PunchBuggy Blues

2009-02-08T11:00:00.003-05:00

New York Comic Con Report

So Charlie and I hit the road at 4:30AM and made it to the Javits Center around 9:30 or so, at which point we had been in five states in five hours. Which may not be legal.

There was a massive line of people waiting to get in, but it seemed shorter and moved faster than last year. There were an impressive number of costumes, some unfortunate, some obscure, and one Spock whose ears were so well done they may have actually been a birth defect.

I actually managed to forego lunch while I was there, subsisting on bottled water and granola bars, so by the time we hit the 4:14 train back to Jersey I was pretty wiped out, being on my feet with several heavy bags for a good seven hours. But at least I decided to leave my Absolute Watchmen at home.

Especially since Dave Gibbons wasn't signing til today.

So here's the highlights:

I spent a good portion of the first hour trying to get a couple of things for Maria. I'm still not quire sure what they are. Go visit her. She can tell you.

Picked up a handful of books: The Brian Azarello Joker graphic novel, the second volume of Darwyn Cooke's Spirit comics, and Ben Templesmith's book about The Presidents.

Met Templesmith and got a quick sketch of the tenth Doctor for Mathilda.

Began my ridiculous quest to get the 20th Anniversary Sandman poster signed by as many of the artists as I can. So far I've gotten Colleen Doran and Kevin Nowlan to sign it. More at Baltimore in October.

Got the remainder of my Final Crisis issues signed by JG Jones and a quick pencil sketch of Wonder Woman for Mathilda. Refrained from telling him that his contribution to Final Crisis 7 was the best part of the issue.

Looked in vain for Darwyn Cooke.

Forgot to actually see how long the lines were Garth Ennis.

Met Jerry Robinson, who may or may not have created The Joker. Got two editions of The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told signed for a friend of mine and a copy for me. Also got him to sign one of my teaser posters for The Dark Knight.

Also got the Dark Knight poster signed by producer Michael Uslan (At this point it has been signed by one person named "Michael" and another named "Robinson." Go figure.). Also got it signed by Bill Sienkiewicz, who did a lot of character design for The Joker, and picked up his sketchbook of the work he did for it.

And I got presents for Tilda.

DC was giving away Wonder Woman tiaras to promote the upcoming animated movie, so I picked one up for her.

And I got her a huge remote-controlled Dalek. It is belligerant and it kinda freaked Tilda out a bit when I showed it to her this morning by having it go towards her screaming "Exterminate!" as she came out of her room. But she was smiling, so it's all good.

But I am exhausted and my eyes are still bloodshot.

And I'm still taking Tilda to Coraline this afternoon.

Can't wait to go back to work tomorrow.

2009-01-01T08:05:00.004-05:00

Thirteen Things I'm Looking Forward to in 2009

1. The beginning of the end for Scrubs and Battlestar Galactica (January) - I know that Lost and 24 are both back this month, but those two have at least one more season to go while these two are heading towards their conclusions. The final episode of Scrubs sounds mind-blowing and I don't know anything about it other than practically every character who has even been on the show should make an appearance. And as for Battlestar Galactica, I'm convinced that John Hodgman is the final Cylon. He's already all over tv saying he's a computer.

2. Henry Selick's Coraline (February 6) - The coolest thing about this right now is over on Neil Gaiman's blog he seems to be geeking out about the movie as though he wasn't the guy who wrote the book it was based on. I can't wait to take Tilda to this one.

3. Watchmen (March 6?) - The first thing on this list not featuring John Hodgman. Hopefully Fox will allow us to see it in March. And hopefully I'll only be a little disappointed by it.

4. The Decemberists' Hazards of Love (March 24) - It's a rock opera. And the one song I heard from it during Colin Meloy's solo show last year was sick and brilliant. Songs about murdering children really shouldn't be funny. But this one was.

5. Elvis Perkins in Dearland's currently untitled second album (Spring) - Just found out about this and I've heard the first and last songs when he was touring for Ash Wednesday. Probably won't be happy, but it should be good.

6. Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 3: Century (Spring) - The first volume "What Keeps Mankind Alive" is due out in April and is apparently a musical. Volumes 1 and 2 are some of my all-time favorite comics and although The Black Dossier was a bit of a letdown, I'm looking forward to these.

7. Disney/Pixar's Up (May 29) - It's Pixar and it has nothing to do with Cars, so I'll probably like, if not love, it. And based on the trailer before Bolt, the 3-D effects look incredible.

8. The four 2009 Doctor Who TV specials - I just got into Doctor Who and though I have no idea when they'll air in the US I should be caught up with the series by the time they do. And then I'll get excited about Stephen Moffett (who wrote "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink") taking over the show in 2010.

9. Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds (August 21) - The release date was announced yesterday. Tarantino doing World War II with Greg Nicotero in charge of makeup effects. Can't wait.

10. Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (September) - Heath Ledger's last movie and Tom Waits as the Devil. Throw in Gilliam and stir. I have no idea if it'll be any good, but at least there will be a Gilliam movie in more theaters than showed Tideland. (Bonus points if you've even heard of that one.)

11. Untitled Neil Gaiman nonfiction book about China (Fall) - Dunno anything about it, but it's Gaiman, so it should be interesting.

12. John Hillcoat's The Road (Fall?) - This should be no fun at all.

13. John Waters' Fruitcake (December) - John Waters doing a holiday children's movie. With Johnny Knoxville. Probably the most wholesomely freaky thing since David Lynch released a G-Rated movie through Disney.

2008-11-20T08:59:00.005-05:00

Something or Other

So I'm home today with Mathilda and the twenty-four hour vom-a-thon. Started around four AM. She's miserable and I'm exhausted. But Jamee has to go to work and teach tonight, so she'll probably be even worse off.

Recently Tilda's been watching a lot of movie trailers. She's obsessed with the one for Pixar's Up, and has been watching it as part of her nightly bedtime ritual. If you can tell how the boyscout got on the porch, please let me know.

She's also been wanting to watch "Joker Movie," which translates to the two trailers for The Dark Knight. There's no way I'm letting her watch teh full movie, but she seems really taken with The Joker, most likely due to Halloween. But last night, unprompted, she said "Why so serious" while we were having dinner and it was the creepiest thing in the world. So we're probably going to have to cut back on that one.

But today, one of the few things that makes her happy is the trailer for Coraline, which just got posted yesterday. It's a little more colorful that I was expecting, and there's a few too many things coming towards the camera because it's in 3-D effects, but I'm still going to take her to see it come February 6.

There's two posters out for it too. This one:

And a UK version that came out this week:

For once, I actually prefer the US version. I asked Tilda which one she liked better and she said that she liked "the scary one," though I think we have differing opinions on which one that would apply too.

Too bad I already got her the Other one.

2008-11-01T06:03:00.002-05:00

Me Want

From Neil Gaiman's site.

If only I'd had one of these a week-and-a-half ago for the Hodgman event. Of course, carrying one more thing would have been a bitch.

Halloween post soon. Still recovering.

2008-10-31T05:33:00.005-05:00

Happy Halloween 2008

Preview for the long-awaited Dark Knight post:

Well, long awaited by Sara, at least. Won the costume contest at work yesterday. And I didn't even bother to do the face scars. More soon...

*And though I haven't watched this week's The Office yet, be advised that I was the only one.

2008-10-24T05:27:00.002-05:00

The Magic Word is Hodgman

So I took Tilda to see John Hodgman at Politics and Prose last night. Which was kind of a mistake. About ten minutes into his thing, she decided that she would rather run around screaming. So we went outside. Just like for Neil Gaiman two years ago. For this, I will be traumatizing her with Coraline next February. In 3-D.

And to prove that I am completely stupid, we stayed for the signing, even though we were towards the end of the line. I had a pile of books - mine, two for a co-worker, and a couple of others for people who shall rename nameless who I don't believe are aware that this blog exists. But leaving would have made the whole trip to DC a waste of time. The line was long and slow, but Tilda was surprisingly good. She rode on my shoulders most of the time and appeared to entertain the woman behind me. At one point Tilda wanted to see her book and she asked what the magic word was and Tilda said:

Hodgman

I told him that when we got to the front. He seemed to think it was a good idea. He was very nice and made the whole thing worth it, though I am still sore from Tilda wrangling and lack of sleep. But the best part of the evening was when he was done signing my books and shook my hand. Tilda, still on my shoulders, leaned down and shook his hand too. The few people left in line said "awww" and it was incredibly cute. I wish I had a picture.

Maybe next time.

That is all.

2008-10-17T05:26:00.001-05:00

Foresight

Of course, the scariest thing about this is when you notice the publication date.

2008-10-13T06:58:00.008-05:00

Last Last Weekend, Part 2 (Now that Last weekend is no longer Last Weekend)

Whenever we travel, I like to eat at places I cannot easily get to where I live. It's a general rule and works out pretty well most of the time and is the primary reason that I didn't drink Starbucks once when we were in Seattle (Tully's rules, but still isn't as good as the coffee at Top Pot Doughnuts). As we reached the exit that we needed to take for Brad and Sara's we saw a huge billboard for a place called Biscuitville.

Looked a little kitschy. We had to try it.

The first morning we were prevented for venturing out to purchase biscuity goodness by Brad and Sara making a damn fine breakfast (including a damn fine blueberry tart thingy), which was nice and big and prevented us from getting too messed up at the World Beer Festival. Got some Indian food at the fest for lunch. Which was nice.

For dinner, we met up with some more friends at a lil family friendly diner in Durham called Elmo's. I got the jambalaya. I'd go back. Even though they never did bring my milkshake. But they didn't charge for it either.

On Sunday we were due to be brunching at Enotica Vin, a wine bar in Raleigh, but more on that later. Because first we went to Biscuitville. Or, Brad and I eventually got to Biscuitville. Because we got lost. Who knew that some streets in Mebane, NC, seem to randomly dead-end? But we got biscuits. And they were nice. And cheap.

And you know what, I'm going to wrap this up, because if there's two things I'm fairly inarticulate at writing about, it's music and food. It basically boils down to "Me like it, it good, you try" for both topics.

But it's good to know people who good places to eat.

And I will let Jamee talk about the barbeque.

2008-10-08T20:46:00.002-05:00

Something's Bugging Me

This one's for Emily and Maria, because I know how much you love The Mist. Been trying to get this pic off my phone since August. Jamee finally succeeded tonight. Hoo-Ray.

Not sure whose head that is behind me.

2008-10-07T19:48:00.002-05:00

Non-Beer Interlude

Now this is just cool. Man, I love The Goon.

2008-10-07T19:20:00.002-05:00

Last Weekend, Part 1

So we went down to the World Beer Festival, Jamee, Mathilda and I. We stayed with my friends Brad and Sara, who are two of my favorite people in the world. And we saw my friend Sarah, and my friend-in-law Blair, and my friend Amy, and her daughter Yoko, who Mathilda adored. Kelly and Kevin were there too. All of them are some of my favorite people. Actually, I think everyone who's even aware of this blog counts as one of my favorite people, which fifteen years ago would have seems like an alien concept to me. You know, the actual long term liking of people. But then, I've known my friend Kevin since I was in ninth grade, which was eighteen years ago this month. And I've know my friend Jasper since I was in pre-school, so that's going back almost thirty years. Which blows my mind.

But there's really not that many people that I actively dislike, at least among people I know (and you know who you are, Mister). But I genuinely like people, which the fifteen year old me would find to be an alien concept, even if he did it too. I think it drives Jamee nuts.

I also like beer.

I had the privilege of not drinking in high school and most of college. Again, an alien concept. My first real beer was in Ireland and it was a Guinness and it was lovely. Most of the people in my group found it abhorrent. But it lead me towards the good stuff. I think the microbrew explosion of the 1990s was a wonderful thing and I love how you can find some really interesting things in the grocery store on the shelf next to Budweiser (except in Maryland, where you'll find neither in a grocery store).

The World Beer Festival was big and crowded and loud. And we brought a three year old. People were generally nice and the beer was nice too. I was especially fond of the Foothills Sexual Chocolate Stout (which we went back for too late to get more) and the Kuhnenn Fourth Dementia Olde Ale, which had a 13.5% ABV and was just fantastic, even though nobody else seemed to like it. I thought it was so good that I want to go to the Kuhnenn Brewery and Brewpub. It's only eight and a half hours away. And in Detroit.

Jamee really liked the New Holland Ichabod Pumpkin Ale. I bought her a shirt for it, but she can tell you more about that.

Coming soon - a trip to Biscuitville.

2008-10-01T18:19:00.010-05:00

My Big Fat Geek Weekend

As Emily already pointed out on her blog, we did the geek thing this past weekend. The problem with being a geek is that sometimes multiple strands of your geekery converge and this year both the National Book Festival and the Baltimore Comic Con happened on the same weekend. Neil Gaiman was at the bookfest, signing at 1:00 and Mike Mignola was at Baltimore. I'd met them both previously, but Emily wanted to meet Mignola so we decided to do something crazy and do both in the same day.

So...

I got to the National Mall around 11:00 and bought The Graveyard Book and then headed over to camp out in the Gaiman line. As I said, I've met him before and this would be my fifth signing, so camping out is the thing to do. You may be waiting for a while, but it ultimately saves time in the long run and you usually meet some nice people.

Neil started scribbling on things at about 1:00 and by 1:35ish we'd gotten to the front of the line. Neil was nice, as usual, and scribbled on the new book, my UK American Gods, and my advanced reader's copy of Good Omens, which he said was in surprising good shape for a twenty year old ARC.

And then we turned around.

I estimate that we were about fifty people from the front of the line. On Neil's blog he says that there were approximately 1400 people there for him. I have never seen such a crowd. And he signed something for all of them. With a broken finger.

That is why I love Neil Gaiman.

So Emily and I rushed up to Baltimore, getting there at 3:30, about two and a half hours before the Comic Con was due to close. We headed straight for Mike Mignola and were amazed that there was no line. Emily got her stuff scribbled on and I got a pile of stuff signed. So then we walked around the place and from here I'm just going to combine the rest of Saturday and Sunday into one big pile.

If I was forced to name my five favorite comics artists, I'd probably have to go with:

1. Mike Mignola
2. Bernie Wrightson
3. Darwyn Cooke
4. Tim Sale
5. A constantly changing roster of about ten different people

All of these guys were there. To my amazement, Bernie Wrightson had no line at all during the weekend and you could just walk right up and talk to him. He was extremely approachable and a pleasure to talk to. He was selling production art from The Mist that was way out of my price range, but if I had a spare $200 to drop I would own the spider sketch. But I didn't, so I don't. He did sign my Mist poster and a couple of Stephen King books that he illustrated and I bought a lovely print of one of the illustrations he did for Frankenstein. I've loved his work since I was in high school and it was nice to meet someone whose work I've admired for so long and have him be as great as I'd hoped.

I feel like I almost took advantage of Mike Mignola. He signed a ton of stuff for me and he said that if he didn't want to sign things, then he wouldn't have been there. So I don't feel too bad about it. It's not like I'm going to sell all of it.

Eric Powell, who writes and draws The Goon, which you should read, was there too and drew a quick sketch of my favorite character, Willy Nagel, which will go up in the zombie dining room at some point.

The only real wait we had was for Tim Sale, which is understandable since he was only signing from 4-5 when we were there on Saturday because he was doing commission sketches for most of the day. I did get a pile of stuff signed and he drew the Batman jack-o-lantern in my Absolute Long Halloween.

Between Tim Sale and Darwyn Cooke I've now got all six issues of the Kryptonite story they did for Superman Confidential signed. Cooke was unfortunately sick, so I wasn't able to get him to do a sketch of Catwoman for Tilda like I'd hoped, but chances are I'll get to see him again. He's doing a tour next year to raise money for the Hero Initiative, so hopefully I'll be able to get a Catwoman sketch then, or a Wonder Woman, or anyone. His work is beautiful. Especially The New Frontier, which is one of the best graphic novels ever. It's as good as Watchmen. Jamee likes it better. And though he wasn't really sketching, he did draw a quick Hal Jordan in the clouds when he signed my Absolute New Frontier.

After ditching the massive hardcovers in my car, I swung back to see Steve Dillon, who drew Hellblazer, Preacher, and The Punisher. He was very nice (I've met two of the three main people who worked on Preacher - Steve Dillon and Glenn Fabry - and though they should by rights be degenerates, they were both lovely. I have not yet met Garth Ennis). And Dillon cleared up, for me at least, how John Contstantine's name should be pronounced: It's "tine" as in part of a fork, not "teen," as in someone who's older than twelve and younger than twenty.

He also drew me a sketch of the man. Note that he looks nothing like Keanu Reeves.

But the highlight of everything was meeting J.G. Jones. I only have the first three issues of Final Crisis that he drew, and they were giving out promo posters of the first four Final Crisis covers. I really didn't know much of his stuff, but what I'd seen I liked. So I brought my stuff that he drew with me as a last minute decision. And he turned out to be one of the nicest people I've ever met. Very friendly and generous - he even offered me a raisin chocolate chip cookie, which turned out to be the only think I ate between 9:00 and 3:30 on Sunday, but that's pretty much my fault. Still, 'twas a damn good cookie.

So now I'm a huge fan of the guy's stuff, and I'm adding his 52: The Covers to my X-Mas list and pretty much telling everyone to go check out his stuff. He does good work and seems like a genuinely good guy. Here's the image for the Supergirl poster - I got one signed for Mathilda and
one signed for Aurora:

Hopefully he'll be attending next year. That was a damn good cookie.

2008-09-30T18:18:00.003-05:00

An unpopular opinion

So I just realized that Cars is the final film for Paul Newman, George Carlin (not counting Happily N'Ever After), and Joe Ranft.

Man, I hate that movie.

2008-09-19T15:31:00.003-05:00

This wasn't supposed to happen

In May 1994 I say James play at The Boathouse in Norfolk, Virginia. At the time I had only been to a few concerts - Morrissey, U2/Pixies, James Brown, and another artist who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons if you know who it is.* They were in support of the Laid album and at the time it was the best show I had ever seen, to which a college friend of mine retorted "Yeah, but you haven't seen much," which was true if a bit dickish. Well, I've seen many more shows since then, and that show is still one of my favorites, although there was something missing.

