I guessed he'd have to wait until the Cohen brothers cast him, but Mendes... I'd not yet reckoned with Mendes. I have high hopes, in fact.

The whole cast, really, appears to be something to behold. Maya Rudolph - who was just as fantastic as anyone in Idiocracy, Jeff Daniels (Jeff Daniels!!), Jim Gaffigan, Allison Janney (man, that's going to be one hell of a married couple), Maggie Gyllenhaal...

The story seems pretty standard, indie-like movie fare, but (once again)... Sam Mendes! With a script co-written by Dave Eggers! How much more upside could this indie-movie-that-isn't need?

I don't much like the Sufjan Stevens-esque title card, but if that's all I can complain about, hey, go movie.

"last house '09"

2009-03-17T10:22:00.010-06:00

I saw the original Last House on the Left (or, Last House '72) towards the end of college, when Matt and I went on this big, years-long binge of horror movies. A lot of them have kind of blended together, to the point that I sometimes can't remember if a scene that I'm remembering is from Fulchi's Zombi 2 or Argento's Bird with the Crystal Plumage (hint: if it involves zombies, it's Fulchi), but two certainly haven't: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (perhaps a subject for another day), and Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left. I'd like to be sarcastic and say it's because of the hyper-inappropriate cross-cutting between the Keystone Kops rushing to the house to save the day (which, as anyone who has a passing familiarity with Craven's work can tell you, they don't) and the brutal, nasty stuff going down in and around the Collingwood cabin, but it's really because it had an exceptionally visceral quality to it that I'd never seen in a film before, and doubt I ever will again (I feel inclined to make a virginity joke here, but I'll leave that one to you, dear reader).

Last House '09 has got nothing on it's predecessor. It says nothing significant, isn't noteworthy for any other reason that Garrett Dillahunt's performance (which is extraordinary, as usual - does that make it "ordinary?"), and, insofar as the much-bandied-about "ending" goes, is fairly lacking.

I wrote myself a bunch of notes on my iPhone over the course of the film, but, due to the fact that I feel less than inspired to translate them into paragraphs of writing, I'll just post them, in their entirety, in the order in which they came to me:

"cigarette lighter why not in the eye

aerial view of the suv pinballing

closeup doesn't equal awkward

arbitrary nudity

swimming shot at the start is good foreshadowing

c grade paul dano [regarding the son]

there's a difference between gritty realism and manufactured gritty realism

krug wants his son to look - how does that relate to us the audience

2x stabbing - first time i've seen that in a movie?

assault is alternately well & poorly shot - so poorly edited?

mythbusters

dillahunt likes shooting motherfuckers in the back

no one's likable enough to generate sympathy

resetting broken nose = FUCK

stitches don't quite = fuck

oh shit the power went out

making memories

daughter surviving is lame - they should've stolen the girls' phones and been found out that way...?

justin sees -> what could his reaction say about the audience

maybe i take it back re finding out (still could've been a good fuck you we know what you did moment

c grade viggo [regarding the dad]

history of violence

cutting on your own child

this is the sort of movie that makes people hate handycam?

like a summer guest home invasion movie?

francis & emma in the kitchen

zombie fighting tool shed

no outdoors bj w/ biting... almost too bad

reverse rape through drowning?

garbage disposal

couple walked out

fireplace poker

son sees krug & sadie in bed, watching w/ gun

crazy topless bitch with shower curtain rod - mom shoots her where daughter should've burned her

husband & wife can only kill in tandem

music is vaguely john carpenter

water is...?"

...So, there you go.

phil watches the watchmen

2009-03-08T18:12:00.003-06:00

I've said it before, and I have no qualms about saying it again: Watchmen is, in my opinion (for whatever that's worth), easily among the crowning literary acheivements of the last 30 years. I don't care what piece of prose you're putting Moore & Gibbon's book up against, Watchmen'll fight it to the bitter, bloody end, and, more often than not, come out on top. I read it for the first time about five years ago (thank goodness for that graphic fiction scripting class), and I've read it at least ten time since then. At the end of every single reading, I come away with a new understanding and appreciation for the work. I can't say that about many of the other things I've encountered in my life, no matter the medium or the message. It certainly works in the book's favor that it almost single-handedly dragged an art form universally considered to be the purview of adolescent boys kicking and screaming into maturity, but so what? Watchmen is sinister, hysterical, cynical, brilliant, and completely, utterly unwilling to submit to what most everyone in 1986 thought a “comic book” should be.

Enough people have and can recount the story's stormy journey to the silver screen that I won't waste time doing it here. The point is, Watchmen (from the “visionary” director of 300 and the Dawn of the Dead remake – Zack Snyder) has arrived in theaters, and I have experienced it. I've thought about it long enough that I think I can form coherent thoughts about it, and I'll attempt to archive them here.

Principally, I was and still am astounded. Watchmen is such a complex book, with so many branches, roots and vines, interconnected and disparate all at once, weaving in and out, over and under, that I long ago agreed with the popular conception that it was, to borrow a phrase, “unfilmable.” I didn't really see a problem with that, because it's so good as a book, I didn't see a reason to make it into what could only be a lesser movie. I couldn't have figured out a way to make it work in my wildest dreams, so thank goodness Zack Snyder and the writers of the script didn't listen to me. Watchmen is at least as good as V for Vendetta, a film I seriously respect for its ability to recognize, understand, and speak to its audience (post-11th of September, 2001, America, as opposed to Britons who'd lived under Margaret Thatcher's time as Prime Minister), and could well be superior, by virtue of the fact that its source material is better.

Just like Moore and Gibbons' book, Synder's film doesn't compromise (serious congratulations should be given to everyone involved who contributed to its eventual R rating – if they'd allowed the sex, the violence, or the thoughtfulness to get watered down enough to the point that it had become a PG-13 movie, Watchmen would have become a terrible casualty of the all-ighty -ollar, and not something that might well be an actual artistic acheivement. But, more on that later). From Dan Dreiberg's schoolboy-ish costume fetish, to the Comedian's cold-blooded murder of the Vietnamese woman he knocked up, to the giant blue wang (which was never actually “giant,” which is something I appreciate, not because of any latent homophobia, but because I've never had much interest in seeing a penis that's larger than a grown man. Or a vagina, either, but that's something for a later paragraph, as well), Watchmen the film remains just as true to human nature as Watchmen the book; losing the reverse correlation between Dr. Manhattan's humanity and his modesty is impossible to do. For a work whose principal concern is human nature, that's a good thing.

In every way, the film succeeds in bringing the world of the comic to life. All of the iconic imagery (save one thing) from the book makes its way into the film, as far as I could remember. Sure, a lot of the side stories had to give in order to keep the [initial] running time down, but everything that makes its way onscreen is inarguably essential. This is the essence of Watchmen, and it would be the perfect introduction to the world of the book if there were such a thing as a primer on Watchmen. It's great fan service, though.

Speaking of bringing the book to life, the acting in the film sets another new bar for what we can hope to see in a superhero movie (is this the only time I'll subtly indicate that it might be better than The Dark Knight, a film I might've married had it been human? We'll see). Billy Crudup's next-step-up-from-Gollum performance as Dr. Manhattan is supremely praise-worthy – he humanizes a man who becomes so powerful that he's no longer a man, which should shut up anyone who wants to complain about his acting chops for the rest of forever – and Jackie Earle Haley, him of Maniac Cop 3 and Bad News Bears fame, turns in the performance of a lifetime as everybody's favorite character, Rorschach – the fact that he's even scarier when his “face” (his mask – what do you want, he's a sociopath) gets taken away from him and he's left with his prison jumpsuit astounds me. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is magnetic as the Comedian – he made me genuinely like a facist, murdering rapist.

The real story, though, is Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II – my favorite character from Watchmen. The man jumps off the fucking page of the comic, dear reader – a tribute to makeup and performance alike. I'd heard at one point that John Cusack was in talks to play Dreiberg, and as a huge John Cusack fan, I had high hopes it'd come through. When it didn't, I felt I'd be automatically biased against the asshole that had the audacity to steal a part that was rightfully Rob Gordon's. I was wrong; when I say Wilson's portrayal was perfect, I mean that it was absolutely flawless, and above reproach. It's a case study in understated acting, and, I think, in committing to a character (but in a different way from Heath. Heath owned the role of the Joker – he redefined it – but Patrick Wilson in Watchmen is Dan Dreiberg). Wilson may as well not be present; they could've made some sort of evil scientist-type ray to shine on the book to make Dreiberg come to life, and I seriously doubt the character from the book could've done a better job.

I'd be remiss in my praise if I didn't mention Malin Akerman's job as Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II. She was the one on whom I was least sold from the trailer, but she's stellar (a bad pun, seeing as how she and Dr. Manhattan find themselves on Mars for a good chunk of the film), riding the fence between hard and vulnerable exactly the way she needed to. Matthew Goode was, well, precisely that as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias (the “slight German accent” I've read about was rarely noticable to me, and therefore a non-issue). I couldn't stop myself from comparing him to Tom Cruise the entire time; I still haven't quite figured out what that means. Ozymandias, as the character that's the least complicated (in that he articulates his motivations best), is the least interesting in the book, as far as I'm concerned. I have no issue with Goode's performance, regardless.

The big change (and the way in which I'll directly compare this to V for Vendetta, beyond the obvious “Alan Moore wrote both of them, dickwad”) from book to screen (again availing myself of my small reader base, I'm just going to write about it) is the replacement of the giant asshole/vagina monster that's dropped on NYC with a fradulent attack by Dr. Manhattan on more than a few of the world's major cities. In order to talk about this, I'm going to refer to the other major alteration that I noticed – Ozymandias' desire to bring an unlimited supply of clean energy to the world, to wean us off fossil fuels, because, as he puts it, once the resources become limitless, the need for war goes away. In the book, electric cars are everywhere, and recharging stations – which look almost exactly like fire hydrants – are just as pervasive. These don't appear until the end of the movie, and with good, obvious reason. Manhattan and Ozymandias are working on this clean, limitless energy generation system throught the film, until it turns out that it's a smokescreen (kind of) to allow Veidt to play a huge “practical joke” on humanity – get us all united against a singular threat, and keep us thinking that threat is imminent, so that we don't go around killing each other anymore. Kind of a reverse-Star Trek ploy, but with more or less the same result.