My sister was supposed to come with me, but she was fourteen at the time, in high school, and it was a school night. At least that's how I remember it. She tells it that she had missed a dance class the previous week and mom wouldn't let her miss a second. Memory's funny that way. One of my sister's friends clearly remembers me talking my way out of a suspension in high school for wearing a "Get Laid" t-shirt. Which is a great story and I fully admit to it's truth even though it never could have happened, mainly because I never heard of them until my freshman year of college.

So, anyway, mom wouldn't let Emily go. "You'll see them next time," she said.

And then, things happened. The Next James album, Whiplash, got only sporadic US shows and some festival support. The following albums, Millionaires and Pleased to Meet You, never got a US release at all.

And then they broke up.

And The Boathouse was destropyed by Hurricane Isobel

So that whole "next time" thing didn't really work out.

But then last year there were some rumblings that James may be reforming. There was a singles collection with some new songs and rumors of a new album. Then the new album, Hey Ma, came out in the UK this April. I picked it up through Amazon UK because there was no indication that it would be getting a US release anytime soon.

Anytime soon turned out to be September 2008.

And there was a US tour. And they were playing at the 930 Club, which is only a few blocks from where my sister lives, and although it was also a school night, she got to go.

So next time only took fourteen years.

The show was good. Not quite as good as the first time I saw them, which is still one of my top five shows, mainly because it was a little loaded with the new album, which frankly, I'm not fond of. But in the second half they started playing more of the older stuff and it got good. The crowd singalong with sometimes was wonderful and when they came out for an encore and started taking requests... well, who the hell does that?

Rumor is that James'll be headed back to the US next February. Hopefully it's true. I'd hate for next time to be another fourteen years away.

*and to be honest, you can probably find out. (Footnote in memory of David Foster Wallace)

2008-09-04T17:57:00.000-05:00

CARMEN! CARMEN!

2008-08-24T07:13:00.003-05:00

Failure

So the Olympics are nearly over and I have completely failed in my goal to get Jamee to watch Munich. Something about it being three hours long and remembering me being depressed for three days after I saw it the first time.

I thought that would at least be offset by Daniel Craig in tight 1970s shirts, but oh well...

2008-08-24T07:06:00.002-05:00

Questionable Parenting Decision

So last night we decided to let Tilda watch this:

Yeah, I know, we're lousy parents. But you know what? She loved it. And as soon as it was over, she gave us a "One more time?"

Which means that my three-year old now has a new movie that she will want to watch incessantly like The Incredibles and the Catwoman episodes of Batman: The Animated Series to the point where mommy and daddy don;t even want to be in the same room when it's playing. And that movie is Evil Dead 2.

I should be proud, but I just don't want to get sick of it.

2008-07-13T10:31:00.004-05:00

Oh Hell

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Regal Gallery Place
Washington DC
35mm

I love Guillermo Del Toro. And I love Hellboy. But I did not love Del Toro's Hellboy. I wanted to, I really did, but I just didn't. There a number of reasons.

Such as:

1. The pacing felt a bit off
2. Agent Myers
3. I didn't buy the Hellboy/Liz love story
4. Didn't get why they made Hellboy and the BPRD secret and felt like too much time was spent on the agency's secrecy
5. Agent Myers
6. Abe Sapien disappears about halfway through
7. Agent Myers

Hellboy II fixes most of the problems I had with the first film within it's first thirty minutes, although the lil kid Hellboy makeup is a bit dodgey. This is the movie I wanted the first one to be.

One of the biggest problems with the first movie is that it seemed like there was a studio mandate to invent a "normal" character through whom we could focus on the freaks. Enter Agent Myers. In this one Myers is dispatched with a single line of dialog and we get to focus on the weirdos.

And oh boy are there weirdos. Just about every scene is stuffed with monsters, from tooth fairies (of a variety that Del Toro first used in the short story "Tasty Teeth" that closes the Hellboy short story collection Odder Jobs), to trolls, to elves, to things that lurk somewhere in the dark cobwebby recesses of Del Toro's imagination. There's a book coming out called The Monsters of Hellboy II that I just have to get. If only to see everything that's in the Troll Market sequence...

...and that's where I stopped writing a week ago. At the time, Hellboy II was the best thing I had seen in 2008. I suspected that that would change within a week and I was right.

But that's for next time.

2008-07-07T19:10:00.003-05:00

An Album a Year

Oh well, may as well jump on the Bandwagon. The idea is to pick one album from each year that you've been alive. It was easier than I thought, though 1987 proved to be a good year for stuff I liked. 1998 was tough and I may have cheated a bit, but I like that disc.

And here we... go.

1975 - Alice Cooper - Welcome to My Nightmare
1976 - Bob Dylan - Desire
1977 - Iggy Pop - Lust for Life
1978 - Warren Zevon - Excitable Boy
1979 - The Clash - London Calling
1980 - Joy Division - Closer
1981 - Oingo Boingo - Only a Lad
1982 - The Cure - Pornography
1983 - "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Weird Al" Yankovic
1984 - Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain
1985 - The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
1986 - The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
1987 - The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God
1988 - Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man
1989 - Pixies - Doolittle
1990 - They Might be Giants - Flood
1991 - U2 - Achtung Baby
1992 - The Cure - Wish
1993 - James - Laid
1994 - Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
1995 - David Bowie - Outside
1996 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
1997 - Radiohead - OK Computer
1998 - The Big Lebowski Soundtrack
1999 - Tom Waits - Mule Variations
2000 - Johnny Cash - American III
2001 - James - Pleased to Meet You
2002 - The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
2003 - The White Stripes - Elephant
2004 - The Magnetic Fields - I
2005 - The Decemberists - Picaresque
2006 - Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday
2007 - Basia Bulat - Oh My Darling
2008 - DeVotchKa - A Mad and Faithful Telling

For bonus points, I own every one of the above.

And for the hell of it, I tag Jamee, Kelly, Emily, and Maria.

2008-05-31T07:12:00.002-05:00

Considering DeVotchKa

This is cool.

NPR's All Songs Considered has the DevotchKa show we saw available here. You can also get it as a free podcast through itunes, which is only slightly less expensive that an actual ticket to the show was.

And, if you want to hear the first White Stripes show we went to, they have it here. If you want to hear the second one we saw, I have a crappy bootleg of it, which I actually appreciated listening to more than actually being at the show. (It's weird, as much as I didn't enjoy that show - stupid Patriot Center - it turned me on to Bob Dylan's "One More Cup Of Coffee" and was therefore worth it.)

Happy listening.

2008-05-18T13:23:00.003-05:00

Late Concert for Old Michael

So, we had tickets for DeVotchKa and Basia Bulat at the 930 Club in DC last Friday. I was kind of concerned, bing old, that according to the tickets the doors would be opening at 9:00. On Friday they posted the stage times for each performer. They'd added a second opener who would be going on at 9:45. Basia Bulat wouldn't be going on until 10:30.

DeVotchKa would hit the stage at quarter til midnight.

Did I mention that I am old? And that that was really frickin' late?

So, I decided to suck it up and not worry about the time. I already had the tickets anyway and we had friends coming up from Hampton on Friday to see the show. So, in the spirit of not worrying about the time. Here's a rundown of Friday night:

I decided that I wanted to be at the 930 Club by 10:00 because I did not want to miss Basia Bulat. Her album's been in constant rotation on the computer and the ipod for the couple of weeks. It takes about an hour and a half to get there from my house if you factor in walkign and the metro arriving at the best possible time.

Kevin and Marie (the Hampton friends) were leaving there around 4:00, which should put them at our place around 8:00. If we leave then we should be able to get to 930 around, well, 9:30 and everything should be great.

It did not happen this way.

Around 7:00 I called Kevin to see about where they were. Richmond. There were delays and they would be getting to our house around 9:30, which meant we wouldn't be getting to DC in time to see Basia Bulat.

Change of plan - we'll meet at the Shady Grove Metro stop. We''ll pick'em up and then drop them off at the car on the way back. They get there at 8:30. We're there at 8:40. There are ten minutes of shenanigans wherein we eventually determine that Kevin and Marie are on the opposite side of the station than Jamee and I. I never learn where they actually parked.

So, by 8:50 we're on the road. At this point I realize I have to pee.

I call Emily. She and some friends are at a restaurant near the Columbia Heights Metro, which is one stop away from the U Street Station, which is a two minute walk from the at this point fabled 930 Club. We are to meet them at the station. We get to Emily's at somewhere around 9:40 and hike the four blocks to the Columbia Heights metro. We get there at the same time as Emily and her friends. We now have enough people to go search for the One Ring, assuming one of us gets to be Bill the Pony.

We get to the station. One of our two SmartCards finally craps out. A train departs. Another comes. We get on it at 9:55 and are immediately informed that there will be a three minute delay due to trackwork or some such thing. Fifteen minutes later the train leaves. One minute after that we arrive at U Street.

And I really have to fucking pee.

We get to the 930 Club at 10:15 and get to wait in line for ten minutes to pick up my will-call tickets that I probably should have tried to get when Emily and I came to see Colin Meloy back in April. At 10:25 we're inside. And I make it to the restroom. And there was much rejoicing.

Five minutes after that Basia Bulat comes on. She and her band play for about forty-five minutes and it's a good show. They played almost all of her album with a couple of covers adn a newer song that may or may not still be called "Untitled." I bought Jamee an "Oh My Darling" shirt and she enjoyed vodka. I bought myself a DeVotchKa shirt, but they only had up to size Large for the designs I liked. It nearly fits and I've now got another reason to keep going to the gym.

At 11:45, as promised, DeVotchKa hits the stage. It is, a damn good show, though they did not play their cover of "Venus in Furs," which I've heard is just awesome live. But I cannot complain. And they had an acrobat during the encore.

So around 1:30 we leave. Through the entire time we were actually in the club, it never felt as late as it actually was. But the moment I stepped foot outside it felt like everything hit me. We go to the Metro and although it is apparently running until 3:00, there are no trains that appear to be coming for the forseeable future.

So we walk back to Emily's. At around 2:00 we stop at a late night McDonalds. I get a quarter pounder with cheese. First one I've had in years. It tasted incredible. No way that it should have tasted as good as it did. Maybe they're nocturnal. Or maybe it was the overuse of mustard.

By 2:15 or so we're at Emily's. We head back to Brunswick and after about ten minutes everyone's asleep but me. Or at least they're reeeeally quiet. We get to Shady Grove to drop off Kevin and Marie at their car and end up circling the place and heading back towards 270 because we're not sure where they parked. I ended up dropping them off where I originally found them and headed out. I made it most of the way back to Brunswick without falling asleep and by 4:00 we were home.

At this point I had been awake for twenty-three hours. We went inside and went to bed. I slept for four hours.

And then I woke up.

2008-05-10T14:47:00.002-05:00

Curiosity

Until last night The Cure was the last band that I was majorly obsessed with in high school that I still cared to see live (sorry, REM) that I had never seen in concert. U2 - check, Morrissey - check, Pixes - check, check. I missed seeing them in high school on the Wish tour and they never played anywhere near where I went to college. And after Wild Mood Swings I just kind of lost interest.

But when I was in high school...

When I was in high school I was an obsessive collector of the things I was interested in. Still am, but to a lesser degree. I got into The Cure in the period between Disintegration (technically Mixed Up) and Wish. I snagged all the albums (on tape!) and then found out about b-sides from a friend at work who was obsessed with The Cure and the cassette-only extra songs on Standing on a Beach and Concert & Curiosity. So I bought all the Disintegration singles. Bought all the Wish singles. Bought The Crow soundtrack for "Burn." But I could never get the Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me singles. Because they were too goddamn expensive. I wanted some sort of boxed set with all of the non-album stuff that I just couldn't track down. Tracking the stuff down was fun, but I wasn't about to buy a four-disc box set of Electra artists just for one stinking Cure song. At least not after thinking about it.

Which brings me around to getting back into The Cure. A few years ago I saw in the Best Buy circular that there was a Cure box set coming out called Join The Dots, which was exactly the collection that I wanted in high school. I hadn't listed to them in years, but I wanted the damn thing. And I got it. And it's good. There's some weak stuff on there (it is a b-sides collection) but overall it's worth getting if you like the band. And I was hooked again.

And then they started putting out remastered versions of the early albums. And then there was a new album that wasn't that great. They toured for that, but I didn't go because I didn't want to pay for the festival thing they did and risk only seeing them play for an hour.

But they announced a show at The Patriot Center last September. The tickets were a little pricey (about $60 - which is more than most of the acts I like to go to) It got postponed until last night, which was good because it allowed Jamee to get me tickets for Christmas.

So, after nearly 18 years of liking this band, I got to see them live.

Here's the setlist:

Plainsong, Prayers For Rain, A Strange Day, alt.end, The Walk, The End of the World, Lovesong, To Wish Impossible Things, Pictures of You, Lullaby, The Perfect Boy, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, Hot Hot Hot!!!, The Only One, Push, Friday I'm In Love, Inbetween Days, Just Like Heaven, Primary, Shake Dog Shake, Never Enough, Wrong Number, One Hundred Years, Disintegration

1st encore: At Night, M, Play For Today, A Forest
2nd encore: Lovecats, Let's Go To Bed, Freakshow, Close To Me, Why Can't I Be You
3rd encore: Boys Don't Cry, Jumping Someone Else's Train, Grinding Halt, 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing An Arab.

Yeah, That's 38 songs. Three hours and one minute of show. Let's break that down a little by album.

Three Imaginary Boys - 2 songs
Seventeen Seconds - 4 songs
Faith - 1 song
Pornography - 2 songs
The Top - 1 song
The Head on the Door - 3 songs
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me - 3 songs
Disintegration - 6 songs
Wish - 3 songs
Wild Mood Swings - 0 songs
Bloodflowers - 0 songs
The Cure - 2 songs
the new album - 3 songs
Singles - 8 songs

So half of the show came from their pre-Kiss Me catalog. I think that's pretty impressive. When I saw U2 on the Achtung Baby tour they only played maybe three songs that predated The Joshua Tree. And we're talking about a band that was touring for an album that was only two albums after Joshua Tree. When we saw The Flaming Lips, there wasn't a whole lot of anything prior to The Soft Bulletin that got played. And that was still a damn good show. The U2 one was, too. Pixies opened on that one.

But what impressed me about The Cure show is that they working with thirty years worth of songs and they managed to fit in stuff from just about every period and every album (with the exception of the album that made me give up on them and Bloodflowers, which I didn't pick up until later). And out of thirty-eight songs, they only played two that I don't really care for (verdict's still out on the new ones), and those were back-to-back near the end of the main set, but right after those they played "One Hundred Years," and I got a new appreciation for that one. It's a dark song from a great album (Pornography - which you should put on if you want to feel really bad), but I didn't really get just how dark it was until they showed news photos in teh background of atrocities from the past century.

This was offset by the large woman who was twirling and dancing like a hippy in teh aisle next to Jamee. I'll let her talk about that one.

But think about the number 38. How many concerts have you been to where they played 38 songs. I mean, these guys played for two solid hours before the first encore break. I've never seen a show by a single artist where their set goes past two hours including encore.

So, this is arguably the best show I've ever seen, especially based on lowish expectations going in (It was the Patriot Center). But based on the sheer number of songs, length of the show and enthusiasm of the band (Robert Smith never once seemed bored playing these songs that you know he's done thousands of times) it was well worth the ticket price.

The t-shirts, however, were not worth the price. But I still have three left from high school and they fit. And that makes me happy.

Next Week - DeVotchKa

2008-04-20T08:46:00.003-05:00

Re: 'venge

Emily took me to see Colin Meloy at the 9:30 Club for my birthday last Sunday. Not that it was my birthday last Sunday, or this Sunday, or even next Sunday, but that's when he was playing and sometimes you do what you have to do.

So he was doing his third solo tour without the rest of The Decemberists. I've never seen the whole band live, but based on this show I'd see them in a second, though hopefully they'd play for longer than that.

'Twas a good show, and though he tended to play mainly Decemberists songs that I don't really care for (Am I the only one who hates "Perfect Crime #2"?) and he dropped "Everyday is Like Sunday" from the set (so now I've seen both Morrissey and Colin Meloy and neither played it live), the final song in the encore was one of my top five concert moments. Easily.

He played a solo acoustic, campfire sing-along version of "The Mariner's Revenge Song." It may be my favorite song. If you've never head it go here and listen to the live KEXP version. It's a murder ballad about a sailor whose mother has a relationship with a rake, who leaves her destitute. On her deathbed, she implores her son, our narrator who is about five at the time, to seek revenge:

Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and
Break his fingers
To splinters
Drag him to a hole
Until he wakes up
Naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave

Tilda loves the song and sings along. There is nothing creepier than hearing a two-year-old singing that. It's all very cute.

Anyway, it's a great song, and though I thought I loved it before, seeing it live was awesome, even with just one guy and a guitar. The audience sings the mother's words and during the instrumental waltz section the crowd sways back and forth like waves in the ocean.

And it's just occurred to me that there's no real way to convey the experience to someone who wasn't present, or to someone unfamiliar with the song. I would say get the song and listen to it loudly and often. And if you get the chance to see Colin Meloy live with or without The Decemberists, do it.

And on another nautical note, I think I may have found my favorite verse from the Bible. I'm not particularly religious and I'll keep my views on the whole matter of god to myself, thank you very much, but this is from Psalms 107: 23-24, and is beautiful:

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the lord, and his wonders in the deep.

Now if I'd just known about the Hellboy comic they were giving away in New York yesterday that uses the first bit as it's title.

2008-04-20T07:55:00.003-05:00

Oh, Hell

So my brother-in-law-in-law Kevin and I went up to the New York Comic-Con yesterday. And came back. I'm exhausted and am currently aching in places I didn't know I had. Kevin may feel worse. He did the driving.

The initial draw for me was that Guillermo Del Toro was going to be there. Never did get to see him - the Hellboy II panel was packed, and my lotter ticket didn't get drawn, so I missed out on the signing.

But I did get one of these:

It's a Drew Struzan painted one sheet that was exclusive to the New York Comic-Con. Only 2100 printed. Heavy paper and individually numbered. It's just nice and the lil image above really does not do it justice.

Otherwise, the con was both over and underwhelming. It was packed, which was to be expected, and I didn't get nearly as much stuff scribbled on as I brought. I found out a couple of days ago that Michael Whelan was going to be there, so I spent the day lugging around my copies of The Dark Tower 1 and 7, which is probable contributing to my general achiness today. But he was very nice and signed both of them, and now I know what to bring if Stephen King ever comes around.

Only met a couple of other artists that I like. Darwyn Cooke, who did The New Frontier, was great, but he had a line and I didn't want to take up too much time. Plus he'll be in Baltimore in September and hopefully I'll have a copy of the Absolute Edition of New Frontier by then.

That is a hint.

Glenn Fabry, who did the covers for Preacher and Hellblazer was cool and I got Kelly and Kevin a print he was selling of the main Preacher folks. He did do all the driving after all.

And Duncan Fegredo, who drew Hellboy: Darkness Calls was great. He signed all six issues and drew a little Hellboy doodle on the cover of issue #3.

Kevin and I ended up going to the Grant Morrison panel on a whim. I've liked Morrison's stuff, though sometimes he gets a little weird and esoteric. Yeah, even for me. But he seemed very cool and basically spent the entire hour doing a Q&A. The highlight was when someone asked him about the Batman movies and he said that the great thing about Batman is that you have a character who's been around for seventy years and you can do pretty much anything you want to with him. He then stated that there's been some great superhero moves and some really bad ones, but you can even find stuff to like in the bad ones.

At which point someone yelled out "What about Batman and Robin?"

And without hesitation, Morrison replied:

"Oh the colours are brilliant!"

Which is now why I like Grant Morrison as a positive role model. He can even say something nice about Batman and Robin.

But I still don't think I can bring myself to watch it again.

Ever.

2008-04-14T20:19:00.004-05:00

Catching Up

So Jamee's out of own in Charlotte for about a week. So I'm here with Tilda by myself for a couple of days. Well, technically not really, because dad come up for the weekend and watched her last night while I went to a concert with Emily.

So, since Jamee was out of town I Netflixed a couple of things that I knew she would want to see. The first night of bacc'ing it I watched Right at Your Door, a low-budget flick about a guy who gets stuck in his house when a series of dirty bombs get set off in Los Angeles. It's pretty good. Small-scale and scary, but it kept bugging me trying to figure out where I'd seen the male lead before. Turns out it's Rory Cochrane, who played of my favorite characters in Dazed in Confused. I thought he'd disappeared after that one, but he's apparently been working steadily since. Which is nice.

My dad and I watched Breach on Friday night. It's the one about Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who was selling secrets to Russia for twenty-something years. It's a solid picture, and It's weird seeing DC locations in movies now that I've been living up here for eight years. Which brings me to a quibble with the flick. Hanssen was arrested the weekend Jamee and I moved to Ashburn. And unlike in the movie, there was no snow. Because if there was, I'd be even more pissed at the people who bailed on helping us move (None of whom read this. I think.)

So, on Saturday Dad and Tilda and Emily and I went to DC. Technically, Emily was already there. We went to the Natural History Museum where Emily is now doing an internship (a picture of her with her lunch can be found here is you scroll down to the R's). We walked around for a good six hours, taking a break to get lunch at the American Indian Museum, which we walked to. And Tilda did not tire. At all. She also did very well with the escalators. To my knowledge it was her first time riding one and she did great. Older kids were freaking out, but not Tilda.

She saved that for the dinosaurs.

Apparently dinosaur skeletons, like the Joker, freak her the fuck out. We'll try that again later.

She did like the new mammal exhibit, which is like a big zoo where all the animals are dead, and she seemed to really enjoy the bones exhibit, which is a long hallway lined with glass cases filled with skeletons. She's freaked out a bit by human skeletons, but she didn't have a problem with the one there. It's a pretty cool exhibit, too, and goes to show that context is everything. A hall full of skeletons in glass cases in a museum is neat. In your neighbor's basement, not so much.

We also found out this weekend that Tilda likes snakes and bugs. There was a display of a couple of snakes and according to Emily, Tilda pointed at them and labeled them "Mommy 'nake, Daddy 'nake, Tilda 'nake." Which is unbearably cute.

And I could not drag her away from the Insect Zoo. Which would horrify Jamee.

There are things that Jamee does not like. One of them is in the following picture. It is not me.

It's kind of hard to make out, but that big black thing halfway up my forearm is a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. They had a petting zoo portion of the Insect Zoo and the thought of letting a four inch long cockroach crawl up and down my arm horrified and repulsed me.

So I did it.

It was cool.

Tilda would not allow it. We shall save that til next time. Oh yes.

We then went to the gemstone exhibit that Tilda loved because I think she thought it was a store. So she likes skeletons, snakes, and bling. We are not warping her at all. Maybe I should play her more Alice Cooper.

We're going to have to go back to the Natural History Museum in the fall when the Ocean exhibit opens up. All you can see of it now is the giant whale they have suspended from the ceiling. I showed it to Maddy and said, "It's a whale, just like 'Find Him'."

Which brings us to the next post, which I will hopefully have up tomorrow.

But no promises.

2008-04-06T19:28:00.002-05:00

Finding Something New

So Jamee found this yesterday:

It's pretty good and reminds me of Jonathan Coulton's brilliant cover of "Baby Got Back." There was a great video of it where someone took the original Sir Mixalot video and slowed it down so that the Coulton version matched it perfectly.

You can find the Coulton version here. It's worth your dollar.

On the other new stuff front, we're going to see DeVotchKa in May. There's a Canadian singer named Basia Bulat opening for them. Lately we've been skipping openers, but since we shelled out a whole $17.00 to see them, I wanted to see what her stuff sounded like. She's really good and if you want a taste of it, she did a Daytrotter session that you can download here for the princely sum of nothing.

Enjoy.

2008-04-03T20:47:00.004-05:00

The Opposite of Awesome

The Omega Man
M'House
DVD

I think that The Omega Man now exists so that when someones says that they didn't care for the Will Smith version of I Am Legend, I can say, "you should check out the Charlton Heston version where the monsters are a cult of albino disco mutants."

Albino.
Disco.
Mutants.

Or something. It doesn't really matter. The Omega Man, like, I Am Legend, is an adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, but is so loosely adapted that it only shares the lead character's name and the general idea.

(OK, I started writing this two days ago and based on tonight's news it seems to be in really poor taste to go where I was going to go with it, so I'm just going to abandon it for now until I see the Vincent Price version and can do a big thing on all three.)

2008-03-31T16:50:00.001-05:00

Planning Ahead

The first weekend of March 2009 is going to be a busy one.

March 6: Watchmen comes out
March 7: Sarah Vowell comes to Reston

Mark your calendars.

2008-03-31T16:29:00.003-05:00

Catching Up: Part 1

The Pogues
930 Club
March 9, 2008

Ain't that a great cover. Five cds. One Hundred and Eleven tracks (beating out those pesky dalmatians by ten) only two of which I already have, or, to my knowledge, have ever been released on cd. The only problem?

It's so far only getting a European release.

Dammit.

Anyway, Jamee and I went to see The Pogues for the second time a couple of weeks ago. (Emily was there too, but since she buggered off to be with her friends in the balcony, I can't really say I saw the show with her, now can I?)

At this point, an review of a Pogues show that harps on Shane MacGowan's physical condition is cliche and pretty much missing of the point. Sure, he's in bad shape, but the fact that he's up on stage for most of two hours is impressive. And though he didn't do it this time, when we saw them two years ago he balanced a glass on the back of his hand for what seemed like a good minute. I don't even think I could do that.

But if we want to talk about a Pogue's health and well-being, let's reserve it for Philip Chevron. The show we saw was his third since rejoining the band after a fight with cancer. "Thousands Are Sailing" is a highlight of a Pogues show, but seeing the man back onstage that night was special.

What was surprising about the night was how tame the crowd was. I was in the balcony two years ago and the crowd on the floor looked nuts. I hold my brother-in-law-in-law responsible for that, and his absence this year may have contributed to the mellow crowd. Or it could have been that the previous show was their second appearance in the US with MacGowan in seventeen years. Regardless, even when the crowd was bugfuck crazy, what was notable was an enormous feeling of goodwill and joy from the people around me. I can't think of another show I've been to where you just end up talking to strangers, like my new best friend at this show, who was appreciative of my random ability to decipher Shane's banter, and who was even more appreciative when I stopped him from leaving by letting him know that a second encore was coming up.

But what was especially nice was when Jamee found me. She stayed outside to offload an extra ticket we had, and for the first twenty minutes of the show I couldn't find her. So I stayed put. The show was ok up that point, which was when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there she was. Smiling. And I knew how much I loved her. Which was nice.

Everyone should have a moment like that.

2008-03-21T18:12:00.004-05:00

How it Ends

I Am Legend
Bio-Zombie
DVD
M'House
March 2008

The post title comes from DeVotchKa, and their new album is really quite good. I hope we get the acrobats at the 930 Club show in May. I was going to do a ZOM-BEE MOV-EE post with these two movies after I watched Automaton Transfusion (which I have to give props for having a title that could not possibly appeal to anyone--and yet I rented it--UPDATE: watched five minutes and shut it off, it's that bad.), but both of these got me thinking about the importance of endings and how they really can make or break a movie.

Which is a good mindset to be in for watching No Country for Old Men again tonight.

I'll start with Bio-Zombie. It's a Japanese zombies-in-a-mall flick that offers subtitles in both English and something called Engrish. Or you can watch it with everybody dubbed as surfer-dudes. We started with Engrish, switched over to English and then at some point I fell asleep for a good fifteen minutes, so for me it ended up like it had a missing reel like in Planet Terror, because there was no way Jamee was gonna rewind.

Basically, it's an OK movie. Nothing special and "Zombies in a Japanese Mall" pretty much tells you everything you need to know. But the last scene really works and with it I went from thinking, "hey, this is allright" to "hey, this is all right." And since even my Japanophile friend Maria hasn't heard of it, I'm going to assume most everyone reading this has not seen it and I'll stop talking about the ending right now. But if you're into zombie flicks check it out. It's all right.

And then we watched I Am Legend.

Sometimes when you're watching a movie you can tell from the beginning that a particular character is doomed. I am Legend is one of these, and I'm not going to say who it is, though it's pretty obvious from the get-go. It's not Emma Thompson, though you can assume she buys it sometime between the first two scenes. So, anyway, I thought I am Legend was pretty darn good up until the aforementioned character dies. For a big-budget, PG-13 rated Will Smith movie, it's pretty intense and much grimmer that I expected, especially in the aforementioned death scene.

("Aforementioned" is the word of the day.)

Then the flick goes a little downhill. Maybe more than a little. The Shrek bit didn't really work for me the way it should have, because I already got the point that Neville was at the snapping point from being alone during the scene where he nearly breaks down in the video store.

But then we get to the end. Or, more specifically, then we get to the end of the theatrical cut. The last two minutes of this version of the film ruins everything good that came before it. Seriously, it's that bad. What happens is this (SPOILER TIME) - Neville blows himself up real good and we're left with an annoying character who shows up two-thirds of the way through the film who suddenly has a deeply stupid voice-over where they awkwardly try to explain the title. OK. There. Now you don't need to see the theatrical cut.

We immediately went online and tracked down the original ending. It works and it fits with the rest of the film. It's not necessarily a happy ending, but it offers hope, which in light of the preceding 100 minutes is a minor victory, but a victory nonetheless. If anything, it ends like the novella The Mist and is ambiguous and open without any real resolution. Which is probably exactly why they dropped it-- 'Cuz 'Mericans is stupid.

So, if you haven't seen I Am Legend yet, rent the bonus features disc and watch that version. It's not perfect, but there are worse ways to waste an hour-and-a-half (and it's called 30 Days of Night).

2008-03-08T06:20:00.002-05:00

Justice League: The New Frontier
M'House
DVD
March 1, 2008

So I decided to show this to Tilda and her now six-year old cousin last week when Jamee and her sister were helping their parents movie. So what if it's got a PG-13 rating. Well, it starts off with someone shooting themselfves in the head, then Hal Jordan shoots someone in the head, and then there's a scene that shows you just what Wonder Woman's invisible jet would look like if the cockpit was splattered with blood. And they never really say whose blood it is.

But the girls were unfazed, and dare I say, kinda bored with it.

I thought it was great. It's a little short, only clocking in at 75 minutes, and from what I can tell a lot has been cut from the original miniseries, which I've never read. DC's published a nice Absolute Edition of it that, if if the animated film is only have as good as, is probably worth picking up. I've yet to see one of those oversized hardcovers that's a disappointment.

So, anyway, New Frontier is supposed to be a bridge between the Golden Age and the Silver Age of DC Comics. If you have no idea what that means, there's a nice bonus feature that goes through the history of the Justice League. It's short, but fairly comprehensive and even covers the Detroit years, of which the less said, the better. This is classic, though bloody, superhero stuff and I can't recommend it more any more highly.

Plus it's got Blackhawk in it.

2008-03-02T06:33:00.006-05:00

February 08 Movie Round-Up Catch-Up

The King of Kong
The Killer Shrews
The Bourne Ultimatum
M'House
DVD
February 2008

So I missed posting about a few movies that I saw last month, so if I'm going to keep this up, I need to at least say something about them.
The King of Kong would play well as a double-feature with There Will be Blood. They're both about ambition and obsession and, well, maybe not greed in the case of Kong. And that's because King of Kong is about two men's obsessive desire to the the world's greatest Donkey Kong player, which in Japan is a feat that brings both honor and shame to your family at the exact same time.

I think I stole that last bit from Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Kong is a fascinating look at the subculture of competitive video game players. It's weird and freakish, and while the film sets up reigning champion Billy Mitchell as a bit of a Plainviewesque monster, I get the impression that's mainly through editing, and that although he is an egomaniac, he's probably not as bad as they make him look. It's weird, by the end of the movie you hate the guy, but if you look back, they do show him doing all sorts of nice things, especially towards the beginning. And he did help that nice old lady win a video game championship.

I can confirm that teh previous MST3K reference did not come from The Killer Shrews, which Jamee and I watched about a week ago. It's one of those low budget crap fests where they had so little money, they decided to try to create tension by having all the characters stand around in one room and drink martinis.

Except for the black guy. He has to stay outside and get eaten by dogs wearing carpet, which are supposed to be giant, venomous killer shrews.

Here's how stupid this movie is. Basically, the idea is that they're on an island overrun by the aforementioned giant, venomous killer shrews. There might be a hurricane coming (It's mentioned but sure don't look like it). So everybody tries to escape, but when the survivors reach their boat (which I presume that they intend to sail through the hurricane), one of them mentions that within 24 hours all of the shrews would have cannibalized themselves and the last surviving one would have starved to death. Which means that all they had to do is climb to the roof and wait it out. Which leads me to believe that some of these characters descendants moved to Alaska to be in 30 Days of Night.

And then there's The Bourne Ultimatum. I like these movies, but for me they're ultimately single-serving films. I really enjoy them while I'm watching them, but as soon as they're over, I can't remember a thing about them. Which probably means they'll hold up if I watch them again. But I really feel no desire to own any of them or watch them again, as great as they are.

But the thing that's perverse and baffling here, is that of the three movies in this post, the only one that I actually do own, is The Killer Shrews.

2008-03-01T16:46:00.003-05:00

A POLITICAL AD I CAN BELIEVE IN

I so want to get an "I Believe in Harvey Dent" bumper sticker for my car. It's interesting to see that the Dark Knight advertising campaign seems to be shifting away from the Joker and towards Harvey Dent. I wonder what could have caused that.

2008-03-01T10:40:00.003-05:00

Suck It

30 Days of Night
Kelly & Kevin's House
DVD
2/29/08

I was preparing to say something about the first line of No Country for Old Men being, "I was sheriff of this county when I was 25 years old," and how I could buy Tommy Lee Jones being sheriff at that age but not Josh Hartnett, but I'm not going to go for that.

There are so many more things wrong with this movie.

I'm not going to bitch about the pacing, because we had to frequently pause it when one of the children came into the room, usually right as something particularly horrible was about to happen on screen. But it does seem strange to jump forward by weeks in the story and just imply that absolutely nothing has happened during that time? What the hell are the vampires doing? Just hanging out? Do you mean to tell me that they didn't have time to go from house to house in order to see if they missed anybody?

This is one of those horror movies where people do stupid things just to move the plot along. OK, we've found a place to hide that's relatively safe? Are some people going to be dumb enough to go outside just to thin out the cast? You betcha. Are the survivors going to hide out for 29 days, knowing that the sun's about to come up and rescue is presumably on it's way, and then decide to break cover and reveal themselves to the monsters? Of course they are.

And what the hell is up with the light source? If the town is supposed to be plunged into darkness for thirty days, why is everything surprisingly well-lit every time someone goes outside? And where the hell are the vampires when they do?

I don't know if this played better in the theater with an audience, but I thought it was a sloppy mess. It had potential, but just kept coming up short. And it turns out what I thought was the coolest thing about the movie was just an error with setting up the DVD player. When we saw it, none of the vampire language dialog was subtitled, which was cool, even though they kinda sounded like dolphins. And then, towards the end, a single line of dialog popped up at the bottom of the screen. So, it turns out that the DVD player was set up in a way to cut off the subtitles, which actually worked in the movie's favor.

But ultimately, and I hate to use this to describe a vampire movie, 30 Days of Night sucked.

(For the record, I remember the comic being pretty good, and co-creator/writer Steve Niles is a great guy. And he signs things with a little fanged smiley-face. Which is nice.)

2008-03-01T06:33:00.004-05:00

Music I'm looking forward to - 2008 Edition

So, it looks like there's a pile of new music coming out in the first half of 2008 that I'm already super-excited about, including two concerts in May that should be a lot of fun (and I do realize that I'm using "fun" to describe The Cure).

March 18 : DeVotchKa - "A Mad and Faithful Telling" - I blew my 2007 Oscar pool at work by voting for "Til The End of Time" from Little Miss Sunshine. I don't care if it didn't get nominated, it was the best song from a movie that year. My friend Kevin saw DeVotchKa live at a beer festival in Colorado, gave me some of their stuff and I've been hooked ever since. The new album release kinda snuck up on me, but based on the first single, "Transliterator," it should be good. Oh, who am I kidding, it should be good merely based on the fact that it's a DeVotchKa album.

And, tickets just went on sale for their May 16 show at the 930 Club, which may be the best concert deal of the year - $17.00 including surcharges.

March 25: Counting Crows - "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings" - Jamee was always a bigger fan of Counting Crows than I was, and I've kind of written them off in the past few years. But, I'm fond of the free tracks that they released from the new album, so I'm hoping for good things. Itunes is doing a preorder that includes four bonus tracks for $11.99, which, if you don't have to have the physical CD and jewelcase, isn't a bad deal at all.