These changes update the movie for a post-11th of September, 2001, post-An Inconvienent Truth, world, in the same way the Wachowskis and James McTiegue updated V. While it still remains true to the original spirit of the work (far more than that, in Watchmen's case – despite these changes, the movie tells the same story), it renews that work's relevance. I never felt much affection for the asshole/vagina monster from the book – there wasn't much scatalogical humor in Watchmen. It would've worked well in Preacher, but I always felt it cheapened Watchmen a bit. What's the only thing better than a great work? A great work with a tiny flaw you can pick at – so Veidt's perversion of Manhattan's abilities (Manhattan = ultimate nuclear deterrent, right? Now, he really is) sits pretty well with me. It adds a new wrinkle to him (which I appreciate – he's still the least interesting, but less so now), and makes his moral position a little more precarious. Plus, in this tear-down-our-heroes culture we're living in, it (again) renews the relevance of the story.

I still don't think Snyder's going to qualify as anyone remotely on the cutting edge of American film directors until he makes something that's his own (Dawn being a remake – a 28 Days Later-ified remake, nevertheless – of one of the five most important American horror films ever made, and 300 and Watchmen extraordinarily faithful adaptations of comic books), something that springs out of his fervent visual imagination. However, I'm much more a Zack Snyder fan after Watchmen than I was after 300 (I thought 300 was obnoxious, frankly, both in its adherence to its source material and in its overuse of slow-motion). It's a much more thoughful movie, one that appeals better to the brain than to the balls (interesting word choice there, Phil, given the virtually all-male cast of 300 and the sexual dynamics that drive Watchmen). Plus, there's far less slow-mo (it's still there, and I still don't like it, but it's like Paul Greengrass' shakycam from Supremacy-United 93-Ultimatum, in that I believe he'll get better and more judicious with it as time goes on).

I'm going to do my level best to get my complaints (such as they are) out of the way here at the end. Mostly, it's the fact that the movie, with few exceptions, is basically the comic book slapped onscreen (“slapped” conveys a carelessness that I don't really mean to imply – this was a well and carefully crafted movie. I don't think that's even up for discussion). [ASIDE: I've said before that the (apparently) most universally disliked of the Harry Potter films – Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban – is my favorite of those films, because Cuaron didn't just slap the book onscreen the way Chris Columbus did with the first two. He made an actual movie adaptation from the book. I think Azkaban really was, and remains, the only Harry Potter movie made for fans of the books, because it took the framework provided by book – a book that virtually everyone in the audience for the film knows well – and plays around with it. There are gaps in the story that can only be filled with a knowledge of the source material. The movie doesn't unfold in the painfully obvious way that the other movies do. It takes advantage of its medium – film, in case we've all forgotten – in the telling of its story, a medium which is different from its source. That's why I like it best. END ASIDE] Watchmen doesn't really break free of the confines of the book except in the opening credits sequence (which, I'll say again, was absolutely beautiful), and I think that hurts it somewhat. The book is, well, I'll say languidly paced at times, and that's part of the reason I thought it'd never get made into a good film, because, given the sort of movie Watchmen'd have to be, it could never embrace that pacing, have the confidence to let the story unfold as it is wont to.

Clearly, I have underestimated Zack Snyder (and the screenwriters) in this regard, for his film has (though I am loath to repeat myself, here we go again) nothing if not fearless fealty to its source material. But, therein lies the Achilles' heel. I wrote before about my initial reaction to the teaser trailer, and about how I asked Matt for his reaction (thought it looked cool, but didn't know what was going on, and he didn't really care as a result), and I don't think there's much that I took away from the movie that'd give me cause to work to change his opinion. Because the film is so carefully wedded to the book, it unfolds the way a fan of the book (like me) knows it will. I wasn't confused from the start about who each of the weird costumed people were; I knew we weren't going to uncover the “Secret Origin of Dr. Manhattan” until, well, a lot later. I knew we were going to get attached to the Comedian only to have him disappear because, well, he gets killed at the outset. I bring no neuroses about the way in which the story unfolds to the screening, because I already know. The same can not be said for people that don't know Watchmen already. I spoke to plenty of people who could only say that the initial trailer “looked cool,” because they didn't have a reason to be excited about seeing Nite Owl, Silk Spectre and Rorschach in action.

To put it another way, I don't think the movie does a Watchmen neophyte any favors. It doesn't hold your hand. Though, that's not really a complaint. If anything, it's a compliment, for far too few films these days have any sort of confidence in their audience. Snyder's made a film that's ruthlessly loyal to its source material, but in doing so, he may have done exactly what I wanted as a fan of the original material, and as a filmgoer (and -maker): he's made a coherent movie out of Watchmen. And, in all fairness to him, it was likely far too great a task for any filmmaker to distill that monster of a story into something that zips along for 100-120 minutes and drags everyone in the theater, experienced and virgin alike, along for a spellbinding ride.

I honestly think the director's cut might be able to do that, even if it is 4 hours long (oh, and before I forget, let me reiterate something: this is a seriously R-rated movie. Which it should've been. But, by virtue of the fact that it's limited its audience, well, there's a reason for that. Which is worth keeping in mind). Here's to hoping it gets released in theaters.

a two-for-one post (Thursday, plus ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead)

2009-02-19T11:03:00.013-07:00

I've remarked before about how I really didn't care for Thursday before the United Nations record came out. That's changed; I've gone out and picked up War All The Time, and it's a good, solid record. It probably would've changed the way I thought about music if I'd heard it when it was released, but even now, a good six years after the fact, it holds up as better-than-good. After that, I pulled their split EP with Envy off of iTunes, and again, pretty high quality music (I wrote a tiny little bit about it here). I liked how they were experimenting with what I'm familiar with as their core sound, and hoped it'd carry over to their new release, Common Existence.

I'm a little sad to report that we didn't get any epic, Explosions in the Sky-type instrumental noodling on Common Existence; what we got instead was another good record from Thursday. It's not going to get me picking up my guitar and writing screamo songs, but every track on the album is good, more than listenable, and better listened to than skipped. This puts it heads and shoulders above most every record that's been released in my lifetime.

Geoff Rickly has himself an amazing vocal range (not quite matching the level of Daryl Palumbo or the much-beloved Mike Patton, but he can sing and scream with the best of them), and after the UN album, I'm pretty certain he works best as one half of a duo. Tim McIlrath's voice (the voice of Rise Against, about whose latest album you'd be able to find my reaction here), in concert with Geoff's, on the first track ("Resuscitation of a Dead Man") packs an extraordinary punch - they may be the two best voices in... I was about to type "modern rock," but I know that's completely off base... They may be the two best voices in rock (save Chris Cornell, but he's kind of fallen by the wayside) suited to sing about a desperate desire to stay alive. It's a beautiful song, in its own way.

"Last Call" might be the most heartwrenching song I hear all year; lines like, "Everything we build, it falls apart/And the architect abandons us," and "Last call for the two of us/And the people sang/Everything is falling apart," wouldn't strike me as particularly profound or affecting, but this is where I bring up Rickly's voice again, because he sells the songs, completely. The same goes for "Friends in the Armed Forces." This is the kind of song I wish people had been writing about six years ago, when it might've actually made a difference. Admittedly, I'm beating a dead horse here when I talk about the disaster that is the Iraq invasion/occupation, and I should be grateful that so many people in the creative community finally opened their eyes to what's going on, when I read lines like this:

"You say you're defending me/
I'm sick of tying yellow ribbons/
Praying not to see/
We're not going to hell/
To run rings around a wishing well"

I can't help but wonder what sort of world we'd live in if this artistic rebellion had come to pass a few years earlier. That's not to discount it; it has some of my favorite guitar lines on the album. It's just... not nearly enough, not now.

The thing I've come to like most about Thursday is how their sound evolves, while their thematic concerns remain, more or less, the same. There's a continuity thread inside of the growth, and I think that's a good way to evolve as artists and still manage to keep yourself grounded. With that, I want to single out one more song, "Subway Funeral," which deals with the "classic" Thursday issues of connectivity (human connectivity... relationships... love... etc). I think it does a great job of punching you in the face, sending you reeling back, and just when you think you've prepared yourself for the final blow... silence, for almost a good ten seconds (following the line, "this will never end," which entertains me). Then, the song unleashes the full force of its fury in the last minute. I appreciate the fakeout; I also appreciate the words, like:

"Surprise, surprise/
Everything you know will flash before your eyes/
You're frozen with your hands against the glass/
I'm seeing bright lights/
I'm hearing sharpened knives/
I'm praying to a neon sign/
As I wait for this severed line to take me"

So few songs anymore have the ability to paint pictures of true grandeur with just their lyrics. That's another reason I've finally come to appreciate Thursday. That's why I'm now excited at the prospect of picking up more of their records, and maybe someday seeing a concert of theirs.

As for ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, I've also recently come to enjoy their music. I remember seeing them perform on Conan long ago, and being horribly confused as they systematically demolished their instruments. Late night talk shows tend to be bad venues for bands, anyway (Pearl Jam's always been good, but, hell, they're Pearl Jam. Anybody besides me remember Audioslave's coming out party on Letterman? Man, was the sound bad), and this was no exception. My guess is that their music overloaded the microphones... In any case, I didn't seek out the Trail of Dead for a long time afterwards. At least, not until The Century of Self started getting glowing reviews.

I'd be remiss if I said nothing about the artwork. Apparently, Conrad Keely, one of the two founders, did the cover art himself, in blue ballpoint pen. People who can draw amaze me; I'm terribly jealous of them. This, however, is awe-inspiring. If you have the opportunity to get a good look at it, I'd make a strong case for doing so. I'm not an art critic, but I know what I hate, and I am so far away from hating this...