April 7: James - "Hey Ma" - This wasn't supposed to happen. James broke up years ago. They were a great band. I suppose they still are. I'm sure they still are. I saw them at the Boathouse in Norfolk during the Laid tour and it remains one of the best shows I've ever seen. And there's rumours of an international tour later this year. Which brings me to my only problem with the new James album, "Hey Ma." There's currently no US release planned, just like their last two studio albums. So that means import prices. But it's James, so it's worth it.

May 6?: The Cure - Currently Untitled - I gave up on the cure around the release of Wild Mood Swings, and didn't get back into them until the released the B-Sides collection taht I always wanted in high school and college because I couldn't afford the singles from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. I've been keeping up with them ever since, and though I was a bit disappointed with their last album, the deluxe reissues have been awesome. Jamee got me tickets to see them for Christmas, and the tour appears to be a greatest hits thing based on the setlists from Europe. They've also been playing three hour sets, which if that continues in the states, would be just perfect (You thought I was going to write "just like heaven" didn't you? Well, I didn't. OK, technically, I did.)

Who Knows?: The Pogues - Just Look Them Straight in the Eyes and Say 'Pogue Mahone'" - I don't even know if that's even the title. Five CDs of unreleased and uncollected Pogues stuff. Originally due out in March, now delayed to who knows when. It'll be worth the wait. And to tide things over, we're seeing them at the 930 Club next Sunday. Which, again, should be great.

2008-02-27T20:08:00.003-05:00

A Dream Within a Dream

Picnic at Hanging Rock
M'House
DVD
2/24/08

My friend Joe gave me a copy of the Criterion DVD of Picnic at Hanging Rock for Christmas a few years ago. I've just now gotten around to watching it.

It's based on a novel by Joan Lindsay about a group of Australian schoolgirls who go on a class outing to Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day, 1900. Three of them and a teacher vanish. Hanging Rock is a real place and, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a lot of effort has been put into making you believe that the events in the film really happened.

And, like the events in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, they didn't.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a fiction. It's lyrical and mesmerizing and it's central mystery is maddeningly unresolved. It's a good thing, too. As Lovecraft wrote, "In all things mysterious, never explain." Lindsay actually wrote a chapter that explained the mystery that was excised from the book and went unpublished until after her death. And when you find out what it is... well, it's kind of ridiculous. I haven't read the book and I don't know how well it fits in with the tone of the book and while the explanation fits in with aboriginal mythology, it still has kind of a "That's It?" vibe to it.

And I'm not going to say what it is.

Still, this is one creepy movie. It's a horror film that takes place mostly during the day and where very few horrifying things are seen. There is a monster, in the form of the girls school headmistress, but the unnerving thing about the film is Hanging Rock itself. Its given a presence and there is a deep, low thrum on the soundtrack that accompanies most of the scenes set there. And as the vanished girls ascend the the rock, there is the feeling that something is calling them to the peak, something almost sexual. With the exception of one (the one who runs screaming down the mountain as the others disappear) they remove their shoes and stockings, and the one who later reappears is missing her corset. And I doubt it's a coincidence that the pan flute is the primary instrument in the score.

Which raises the question, if the girls were abducted by faeries, is the one who was sent back even the same person who was taken? Or a changeling, or something else? As I mentioned, it's maddeningly unresolved and open to interpretation and even if there is an author penned solution to what's going on, who's to say she was right?

Apparently, they screen Picnic at Hanging Rock at Hanging Rock every Valentines Day. I think if anywhere, that would be the place to see it.

2008-02-24T07:33:00.003-05:00

THE END BEGINS AGAIN

Diary of the Dead
Muvico Egyptian 24
Hanover, MD
35mm
2/23/08

So maybe we shouldn't have gone to see a Romero movie at a mall. Ever been to a mall in, say, December and been completely unable to find a parking space? Ever had that experience in February?

Welcome to Arundel Mills.

So, the new Romero flick, Diary of the Dead, is only playing in about 40 theaters in the country and four of them are in the DC area, and all of them are at least an hour drive away. So of course we go to the theater with the big statue of Anubis out front. Yeah, you read that right. I though I worked at a ridiculously overdesigned theater at the Hampton 24, but words cannot describe how silly this place is when you get right down to it and realize that it is in essence a big box that's made to show movies.

So, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the show?

Diary of the Dead isn't bad. It's a bit heavy-handed with it's message, and it's nowhere near as good as Night or Dawn, but honestly, at this point nobody's expecting it to be. And we do have some people doing and saying some pretty stupid things from time to time, like the girl who says that her friend who's just died might not come back as a zombie when every single person on the planet who has died has done exactly that.

And I could have lived without the narration. It kills the tension and it a lot of cases tells us things that we already know. I would have been fine with the bit at the beginning that establishes that at least one person makes it and one most definitely does not, but would have been happy if what's-her-name had just shut up from then on out.

There are some great bits though. Some really great bits. Such as how the rich kid disposes of his zombie problem (It's a great image and I won't ruin it). In fact, Phillip Riccio, the guy who plays the rich kid does a great job, especially in the last half of the film.

But even he's not as cool as Samuel the Amish zombie-killin' badass. I would pay to see a whole movie just about that guy. It's actually kind of amazing that Romero's done five zombie movies, four of which take place in Pennsylvania, and this is the first time we've seen an Amish. (Irony points awarded for the fact that this one was filmed in Canada.)

I liked the cameos, too. I didn't catch all the radio voice cameos, though I did catch Guillermo Del Toro as the guy talking about immigration. And Greg Nicotero making an appearance as a zombie doctor was cool. I think he may be the only guy to play two different zombies in more than one Romero flick. And I still can't figure out if he's the guy who gets eaten by the bird-monster in The Mist.

Oh yeah, zombie stuff. There's some very inventive zombie stuff in this one. And I won't spoil any of it. You'll have to see it for yourself. I'm sure it'll be on video soon. Especially since it doesn't look like it'll get a wider release anytime soon.

Still, as long as Romero keeps making zombie pics, I'll keep seeing them. I like how it's been forty years since Night of the Living Dead and he really hasn't repeated himself. Even the remake of Night takes on a different social issue that the original, even if it's basically the same movie. I also like how within the context of the movies themselves, only a few years have passed between Night and Land and somehow it's actually believable that Night and Diary take place at the same time, even though there's forty years between them.

Thank you, George.

2008-02-17T08:10:00.003-05:00

Not ha-ha funny

Funny Games
DVD
M'House
2/11/08

About ten years ago we brought John Waters to JMU. At dinner (because this is how I choose to remember it) someone asked him if he'd seen anything good lately and he mentioned Michael Haneke's Funny Games, saying "It's really disturbing." Sounds good. But, I figured that if John Waters found it disturbing, it had to be really fucked up.

So it took ten years to get around to watching it.

It's an unsettling movie, about an upper class German couple and their son who go to their lake house for a holiday. Two young psychos show up and proceed to torture and torment them. That's it. But that's not it.

Basically it's a comment on the conventions of horror movies and the people who watch them. There's a gimmick here, where one of the two psychos is not only fully aware of the conventions of horror movies, he's also fully aware that he's actually in a movie. For me, it worked. It's also interesting that Funny Games seems to be a critique of movies like Hostel and Saw, but it predates them by years. It's also better that them.

I don't know if it's because I waited for ten years to watch it that I didn't find it as disturbing as I expected to. It is unsettling and creepy and most of the actual violence is kept off screen, which of course makes it worse. There's a technique used throughout where the camera will focus on a single view and all of the characters are off screen. You hear things, and you want to see them, but you know that it's something that you really don't want to be looking at. It's perverse and often baffling, but it works.

Still, I'd recommend that anyone interested in horror movies see it. I'm curious to see the remake with Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, but honestly am not sure why it was made, since it appears to be shot-for-shot the same. But, it got me to finally watch the original, so that's a good thing.

2008-02-07T05:42:00.000-05:00

I Wonder Why The Title's Not On It

You know, we did the math not too long ago and somehow I've managed to collect somewhere in the neighborhood of around 300 movie posters. And yet, I have never gotten any 007 posters. I like the Daniel Craig era ones so far and this teaser for Quantum of Solace is particularly nice.

2008-02-02T16:08:00.000-05:00

Are You Aware of Garfield?

Cloverfield
Regal Westview16
Frederick, MD
35mm
2/1/08

Sometimes, and this happened with The Mist, too, hearing the number of people coming out of a theater saying how much they hated a movie I liked only makes me like it more. Cloverfield is a nasty, effective little giant monster movie that actually works better than something like, say, the American version of Godzilla, by focusing on a small group of people making their way through a disaster zone rather than the big-picture monster attack.

It's brisk and though it feels longer than its hour-and-thirty-five minute running time (including trailers!) it also feels like its just as long as it needs to be. It's fun and I get the impression that it'll hold up to repeated viewings. I definitely think it's a good argument for investing in a decent home theater sound system and I'd argue that it's worth seeing in the theater just for the sound.

And considering how disappointed I usually end up with things I see in the theater, where I feel that they could usually have waited for video, saying something's worth seeing in the theater means a lot.

2008-02-02T07:11:00.001-05:00

In Honor Of Superbowl Ad Sunday

They sure don't make ads like they used to:

2008-01-27T11:59:00.000-05:00

We Can Take in an Old Steve Reeves Movie

Giant of Marathon
Film Crew Version
M'House
DVD
1/26/08

This is probably the probably the best of the four Film Crew movies, which isn't saying a whole lot. I've always liked the sword-and-sandals movies that they did on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the Rifftrax of 300 is the best one I've heard so far, so it's not too much of a surprise that this one's good.

And they make a reference to The Joker, so I can link it to Ledger without having to go the obvious straight-man-as-gay icon route.

2008-01-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Plan 9 From Outer Space
with Rifftrax Commentary
M'House
DVD
1/25/08

As has no doubt been driving Jamee crazy, I've been obsessing a bit over Heath Ledger's death this week. (DC killed off the Earth 2 Joker last week and this week the actor who plays the Joker in the new Batman movie dies! Coincidence? Of course it is.) So after we watched Plan 9 (and struggled to stay awake through the last twenty minutes) I realized that we were watching a movie that was famous partly because the star died during filming and was replaced with another actor.

Which is apparently what Terry Gilliam might be doing with The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Possibly. So the question is, was I drawn to watch Plan 9 subconsciously because of the extremely tenuous Ledger connection?

(And which actor is rumored to be his replacement in the Gilliam movie? [there's no way I'm typing out The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus again. Wait. Aw crap.] Johnny Depp, who played Ed Wood in, um, Ed Wood, that's who?)

Of course not. The Rifftrax commentary was released this week. Does it help the movie? Not so much. Plan 9 is pretty much crap any way you look at it. I don't think I've actually watched it all the way through since college and I know I haven't seen it since meeting Conrad Brooks, who I think, with Vampira's recent death, may be the last living cast member. I was surprised that Conrad's really only in one scene. Ed Wood (and Conrad himself) will lead you to believe he's in it a whole lot more.

There are a few good jokes in the riff, though some of the Lugosi heroin references may be needlessly cruel and a few stretches were screwed up by my mistiming the ipod with the DVD.

But what's an Ed Wood movie without a little incompetence?

Tonight: A Steve Reeves movie. Oh goody. Can't wait to see how I link that with Ledger.

2008-01-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

Why So Serious?

Here's why.

OK. I was all prepared to come in and write something about how the Oscars are absurd because Norbit got a nomination and Zodiac got nothing. But then I saw this as a flash on MSN and thought "That can't be right," but it was.

I think that what disturbs me the most is that he had a daughter, also Matilda, who was only a few months younger than mine. Whenever Jamee tells me that she wakes up and I'm not home she asks "Where's Daddy," and it breaks my heart. So I think about his little girl asking where's daddy and it bothers me.

And my mom liked him. A lot. Batman Begins was the last movie my immediate family saw together before my mom died and I wish she could have seen the new one, knowing he was in it. We have the above poster hanging at the bottom of our stairs and it initially really bothered Mathilda. But she's gotten better. Now she'll look up at it and say "Hi, Joker."

Which is nice.

Goodbye, Heath.

2008-01-20T20:42:00.000-05:00

Ghost Story

El Orfanato
Regal Countryside 16
Frederick, MD
35mm

When I tried to see this two weeks ago I had no idea it would be expanding wide and no idea that it would be playing in Frederick. It's in Spanish and, well, it's in Spanish, so it's nice to see it get a fairly wide release. We've come a long way from when The Devil's Backbone came out and only played on one screen in DC in a theater the size of my living room.

I've said before that I'll pretty much watch anything with Guillermo Del Toro's name on it, and I may have to just expand that to say that I'll watch any ghost story with a Spanish speaking director. The Devil's Backbone is probably my favorite ghost move (Yep, I like it even more than The Shining. And I like The Shining a lot.) and I'm very fond of The Others and, now, The Orphanage.

I don't want to go into to much detail about the story, but the basic gist of it goes something like this: A woman and her husband move into the orphanage where she spend some time as a child. Their son goes missing. There may or may not be ghosts. It's a very tense movie and like the very best ghost stories it relies on mood and tension rather that things jumping out and going "boo," although there is a fairly gruesome "boo" moment that comes bout midway. But it's earned.

Although not directed by Del Toro, The Orphanage revisits the questions of his two best films. The central question of The Devil's Backbone, "What is a ghost," is actually spoken by one character here and Pan's Labyrinth's question of whether or not the fantasy elements are all in the protagonists head can also be applied. I think you can probably watch the film from both perspectives and have it work equally well, though I think I would like it more if the ghosts are real.

Still, it's beautiful, scary, and heartbreaking. Just what I like it my ghost stories. And like the very best ghost stories, it's haunting.

2008-01-19T09:50:00.000-05:00

Debt & Death Double Feature

Maxed Out
M'House
DVD
1/16/08

3:10 to Yuma
M'House
DVD
1/17/08

In Debt We Trust (most of it)
M'House
DVD
1/19/08

So this guy I work with was quoting the Louis CK bit that shows up in Maxed Out, this documentary about credit card debt, so we moved it up on our Netflix queue and watched it this week. It starts out with this real estate agent in Las Vegas, driving past planned community after planned community, talking about how there's a famous place in Italy called Seven Hills and how one community is called "Seven Hills" after it and all of the streets have Italian names.

She's right. There is a famous place in Italy with seven hills. It's called Rome.

So initially I though that this was going to be like The Office. Wince-inducing, but funny.

And then we get to the first suicide story. And then the second and third. Maxed Out may be the most depressing thing I've ever seen that I can think of at the moment. I am no longer in credit card debt, and when I was, it wasn't anywhere near the levels that the people in here got to, but it still wasn't a good thing. Sure, this doc is biased and there is a certain aspect of personal responsibility involved with racking up thousands of dollars of debt, but the insidious nature of a business that refuses to do away with high-risk customers because "that's where our money comes from" has to be accountable for something.

It's a very-off putting film and once we get about fifteen minutes into it the shadow of death hangs over the rest of of the picture and doesn't go away even when it gets into the closing credits. I think anyone with a credit card should watch it, but I wouldn't recommend watching it on a weekend.

The strange thing is, if I had not watched Maxed Out on Wednesday, I probably would have had a completely different take on 3:10 to Yuma when I watched it on Thursday. It's also about debt and the desperate actions that someone will resort to in order to pay it off. Granted, it's set in the 1800s and nobody had credit cards at the time. Not even Diner's Club.

The story is simple, Dan Evans (Christian Bale) takes on the job to escort captured outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a prison train. It's basically a suicide mission, because Wade's gang is out to spring him, and will kill anybody who gets in the way, or even just for the hell of it.

I want to make note of Ben Foster, who plays Wade's second-in command. The guy plays good crazy and I spent most of the movie trying to figure out where I'd seen him before. Turns out it was on My Name is Earl, and he was good scary-crazy on that too.

I was going to see 3:10 to Yuma in the theater, but I was only going to go to a show that started at 3:10. Not a single theater in the DC area had a 3:10 show. There were 3:00s, 3:15s, even a 3:05, but not a single freakin' theater was clever enough to schedule a 3:10 show. So I waited til video because I am a snot.

It's actually a pretty good movie. I've never really liked anything I've seen that was directed by James Mangold. I thought Cop Land and Walk the Line were average and I actively hated Identity. Haven't seen any others. But 3:10 to Yuma's good. It's a classically generic story and well-cast and a decently entertaining two hours. I don't know if it's the best western since Unforgiven, but I can't really remember any since Unforgiven, so it may well be. Unless you count No Country for Old Men as a western, which it is.

Now if they actually do justice to Blood Meridian, that will be something to see.

-Post Script-

We tried to watch In Debt we Trust last night, another credit card documentary. Don't waste your time. It's sloppy and amateurish and annoying to the point where we just couldn't take it anymore and ejected the disc before it was even over.

2008-01-13T12:16:00.000-05:00

Down in the Mall

Dawn of the Dead: US Theatrical Cut
Nightcrawlers Meetup
DVD
1/12/08

"Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead"
in 20th Century Ghosts
by Joe Hill

I went to the first Meetup last night, a Zombiethon of Dawn of the Dead, and the first two versions of Night of the Living Dead. Due to the playoffs, I was only able to stay for the first movie, which turned out to be Dawn. I think I've only actually seen it twice. Once of VHS waaay back in high school (I don't recall liking it) and the "Director's Cut" at least five years ago. I remember thinking it was great then. But I think I prefer the shorter Theatrical Cut.

I like movies like this and Blade Runner, where there's a number of different versions out there and everybody has one they like better. It's not like the Zach Snyder Dawn of the Dead, where there's two versions, but one is clearly superior, mainly because the R-Rated cut of Snyder's Dawn drops a scene that make a big chunk of the movie make sense. I like Snyder's movie and I seem to like it more each time I see it, but I think the remake factor knocks it down a notch (The Fly and The Thing just tapped me on the shoulder and coughed. Wait, that was Tilda). And there's more going on in Romero's film, subtext-wise, even though Snyder's does not have anybody stupid enough to take a blood-pressure test in the midst of a zombie attack.

When did I get into a which-is-better argument with myself? I like them both.

One thing I did notice this time around was that the blood did not look as Crayola-red as I remembered. I've since found out that for the DVD release they actually went through and recolored the blood. It fixes one of the things that severely dates the picture, though there's not much that can be done about the clothes, hair, or carpet on the walls. I'm fine with going back and changing that aspect of the movie. Everybody should get a do-over.