Not to be too general, but I particularly like the overall... epic-ness (epic nature?) and energy of The Century of Self. "Giant Causeway" betrays some pretty bombastic tendencies, which are expanded upon in "Far Pavillions," which come to a gorgeous head in "Isis Unveiled" (which, as my friend Matt says, has got to be the leading candidate for Song of the Year at this point. I still like "My Girls" - off Meriwether Post Pavillion - a whole awful lot, but "Isis Unveiled" could probably take it in a fight). "Halcyon Days" almost slows things down a bit (but not for long) before we get to "Bells of Creation," which kind of sounds like Trail of Dead writing a Who song. I like it; I don't quite know what to make of it, but I certainly do like it.

Let me backtrack a minute to "Isis Unveiled." It just has so much infectious, aggressive energy. It's a song that cannot be denied. It might well be a song that produces what I have long referred to as a "good" mosh pit (where fun, rather than pain, is the goal). The way it comes to its stomping, head-banging slowdown in the middle, only to ramp things up once again for a rousing finish, is something to adore.

"Fields of Coal" has a little bit of a U2 tinge (probably due to the keys... I guess that could be attributed to Springsteen as much as the lads from Dublin, though). I love "Luna Park" (I've always been a sucker for guitar paired with piano, one instrument mirroring the other) and "Ascending" (because it calls back to the furious energy of the beginning of the album). For an album that could be accused of being all over the place all too often, Trail of Dead have put out a record that I feel is far greater than whatever the sum of its individual parts might be thought to be.

I think that Century of Self, insofar as the music goes, is one of the best constructed albums I've ever heard. The ways in which musical elements (themes?) return from song to song, the almost hypnotic ebbing and flowing of the music, and the passion of it... It works on a very fundamental level, almost a gut level. For me, that's kind of a big deal.

on the dollhouse

2009-02-16T08:11:00.004-07:00

This really is something I should've written on Friday and Saturday, but, what the hell. Better late than never, right (better short than too long, also):

Hearing what I'd heard about the trials and tribulations surrounding the production of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, I really didn't know what to expect going into the show. Sure, I knew the premise ("dolls" - personality-less people - can be programmed/imprinted in any way their masters see fit and one of them - the scrappy Eliza Dushku - discovers things she wasn't meant to know), and the fact that Karl C. "Helo" Agathon from Battlestar Galactica was going to be on the show, but I didn't really know what to expect, in the truest sense of things.

All in all, I thought it was a pretty good first episode. First episodes (not so much the case with Joss, but these were extenuating circumstances) are oftentimes iffy: the show's just getting its bearings, cast isn't quite comfortable with each other yet... The show doesn't always know what it's supposed to be, so it's imperfect. The best shows have more than flickers of promise or flashes of insight in their opening episodes, and if it gets nurtured properly, given time to grow, you'll see it come into its own and, hopefully, thrive.

Dollhouse's first episode was, I think, right on track. Regardless of how I feel about the lead actress (I've never been sold on Ms. Dushku, not even when she tore up the television screen as Faith in Buffy), Joss' idea is a magnificent one, and certainly allows him to explore more of the grey morality that seems to fascinate him, particularly lately. The fractioning, even from the start, inside the people that administrate over the Dollhouse should be ripe ground from which to harvest stories. The pitting of one "active" against another in order to accomplish the same mission, and the reality-making which gives the show such a good foothold in the zeitgeist of the now... All of it is practically bursting with possibility.

It reminds me a little bit of Alias (what I know of Alias, anyway), only with far less obnoxious tendencies. I like that.

The writing wasn't Joss-ish enough for me, but again, that's more of an issue, not so much with too many cooks spoiling the soup, but the cook having too many bosses that want him to adjust, and even reimagine, the recipie. I'm looking forward to seeing episodes that executives haven't monkeyed with so much.

It was nice to see Amy Acker on TV again (those scars... what's up with those scars?); ditto Harry Lennix. If they're putting Dollhouse on Fridays, tying it with Terminator (another show with a lot of good ideas), maybe they're trying to resurrect their cult show Fridays that used to be so great in the X-Files' heyday. I'd be pretty happy with that.

I'm going to wait and see, but I'm excited to do so.

to take a break from the unimportant, and spend some time in the realm of the important...

2009-02-10T09:29:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, Carlos said, "It's not trickle-down economics, it's golden shower economics."

Version 2.0 of the Republican Party's pandering realization-that-there-are-more-than-just-white-men in this country, Michael Steele, says one of the most batshit insane things I've ever heard, that government hasn't created a single job. Ever.

Apparently, it's harder to save the world than I thought.

Joe Lieberman is still a worthless, douchebag piece of shit.

Mitt Romney's almost neck-and-neck with him, these days.

And I don't understand why anyone thinks Rush Limbaugh's opinion is worth anything at all in this day and age; hasn't he engaged himself, for as long as I've been aware of him, in backing the very sort of people that've brought us to the very edge of catastrophe? Isn't he a liar, a hypocrite, and a spewer of the foulest sort of hate speech? Who would want to apologize to him after calling him precisely what he is?

With an opposition party like the Republicans, who needs global terrorism?

And let's not even get started on the Army's suicide figures for January.

Maybe the world really is getting worse. I mean, no time period in global history was safe from its share of strife, and saying otherwise is basically idiotic, but even when our very way of life was under attack (and I'm speaking here as a pro-democracy westerner), we still had that certainty to surround us, to penetrate us, to bind ourselves together. That duct tape-like security is getting torn away, seemingly by the minute. If we don't have that, what the hell is left? Do we jump blindly into the hands of someone, anyone who promises order and stability and a return to what people like Ronald Reagan want us to think the 50s were like?

Obviously, since we elected Obama, that's not the case (not yet, anyway, but I'm trying to be more optimistic than I used to be), since he promises us hard work, sacrifice, and a certain amount of pain and suffering before we come to whatever version of the Promised Land we've lowered our expectations to believe in this week.

The point is, throughout this whole disastrous clusterfuck of a meltdown, I've been worried, but not scared. I figured people - no matter their background, ideology, or programming - would eventually realize the enormity of what we were facing, and unite together to stop it, to put aside the petty bullshit and focus on what really matters (the same way I'd hoped we'd fight the climate crisis, the end of oil, overpopulation, and every other major issue that'll probably rear its head during my lifetime). I'm not seeing that happening.

It still could; I think there's time. I probably need to figure out how to facilitate it myself, or at least make a more substantial contribution than doom-and-gloom whining on my little corner of the Internet that virtually no one else accesses.

Jeffrey Feldman writes about this last little topical shift of mine with far more grace, and a hell of a lot more... hope, than I do. His words, and the President's. I'm crossing my fingers.

I need to do more than that.

crazy friends

2009-02-03T11:45:00.007-07:00

In case I've not gone far enough to label myself a disaffected, cynical (but still hopeful) liberal, I think I just did. I think it's important to note that I have a specific point of view from which I'm coming, so I'm going to actually admit to it right now.

I think that the last... let's say 20 or 30 years have done a better job making my side's (big government) case against its mortal enemy (small/no government) better than any argument we could've hoped to fashion ourselves. Sure, the booms are cool (despite the fact that real wages in this country haven't risen in a ridiculously long time, but who needs a salary when you have credit cards?), but the busts tend to bring everything crashing down on us, to the point that the system hemorrhages and this evil beast called "government" has to step in to make everything calm down (I thought the market was a benevolent force that was going to make everybody's lives better, if only Big Brother would stay away from it. Oh, right, the financial market's collapse was due to overregulation, and not the fact that capitalism produces more money almost exclusively for the people that already have it by exploiting those that don't). This isn't my theory alone; I read an article a few months ago (wish I could remember whose - oh, hey, here it is: "The End of the Libertarian Bubble," by Jay Rothermel) that started my thoughts down this path. Like Rothermel writes, Ron Paul, patron saint of libertarians and people too sick of politics-as-usual to let their minds balance out their hearts, may well have helped breach-birth a new generation of anti-government Americans, but time passed them by before they even got started.

What did deregulation of the energy companies in California get us? Enron. What did deregulation of the banking industry get us? A financial crisis the likes of which we'd never hoped to see again, on a level so global that it's actually revived protectionist talks in, of all places, the hallowed halls of the United States government. What will future deregulation bring us? Likely, more of the same (I'm just guessing, and not citing precedent).

Sure, a "gun nut" the likes of Thomas Jefferson wanted America to be a nation of small farmers, and I'm sure those of us that would like to go back to the "original Constitution of the United States of America" would like to invoke every single quote of his they can obtain and twist around, but the fact of the matter is this: America is not a nation of small farmers anymore (and go ahead and ask the small farmers how they're doing, and how much better off they think they'd be if they didn't get the pittiance of support they get from the government now). We can't just demolish our central government and go back to the (forgive me) "original Constitution of the United States of America;" it is, in fact, impossible (as Mr. Matthew pointed out, the original Constitution contains something as unsavory as the 3/5ths clause. If we're interested in blind fidelity to the original document, what would you have us do? As someone on the Internet said, what does the original Constitution say about embryonic stem cell research? Inquiring minds want to know).

Where am I going with all of this, aside from a longer rant? The answer, right now:

I have a friend who is a huge Ron Paul fan (even now), which should mean he's a libertarian (he advertises himself as one, but hey, you never know. We live in a world where Republicans are demanding that the government bail out banks that are "too big to fail," so anything can happen). Yesterday, on the Facebook, he changed his status to the following: "Ron Paul once again prescribes the only cure that could save America: Cut taxes, cut spending, bring our troops home, and down size government." This comes from an article that Dr. Paul wrote, and posted, on the website that bears his name. Here's the link, if you're interested (see, I did read it). Shortly after this status update, my friend Dean commented, saying that he thought Ron Paul was absolutely right, because non-interventionist policies for the credit markets and the environment had worked out smashingly well so far. In the spirit of fun (and with a sizable amount of thanks to Vanessa - the best girlfriend for whom I could have ever asked), I added my two cents in: "Say what you will, but Bank of America throws a hell of a Super Bowl party."

Our friend decided to reply in not one, but two incredible textual rants, and then deleted all of the comments (ours and his). Thankfully, Facebook emailed me copies of the replies, and I'm reproducing them here, in full, for posterity and entertainment:

1) "Yea cuz what obama is doing is working so well, wake the fuck up and quit acting like he is the savior by doing nothing but putting us further in recession, thousands of lay offs and forcing people to give the government more money than they are already, why? How bout we keep the money we earn and do what we want with it rather than pooling all our hard earned dollars into gov't pension funds that go bankrupt when the companies and banks they bail out still go under, thanks but any sane american doesn't want to go bankrupt while they watch their country rot with these politicians we have...hope nancy pelosi's company makes another million with your money this year"

2) "you want to spend on the environment? That worked out so well for the governator and his now bankrupt state. if people would live within their means there wouldn't be a credit problem, which ron paul discusses in the same article if you cared to read other than listing off liberal sarcasm, y wouldnt u want to cut spending on things internationally and focus on your own country instead of sending 20 million to gaza rebuild just so israel can blow it up again tomorrow (and that is just chump change tax dollars,) why wouldn't u want to quit wasting billions of dollars in the middle-east and on two wars (that their own people should have started/finished) or to quit a phony war on terror just cuz they dont have the war on drugs to keep spending on (when bush was in office i dont think anyone would disagree that bringing the troops home is a good idea, but now with obama its all okay?) you want to keep bailing out corporations and banks just so that they take ur money when they fail again"

This is the same guy who once remarked that we shouldn't have a transportation department; if people want roads, they should just build them (this comment reminds me a lot of that South Park episode, "Die, Hoppie, Die," and this moment in particular).

I could adopt the tack of replying to every one of the ridiculous comments he made, line by line [we can do a whole hell of a lot more by pooling our money into a common pot than we can if we "keep what we earn" - I think that's what taxes are about; liberals that I know never advocated the bank bailouts we've conducted so much as following the rules of capitalism - if the people put their money into an institution, they should see some sort of return, be it in money, some level of control, or, really, both; I don't understand the "Nancy Pelosi's company" remark; California's financial issues have nothing to do with its progressive stance regarding environmental protections; when you have it as ridiculously well as we have it in America (even now), and a lot of what we've gained has been on the backs of significantly less fortunate people, you're morally obligated to try to help the less fortunate out - we're part of a global community now, whether libertarians like it or not, and the most powerful, richest country in the world, the one that consumes the lion's share of the resources, has to be involved in the world - especially if we're just using "chump change tax dollars;" the War on Drugs, as far as I know, hasn't gone away, we're just not hearing anything about it, which I think speaks more to his awareness of the world around him than it does to the fact that I think the War on Drugs is an unconsciable waste of time, money, resources and lives, and the sooner it goes away the better... You want to raise money for the government to spend? Let's take a cue from Mr. Dana Carvey: legalize it and tax the shit out of it), or I could just post a link to the Facebook page for, "The Coalition for a Free Iceland," which allows me to employ even more of my "liberal sarcasm" without having to say a single word.

In a time when the government should be doing everything it can to save its people, and the world, from the mess it created, tax cuts are not the answer. Cuts in government spending are not the answer. Libertarianism, for a very long time, has not been the answer (ever since the Louisiana Purchase, I'd say). Once my friend, and the people like him, decide they want to start living in the real world, and come up with actual solutions to the problems we're facing, and not just spout off sound bite lines like "cut spending, cut taxes" (give me real, workable examples of places we can cut spending - like Iraq, Afghanistan, the F-22 - and then maybe we can talk), we'll all be much better off.

Or, you could just go live in a cabin in the woods. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, so quit being a part of the fucking problem, as John McClane said.

the self-titled album released by the band now getting sued by the international organization that will not be named (part 5 - with a lengthy preface)

2009-01-27T09:12:00.018-07:00

As tradition established last year dictates, I'm going to list my oddly-named awards in no particular order before I get to the final album on my list of favorite albums for the previous year. Therefore...

The Andy Roddick Memorial Award: Atmosphere - When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, Rise Against - Appeal to Reason, The Roots - Rising Down, The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia, Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life

The Stretch Armstrong Tribute Award: Genghis Tron - Board Up The House, These Arms Are Snakes - Tail Swallower And Dove

The Salvador Dali Memorial Award: Brian Scary & The Shredding Tears - Flight of the Knife, Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull

The Spirit of Planet of Ice Award: Coldplay - Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends

The Bourne Identity Soundtrack Award: Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III, The Roots - Rising Down

The Phantom Award: Metallica - Death Magnetic

The Die Hard with a Vengeance Tribute Award: Opeth - Watershed

The "Holy Shit! I Care About You Again" Award: R.E.M. - Accelerate

The Samuel Beckett Memorial Award: Portishead - Third

The Live Free or Die Hard/Lethal Weapon 4 Tribute Award: Foxboro Hot Tubs - Stop Drop and Roll!!!!, Disturbed - Indestructible

The '04-'05 Phoenix Suns Tribute Award: Eddie Vedder - Into The Wild Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

2008 was a good year, with the exception of the virtually worldwide collapse of the financial sector, and confidence therein (I suppose that's not necessarily bad, depending on what kind of person you are, but as someone who depends on his job in order to, you know, stay alive, statewide budget cutbacks inspired by a decline in tax revenue, itself inspired by a deflation in consumer confidence are not a good thing).

2008's status as a good year is what most directly influenced my selection of Randy Newman's "Feels Like Home" as my favorite song of the year (the runners-up, for those of you keeping score at home, were Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," followed by TV On The Radio's "Halfway Home" and Nine Inch Nail's "Discipline" - if 2008 had been a different year, my favorite song would've been a different one, but, c'est la vie), for personal-life reasons that are instantly apparent to anyone who knows me at all (or has read anything I've written in the last 5 months... Having found the most amazing, ideal, ridiculously awesome person I could've ever hoped to find has adjusted my attitude somewhat - for the better, I would say).

For the first time that I can remember, I love a song not just because it's well-written (musically and lyrically), or witty, or different from every other song I've heard before - Mr. Newman himself has described it as a fairly standard love song, even though I think he's selling himself short - but because it articulates my personal feelings in a way that I don't think I'm capable of doing myself. Four lines from "Feels Like Home" go quite a long way towards illustrating that exact point:

"Something in your voice/
Makes my heart beat fast/
Hope this feeling will last/
The rest of my life"

As I wrote before, reading Randy Newman's words doesn't even hold a flickering candle to hearing them come out of his mouth, so you'll just have to trust me on this: never, ever have I heard a song that pierced me to my... center? Core? Spirit? Even though it's a song he wrote for his musical version of Faust, it came along at the perfect time for me, the perfect situation. Let me put this another way: I didn't know how hard I was going to fall for this song until I heard it (a nice mirror of something else that happened last year).

In any case, I've heard it said - frequently - that timing, if it's not everything, than it's at least 40%. After 2008, I understand that a whole lot better.

Let's look at another couple of lines, just for fun:

"If you knew/
How much this moment means to me/
Ad how long I've waited for your touch/
If you knew/
I wanted someone to come along/
I never thought I'd love anyone/
So much"

Much of what makes Randy Newman so special is his word economy, how he's able to say more with less than, well, almost anyone (a trick I have yet to master, clearly). Movies and song titles keep getting longer, but Randy Newman still says what he has to say, then moves on. I appreciate that for a variety of reasons (many of which I've stated before).

In the interest of paying slight tribute to Mr. Newman, I'll leave my reaction to his song at that, and move on to the final album in my list: United Nations' self-titled record.

I love this cover more than any reasonable human being should; as an image that's supposed to embody the spirit of the band, and the music contained within, it's perfect. Totally, unquestioningly perfect. Irreverent, abrasive, hysterical (to the right audience), and far smarter than nay-sayers would ever be willing to give it credit for being, the cover of United Nations (which no record store in the country was willing to stock - they had to go with a backup that still wound up violating copyright) is as successful a cover as any album has ever had, ever.

I wrote a pretty thorough reaction to the album last year, so this'll be my first attempt in this little space that I attempt to call my own to address the same topic twice and do my best to not repeat myself (not to beat a dead horse here, but I think I'm going to play the brevity card once again - better to say what you have to say and get it the hell over with rather than waste everyone's time, including your own).

There are really two useful things I can say as a follow-up to my earlier posting (three, perhaps, but that might be stretching it. Read on). First and foremost, unlike, for instance, the Atmosphere record (an album that I overdosed on, more or less), I have yet to tire of United Nations. Every time I listen to it (and here I'll compare it to Pearl Jam's self-titled album), it's over before I really even process that it's begun. Sure, some of that might be attributable to its sub-30 minute running time, but that's not giving United Nations the proper amount of credit. Every aspect of the record blows me away whenever I listen to it: the purity of its fury, the dense layering of the sounds that make it up, how flat-out funny it can be, and the confidence with which the entire thing is pulled off. There's an almost swagger to it ("Filmed in Front of a Live Studio Audience" makes that case for me) that I've not heard on many "hardcore" records. I like it.

Here's my second point: I said in my earlier posting that I'd never cared about/for either Glassjaw or Thursday before listening to the UN album. Well, that opinion's found cause to change, and fairly dramatically, too. Having found cause to uncover Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence and War All The Time, I have to cop to a fear that I may have missed the boat on these bands. Not entirely, I hope, seeing as how I'll now happily count myself among the ranks of their respective fan bases, but I've missed them both in what was probably their heyday. That is to say, I doubt Thursday will release a better album than they already did in War All The Time, just as I doubt Glassjaw will produce anything superior to EYEWTKAS. One can always hope, but I feel pretty certain in my analysis.