Speaking of which...

Just before bed last night, I read "Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead," in Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts collection. It's a nice story about second chances and zombie love. Though it's not really about zombies, in that it's a love story between two zombie extras on the set of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. It's good, though not as brilliant as Hill's "Pop Art" or "20th Century Ghost," and he seems to get Romero and Tom Savini just right. Like most of what I've read by Hill (and dammit, I keep wanting to call him "King") I feel like all I really should say about it is that it's good, and you should read it.
-
I'm going to try to do this with each movie now:

Still image alert: Peter and Steven go to the bank.

2008-01-12T11:38:00.000-05:00

Friday Double-Shot of Awful

Wild Women of Wongo
Film Crew Version
M'House
DVD
1/11/08

Flight of the Living Dead
M'House
DVD
1/11/08

I'm not sure why we decided to do this to ourselves. We've been going through the four Film Crew DVDs, which frankly haven't been as enjoyable as Mystery Science Theater 3000, but still manage to get a couple of funny bits in here and there. And in Hollywood After Dark we at least got to see Rue McLanahan as a stripper. Wait, that's not right...

Wild Women of Wongo is supposedly about some experiment by mother nature to have two tribes of people in different villages or something. In one, the women are beautiful and the men are trolls. In the other, the men are beautiful and the women are less so. Or something. Things happen and the whole thing looks like it was made by a retarded Terrence Malick, with lots of random shots of forests and jungles and parrots. It's even got a crocodile, like The Thin Red Line. Or maybe it's an alligator. Who cares? It sucks and kept putting me to sleep.

So I decided to watch another movie afterwards. Kelly loaned us Flight of the Living Dead, and now I am mad at her. I don't care if Kevin is the one who actually did the loaning. Imagine Snakes on a Plane with zombies. You know how most movies would be improved by the presence of zombies? This one isn't.

It does have Kevin J O'Conner again being good in crap. And, uh, other things. I suppose. Anyway, didn't like it and I have a headache so I don't want to think about it anymore. At least everyone involved got a paycheck so that they could eat. Hopefully.

See that was something nice.

2008-01-12T11:27:00.000-05:00

Best Customer Service

So I won a copy of Toy Story at work this week. Since I already had it, I took it to the Best Buy in Reston to exchange it for Zodiac. I think it's a fair trade. They're both great movies. At their customer service desk, on top of the register, was a Happy Bunny figurine. Printed on its stand , facing the customer, was the slogan, "It's Cute How Stupid You Are."

I would have complained, but I thought it was brilliant.

2008-01-11T20:18:00.000-05:00

Trailer Park: Diary of the Dead

Diary of the Dead - Exclusive Trailer

Add to My Profile | More Videos

2008-01-09T19:24:00.000-05:00

Keeping "Up" with the Joneses

Shoot 'Em Up
M'House
DVD
1/4/08

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
M'House
DVD
1/5/08

If you can't figure out by the second shot that Shoot 'Em Up is a joke, then you're wasting your time. It's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. It's kind of like taking an entire season of 24 and squeezing it into 86 minutes. Yep, it's that silly.

It's fun though, and though it's a one-joke premise (every scene turns into a gunfight) it doesn't outlast it's welcome. That is, of course, if you get that it's a joke from the first twenty seconds.

Last Saturday we watched the last two Indiana Jones movies. Haven't done a double-feature in a while. Haven't watched the Indiana Jones movies in a while, either.

Tilda has recently become obsessed with Indy. We have the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull poster up in the TV room and she'll wave at it and say "Hi, Jones." And when I went to DC last weekend she asked Jamee if she could watch a "Jones movie." But the only one that I know she's been awake the whole time for was Temple of Doom, and she didn't seem to be paying much attention to it.

The last time I saw Temple of Doom was as part of my midnight movie series for Hampton 24. It was when I realized that Temple of Doom really wasn't very good. I loved it when I was a kid, but seeing it again for the first time in maybe ten years I realized I didn't like it. So now it's been almost another ten years and it's not as bad as I remembered. Willie Scott is still one of the most irritating characters in film, up there with Franklin in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the addition of the kid seems a bit off, but by the time it was over I felt like it really wasn't all that bad.

Last Crusade, on the other hand, is just fun. I can't remember when I last saw it (I don't think we got it as one of the midnight shows), so I probably haven't actually seen it since college. I don't really have a whole lot to say about it, and I have a feeling that with Tilda, we'll be watching them a lot in the future, but there was one bit I noticed this time around, and it's not the fact that the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword guy looks like Borat. I thought it was a nice bit to have the guy who played a Bond villain be the one who shoots Sean Connery, even if he was the villain in a Roger Moore one.

2008-01-06T17:23:00.000-05:00

People Ain't No Good

There Will be Blood
Landmark E Street Theater
35mm
1/6/08

I did not intend to see There Will Be Blood today. I went into DC to see The Orphanage, but church traffic on 16th Street delayed me and by the time I got to the Metro the trip would have gotten me there too late . So I went to this instead. There was a problem with the theater's house lights, so it wasn't an ideal screening. (Daytime scenes look fine, anything in the dark had a glare on the screen. There are a lot of scenes in the dark.) But I got a free pass out of it, so I'll probably go back and see The Orphanage in a couple of weeks.

I'm already three movies behind this year, but I wanted to get this one out as soon as possible, without the benefit of reflection.

Imagine if It's a Wonderful Life had been about Mr. Potter. That's my initial reaction. Daniel Day Lewis' Daniel Plainview is a monster, plain and simple. Almost every second he's on screen his eyes are locked in a glare of murderous hate and you get the impression that he could erupt into violence at any moment and for any reason. It happens, infrequently, but it does happen. He is a bitter misanthrope and spends the better half of the movie swindling rubes out of their land for the sweet, sweet oil underneath.

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

I don't buy the notion that movies have to be about likable people. There's a lot of interest to be had in scum. Hell, Satan is essentially the hero of Paradise Lost and that's pretty much what we have here. Plainview is basically the devil and he's fascinating, but at close to three hours of watching him sit around and hate people it begins to drag a bit and it does feel like the sort of movie that in ten years will only be watched by film students. You know the ones. They're the people you know who have actually watched Citizen Kane.

(Full disclosure - I have seen Citizen Kane at least three times.)

This is not to say that I didn't like it. It's all jumbled up in my head right now and I'm sure that once I've had time to reflect there will be things in it that stick with me.

-and now we have two days pass between the writing of the previous sentence and what follows-

I do not think that There Will be Blood is a great movie. It has moments of greatness. Lots of them. But I'm not quite sure they cohere. Time, and repeated viewings will tell. Maybe it was the lights being on that affected my feeling, because I really don't feel like I got the complete experience.

There are performances and images in here that are great, though. Kevin J O'Connor, who I've liked in things like The Mummy and Deep Rising is especially good. I don't think he's ever been better, and I don't feel that because he's usually in stuff like Flight of the Living Dead (which is sitting on top of my tv, waiting to be watched). He really is very good here, playing a man who has gotten in way over his head and waits just too long to get the hell out of of Dodge.

There's one image in particular that has stuck with me the past few days. It's in a fairly simple scene. Plainview is on the phone and someone is in the same room speaking with him. I don't remember the details exactly, but Plainview is standing in the center of the frame, wearing a hat. It's broad daylight, but the shadow cast by the hat brim swallows his face in a black hole, so that we're really seeing the very essence of the man. It doesn't matter what's being said. What we're seeing is what's important.

It really is Day-Lewis' movie, though and the whole thing is set up in the opening moments. Plainview, down in a hole, beneath the earth, in the dark, alone. How much better would things have been for everyone if this thing had not crawled out of its pit?

I want a milkshake.

2008-01-05T07:40:00.000-05:00

2007 Roundup

Well, Maria made this a tag, so here we go with a rundown of what I liked and didn't last year entertainment-wise.

Things that made me happy last year.

1. No Country for Old Men - Though I suppose "happy" isn't the right word for it.

2. Hellboy: Blood & Iron - Really impressive. It tells two parallel stories, with one being told in reverse, and they both dovetail in the end. And it's got Hellboy fighting monsters. The only thing wrong with it is that it apparently did not make enough money to make a third animated Hellboy movie, even though there's a teaser for one at the end of the credits.

3. Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts - I'm only about four stories in, and frankly I'm not very fond of the one I'm currently reading, but this is here for no other reason than the story "20th Century Ghost." It's the best haunted movie theater story I have ever read and it's just beautiful.

4. Blade Runner at the Uptown and on DVD - Blade Runner is always good on the big screen and The Uptown is as good as they come. And the DVD set is pretty much everything you could want (although the originally advertised Ridley Scott signature is pre-printed). I've only made it through a disc and a half and still haven't watched any version of the actual movie yet.

5. The end of the third season of Lost - So that's why I didn't give up on the show yet.

6. Hot Fuzz - Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright make me happy. I love Spaced, and Shaun of the Dead, and this, which just left me with a big, goofy grin (Even though it made me want to actually watch Bad Boys II).

7. A Date with John Waters - The follow up to A John Waters Christmas and worth it just for "Johnny are you Queer," which was featured in the ball pit scene in Jackass Number 2. I went up to a promotional appearance in Towson to get John to sign my Cry-Baby one sheet for Tilda, so it now says "To a Future Juvenile Delinquent - John Waters."

8. Murder Party - Probably the most enjoyable surprise of the year. I went in knowing nothing and loved pretty much every minute of it. And it has the best DVD extra of the year, with the possible exception of the episode of Everybody Loved Hypnotoad on Futurama: Bender's Big Score.

9. Indiana Jones Legos - Happy Happy. Joy Joy. I am a five year old. Wait, that's too young according to the boxes. I am a seven year old.

10. Planet Terror and the Grindhouse trailers - I'm glad we got to see Grindhouse in the theater. At least up to the point where I realized that I was not enjoying Death Proof and that there was still about an hour of movie left. I'm looking forward to the second trailer for Thanksgiving that supposed to be on Eli Roth's Trailer Trash later this year.

11. The Baltimore Comic-Con - This was a lot of fun. I went up with my friend Charlie and afterwards went to a beer fest in Frederick where Mathilda was not allowed in so we had to take turns waiting outside with her and her cousins while rotating groups of grownups got their drink on. But the con was fun and the highlight was probably meeting Mike Mignola and actually getting to talk to him this time. He signed my Hellboy II poster and it's hanging by our stairs.

12. Ratatouille - It's so good that I didn't care when the five year old in the front row got bored and started running around the theater for the last fifteen minutes of the movie.

13. The return of Futurama - Bender's Big Score, the first of four direct-to-DVD movies was everything I could have hoped it would be. I found it to considerably more enjoyable than The Simpsons Movie, which I'd watch again, but no time soon. I could watch Bender's Big Score again right now, but ~'s watching The Incredibles.

14. Zodiac - Probably the best movie that came out last year that I've seen. It's essentially three hours of people talking and it's incredibly intense. The director's cut is out on the 8th and hopefully the price will drop soon so I can justify picking it up.

15. Chocolate Donut Stout - Got it a beer festival in Virginia. And kept going back for more. A brewery in Alexandria makes it and it's one of the best things I've ever tasted. Mmmm, donuts.

16. 2001 and Barry Lyndon at the AFI Silver - The AFI Silver is the best theater in the DC area, nudging out The Uptown because they have DLP projection capability and show non-current release films. They did a Kubrick fest last winter and my friends Brad and Sara came down to see these two. I'd never seen 2001 in 70mm before and I'd never seen Barry Lyndon in a theater. This was probably the best moviegoing experience I had last year.

17. The Mist - Possibly the most unpleasant two hours I spent in a theater last year. I loved it. Jamee is still mad about the spiders and probably madder now that I've reminded her.

18. Seeing Terry Pratchett for probably the last time - I've been to a number of Pratchett book signings. He's funny and personable in person, even with a ridiculously long line of people in front of him waiting to get things scribbled on. He was at the National Book Festival this year, promoting Making Money. I went with my sister and met my friend Charlie and his now-fiancee and her family there. We saw Pratchett talk and waited in line. Got things signed. He seemed tired. A few weeks ago he announced that he has early-onset Alzheimers and though it's a long way from being bad at this point, I would be very surprised if he came around again. But he's good at surprises. I wish him well.

Big old piles of disappointment:

1. Almost every movie that I saw that came out last summer - Disappointing to varying degrees, and mainly because I can't remember most of what happened in any of them: Transformers, Pirates, 1408, Harry Potter, Superbad, Fido, Die Hard, and Spider-Man 3. Although I think Spider-Man 3 had the best posters of the year:

Now, they look just like most of the other posterss for the Spider-Man movies, but if you look closely at the real ones, the rain and the glass have been embossed. It's a nice effect that you really can't seen unless you get up close. Too bad the movie was a huge heap of dull.

2. The White Stripes at the Patriot Center - Jamee nearly fell asleep. Really. Standing up and everything. Could have been a number of factors other than the band (I listened to a bootleg of the show later and it was pretty good, although they didn't play a bunch of stuff that I like). The crowd was terrible. The sound was bad. But a lot of it was probably the fact that my Grandfather had died that morning and I probably was not in the best state of mind to see a show.

3. Costco decided to not make Ratatouille wine - Apparently there's some rule that says that you can't use a cartoon character to promote alcoholic beverages. They did briefly make Ratatouille cheese, whi ch I only saw once and did not get, which makes me sad.

4. The Decemberists cancel The Long and Short of It Tour - I had tickets. Got my sister tickets for her birthday. Band member gets sick. Hopefully they'll reschedule.

5. Season 2 of Heroes - I'm not even going to go into it.

6. The fact that this costs $500:

7. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier - I have a feeling that when LoEG is complete and this finds its proper place as a bridge between Volumes 2 and 3, it will feel a lot more satisfying. As it is, there's no way that it could possibly live up to expectations, and though enjoying self-indulgence comes with the territory when you're an Alan Moore fan, sometimes it's a little too much. I do feel, however, that my liking of The Black Dossier will grow with time.

2008-01-01T20:04:00.000-05:00

December 2007 Movie total

Thirteen total movies.

3 in the theater
10 on DVD

Unless, of course, I can't count.

2008-01-01T15:31:00.000-05:00

Whipped

Raiders of the Lost Ark
with Rifftrax Commentary
M'House
DVD
12/31/07

It's been a while since I last saw Raiders. I think the last time was when we showed it as a midnight movie back when I worked at AMC. The print looked like shit. That's all I remember. What I do remember is the first time I saw it. My dad took me to see it at AMC Colisuem 4, where I later worked, back in 1982 when it first came out. The theater now stands vacant. I remember being scared by all the skeletons. Maddy didn't seem to have the same reaction, though she did seemed concerned about "BIG BALL!"

The Rifftrax commentary was a bit underwhelming, though the Shane MacGowan joke was pretty good. So I won't even mention it again. What I noticed this time were three fairly big holes in the story that I didn't really pick up on before.

1. If Indy is leading an expedition through Peru, complete with pack mules and two other guys, exactly what is Jock supposed to be flying out in his two-person biplane?

2. How does Indy ride the U-Boat all the way to secret Nazi island? This one's actually explained by history and a deleted scenes. World War II submarines were primarily designed as surface vessels and only submerged for attack and defense purposes. There's a deleted scene showing Indy clinging to the periscope for the trip and presumably the boat never submerges.

3. How does Indy know not to look at the Ark? Again, deleted scenes to the rescue. There's a bit cut out of the scene where Indy and Sallah visit the old man who tells them about the staff of Ra where the old man tells them not to look at or touch anything in the Ark. Which seems kind of important.

So two of these things are explained through deletions, but that doesn't really explain the first bit, unless Indy's plan was to leave Doc Ock and the other guy stranded in the jungle. Which really kind of fits with his character throughout the rest of the movie. Let's take a look at our hero:

1. This is a guy who when everyone is digging out the Well of Souls just kind of walks around not doing anything other than wearing a hat.

2. Goes into a fistfight with a kick to the groin (Hey, it worked for Butch Cassidy) and then throws sand in the guy's face. Take a look at the fight scene by the flying wing. The Nazi is the one who's actually fighting fairly. Granted, he is twice a big as Indy.

3. And our hero spend the climax of the adventure tied to a post, squeezing his eyes shut. Our hero spends the big climax not actually doing anything.

So, based on this, we have a lazy, cheating, passive hero who makes a living robbing the artifacts of other cultures. Don't forget, Indiana Jones actually is one of the titular Raiders of the Lost Ark (which makes the DVD cover title make no sense), and at the beginning Brody does mention that the museum will buy whatever he found, as usual, with no questions asked.

And yes, I am conveniently forgetting the truck chase and the bar fight and all of the other cool action-hero stuff that he does.

But none of this really matters, because thanks to this movie, and twenty-five years of nostalgia, we now have Lego Nazis:

2008-01-01T14:04:00.000-05:00

It's How Long?

Dangerous Days: The Making of Blade Runner
M'House
DVD
12/30/07 - 12/31/07

So it took a couple of days to get through the nearly four-hour long making-of documentary on Disc 2 of the super-huge box set of Blade Runner. It's fairly exhaustive, yet still doesn't cover everything, which is why there's even more stuff on Disc 4, including a feature on both John Alvin and Drew Struzan's poster artwork (I've got a reprint of Alvin's iconic one-sheet, but nowhere to put it up at the moment) and a feature on whether or not Deckard is a replicant. My favorite bit in that one is Ridley Scott calmly explaining why you're a moron if you can't tell that Deckard is a replicant followed by Frank Darabont effectively explaining why he isn't one.

Dangerous Days (named after one of the early titles for Blade Runner) covers just about everything about the making of the film, although there's one bit towards the end that bugs me. When discussing how they tacked on footage from The Shining at the end of the theatrical cut as part of the happy ending, one of the producers explains that he miraculously was able to get through to Stanley Kubrick to get permission to use the footage.

Which isn't the story that I heard.

A few years ago Jamee and I met Joe Turkel, who played Tyrell in Blade Runner and also appears in The Killing, Paths of Glory, and The Shining. He's a really great guy and had a ton of Kubrick stories. One of which involved Ridley Scott. Apparently while filming Blade Runner, Turkel introduced Scott to Kubrick, mainly because he was able to, because he knew the guy. They hit it off and that's how Scott was able to ask for the Shining footage.

I don't know which version is true. Maybe they both are. It doesn't really matter. But if you get the chance to hear Joe Turkel tell how Ridley Scott turned into a fanboy over meeting Stanley Kubrick, do it.

Anyway, one disc down. Four to go.

2007-12-31T10:59:00.000-05:00

Anyone Can Cook

Ratatouille
M'House
DVD
12/30/07

There's a moment in Ratatouille that may be my favorite moment in any movie that I saw in 2007. If you've seen it, you know what it is. If you haven't, I'm not going to ruin it with details. But the moment when Anton Ego takes a bite of his special meal took Ratatouille from being a movie that I merely really liked to being one that I loved.

So I was looking forward to showing it to Jamee and we finally watched it last night. Her parents gave it to me for Christmas, along with a set of Disney Store lithographs that I need to convince her to put up in the kitchen, or at least ~'s room.

What I'd also like is the international one-sheet. (Valentine's Day is a month and a half away, sweetie. Hint, hint.) Take a look at that poster. Other than Disney's annoying insistence on spelling the title phonetically it's a gorgeous image and considerably more adult that the US poster, which is apt, because if you really look at the film, it's not exactly for children (more on that phrase in a future post).

Granted, kids can enjoy it. ~ sat through most if it without protest last night and I think she's probably old enough now to see something in a theater. The thing about Brad Bird is that he makes animated films that further the idea that animation is not merely for children. This is becoming more of an antiquated notion anyway, although my two year old still wants to watch Bird's The Incredibles daily, so there is an argument to be made that his films are more for everybody than just a specific age group or demographic.

The thing about Ratatouille is that it's a story that really couldn't be told in any medium other than animation. Imagine it being done in live-action. It just wouldn't work. I'm glad to see Pixar experimenting and really pushing the boundaries of what can be done in animation in the West. And if Wall*E proves to be actually be the nearly dialogue-free movie that the rumors make it out to be I'll be very happy. Especially if it makes a ton of money.

2007-12-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

Hey, look what came in from Netflix

The Kingdom
M'House
DVD
12/28/07

A few years ago Jamee and I went to a horror movie convention just outside of DC and attended one of the panel discussions. I can't remember what the exact topic of discussion was, but at one point one of the panel folks began going on and on about how Psycho was not a horror film because it was a police procedural. Because the police procedural is a specific genre in and of itself and does not qualify as horror. Which means that The Silence of the Lambs is not a horror film. And Seven is not a horror film. And Jaws. Which is bullshit.

The Kingdom is a police procedural and, for the record, not a horror film, though it shares a title with Lars Von Trier's Danish miniseries, which is. (How's that for an awkward transition?) I had wanted to see The Kingdom when it was in theaters, but decided to wait because of the generally average reviews it got and since it only took about three months to hit DVD, that probably wasn't a bad decision, action sequences aside.

It's really not that bad of a standard Hollywood action flick. It's politics are a little simplistic and when it starts the non-stop action in the last thirty minutes it's a little too easy for the good guys to succeed, even with half of the ammunition in Riyadh being fired at them. That's how simplistic this is - you can easily label the characters as good guys or bad guys and the bad guys can get killed by bullets flying through concrete, the good guys are protected from RPGs by, let's say, air.

So, it's cliched, but well executed and the action is good, (not surprising considering this is a Michael Mann production), but nowhere near the level of the bank heist in Heat or the trailer park standoff in Miami Vice. And it's hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy for the good guys, considering that they swagger into a foreign country without any seeming care for customs or modes of behavior. It's almost as though we're supposed to be rooting for them simply because they're Americans.

At least Jason Bateman's character gets taught an important lesson about why it's not a good idea to be a dick to your hosts. It's also funny to see a supposedly crack FBI agent wearing a Pixies t-shirt that to my knowledge was mostly available at Hot Topic, which gave me the impression that he was a poseur who couldn't score tickets to either reunion show in the DC area over the past few years, but I digress.

Anyway, The Kingdom is not awful, and the first have handily labels every place and everybody, so you kinda know who the characters are and where they're at. Which is considerate.

2007-12-24T07:53:00.001-05:00

Are you sure the number is 911?

Hatchet
M'House
DVD
12/23/07

A few months ago I read about a movie called Murder Party on Ain't it Cool's weekly upcoming DVD release post. I'd never head of it, but Harry mentioned that it had been playing film festivals and people just loved it. So I rented it without finding out anything further and loved it. Ended up seeing it again a week later and still loved it. Immediately bought it and have been telling everyone I know who would like that sort of movie that they need to see it. And just about all of them do. So when Hatchet got a similar write up on Ain't it Cool, I decided to give it a chance.

Hatchet is billed as a throwback to R-Rated 80s slasher movies and was intended to be an antidote to crappy PG-13 horror. The problem is that it's basically crappy R-rated horror. It does have some good bits. Joel Moore and Deon Richmond are good as the two buddies who make a bad decision to go on a night swamp tour outside New Orleans. The movie's worth watching just for them. And Buffy's Mercedes McNab has some brilliantly stupid dialogue.

The problem is that after the set up, once it actually becomes a slasher movie, it becomes just another boring slasher movie. The slasher himself is especially bland and lacks any sort of iconic imagery that you get with characters like Freddy, Jason, or Candyman (Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, and Tony Todd all make cameos just to drive in that point), so you have just another backwoods mutant running around killing people. Seriously, once the killer shows up everyone runs around in circles getting picked off until you have the obligatory handful of survivors and pretty much the only ending you can have because it's been written in such a way that it can't end in any other way. Not because it's clever or original, but because it's sloppy.

At risk of sounding like an old fart, I think I've grown out of slasher flicks. I think maybe middle school and high school is the ideal time for them and then you realize that most of them are just crap. I still like a handful of the - Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Scream. But mostly they're crap. Cheap, profitable crap.

Maybe it's time to make one.

2007-12-23T07:51:00.000-05:00

Featuring John Goodman as "Cop in Diner"

C.H.U.D.
M'House
DVD
12/22/07

Yes. We watched C.H.U.D. We were going to watch Hatchet, but there was an ad before it for other Anchor Bay titles, one of which was C.H.U.D. And Jamee pointed out that I'd borrowed it from my friend Joe at least a year and a half ago and since I was going to see him today, we should probably watch it.

So I blame her.

I remember that when I was a kid, C.H.U.D. was this super scary monster movie that I was always just too afraid to watch. Man, I was really a wuss back then. For a monster movie there are very few monsters actually in it, and when they do show up it's just unfortunate. You could argue that the effects are just dated, but this thing came out four years after The Thing, so effects were being done back then that still hold up nearly thirty years later.

But as laughable as it is, John Waters points out in his essay "How Not to Make a Movie," that C.H.U.D. can be looked at as an example of what to do right if you want to make a movie. It cost very little, but made a profit nearly everywhere it was released. And it's gotten multiple references on The Simpsons. Which is great. I'm just saying you don't actually have to watch it.

Although John Goodman is great as "Cop in Diner."

2007-12-22T15:06:00.000-05:00

You've Got to Cut Him Up, Boy

Sweeney Todd
Regal Westview 16
Frederick, MD
35mm
12/22/07

I first heard about Sweeney Todd when I was a kid, but only the basics of the story. Todd was a barber on Fleet Street in London who murdered his customers, who were then baked into meat pies by Mrs. Lovett, the baker downstairs. That's all I ever remember hearing of it. I never saw the musical and I never read any of the penny dreadfuls. For all I know they're out of print. I did look forward to Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli's version, but it never came out, so I never read it.

And now Tim Burton's gone and made a film out of it. I used to be a huge Tim Burton fan. Was right up until Ed Wood. I love Ed Wood. It's one of my favorite movies. But then there was Mars Attacks! (which I have a soft spot for because it came out on the day I met Jamee.) But then there was Planet of the Apes. And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And then I rewatched Batman and hated it. So I'm no longer the biggest Tim Burton fan anymore.

But Sweeney Todd is a solid film. Though it probably wasn't the best idea to see a morning show. This is more of a night movie. It's dark and obsessively misanthropic and once it was over and I had to navigate last-minute holiday shopping traffic on the way home I really wanted to do violence to everyone around me. So I think I liked it.

The problem I have with it is the music. Now, I'm not against musicals, but I think the fact that it's basically an opera and ninety percent of the dialogue is sung sets up a bit of detachment for me and I never really felt any real connection to the film. Although it is about horrible people doing horrible things, so maybe that was a good thing. So while I liked it, I didn't love it.

But I do love that Comic-Con teaser poster and that's staying up in the dining room.

2007-12-22T07:16:00.000-05:00

Good Old-Fashioned Nightmare Fuel

Based on this, I'm probably not going to be taking Maddy to see Coraline just yet (Yes, I know it's not out for a year). I want to see it, but what's under the cover kinda freaks me out, so I really don't want to inflict that on my child. Yet.

But I'll be there.

2007-12-22T06:58:00.000-05:00

Bart, are you drinking whiskey? I'm troubled.

The Simpsons Movie
DVD
M'House
12/21/07

We gave up on The Simpsons a few years ago, back when it stopped being, you know, good. I'd been watching since the Christmas special first aired, and sixteen years is a pretty good haul for any show. But we stopped watching and it kept going. I have found that some of the episodes that I didn't like at first improved upon subsequent viewing, so maybe when the past few seasons come out on DVD I'll see them and enjoy. But I'm not counting on it.

So I missed this in theaters, mainly because I was too cheap to by a ticket and too cheap to buy the Season 9 set at Costco that came with a free pass that was selling for $30. (It has since dropped down to $20, so there. And please don't point out that I spent more to buy the DVD that I would have on a movie ticket. It was under my $15 threshhold for movies on DVD and came with a map of Springfield. So there.)

So we watched it last night. Tilda had been asking for Homer all afternoon, which is strange because I wasn't aware that she even knew who Homer was. Perhaps she just wanted The Odyssey. Instead she got The Simpsons Movie. It's funny, don't get me wrong. There's some very funny stuff in here. But after nearly twenty years, is there any story they could really tell on the big screen that could match the greatness that they've done on TV? Not really. But it still feels like something that really couldn't be done as multiple episodes of the show, although the 2.40:1 does give it some scope that probably worked better in the theater.

So, it's not entirely a letdown, but it's not the greatest thing ever, either. For that, we've got the show.

2007-12-21T10:55:00.000-05:00

Getting the Finger

So as I'm about to leave work yesterday I notice that there are a couple of people standing by my friend JP's desk and they're all agitated about something. I ask what was going on and they say that they just saw a severed finger on the ground downstairs by the dumpster.

"It was horrible, I almost threw up."

I'm leaving for the day and either I or JP say to the other, "Want to go take a look at it," and the other says "Sure," and we do, because that's what guys do.

So we get downstairs and take the exit by the dumpster. One of our managers is standing by the door smoking a cigarette and about twenty feet away are two guys standing over what looks like a finger. One of them is poking it with a stick, because that's what guys do.

The manager asks JP and I, "What's going on?" One of us replies, "Apparently that's a finger."

The manager walks over to it, leans over, and then picks it up.

"That's not a finger."

That's a potato.

2007-12-20T20:12:00.001-05:00

Trailer Park: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Hellboy II: The Golden Army trailer

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I love Hellboy and I love Guillermo Del Toro. The thing is, I didn't love Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy. I liked it, but of the three versions of Hellboy, Del Toro's film version is my least favorite. Mike Mignola's comics are great, and the animated films are wonderful, especially Blood and Iron, but there just seemed like there was something missing from the live action film. And I've seen it about five times.

Still, I'm looking forward to Hellboy II: The Golden Army. From what I've heard it's going to be more along the lines of Pan's Labyrinth than the first film, which is a good thing, because that film hews closer to the spirit of the Hellboy comics that the first Hellboy film did. Having said that, I'm not entirely sold on this trailer. I like the monsters, and nobody does monsters like Del Toro. It just seems like the first film and that makes me a bit wary of it.

But I'm sure I'll be surprised. And it's nice to see Johann. And that Comic-Con teaser poster is gorgeous.

Hellboy.

2007-12-19T18:17:00.000-05:00

Trailer Park: Wall*E

WALL-E Exclusive Trailer

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The Nightmare Before Christmas was Mathilda's first movie in a theater. She was admittedly way to lil for it and I haven't taken her to one since. But this... This I'm taking her to. This will be her first real movie in a theater. I don't know a thing about it, but it looks wonderful.

2007-12-18T20:44:00.000-05:00

Do you have the crazy?

The Signal
AMC Towson Commons
Towson, MD
35mm
12/17/07

So last week I got two tickets in the mail for a preview screening of The Signal. I don't know why. I don't recall signing up for anything with Magnolia Pictures, so when my brother-in-law-in-law and I went up to Towson last night there was an equally good chance that we would either see a movie or get raped and murdered. Or possibly both.

Turns out we saw a movie.

The Signal is a low budget independent horror film about an unexplained signal that begins transmitting through television and radio and telephones and basically makes people go bugfuck crazy. It's the same basic premise as Stephen King's Cell, but more successful in execution. I'm not going to go too much into details because it's not coming out until the end of February and it's probably best to go into it knowing nothing.

What I will go into and what's most interesting about it is how it's structured. There are three sections, each of which follow one of three central characters and has a different director. According to the Web site, it started as a cinematic game of Exquisite Corpse where one filmmaker would begin the story and then hand it off to another to do the next part. Knowing that, it's easy to look back on the film and see that being its origin. What's really cool about the different directors is that there's a definite shift in tone from one section to the next, so that we go from horror to comedy and then back to horror. The most surprising thing is that they manage to pull off the tonal shifts successfully. There's a point where the movie suddenly becomes funny and then there's a point where it's definitely not funny anymore and it works. That's not easy.

I did have a few quibbles with it, the biggest one being that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a character go out into a city full of bugfuck crazies and put headphones on so she can't hear the bf-crazies coming towards her unless she's a complete idiot. And she doesn't appear to be a complete idiot. And they don't go into reasons why the cuckolded husband deserved to be cheated on other than the fact that he kinda resembles Roy from The Office. But they don't go into backstory on anybody.

I heard some people commenting as they left the theater that The Signal was the worst movie they'd ever seen. Hell, this isn't even the worst movie I've seen this week (see Sunday's post). It's an interesting indy-horror flick and should be seen. I can't imagine that it's going to get that wide of a release, but you know what? The transmission effects may actually work better on television.

2007-12-16T20:03:00.000-05:00

Bacon + Chocolate = Awesome

It should be disgusting, but this is pretty darn good.

2007-12-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandstorm

Mystery Science Theater 3000
Hercules Against the Moon Men
M'House
DVD
12/15/07

There's only one notable thing about Hercules Against the Moon Man and that's even considering the fact that nobody seems to be sure if star Alan Steel is even alive anymore. Seriously, there's a Wikipedia category for "possibly living people" and he's in there.

That notable thing is the endless sandstorm sequence. The first time you see it, it feels like forever. The second time through it's pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as the first, which goes to show that the human brain can get used to anything.

Otherwise it's your standard poorly dubbed mid-60s Italian sword-and-sandals flick. It isn't even a frickin' Hercules movie, either. They just slapped the name on when it was dubbed into English because they figured that nobody in the States knew who the real hero, a strongman named Maciste, was.

Which is true.

And speaking of crap, Maddy took her first dump in a real toilet yesterday. We're very proud.

2007-12-15T21:06:00.000-05:00

Good News/Bad News

Good News:
Pogues. March 9. 9:30 Club. Tickets go on sale Monday.

Bad News:
Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers.

2007-12-13T21:46:00.001-05:00

Post #1729

Futurama: Bender's Big Score
DVD
M'House
12/9/07

The fact that this exists makes me happy. The fact that there are going to be at least three more makes me even happier. And the fact that this includes a full length episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad... well, that's just not right.

So, it's good. And it was worth the wait.

And darn it, I'll probably buy it again if they reconfigure it into four separate episodes with additional footage.

Jamee, please don't read the preceding sentence.

2007-12-10T17:31:00.000-05:00

HOORAY FOR CRYSTAL SKULLS!

This may be my second favorite Indiana Jones poster after the teaser one-sheet for Temple of Doom. Looks like there's going to be at least four for the new movie. Wonder if they'll all be by Struzan.

2007-12-09T10:42:00.001-05:00

Saturday Night Double-Feature - The midget is the baby's daddy... daddy... daddy...

Superbad
Trapped in the Closet (Chapters 1-12)
DVD
M'House
12/8/07

So we watched Superbad. 'Twas mildly amusing. Some good bits. Not as funny as I hoped it would be. Don't feel the need to see it again. Can't even remember much of what happened in it less than twelve hours after finishing it.

And that's probably because we immediately followed it with Trapped in The Closet (Chapters 1-12).

I'd been told by the person who insisted that I watch Closet that it feels like you're spending an hour inside the mind of a retarded person and I can't really think of a more appropriate description. I don't even want to describe it. I just want people to see it. I can't tell if it's brilliant or stupid because I have no way of telling whether or not R. Kelly himself is even in on the joke. From what I've read he's not, but then that might be part of the joke. It feels like it was written by an adultery-obsessed third grader and it makes by brain hurt to even think about it.

My sister was right. Trapped in the Closet will change your life. In ways you cannot imagine.

I must own it.

2007-12-08T17:18:00.000-05:00

Fight the Frizzies

So Mystery Science Theater 3000 is pretty much back. We've got Joel and company doing Cinematic Titanic and Mike and company doing The Film Crew and Rifftrax. The first Cinematic Titanic movie is apparently due out on Monday and they're doing something called Brain of Blood. Can't wait.

But then there's Rifftrax. We've watched a couple of these. The one for 300 is hysterical and makes the movie itself worth buying in my opinion. But now they're doing something that's just wrong.

Now they're doing The Star Wars Holiday Special.

And that's not right.

It's pretty much the worst thing ever. It's the reason why Episode 1 is not the worst thing to ever have the name Star Wars slapped on it. Sure, it introduces Boba Fett, but the first half hour is in unsubtitled Wookiee for chrissake.

And now I have to watch it again.

2007-12-08T16:49:00.000-05:00

Did it give you Atheism? Did it?

The Golden Compass
Regal Countryside 20
Sterling, VA
35mm
12/7/07

So I read this letter to the editor at rogerebert.com yesterday morning and thought, what the heck, I'll see if I can spot one in the next movie I see, which turned out to be The Golden Compass. Jamee went out shopping with her mom and sister and Tilda and I ducked out for two hours to see this and was disappointed that there were no protesters. Perhaps it was too cold. There were, however, at least three still images in the movie: There's a painting of Mrs. Coulter in her apartments, later Mrs. Coulter is holding a picture of Lyra, and then there's a bit where Seraphina Pekkala is talking about various locations that we'll be seeing later and the film cuts to a still image of a landscape.