Finally, but in a significantly different way from before, United Nations was, for me, absolutely the right record at the right time. My total disaffection with the Bush administration was passing the "total" marker, to the point that I contained enough hatred and loathing within me to account for three or more people, I was feeling as though the cracks in the system were widening and deepening to the point that they were truly going to fuck things up, rather than just be unjust and inconvienent, and I'm generally sick of treading water. United Nations gave that rage and despair a voice, an identity. That, more than anything else, is why it's my favorite album of 2008.

Post-script: Recently, I've picked up, and listened to, three more releases from last year. I'll briefly respond to both of them.

The Decemberists' Singles Series: "Valerie Plame" is a fantastic song. I think I've found my diving board into their music.

Thursday/Envy Split [EP]: I never expected to see a Thursday release on Temporary Residence (they do Explosions' releases - when I think of Explosions, I don't think of Thursday), but it's an interesting thing to do. If they're really serious about integrating some post-rock compositional/playing style into their music, my assertation about them having released their masterpiece may be premature (but we'll see). I'd never heard of Envy before, but I'd be willing to check them out.

Red Sparowes - Aphorisms [EP]: "We Left the Apes to Rot, But Find the Fang Grows Within" (see what I mean about overly verbose musicians - a funny thing to say about an instrumental band, but still) may be the angriest Red Sparowes song yet, but the rest of it's pretty normal, as far as they go. Good enough to remind me I'm interested in their new album that's supposed to come out this year.

as long as we're thinking about remakes...

2009-01-26T15:43:00.003-07:00

I'm throwing down the gauntlet here, Timmy (in kind of a lame way - I'll just restate a point I made at lunch):

I'm still not sure if we're entering into a time with horror cinema today (or if we're already in it - I think it's like a recession, by the time we know we're in it, we've been in it for a while) that's anything like the period American cinema as a whole entered into in the 70s, where you get the first generation of really serious horror scholars making horror films, but the only way they can conceive of fashioning a response to, say, Halloween, is by taking the movie and twisting it around and making their own Halloween.

My major malfunction here is that I don't see why you have to take so many of these properties and retool them (BSG syndrome, maybe?); why can't someone conceive of their own slasher-verse, their own villain with his own fucked up backstory, and make that movie? Why take Leatherface, or Michael Meyers, and ruin so much of what was great about them in the first place, even if it is in the name of hard cinema?

This isn't to say that I'm opposed to all horror remakes, or all remakes in general. There might be some properties with some actual potential to them, untapped at the time of original release (see an earlier posting of mine, for instance). But, why not be original (unless this is a business thing purely, in which case, fuck that. Fuck that sideways)? Put another way: Star Wars was, and is, hugely influential on me. If I wanted to make my cinematic ode/reaction/response/masturbatory tribute to Star Wars, I wouldn't make a Star Wars movie (the fact that I'd never be able to touch the property, professionally, is moot for the moment); I'd make... something else. Something that touched on characterizations, or themes, or moments in the movies that spoke to me, that I'd want to communicate to my contemporaries, to my audience, in my way. I wouldn't make Blade Runner II, either.

In this regard (and most every other), I'll take Quentin Tarantino over almost an entire generation of genre filmmakers; at least he puts his own spin on the shit he rips off.

I suppose this is stretching into complaining about hyper-referencing in general (Fanboys, Trekkies, Kevin Smith and filmmakers who want to be Kevin Smith...), but that's a branch-off for another time.

dear science (part 4)

2009-01-20T11:42:00.010-07:00

If you know me, you'd probably figure that the second I found out there was a band called TV On The Radio, and they'd just released an album called Return to Cookie Mountain, I'd have jumped at it like a lemming does at water. Well, you'd be right. The part of the story that you wouldn't expect, I reckon, is that despite my very best, well-intentioned efforts, I couldn't get into it. I figured it was "good," in that Pitchfork way that things are good, but nothing really jumped out and grabbed me (and there's so much out there in the movie/book/music/tv show/video game/theatre/stand-up comedy/poetry/live sculpture world that it's almost unjustifiable for something, anything, to not do some amount of work to at least grab your attention - of course, the band already did that little bit of work with their name, and the name of their record) and said, "If you work to understand this, you will be rewarded!"

This isn't to say that I'm yet another victim of the attention span recession, just that I have to get something of an indicator from a less-than-accessible... anything that working at understanding it will be worth my time (Leslie Stevens' Incubus, or Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View, or, more recently, Stuart Gordon's Stuck and Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion, for instance, fall into that all-important category). Return to Cookie Mountain, for good or for ill, just got pushed aside. I certainly want to go back to it at some point, particularly now that I've fallen for Dear Science as hard as I have.

Looking back at albums I particularly enjoy, a common thread many seem to have in their construction is an absolute knockout of an opening track (it kind of fits with the first rule of mixtapes that I developed on my own, and later had confirmed by John Cusack/Rob Gordon in High Fidelity). Look at my albums from this year: Harps and Angels, Med Sud..., 808s & Heartbreak, Dear Science, United Nations; all of them feature fantastic opening tracks that cast shadows any reasonable band would have to fight hard to escape (and all do, but that's not entirely here nor there, nor even here again).

This is all meant to indicate that Dear Science's opening track, "Halfway Home," is a triumphant five-and-a-half minutes of music, blending nonsense singalong with some of the most gorgeously articulate wordsmithing I've seen in a song in years ("A comfort plush all laced in lead/ Was sent to quell your sentiment/ And keep your trembling sentinel hand at bay"), soaring synthesizers with ripping, rocking guitars, all colliding together for about fifty seconds of pure, well, music. It's smart, it's glorious, it's... danceable, somehow.

[I should DIGRESS for a moment to explain that, while I absolutely adore TV On The Radio now, this newfound affection will do nothing, nothing at all, to reawaken my comatose interest in The Mars Volta, a band to whom I've heard them compared on more than one occasion, due, I guess, to the multi-racial makeup of their membership, their "genre-pushing" music, and the technical skill that they so clearly possess. I guess this is going to relate back to my abbreviated rant about how things - difficult, complex things - need to indicate that they're going to be worth the time it takes to unravel them, because I also think that, in this multimedia age where there's just so much to absorb (and sure, a lot of it is terrible, but a good deal of it is extraordinary, as well), the ability to make your point well and quickly is one worth cultivating. The longest song on Dear Science is five minutes and fifty-four seconds long; the longest track on The Mars Volta's latest album, The Bedlam in Goliath, is nine minutes and eight seconds. "Cassandra Gemini," on Frances the Mute, is thirty-two and a half minutes long. TV On The Radio know how to get their point across without wasting my time; one of The Mars Volta guys (don't care to remember who) said that he considered being called self-indulgent a compliment. He who recognizes the audience will get more love in my book, if that matters at all. END DIGRESSION]

"Crying" and "Dancing Choose" give TV On The Radio (to save time, let's abbreviate it TVOTR, okay?) lead vocalist Tunde Adebimpe ample opportunity to demonstrate his versatility and range, and boy, he doesn't disappoint. "Stork & Owl" may well contain one of the most simple and powerful truths recorded in 2008: "Death's a door/ That love walks through/ In and out, in and out/ Back and forth, back and forth." The omnipresent string section does a phenomenal job of bringing life to the tidal imagery that's all over the lyrics.

"Golden Age" takes the record into funky, disco-y territory, a move that feels so right it can't even be rightly recognized for the craziness it truly is. It just sounds so... positive, so goddamn hopeful that it can't be repressed. The horn section, laid so perfectly over the fuzzy thrum that persists throughout the last half of the song, could beat back any encroaching darkness that persists. Parts of the song I could've reasonably expected to hear blasted over loudspeakers at the inauguration, but particularly this:

"Now we're all allowed to breathe/
Walls dissolve/
With the hunger and the greed/
Move your body/
You've got all you need/
And your arms in the air stir a sea of stars/
And oh here it comes and it's not so far"

This "Golden Age" that Adebimpe repeatedly promises is nearly upon us sounds very much like the post-Shrub era that so many of us around the world have hoped and prayed for for far, far longer than we would've liked, doesn't it?

This is contrasted pretty abruptly with the following track, "Family Tree," which weds death to marriage about as well as anything ever could (including the fairly fantastic movie pitch that my friend made to me a few weeks ago - perhaps we have a theme song? Probably not, this song is a bit too much of a downer for a slasher film). The... character, I suppose, doesn't sound regretful, mournful, or even the slightest bit angry about the development that manifests itself over the course of the song (in fact, the music gets more upbeat as it goes along, but that's not exactly the vocal part, now is it?), just... resigned, or maybe even accepting. I still don't quite know what to make of that (unless it's another commentary on "love," which so much of art is).

"Red Dress" is certainly one of the most energetic condemnations of, well, most of America that I've ever heard:

"Read my names on your lips/
When the man cracks the whip/
And you'll all shake your hips/
And you'll all dance to this/
Without making a fist/
And I know that it sounds mundane/
/But it's a stone cold shame/
How they got you tame, and they got me tame"

It's certainly a more creative way of calling us all sheep, but if it's got wool and is docile to the point of self-destruction, well, a sheep's a sheep (except for those fuckers in Black Sheep; they looked ready to take the power back). At least the music is an incitement to action (going back to the form/content thing I harped on with regards to 808s & Heartbreak).

"Love Dog" takes the band into a quieter, more introspective territory, while "Shout Me Out" is probably as close to U2 as TVOTR is ever going to get (Joshua Tree U2, not HTDAAB U2) - The Edge would be proud of the last two minutes. "DLZ" turns their fury onto the most appropriate target any artist could ever ask for, the towering, crashing assault of sound finally giving way to exhaustion:

"Congratulations on the mess you made of things;/
On trying to reconstruct the air and all that brings./
And oxidation is the compromise you own/
But this is beginning to feel like the dog wants her bones
saved/
[...]
Never mind/
Death professor/
Your structure's fine/
My dust is better/
Your victim flies so high/
All to catch a bird's eye view of who's next"

I think it's a bit overdone to refer to this band, especially that band's lyricist/vocalist, as articulate and intelligent (particularly in light of this past election season, when the entire country finally realized those were code words), but it's impossible to avoid them when talking about TVOTR. Adebimpe doesn't go halfway with his words; you hear every one of them burst forth clearly, and with such power, that they cannot possibly be denied, particularly here.

All of the frustration, passion, agony and ecstasy that have consumed the band and its album come to a head in the final track, "Lover's Day," and get released as TVOTR pulls out all the stops, deploying what can almost feel like every instrument in the known world to support a song that I can only describe by going back in time to the final Planes Mistaken for Stars show and copping what their lead singer said about the song "Little Death" - "a song about fucking." Except, "Lover's Day" may well be the end-all, be-all song about fucking, a song about fucking to put all other songs about fucking to shame (and now, friend reader, you see where I was going with the first sentence in this paragraph. You see all too well, don't you?).

In the spirit of the song, which neither burns out, nor fades away, but stops at the perfect time, in such a decisive way, I'm going to end this posting with a final quotation, from the end of "Lover's Day." I conjure it'll make my point for me:

"We’ll smash the walls,/
Break the bed,/
And crash the floors, don’t!/
Stop! Laugh and scream!/
And have the neighbors call the cops!/
'till all the eyes that they've seen our fire play!!/
Can't forget,/
Mark it down,/
Call it Lover's Day!!/
Yes here of course there are miracles./
Under your sighs and moans./
I'm gonna take you,/
I'm gonna take you home."

stringer bell's making his way to scranton?

2009-01-20T08:47:00.004-07:00

This could either be brilliant, or terribly, horribly awful...

I'm going to err on the side of brilliant, though. If there's one thing that has proven itself pretty adept at, it's integrating visitors into the framework that they've so carefully constructed for the show (especially out-of-left-field guest stars, like Amy Ryan, also a Wire alum... Weird). This isn't to compare them to 30 Rock, which has kind of become the gimmicky guest star-featuring program of the 21st century (not that I'm complaining - I loved Oprah, Matthew Broderick, Ghostface Killah...), but just that they're good at... integration, horrible as that might sound.

Idris Elba seems like he could be a pretty phenomenal comic, and he sure is scary as hell, so what exactly he'll be doing... Hmm. I'm exceedingly curious, and excited.

the wrath of the reaper

2009-01-15T09:27:00.004-07:00

Ricardo Montalban, the man who brought superhuman villain Khan Noonian Singh to life so expertly in an episode of original Star Trek ("Space Seed") and the best Star Trek movie (as opposed to Star Trek movie - there's an important difference there), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, has died. He was 88 years old.

Burned forever into my brain will be his performance as Khan. He was so powerful that he just took over the screen whenever he stepped onto it (which is no small feat when you're competing against William Shatner). He was always totally in the moment, and absolutely in command of his performance. Montalban was a star in the truest sense of the word (to dust off a fairly old cliche that possesses a lot of truth), and never would he shine more brightly than when he played Kirk's nemesis on the silver screen (look here; he shows up at about the 4:50 mark).

Khan was so perfectly diametrically opposed to James T. Kirk, from the first moment to the last. Khan took (or attempted to take) what he believed was his by virtue of his superiority as a perfect man, while Kirk accepted his imperfections and used that acceptance to strengthen himself. Khan was ruthless, unbending and evil; Jim Kirk was nothing if not a man who knew how to improvise, and, at his core, the sort of man every little boy who saw the show aspired to be.

Regardless of the fact that he was able to play such a brilliant villain, he always seemed like the sweetest of men when I saw him interviewed. Gracious, even eager to talk about his work in Star Trek, or the two Planet of the Apes films in which he acted (who better to teach a superintelligent ape born in the wrong era of all that could be good in an awful world than Ricardo Montalban? No one).

I didn't know that he'd written his autobiography; I'm going to track it down and attempt to educate myself more thoroughly on the subject of Mr. Montalban. I wish him a safe journey, and hope that he doesn't have to commandeer a spaceship to get him where he's going.

so, I just saw the trailer for the Last House on the Left remake...

2009-01-14T10:18:00.005-07:00

I want to hate it, I really do. This streak of remakes of genuinely good movies is driving me batty; it's one thing to take a movie, or television show, that wasn't that great to begin with and twist it around and rework it so that it becomes something new and interesting, but I've lacked an ability to understand the appeal of taking something that was good already and warping it so that it, inevitably, becomes less than it was before.

It feels like it could work. The idea was good enough to begin with, and it doesn't look like they're fucking with it overmuch (and it'd be nice to see it with a budget, and without the Keystone Kops, I'll admit)... I like the casting, too. Becca from Superbad, and Francis Wolcott from Deadwood? That's borderline inspired casting.

I was unnerved, close to scared, as the trailer reached its conclusion. Definitely intrigued am I, definitely want to know of a solid release date.

at any other point in my life, this would've been the album of the year (part 3 of the 2008 retrospective)

2009-01-13T09:53:00.006-07:00

I've made a big point over the course of my life (but especially since I became fascinated with maudlin music and overly dark, depressing movies) to state, unequivocally, that great art comes out of depression, lonliness, longing, and despair almost exclusively, because (if nothing else) a person whose emotions are running that particular gamut has to channel them into something productive if they want to avoid cutting their own ear off (or worse). I'm going to take a big step here as a person and admit that some of that was self-justification to allow myself to be miserable and depressed (though, I still think the argument holds water, as least in the realm of popular perception. Why else do comedies not win Best Picture Oscars?).

That situation has changed somewhat. I do still think that my theory holds plenty of water, but I no longer have any real desire to use it to justify keeping myself in a perpetual state of... sorrow is a bit too strong, methinks, but it'll work for now. I've tasted an alternative, and I'd rather my diet consist of nothing but that (the alternative) from here on out. I don't think that means I'll be less able to appreciate the dismal and dreary, but I do believe I'll do a little more to avoid exposure to same, lest unpleasantness ensue.

This is as good a moment as I'll get to transition back into my (spectacularly original idea of an) end-of-the-year music spectacular. #3 (with a bullet...): Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak.

As usual, let's begin with some sort of disclaimer. I have no strong love for Mr. West; I think he's a pretty good producer, a pretty good rapper, and a walking, breathing ego. However, I have to appreciate somebody who works hard, and I've never gotten the sense that Kayne's reaping undeserved rewards. From here on out, though, I'll be watching every move he makes, and closely. One amazing record, even one amazing song, can do that.

I've long been fascinated with what I'm going to unoriginally refer to as "extremes" in music, be they in regards to the music (as opposed to the vocals), the vocals (as opposed to the music), the production, the subject matter, whatever it is. If it's probing one end of the spectrum or another, I'll be inclined to at least give it a look (maybe that explains my longstanding fascination with exceptionally loud and abrasive music).

The point of this is that the stark minimalism of 808s & Heartbreak is, to steal a title of a track on the album, "Amazing." Not once, not ever, does the music ("beats" may be more appropriate in many cases) overwhelm the words (seeing as how rap is, as my American Folk & Pop Music instructor called it, poetry set to a beat, the words are pretty important). The starkness of many of Kanye's compositions are as grabbing and compelling as any I've heard in overproduced and messy (or full and rich) pieces of music.

Very rarely do I think (hah) that style consciously supports content, in any sort of art form (popular or otherwise - these days, anyway). 808s & Heartbreak is not one of those failures, not in my opinion. The frequently sparse soundscapes, coupled with his heavily processed, Auto Tune-d vocals (delivering some overwrought, but I believe heartfelt, meditations on loneliness, disappointment, alienation and love - which itself can be the root cause of all three of the former feelings), all feed into this overarching theme of disconnection and near-inhumanity (if we are, indeed, social animals, then an inability to socialize and connect would likely result in a subject's dehumanization. But I'm losing sight of the point by unleashing all of this mock-scientific theorizing). The synthetic, detached, inhuman nature of the music all feeds in to this.

I'm rather fascinated with almost every single track on the album; I think "Say You Will" is an incredible opening song. The ballsiness of the whole thing is really compelling (the same guy who used so much on "Gold Digger" creates this beautifully minimal track that, I think, is far more effective than the sonic collage of the other song) - I think you have to have a lot of faith in your work to be unwilling to busy it up with too many bells and whistles. "Welcome to Heartbreak" is a near-perfect followup, in the ways it amps up the energy and the attitude. "Heartless" pulls me in with its nearly exhausting fatalism... Let's put some lyrics on display, shall we?

"So I got something new to see/
And you just gon' keep hatin' me/
And we just gon' be enemies/
I know you can't believe/
I could just leave it wrong/
and you can't make it right/
Im gon' take off tonight/
In to the night..."

"Amazing" is the obligatory Kanye self-love fest ("My reign is as far as your eyes can see"), at least until Young Jeezy's part begins. I think the presence of the guest stars on this album is incredibly important, moreso than to most albums of this sort. Since Kanye's carved out this specific persona, this character for himself, the difference between him and Young Jeezy/Lil Wayne/Kid Cudi/Mr. Hudson is amplified to an exceptional degree. Their posturing is juxtaposed with his am-I-even-human-anymore act over and over again, and I think this experiment is where the album succeeds most thorougly, and what brings it up a few notches from potentially forgettable fuckaround to true art. To wit, Young Jeezy at the end of "Amazing:"

"I’m amazing (amazing), yeah I’m all that (all that)/
If I ain’t on my grind than what you call that (what you call that)/
Victorious, yeah we warriors/
We make history, strive for victory (yeah)"

It's the delivery that sells it, and I can't replicate it as text-only.