So, anyway, is the movie actually any good? And more importantly, did it turn everyone in the theater into Atheists?

Not exactly.

It has been toned down considerably from the novel and though it's still anti-church, it's not necessarily Atheist. In fact, at one point Lord Asriel pretty much flat out says that God exists in their dimension, though it might not necessarily exist in others. Which isn't exactly an Atheist philosophy, the whole acknowledging the existence of God thing. The issue is mainly being about anti authoritarianism. You can get rid of the church and it doesn't mean that God isn't there.

But as a movie, and a story, The Golden Compass doesn't quite work. It feels like there's a longer version out there somewhere (In fact I know there is. They chop out the whole conclusion of the book and I know it was filmed because there's bits of it in the trailer) and the compression of the story into under two hours makes for a lot of people talking the way people only do in movies and a LOT of expository dialogue.

There's good stuff in it, though. Anytime Lee Scoresby or Iorek Byrnison are on screen it's pretty great, and I hope we get to see Scoresby's confrontation with the Tartars in a film version of The Subtle Knife. Iorek Byrnison is particularly impressive. He's the armored polar bear with the voice of Ian McKellan and when he starts attacking things it's awesome. It's pretty much that way in the book, too, and though I haven't read The Amber Spyglass yet I'll be disappointed if he doesn't show up. The kid playing Lyra's good, too, and I'm curious to see how they explain her aging if they actually do another film.

And there's one bit from the book that I was sure would get dropped. When we got to that part I found myself wondering how they were going to change it and then it happened exactly how it does in the book and that made me happy.

Ultimately, though, it's a fairly bloodless adaptation of an interesting book. I keep thinking that there's a longer, better version out there. And that's what I want to see.

2007-12-08T08:01:00.000-05:00

Snow Day Movie Part 2

King Kong: Extended Edition
M'House
DVD
12/5/07

So after Toy Story, Maddy went to sleep. It was still snowing and Jamee was still working, so I decided to finally sit down and watch the extended version of Peter Jackson's King Kong. One of my all time favorite moviegoing experiences was seeing King Kong with Jamee at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring. It wasn't this version. It was the 1933 one with Fay Wray. That one's great. A little bit racist, but great. Peter Jackson's version... not so much.

It felt like Jackson had been given a blank check and unfortunately used it. You can't argue that it looks like every cent he was given shows up on screen and that he tried to give audiences their money's worth, but it's bloated and unwieldly and just too much. It feels rushed, too, like he needed a break after Lord of the Rings and just didn't get one. I'm curious to see The Lovely Bones since it feels like now he's had a chance to recover from Rings and Kong. I'm especially curious because I hated the book.

That's not to say that there aren't good things about Kong. The hour or so that we spend on the island is very good, especially in the extended cut, where sequences have been added back in to better pace everything. It didn't feel as choppy this time as it did in the theater. But even the island stuff begins to go on for too long and by the time we get to New York it feels like the movie should be over, but there's still at least a half hour to go.

Still, they don't even try to make movies like this very often, and while it's a mess, it's fascinating to see how it just doesn't quite work.

2007-12-08T07:37:00.000-05:00

Snow Day Movie, Part 1

Toy Story
M'House
DVD
12/5/07

So we got back from the aborted drive in to work on Wednesday and Jamee got to work from home. Maddy played in the snow for a bit and then wanted to watch a movie, because she's, well, my kid. She wanted to watch The Incredibles, but I wanted her to see something new, so I put in Toy Story, and because I haven't actually watched it in years, I watched it with her.

I forgot Joss Whedon co-wrote it.

You can definitely hear some Whedony sounding dialogue it it, and the bit where the toys confront Sid seems like something he'd write. But then again, I'm sure if we got right down to it, the stuff I thought he wrote probably isn't. Because That's the way these things work.

One thing I did notice this time, and it's a small moment in the movie, is the bit where Buzz Lightyear sees the commercial and realizes he's a toy (Although this time through I wondered what he did whenever Andy came back in the room before his epiphany). It's a short scene, but there's three things I caught:

The commercial announcer is Penn Jillette
Al's Toy Barn from Toy Story 2 is set up
There are shutter bands on the TV.

I don't know if they're actually called "shutter bands," but I'm too lazy to look it up. These are the lines that you see on televisions in some movies: big, dark, horizontal bands that scroll up the television screen. The characters in the movie never seem to notice them. That's because the actors don't see them. The effect is caused by the camera shutter and can be corrected by timing the shutter differently. It's one of those things that lets you know that you're watching a film, like seeing a car moving forward with it's wheels turning backwards.

But we have them here in an animated film where there was no camera shutter, put there intentionally to be noticed a few dorks who would pick up on that sort of thing.

Man, I love Pixar.

2007-12-07T10:14:00.000-05:00

Happy Birfday...

...to Jamee and to Tom Waits, only one of whom made me eggs for breakfast this morning. And on her birfday, too. Guess that's a clue.

2007-12-06T19:33:00.000-05:00

Let it Snow.

Had a snow day yesterday. It took two hours to get just over halfway to work so I gave up and burned a vacation day. We got about five inches here. Totally screwed up everything around here. People in Maine are laughing at us.

But I got a snow day.

The best part of the drive was just before we got to daycare (Yeah we went to daycare. Tilda was there for about twenty-five minutes.) when Tilda got excited by a song on the radio and asked, "One more time?" It made me happy. The song?

"Santa Claus is a Black Man," by AKIM and the Teddy Vann Production Company.

It's on the A John Waters Christmas CD and it's brilliant. I'd first read about the song in John's essay "Why I Love Christmas" in Crackpot. , where he calls it the best Christmas song. I disagree. Until the CD came out a few years ago it was practically impossible to find, which is a shame. It's one of the few perfect things in the world. Basically, it's a Kwanzaa-themed variation of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," but to describe it doesn't do it justice. You have to hear it. It's earnest and beautiful and wonderful and there's this word in the first line that I can't quite make out. It could be "fantabulous." It could be "fantackulous." It could be something else entirely. I don't know. But what I do know is that this song will make you fucking believe.

But it's not the best Christmas song ever. Why? Because this is:

"Fairytale of New York," from The Pogues' third album If I Should Fall From Grace With God is, like "Santa Clause is a Black Man," one of the few perfect things in this world. It's haunting. Beautiful and sad, and full of regret and longing, it alternates between romantic ideals and bitter reality. I can't do it justice, but it really is something great. When we saw The Pogues in March last year this showed up in the encore. Towards the end, when Shane MacGowan and (ack! I can't remember her name, but I think she's Jem Finer's daughter) begin dancing they dropped fake snow from the ceiling. It should have been the corniest thing in the world. But it wasn't. It was wonderful.

And...

And...

They're coming back! When I wnet to grab the image there's a note on the front page of pogues.com that they're playing DC and Baltimore in March. No dates announced yet, but tickets may be on sale as early as next week.

Woo-Hoo!!!

2007-12-05T19:20:00.000-05:00

Mmmm... Do'Nuts

So the Ben and Jerry's about fifty paces from where I work in Reston Town Center is going to be participating in this on December 17.

Guess I'll be working late that day.

2007-12-05T18:24:00.001-05:00

I was just getting used to the name Frohley

Children of Men
M'House
DVD
12/4/07

Since this title keeps getting thrown about whenever I seem to talk about The Mist I figured that I'd watch it again. So I did last night after Tilda went to bed and before Jamee got home from teaching. It's the first time I'd watched it all the way through since we saw it the theater the first weekend of the wide release.

It's still one of my favorite movies. It's got this uncompromising feel to it that reminds me of Kubrick, especially the Hue sequences in Full Metal Jacket. There's a particular image when they're driving to Bexhill towards the end of the film where you can see huge clouds of black smoke in the distance that looks like it could be a right out of Jacket, though I'm sure that here they're CG. In Full Metal Jacket, as pointed out in the commentary, Kubrick had some guys two miles in the distance timing the smoke just right. For every take.

Heck, look at the US poster. It even looks like a Kubrick one-sheet in black instead of white (or yellow. or purple) - Lots of negative space and a strong central image. But I digress.

Anyway, since reading about the opening shots project that I mentioned in the Mist post, I've been trying to see If I can read anything into the opening shots of what I've been watching. Here it's more of the opening sequence than a single shot. We don't even begin with an image. We begin with sound. A series of radio broadcasts that tell us that we're in the future and things have gotten bad, but we don't know why. Then we're in a coffee shop. There is a news broadcast. The youngest person on the planet has just died. He was 18. So we establish that there hasn't been a human birth in nearly twenty years. Probably why everything's falling apart. But we're in this coffee shop. And it's packed. It establishes the world. There are less and less people in it every day and the one's who are left try to come together. There's a woman holding a cat (or is it a dog?) It's the first instance of a recurring motif throughout the film. There are no more children, so people use animals as a surrogate.

Then Theo comes in. Not our hero. The film doesn't have one. Our protagonist. He comes in, wades through the group, buys his coffee and leaves. He's not part of the group. An outsider.

Moments later the coffee shop explodes. Theo flinches (heroes don't flinch). A woman stumbles out of the could of dust pouring out of the coffee shop. For an instant we see that she's holding her severed arm.

Then there's a hard cut to the title.

So we start out the movie with death and violence. The specific death of the youngest person on the planet and the general impending death of the human race. Death and violence is random and Theo escapes more through chance than by anything he specifically does. This is set up in a couple of minutes and looms over the rest of the film. Which is is interesting to me because we have a movie here that sets up a feeling of impending, inevitable, random death ends with impending, random life.

There are at least two sequences of birth imagery towards the conclusion, after the actual birth of the new youngest person on the planet. The first begins the celebrated tracking shot through the combat zone in the refugee camp (actually several shots blended together on a computer, but who cares, it's great). It's a moving shot down a tunnel into a scene of incredible carnage and death. The second occurs as Theo and Kee and the baby escape on the boat, traveling down a tunnel out to the sea. There may be others, but I missed them this time around. I don't think there are any before the baby is born and if that's the case the multiple uses of birth imagery after that occurrence could be Cuaron's way of telling the audience cinematically that it was not an isolated incident. It's begun and will keep happening. Or it could be a symbol of Theo's rebirth. Could be both. Could be neither. Cuaron doesn't spoonfeed the viewer. And I like that.

Can't wait to see what I notice next time.

2007-12-04T19:41:00.000-05:00

Ha-ha. Hah hah hah.

Seriously. Me want. I cannot wait til June 08. Hellboy 2 and this... Wait, they're both out in July.

Dammit.

Hee hee.

2007-12-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

Using mainly spoons, we'll dig a series of tunnels...

Monsters, Inc.
M'House
DVD
12/2/07

So back when I decided to do a post for ev'ry movie I saw, I didn't really take into account that it would actually involve doing a post for every movie I see. Case in point, Monsters Inc. I wasn't planning on watching it, but Tilda wanted to watch a movie and I wanted to show her something that she'd never seen before. So I put in Monsters Inc.

And then I worried that she might get scared.

She's stared saying things are scary. She's bothered by our Balrog candle holder. And there's a picture of Heath Leadger as the Joker that freaks her the fuck out, so I know what I'm doing for Halloween next year. But after the first joke she was fine.

I remember not being all that thrilled with this one when it first came out. I liked it fine enough, but it seemed to me at the time that it was designed more for little kids. I've seen it a few times since, and I like it more each time, but this was the first time that I'd actually watched it with a little kid. By my guess, Tilda's about the same age as the little girl, Boo. And she did get more interested when the little girl shows up. But about halfway through, Tilda got up, walked over to the DVD shelf, picked up a box, came back to me, held it up and said:

"'Credibles?"

We finished watching Monsters Inc. We'll be watching The Incredibles plenty of times. And if I stick to my plan of blogging every movie, every time I see it, I expect in about a year to have something like this:

"Watched goddamn Incredibles again. Still love it, but watched goddamn Incredibles again."

2007-11-29T19:32:00.000-05:00

BEST POSTER EVER

Oh man, I want one of these.

2007-11-26T19:32:00.000-05:00

WE CAN NAME HIM "BOB," OR WE CAN NAME HIM...

Beowulf
AMC Hampton Towne Center 24
Hampton, VA
DLP Projection
11/24/07

The morning after I saw The Mist, my Dad and I went to see Beowulf. I'm not quite sure what to think. It feels a little distant to me, but that may be because it doesn't really feel like the motion capture animation technique has progressed to a point where it doesn't feel gimmicky. It feels like we're watching a step towards something, but we're not quite there yet. Still, it looks better than what I saw of The Polar Express.

I haven't pretended to read Beowulf since college, so I had to go back and see exactly how the original poem went. Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery's screenplay covers the three main events of the original (Beowulf fights Grendel, Beowulf fights Grendel's mom, Beowulf fights a dragon), but integrates the events in a different way, while still acknowledging that the story told in the poem is still valid as a story. The film is about storytelling, and about how the story of a hero is sometimes as important or even more important than the reality of the hero himself. That's what's interesting about Beowulf.

Which brings us to the 3-D. I figured that if I was going to see this in a theater, I had to see it in 3-D. We tried to see it in IMAX on Thanksgiving, but the Riverside IMAX was not open as early as advertised. So we saw it at my old theater in their new DLP house and paid the two extra dollars for the 3-D glasses and saw the oldest story in English told with the most advanced technology available. In 3-D. But here's the thing. As impressive as the 3-D effect is, I'm not sure it's any less of a gimmick that it was when introduced in the 1950s. It doesn't do anything to immerse the viewer in the story, because it still isn't true three dimensions. It's still action on a series of panes and we're already viewing a two dimensional image with the illusion of depth anyway, so the effect doesn't do anything more than distract from the story. So as a storytelling device, I'm not really sure if 3-D adds anything. I'm not sure it's necessary.

But I could be wrong.

2007-11-25T11:43:00.000-05:00

Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-Legged Beasties

The Mist
Regal Kiln Creek 20
Newport News, VA
35mm
11/23/07

Major spoilers ahoy.

Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's "The Mist" feels like an open letter to moviegoers that reads thusly:

Dear Audience,
Fuck You.
Sincerely, Frank

I saw this with a group of about ten other people in a small, sold out theater on Black Friday. Most of them did not like it. Most of them did not like it at all. Jamee is still mad at me about the pharmacy sequence.

I liked it. I liked it a lot.

I haven't felt as exhausted after a movie since Children of Men, which my friend Marie echoed as we were leaving. I think she and Kevin liked it. I'm not sure about them. I do know that I felt bad about her getting dragged to a horror movie knowing that she does not like them, but she said she was fine once the tentacles showed up. So I don't feel as guilty.

This flick is tense. I'm not sure how it's going to play on video, but with 200 people in a theater there's definitely tension. There were people taking, but it didn't bother me once I realized that if the movie was working on me and I was feeling as tense as I was, others were probably feeling the same way. And it's not like you're given any outlet for release.

There's very little humor in The Mist. It gets going pretty quickly (sacrificing a bit of build-up and some of Brent Norton's character from the book) and things start getting bad within the first reel. And then they get worse. And worse. By the time you get to the end you're drained. And then Darabont hits you with the bleakest ending to a horror film since Night of the Living Dead or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. More on that later. I'll warn you. (Actually, there are going to be spoilers-a-plenty from here on in, but I'll red flag it when I get to the ending.)

There are three main monster sequences in The Mist: What Happened to the Bag Boy, the bird-thing attack, and the expedition to the pharmacy. Normally, when you read something, especially in one of King's stories, by the time it gets translated to film it loses something. Not here. Even though the tentacles in the first sequence look a bit CGI-cheesy (They're the worst effect in the film) Darabont amps up the horror from the source material. In the story, King describes the tentacles as eating into Norm's flesh as they wrap around him. Here we have a single feeding arm that rips chunks out of him. Chunks. It's gory and shocking and raises the bar for what's going to happen later. And it's the first monster we see.

But it's not really about the monsters. Like the sociological horror films of the 60s and 70s, this is more about the people that the beasts. Or, more precisely, it's about the beasts that are the people. Here, it takes about two days for everything to go to hell with in the "safety" of the supermarket. The early King religious nut character begins preaching about the end of the world and sacrifice and it takes about two days from most everyone in the store who isn't dead to come around to her point of view. Two days. As scary as the monster sequences are, the scenes where Mrs Carmody's mob begins to act out on their blood-lust are more frightening because something like that is more apt to actually happen that to have a multi-tentacled hellbeast come out of the fog and eat you. At least in the county where I live.

But here's the thing. In the last mob scene, where the crowd is screaming with blood lust to sacrifice the little boy, Mrs. Carmody gets blown away. And the audience roars. It's another of Darabont's F-you's to the audience. He gives you a character who is inciting a crowd to kill in order to get a horrified reaction from the audience and when she gets killed, the audience watching the movie has the same reaction that they were just horrified to be watching on screen. And I'm not saying this at a distance. It's the reaction I had, too.

Which brings us to the ending. And the beginning.

Jim Emerson, the editor-in-chief at Roger Ebert's Web Site has something called The Opening Shot Project. The basic premise is that the first shot of a movie tells you everything you need to know about how to read the movie you're about to watch. The first shot of The Mist shows our protagonist, David Drayton, at work in his studio. He paints movie posters and is currently finishing one of Roland the Gunslinger from The Dark Tower. This is an in-joke for King fans and ties this into the meta-fiction of Roland's story. It's not the first time that a character in a King story painted a picture of the Gunslinger. But that's not what's important in reading the film. There are movie posters displayed throughout the studio and the two most prominently featured ones are Drew Struzan's paintings for John Carpenter's The Thing (which I have) and Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (which I don't). Both of these have bleak endings, although you can argue that Pan's Labyrinth has a happy ending if you believe that Ofelia's fantasy world is real. Regardless, it still ends with the death of a child, a death that is established in the film's opening shot. So, the way to go into The Mist, based upon the images that we're given up front is to expect that it is not going to end well.

And it doesn't.