"Love Lockdown" is the track that's most invaded my thoughts, because I think it's basically perfect. The minimalism of the album reaches another crescendo here with the muted bass part, the piano, and the robotic (but almost frantic all the same) drumming that comes in during the chorus. It covers a lot of the same ground that "Heartless" covers, except that I think it takes an important cue from the best of the New Wave songs, where it masks its darkness with danceability (he's also singing more here of a poisoned love, which is fairly different from a flat-out flawed one). I'm also quite taken with the effect he uses on the "system overload" lyric (actually, the Auto Tuning that builds up to that point is also pretty awesome)... It's just an extraordinary piece of music, and would've been my favorite song I'd heard this year, if we were in an alternate universe.

"Paranoid" is much more lush of a song than its immediate predecessor, which I think works well in its favor. The songs with greater, fuller production tend to involve more activity and less obvious introspection, and this falls in line with that (another case of form involving content, I'd contend).

"Robocop" passes on the robotic-as-less-than-human conceit to West's target this time, rather than just the artist himself (the instrumental that comprises the first 15 seconds of the track is, I think, fairly reminiscent of any number of Portishead songs):

"Cause I don't want no robocop/
You moving like a robocop/
When did you become a robocop/
No I don't need no robocop"

The strings that inhabit a lot of the musical space of "Robocop" seem out of place at first, but they do quite a lot to inform West's place as the human in the song, I think.

"Street Lights" keeps West's voice covered with a static-y sheen from start to finish (a fascinating counter to the un-altered female vocals that persist throughout the song with him); just when we think he might be escaping this self-imposed disconnect towards the end of "Robocop," it comes roaring back with a vengeance through the album's end.

"Bad News" takes the artificiality that's permeated the album to its logical extreme, where every piece of the song contributes to reaching the same end, that of an intentional disconnect from "humanity" so as to avoid any more gut-wrenching, heart-fracturing, thought-obsessing pain. In the second verse, that very point comes through best:

"People will talk/
Like its old news/
I played it off and act like i already knew/
Let me ask you/
how long have you known too/
You played it off and act like he's brand new"

"See You In My Nightmare" is 808s & Heartbreak's other track that caught my attention right from the start, and kept it. West (and featured performer Lil Wayne) reclaims some of his power in this song, casting aside the epynomous "you" in favor of, well, himself. What's most interesting to me, though, is the difference between the lyrics delivered by Mr. West, and those that belong to Mr. Carter (the aforementioned Lil Wayne).

Kanye:
"I got my life and its my only one/
I got the night, I’m running from the sun/
So goodnight, I made it out the door (door door door door)/
After tonight, there will be no return/
After tonight, I’m taking off on the road/
I’m taking off on the road"

Lil Wayne:
"I got the right to put up a fight/
But not quite cause you cut off my light/
But my sight is better tonight and I might/
See you in my nightmare/
Oh but how did you get there/
Cause we were once a fairytale/
But this is fair well yeaah"

Kanye's place as the least aggressive character on his own album intrigues me to no end, if for no other reason than the fact that it's so atypical in this particular genre of music (the alpha male rarely ever brags about how he's running away from his problems). Of course, it's tough to sound much more aggressive than Lil Wayne, so that works in Kanye's favor here, too.

"Coldest Winter" reminds me a lot of a stereotypical 80s synth pop song, and there's not anything wrong with that. It's also got one of my favorite lyrics in the entire album:

"If spring can take the snow away
Can it melt away all our mistakes"

I think there's a lot of beauty in somewhat repurposing the "rebirth" aspect of spring this way. It almost ends the album on a hopeful note, until Kanye closes it with, "I won't ever love again, never again." Talk about your bleak closers.

As Dante Hicks would've said, it ends on a down note, and that's what life is. That's why I would've loved it this time last year, even more than I already do. I'm just at a place in my life where optimism is more... pronounced, and I'd like to keep it that way. I love 808s & Heartbreak, but not as much as other things.

a less-than-totally-transatlantic listening experience (part 2 of the 2008 retrospective)

2009-01-07T09:03:00.010-07:00

When I was young (younger, anyway), I didn't go seeking out new and interesting music. I was more or less happy to listen to whatever variation on alternative rock radio I could find, and pick up recommendations from my older, wiser acquaintances (be they friend, relative, or stranger who liked my Pearl Jam shirt). I did not, to use a term I certainly cannot take credit for coining, "own" my music experience (or any sort, really. When you're in junior high, you don't "own" much).

That changed for me, in a stunningly original turn of events, when I got to college. Worlds upon worlds of music existed outside of my limited, private school experience thus far. Music meant to wash over you as the tide washes over sand, music that crashes into you with the force of a hit-and-run. This posting will deal with one band that produces the former.

I wish I could remember how I first heard about Sigur Ros, but I can't. All I recall is seeing the cover image of their album () on Amazon.com (a link from a page concerning a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album, I believe - can't remember how I learned about Godspeed, either), and then purchasing that same album at the university's bookstore the next day (one of the few remaining CDs in their soon-to-be-liquidated collection, bizarrely enough). Listening to it on the bus ride back to Denver that afternoon, I fell in love (with the album - but especially the sixth track, which I later learned is called "E-Bow"). Afterwards, we were off to the proverbial races.

I contented myself with what I referred to as "The Parenthetical Album" for a while, until Takk..., which I believe is their masterpiece, came out. It's a case study in pacing, in build-climax-release (I know that sounds dirty) songwriting, in making something that's really and truly beautiful, that can transcend any sort of barriers that might have been inherent in its creation (in this case, see "language"). "Saeglopur" is gorgeous whether you understand Icelandic or not.

This brings us to #4 on my list of favorite albums for 2008: Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust.

It's tough to imagine Sigur Ros putting out an album that's anything less than majestic, that doesn't add another few pages to the chapter that they have all to themselves in the book of music; put another way, I doubt they could ever make a "forgettable album," and they certainly didn't do that here. If there was one way I could think to describe Med Sud, it would be as the happy Sigur Ros album.

Don't get me wrong, now, for I've had more than my fair share of joyful moments listening to their other albums, but that's more due to the epic sweep of the music, my unabashed enjoyment of it, rather than the overarching tone of the pieces themselves. That changed with the very first moment of Med Sud, with as un-Sigur Ros of a song as I'd ever expected them to make: "Gobbledigook."

In bright, shining contrast to the tightly constructed, string-and-keys heavy music that I've come to associate with Sigur Ros, "Gobbledigook" is very nearly a beautiful mess of a song, bringing Jonsi Birgisson's voice to the song's very forefront, over a pronounced guitar and percussion section. It's about three minutes long, which is something of a rarity for a Sigur Ros song, but it's also in possession of a tone that's not simply ethereal and gorgeous; indeed, it's straight-up joyful. That sets the stage for a very different, yet totally familiar, Sigur Ros album.

I could easily see every song on this album as celebration songs, of one sort or another ("Fljotavik" - for my money, the most Sigur Ros-y song on the record - wouldn't fit the same sort of event that "Festival" would, and neither one of them are much like "Vid Spilum Endalaust," except that their Sigur Ros DNA is pretty apparent), which is something of a drastic departure from music that could mostly only be described as the audio accompaniment to a trek across, or over, the band's native land of Iceland.

"Festival" and "Ara Batur" deserve some special singling-out as the two most traditional Sigur Ros songs on the album (the two longest, not surprisingly). While "Festival" dispenses somewhat with the to-be-expected "slow burn"-style build that I love ever so much (around the 4:30 mark, the percussion kicks in and the song never looks back), I like the fact that there's so much of the classic Sigur Ros, and the "new" (if I can really legitimately call it that), as well. Again, I'm going back to the joy (dare I say, "playfulness?") that's rampant throughout Med Sud, only here it's painted with that fragile, ice-like sheen that I expect to cover most of their songs (except for the drummer crashing through over and over again. I think Orri Dyrason's drums are as pronounced as they're ever going to get here - he reminds me of Jimmy Chamberlain a bit). "Ara Batur" is straight out of the Sigur Ros playbook, but I defy anyone to not feel on the verge of tears (of... what's the word I'm looking for here?) for very nearly the entirety of the song's closing minutes.

"All Alright," the closer track, is noteworthy for the inclusion of a third language into the vocal stylings of the band - English has now joined Icelandic, and Birgisson's Hopelandic. I don't quite know, still, how I feel about this departure. I very much liked getting a feeling from their music, and not a burning desire to understand precisely what they're getting at (the "meaning," if you will). At the same time, I very much like that they're taking something of a risk, that they're flexing their muscles a bit (though, if this is simply a concession to their international fanbase, I'd rather they not make another). What is art, or life, without some risk?

I think I'll end here by saying that this is the Sigur Ros album I've come to appreciate the best after a live performance; I think the songs, in a lot of ways, are best represented with a performance, and not a recording (and with a large group of people around you). Don't you think it's better to celebrate with a bunch of friends, and not alone?

solidifying an opinion (part 1 of the 2008 retrospective)

2009-01-05T09:34:00.009-07:00

For me personally, 2008 was a pretty darn successful year. I got promoted at work and got to slide out from under a particularly useless supervisor, we produced our first lengthy motion picture, I jumped ahead a good five years in my life plan when I got to talk to Steve Zuckerman on the phone, I landed a girlfriend that's ridiculously ideal in every conceivable way, and neo-con, government-hating Republican policy got repudiated in the clearest possible way in November (I don't know what'll happen in 2 weeks, or after that, but I can hope... for change, right?). I guess the meltdown of the global economy isn't exactly "good," but since I've not been fired yet, I'm not able to complain too much (except about the "bailout," which seems more to be a handout to the top 1% that steered us into this mess in the first place)...

But, we're getting sidetracked (as I am wont to do). The point here is to put forth the first portion of my series of reactions to my favorite music of 2008. This is a significant entry in that it's the second time I've done it on this particular blog, and the first time, it was the most substantial undertaking I'd... undertaken in this space's short existence. Now, here comes the follow-up. Pray that I can be as thoughtful and (I hope) interesting as I was last time.

Just to clarify once again, "favorite" is different from "best." As someone who's more an enthusiast than even a burgeoning expert on music, I feel more comfortable labeling my list with the former, rather than the latter. That being said...

My Favorite Albums of 2008:

1. United Nations - United Nations
2. TV On The Radio - Dear Science
3. Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak
4. Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
5. Randy Newman - Harps and Angels

I still haven't finalized a set of recipients for my list of major awards, so that'll come later. But for now, let's tackle #5 on the list.

My introduction to Randy Newman came from, not surprisingly, Toy Story, specifically his song, "You've Got A Friend In Me" that played at the end of the film. I loved the song (I love the movie, in case that was a subject of curiosity), but I didn't do too much to investigate the man singing the song (which probably has something to do with the fact that I was 12 years old when it came out). I also recall that he performs a duet with Mister Lyle Lovett on The Road to Ensenada; a song called "Long, Tall Texan," I believe (my parents and I share an affection for Lyle - I've seen him at Red Rocks twice, and had a great time both times).

I'll come clean and admit that I don't own a single Randy Newman album beyond Harps and Angels, but I don't think that prevents me from appreciating it. I'd heard someone (and I'm paraphrasing here) say that Harps and Angels was Randy Newman at his Randy Newman-est (especially recently, what with all of his soundtrack work), and, well, what the hell? It's only money, and time (two of my most valuable commodities, actually)... Moments later, thanks to iTunes, I grabbed it, and listened.

It's a special album that can make time fly past without my even noticing it. Pearl Jam's self-titled album is really great at that, as is Funeral, and The Colour & The Shape, just to name a few others. Harps and Angels should be added to that list. Perhaps its relatively brief running time (just about 35 minutes) contributes to that, but hey, the greatest writer in the history of the English language declared brevity to be the soul of wit, so the fact that Mr. Newman can say what he wants to say and be done with it in a reasonable span of time is worth noting.

What strikes me - what's always struck me when I've heard his songs - is how well he can balance sincere almost-sentimentality with an impressively biting wit. As an example, let's take... well, almost every single track on the album (with the notable exceptions of "Losing You" and "Feels Like Home," but we'll get to those later). In the interest of expediency, let's go with the first track on the album (the title track, interestingly enough), where Newman's character suffers a heart attack and heads up to heaven, only to be turned back at the last second, because it's not his time. He's given some life advice before he departs, though, in order to prevent him from hearing, not harps and angels, but "trombones, kettle drums, pitchforks and tamborines." In the end of the song, he passes on these pearls of wisdom to his buddies.

I'll pull two bits from the lyrics to illustrate the careful balance Newman can walk effortlessly:

"As I lay there on that cold pavement/
A tear ran down my face/
'Cause I thought I was dying/
You boys know I'm not a religious man/
But I sent a prayer out just in case/
You never know"

and

"So actually the main thing about this story is for me/
There really is an afterlife/
And I hope to see all of you there/
Let's go get a drink"

Admittedly, reading the lyrics without the priviledge of hearing his delivery (unlike any other as it is) only has maybe 40% of the impact of the song itself, but I think the snippets make my point for me. As the character lies on the ground, convinced he's about to die, the thought that flashes through his mind is to pray, just in case God's real, and at the close, when he has his epiphany about the existence of the afterlife, and how important it'll be for him to have his friends there with him, he cools the situation down by taking everyone out to the bar. This little skill of his might well make him one of the best, most human of songwriters, for his ability to create real people, with real human qualities, in barely five minutes time, is enviable (to put it mildly).

As I mentioned last year, I appreciate an artist's engagement with the world outside of him/herself, and the middle of the album (tracks 4-7, I'd say) is bursting at the seams with precisely that. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" delivers precisely what it promises (fatalism, with a dash of hope mixed in), "A Piece of the Pie" is addressed to those people who've had it worst during the series of terrible collapses we've been forced to endure these past few months, and "Korean Parents" explains, in no uncertain terms, why America's "falling behind" (everyone - the Korean immigrants that are the focus of the song, for instance - is working themselves harder than we are). The character Newman voices in "Korean Parents" proposes an interesting solution: white kids should purchase his parents to provide them with sufficient motivation to get ahead.

Let's take a look at "A Few Words..." in order to enjoy Mr. Newman's wordsmithing once again:

"Just a few words in defense of our country/
Whose time at the top/
Could be coming to an end/
Now we don’t want their love/
And respect at this point is pretty much out of the question/
But in times like these/
We sure could use a friend"

I love his delivery; I call it that because while he doesn't always speak, he sure doesn't sing. The songs wouldn't be half the songs they are if he wasn't the one articulating them.

I'll touch on "Losing You" at the close here (I'd write paragraph upon paragraph about "Feels Like Home," but then I wouldn't have anything to write when the time came to list my favorite song of last year - yes, I know it's been recorded before. Well, let me say this: they're perfect counterpoints to one another) by mentioning that it's a beautiful song, the sort of song that only Randy Newman, and only Randy Newman right now, could record. Just when you're getting ready for a riotously good time, hearing Newman lambaste the awful men and women that've run America for the last eight years, he throws something like this at you (which is perfect, by the way):

"When you're young/
And there's time/
To forget the past/
You don't think you will/
But you do/
But I know that I don't have time enough/
And I'll never get over losing you"

I believe that's the sort of song Rob Gordon refers to when he worries about kids listening to thousands - literally, thousands - of songs about heartbreak, rejection, and lonliness. Regardless of the effect it might've had on my subconscious, I'm glad I heard it, and the songs that surround it. Sometimes the only way we can stay sane is to cry, or laugh, or maybe both, alternating hot and cold.

So, there's Harps and Angels. Next time, the new Sigur Ros album (as promised several months ago, right?).

new noise is fuckin dead

2008-12-02T13:21:00.004-07:00

I'm pretty sure the sports website is dead. In any case, my time at it has come to an end, for better or for worse, so, to me, it is dead.

There were a lot of bad writers, which I'm sure kneecapped any sort of promotional strategy that'd been mapped out for it. There are so many people expressing unsolicited opinions on the Internet that, if nothing else, you have to craft your message in a compelling way in order to attract any sort of an audience. Projecting your message in an incoherent fashion is not the best way to do that.

Seeing as how I wasn't paid for any of my work there, nor did I sign any sort of agreement to keep my work there exclusive, nor did I see anything indicating the like, I'm going to transfer my postings from that website to this one, placing them on the days in which they were posted originally, for the sake of continuity. I imagine I'll get more of an audience, if nothing else (plus, it gives my audience a chance to see another side of my writing, which is something, right?)...

joe johnston is directing the captain america movie

2008-11-11T09:30:00.011-07:00

That's what the Internet's telling me, anyway.

He's not a great director (yet), but he has directed some pretty halfway alright movies: The Rocketeer, Jumanji, October Sky. All three pretty good movies, I'd say. Certainly, they're movies with heart, which is something I always appreciate.

The Rocketeer is the key, though. It's a period film (which, I think it's now safe to say, Captain America: The First Avenger - Cap, for simplicity's sake, from here on out - is going to be), and I think having some measure of experience in trying to recreate the past would be important for anyone tacking this project, much beloved to me as it is. It's not without a sense of fun, which I think could be extraordinarily important if they're not trying to bring Ultimate Cap, but rather New Deal liberal Cap, to the screen (which I dearly hope is the case) - plus, that's always sort of what's differentiated Marvel from DC: the fun (Iron Man vs The Dark Knight). Moreover, The Rocketeer features Billy Campbell as the classic square-jawed, fair-playing, American hero that, again, classic Cap should be. It's kind of like a dry run, in a lot of ways, and I think he did himself proud the first time around (plus, you know, Nazis are the bad guys in The Rocketeer, too).

Besides, I wouldn't say that Jon Favreau had directed any revolutionary, genre-defining or -redefining movies before he got Iron Man, so directors without totally proven track records have, well, decent track records with regards to tentpole Marvel movies. Of course, this could just be me hoping.

I shouldn't be excited about this, or even okay with it. I should demand, say, a Peter Berg, or a Sam Mendes, or a Michael Mann, or any director who's demonstrated a feel for his material that goes far beneath the surface, that resonates, that makes art, but I'm surprisingly copacetic with Mr. Johnston. Maybe I still remember what it was like when I went to go see Hulk, as directed by Ang Lee, a man with a resoundedly proven track record when it comes to making art. Maybe we can leave the art to Batman, and take the fun for Marvel. I'd be more than happy with that.

For what it's worth, Joe, I've got your back until the release date. I will continue to pour over your body of work to cull more tidbits that support my case for, well, supporting you. This is, with the possible exception of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, the movie that's the most important to me, personally, that's been released in my lifetime. Moreover, I have, in my possession, 2/3 of a Cap script that, I think, is pretty damn solid, that remains among the work I've done in my life with which I'm most happy. So, no pressure.

Now, you just need to do the right thing and cast Nathan Fillion.

countdown

2008-11-03T10:20:00.004-07:00

I've gotten more than a few calls from the Obama campaign proper, and MoveOn.org representatives, and I think even someone from Environment Colorado. Much though I'd like to help, I have my own weird little commitments that take up time (you can decide if my girlfriend fits into either of those categories for yourself).

The fact of the matter is this: if you're not of the mind that we absolutely need to change horsemen mid-Apocalypse right now, before it's too late (if it isn't already), I don't know what's going to convince you. It's not that I don't think people should be able to hold their own opinions, it's that I don't see how you can continue to hold a frighteningly wrong one in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

John McCain is dead. Long live John McCain (wait, that's not right... The John McCain we knew is dead, and I don't like this new one a single bit)!

I hope the American people actually get to choose their leader this year, that our fundamental rights aren't stolen away by people who don't care a single bit about what this country means, or about the people that still believe in what this country means.

It's in our hands, now. I hope we don't fuck it up again.