Darabont has so far made three feature-length Stephen King adaptations. Two of the original stories, "The Mist" and "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" end with the word "hope." Both film versions have endings that go further than their source material. The Shawshank Redemption ends with Red and Andy's reunion, where the novella ends with him on a bus, headed towards that reunion. "The Mist" ends ambiguously, though it sets things up to go badly. The story is told in first person, as though Drayton is recording everything that happened in a journal. His group of survivors, including his young son, are stopped at a motel. They have a dwindling gas supply in their truck and a gun with four bullets. Drayton writes that they are headed in the direction of a single word that he thinks he heard while scanning the radio. If they run out of gas they're prepared to use the gun on themselves. There aren't enough bullets for everyone, but he'll do what he has to if it comes down to it. He leaves the journal for someone to find and then they drive off into the mist. The End.

How pissed off would you be if you saw a movie that ended like that?

The film goes further. It goes to the point where they run out of gas and they hear the monsters approaching. And then it goes further. It goes to the point where the gun is used. And then it goes further. It goes to the point where Drayton steps out of the car to meet his fate, to offer himself up to the beasts. And then, because this is the narrative engine that this movie has been going on, it gets worse.

It gets worse.

It takes balls to end a movie the way this one ends. It takes balls to release it and not tweak it to give the audience some sort of upbeat ending (see the American cut of The Descent). It really is a great big "fuck you" to the audience and I'm glad to see it. I don't think the ambiguous ending would have worked, though it's fine in the novella. A happy ending in any form would have ruined everything that came before it. For my money, and I do realize I had a free pass, this is what a horror movie should be like. And I hope to see more like it coming out.

See, there's that hope that got tossed aside.

And Mr. Darabont, if you want to make it up to your audience, please make that Dark Tower poster available for purchase. Showing that off like that... and then destroying it...

That's just mean.

2007-11-18T14:04:00.000-05:00

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

So it's finally out. DC first announced that this was due out in October 2006, then pushed it back, and back, and back. It came out this week. Turns out that DC wasn't supposed to solicit until it was finished, which took a while. And looking at the finished product, that's not surprising. And it's still not really complete - there was supposed to be a 45 included containing two 1950s style pop songs that will be included in next year's pricey Absolute Edition, which will most likely find their way online in one way or another.

Anyway. I first started reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen at the end of the first six issue volume. It's a great concept, though not necessarily an original one (Google "Wold Newton" for more info.) -- the heroes of Victorian literature all exist in the same world and team up to fight for the British government. Every speaking character in volume one either previously exists in literature, or has been retro-engineered from from another character, such as Campion Bond, 007's grandfather. Many of the characters are familiar, such as Dracula's Mina Murray or Doctor Jeckyll, but there's obscure ones in there too, like Rosa Coote, who appeared in Victorian "stroke pamphlets."

Which is where the fun begins.

One of the best things about the series is reference-spotting, which has been made considerably easier by Jess Nevins, who has annotated the whole thing online, and in a series of books.

Which makes volume two considerably easier to digest. When volume two was orignally published, each issue had a section at the end called "The New Traveller's Almanac." This was purportedly a report compiled from various sources that served as a travel guide to the earth of literature. It's mind-blowing. Page after page of dense Victorian style prose with the occasional reference that you get (there;s a mention of a nine-pins loving sailor named Lebowsky who gets stranded in California in the early 1900s) and other that, well, make you thankful that someone like Nevins exists.

"The New Traveller's Almanac" expands the world of the League and The Black Dossier builds on that. Volume one and two are set in 1898 and cover a battle with Professor Moriarty and Fu Manchu, followed by the Martian invasion of War of the Worlds. The Black Dossier jumps forward sixty years to a post Big Brother Britain and finds the surviving heroes from the first two books, Mina Murray and Alan Quatermain, stealing the title documents from MI5 and then being chased by James Bond and Emma Peel, though for copyright reasons those two are never called directly by those names. That's it. It's a simple plot, but throughout the book we get what's in the dossier, which is being read by our heroes as they're on the run and includes:

A history and integration of gods from HP Lovecraft, the Bible, and every religion you can think of.
The life of Orlando
The first act of a lost Shakespeare play
The New Adventures of Fanny Hill
A PG Wodehouse story by way of Lovecraft, involving Jeeves, Wooster, and monsters
The first chapter of a Beat Generation novel

There's other stuff too and what's great is that Moore does a perfect pastiche of each style that he attempts, though I must admit that I have a hard time slogging through most Beat Generation stuff and haven't quite finished "The Crazy Wide Forever" yet.

So is it any good? As a whole? Well, frankly, after three years since volume two, and hearing Moore say that it's the best thing ever, initially it's a bit of a letdown. Initially. Yes, it's overstuffed and loaded with the trademark references, but the impression is there that Moore wants to do something more with the series than have it be just a funny little collection of adventure stories that comes out every few years. We seem to be headed into something a bit grander than what's come before and if nothing else, The Black Dossier serves as a bridge to that, which is probably the main reason that it's not called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume Three. That's officially due next year and is set to cover the entire 20th Century.

So, it should be fun to see where we're headed with this. The Black Dossier's a nice stopgap release, almost like an annual in the world of traditional comics, and I can't wait to see what's next.

2007-11-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

GOING POSTAL

So I went to the US Postal Museum with my sister yesterday. And we saw this, which I thought Jamee would like:

The Postal Museum is small, but nice. They hit you with the most interesting thing right up front -- a collection of postal items recovered from various disasters. A rusted mailbox from the Johnstown Flood, a mail carton from United 93, a letter sent along with delivered mail that was recovered from the World Trade Center. I had seen on a recent documentary that they have a postcard that survived the Hindenberg. Now, we've all seen the crash footage. How the hell does a postcard make it through that as anything other than ash?

Then we went to the Cap City Brewery for lunch.

Later, Kelly cleaned a pie. Jamee can tell you about that.

2007-11-17T07:02:00.000-05:00

MOORE LATER

My brain hurts.

I can't believe they brought in the Gollywog. Yet it makes me smile.

More later.

(Oh, I'm referring to this.)

2007-11-15T22:17:00.000-05:00

Doc Jay and Eightball are wasted...

FULL METAL JACKET
with audio commentary
My House
DVD
11/13/07 & 11/15/07

I realized while watching the commentary on Full Metal Jacket that it's been almost ten years since I've actually sat down and watched the whole thing. And I love this movie. I think the last time I saw it was at the Naro as part of the Warner Bros Fest. It's weird seeing it in the theater. For one, it's in mono. And that takes some getting used to. And on the big screen it's a hell of a lot more intense than it is on video.

And it's pretty intense on video.

The new DVD, which is apparently only available as part of the new Kubrick box set looks good. It's the first time that it's been available letterboxed, which isn't absolutely necessary because it was shot open-matte, but there's something about the images in this that are enhanced by the cropping. Kubrick made movies to be seen in theaters and for Full Metal Jacket the rectangle works better than the square.

The commentary is interesting, though I don't know if I'll go through it again. There are a few good tidbits in it. I had no idea that the Vietnam scenes were filmed first, before the Parris Island stuff. But it makes sense - why wait around for Matthew Modine and Arliss Howard to grow out their hair when you can shoot the bits where their hair's grown out and then shave it off for boot camp.

And it was pointed out that Pyle and Animal Mother are mirrors of each other and that Animal Mother is what Pyle would have become if the machine of the film's first act had worked. We don't know anything about any of these characters prior to the moment they appear on screen. There's no backstory and few hints about what or who they were prior to the Corps. It's intriguing to look at Animal Mother's helmet decoration, where he wrote "I am become death." He's quoting the Bhagavad-Gita or Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad-Gita. Either way it's not necessarily something you would expect someone like the character as presented would know (though that does make assumptions and stereotypes the guy) and raises the question - what was this guy like before?

And what will he be like when he goes back?

2007-11-15T19:00:00.000-05:00

TAGNABBIT

Tagged by Kelly

4 jobs I've had:
Projectionist
Bookseller
Editorial Assistant
Ghost tour guide

4 movies I love to watch over and over:
Raising Arizona
Fight Club
Shaun of the Dead
The Incredibles

4 places I have lived:
Hampton, VA
Harrisonburg, VA
Ashburn, VA
Brunswick, MD

4 TV shows I enjoy watching:
The Office
30 Rock
Battlestar Galactica
Spaced

4 places I have been:
Edinburgh, Scotland
Dublin, Ireland
Savannah, GA
Akron, OH

4 websites I visit daily:
www.cnn.com
www.comicbookresources.com
www.neilgaiman.com
www.aintitcool.com

4 favorite foods:
Tuscan Meatballs
Mediterranean Lentils with Feta
Jambalaya
Chili with Spatzle

4 places I would rather be:
Scotland
Somewhere else in Scotland
Another place in Scotland
Scotland

4 blogs I'm tagging:
Jamee
Emily
Maria
The unknown blog of nothingness

2007-11-12T19:43:00.000-05:00

Three Kings

"The Gingerbread Girl" - Esquire, July 2007
"Ayana" - The Paris Review, Fall 2007
"Mute" - Playboy, December 2007

Didn't Stephen King say he was retiring after The Dark Tower was finished? By my count, there's been four novels (The Colorado Kid, Cell, Lisey's Story, and Blaze) with a fifth due out in January (Duma Key). And there's been at least three new short stories in magazines this year. I had a copy of the Esquire issue but hadn't read the story. I picked up The Paris Review and Playboy this past Friday. And yesterday I sat down and read all three stories.

I suppose the big question about King's post Dark Tower work is whether or not they tie into The Dark Tower. Of the three new stories, "Mute" is the only one that explicitly ties into King's earlier work, with the narrator mentioning that he's headed to Derry, Maine. I don't think any of the stories rank with classic King, but they're interesting. "Ayana" is a short, sad tale of healing and death that fits into the mode of stories like The Green Mile and "The Reach." It also feels a bit like Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job. Just not goofy. "The Gingerbread Girl" starts out like of of King's recent more literary stories and then takes a nasty left turn and becomes something very different. Of the three, it's the weakest.

The most interesting one of the bunch is "Mute." It's a fairly slight story, basically a mash-up of two story types: "Guy goes into a confessional" and "Guy picks up a hitchhiker." What's interesting is how King tells the story. Basically we have one guy telling one story, but it cuts between him telling a priest in a confessional and him telling a deaf-mute hitchhiker in his car. About halfway through you can kind of tell where it's going, but it's fascinating how it gets there. It's nicely constructed and I think it's great that the experimental type story is not the one in the literary magazine, but the one in Playboy.

2007-11-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

A Link for Jamee

5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen

Mmmm, brain parasites...

2007-11-11T19:10:00.000-05:00

Where's My Super Suit?

The Incredibles
My House
DVD
11/11/07

I love this movie. And I love that Tilda loves this movie. She woke up from her nap this afternoon asking for 'credibles. So I put it in while I made dinner. So technically I didn't actually watch the whole thing. But I've seen it enough times that I don't really need to. And it never gets boring.

So Brad Bird has managed to make three practically perfect movies in a row, with this one sandwiched between The Iron Giant and Ratatouille. For my money this is the best thing Pixar has ever released. I know people who don't care for it. They also seem to not like Ratatouille. I don't get it. And they all seem to love Cars. Anyway, Bird makes great movies that would not work in any medium besides animation. Look at the scene where Dash is being chased by Syndrome's henchmen and he's discovering just how fast he can run. One of the best action scenes ever put on film. No argument. Imagine it being done in live action. Wouldn't work -- though maybe I'm just thinking about how lousy the young Clark Kent running alongside the train effects looked in 1978 because I just finished watching a documentary about Superman. Lemme think. Nah, wouldn't work.

So what we basically have with The Incredibles is Watchmen for kids. But it's not really for kids, is it? (Even though my two-year-old loves it.) I don't think that Bird has an intended audience in mind when he makes movies (More on that when I finally get around to showing Jamee Ratatouille). He's smart and the work reflects that. I mean, this guy worked on The Simpsons when it was good. I mean really good. Back in the episodes where you can still remember quotes and stuff. Sigh, poor Simpsons.

Right, where was I? The Incredibles. Best superhero movie made so far. Grown-up entertainment that kids can enjoy and can hold a two-year-old's attention for two full hours. I love this movie. Have ever since I first saw it. And I'm glad my kid wants to watch something that doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out.

And dammit, the Watchmen movie had better be at least as half as smart as this.

2007-11-09T23:21:00.000-05:00

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

No Country For Old Men
Landmark E Street Theater
Washington, DC
35mm
11/9/07

First, a note on moviegoers. At movies like this there's almost always some asshole at the end who has to announce to the crowd that he just didn't get it. Then there's the girl who had no idea what she was getting into who got dragged in by boyfriend, husband, etc. She's the one who goes "awwww" every time a puppy or kitten shows up on screen and gets audibly upset when something bad happens to said animal. She was sitting next to me tonight. And I'm sorry, but if you've just been chased across the desert and had a pit bull sicced on you that is about to rip your throat out and you have a gun and the ability to use it... you shoot the fucker. You shoot it dead. You do not go "awwww."

So, how's the movie then? It's great. It's the best thing the Coens have done in years. Possibly the best thing they've ever done. It's a note-perfect adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel and at the same time definitely a Coen Brothers movie. Tonally it's closest to Fargo, but it's got the trademark weird haircuts, satchels full of cash, big men of power behind big desk, and so on, and so forth. And they're all from the novel.

The novel is probably the best thing I've read this year. It's brutal and gruesome. The movie is not quite as violent as the book. In particular, there's a death in the novel that sticks with me. There's half a hand held up with half a head behind it and blood and brains splattered on the wall behind. In the film it happens off screen and it's no less effective.

Which is one of the things that's so brilliant about the film. It follows the book nearly word for word (There's a few excisions and a couple of changes, but nothing major) and having read the book I knew exactly what was going to happen in any given scene. And it's still intense. There's a sequence that begins in a hotel that's one of the most perfectly constructed suspense scenes I've ever seen.

And having read the book I was ready for it to veer into anticlimax in the last third of the movie. The end of the book, the long conversation between the Sheriff and his cousin (who we've never seen before) struck me as being completely wrong. But McCarthy knows what he's doing and so do the Coens and the last scenes with the Sheriff cap the story perfectly. If you listen to him through the story he spends most of the time wearily regretting how times have changed and how he cannot understand the new ways the world is slipping into senseless violence. And then he's told at the end. This isn't new. The world has always been this way. It doesn't change.

There's going to be a lot of argument about the last scene and the Sheriff's last speech. It seems similar to the coda to Blood Meridian and I can't recall if it's actually in the book. It's odd and doesn't quite seem to fit. But to me it's simple. It tells us we haven't just been watching a chase movie, or a crime movie about a drug deal gone wrong. We have been watching myth.

2007-11-04T08:24:00.001-05:00

TAGGED, PART 2

So Maria tagged me and now I have to post eight random things about myself. Here goes.

1. I love my daughter and my nieces. But most other children make me twitch.
2. I tear up at the climax of Blade Runner. Every. Single. Time.
3. There is a picture of me in my high school yearbook where my name is listed at "Sambo Winning."
4. I can be connected to both Johnny Depp and Bela Lugosi in one step in the Kevin Bacon game.
5. I am deeply jealous of my father for getting to work on Terrence Malick's The New World for a week. He can be seen in the film for three seconds in the background of one shot, standing next to Christian Bale. I call it "Batman and Robinson."
6. There is a polaroid picture of me and two of my friends in a box in John Waters' house in Baltimore.
7. I have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey on TV, VHS, laserdisc, DVD, 35mm, and 70mm. I have not seen a 16mm print. That would be wrong.
8. I like zombie movies, but Jamee has made me like them more that I would have if I have never met her. I stood in line for two hours to get George Romero to sign her Dead posters for our dining room. And I do not regret it.

And I almost forgot. I tag:

Jamee & Kelly

2007-11-04T08:10:00.000-05:00

Everyone's going to say that the Robinsons are strange and they're going to be right!

FIDO
DVD
11/3/07

Wow. That was disappointing. I've been looking forward to Fido since I first heard about it a year ago. It's a zombie comedy set in an alternate 1950s where zombies have been domesticated and follows the story of young Timmy Robinson and his pet zombie Fido. It has a few good moments (I especially like the line quoted as the post title, but that's for personal reasons) and the general idea is great, but it's oddly inert and not particularly funny. It's been less that twelve hours sine we finished it, most of which were spent asleep, and the majority of Fido has slipped out of my head already.

2007-11-03T15:46:00.000-05:00

All these moments...

BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT

AMC/Loews Uptown 1
Washington DC
35mm
11/3/07

So they actually decided to expand the Blade Runner: The Final Cut release outside of New York and Los Angeles. Which is nice. In the DC area it's playing for a limited time at The Uptown, which along with The AFI Silver is about the best place to see a movie in the area. I've seen three versions of Blade Runner theatrically now (although I've only seen the original theatrical cut in 16mm at Grafton-Stovall when I was at JMU, so I'm not sure that it really counts) and I've never seen it look better that this. If I didn't know better, at times I could have sworn that it was DLP projection. It looks that good.

So, what's the verdict?

I don't think I ever need to see the Director's Cut again. Little mistakes are fixed and though it still strongly implies that Deckard is a replicant, it's clear that he wasn't originally part of Batty's group of escapees (although I'm not quite sure how Batty knows his name). It's still essentially the same movie as the director's cut and most of the little additions and fixes don't really change much, and many of them are not even noticeable if you don't know what you're looking for, which is actually a good thing. Blade Runner is still Blade Runner, no matter which version you see and the only real difference is whether or not Deckard is a replicant, talks over the damn thing, or has a happy ending.

Here's the breakdown:

1982 versions - Deckard's not a replicant. Deckard narrates. Happy ending.

1992 Director's Cut - Deckard's a replicant. Possibly formerly with Batty. No narration. Ambiguous ending.

2007 Final Cut - Deckard's a replicant. Never with Batty. No narration. Ambiguous ending.

Here's the thing. It doesn't matter whether or not Deckard is a replicant. It's not important. The real question is whether or not the replicants are human. Tyrell says that his company's goal is to make things "more human than human" and Batty's gang, murderous children that they are, are the only ones in the movie who seem to crave the live that all of the "real" people have had sucked out of them from living in, well, Blade Runner.

I have not seen the film since my daughter was born or my mother died. What struck me about the opening scene when Leon is being given the Voight-Kampff test that I've never really seen before is that he seems like a child who has been caught doing something wrong. I may have noticed it before, but never really seen it.

And Batty's death is heartbreaking. It shouldn't be. We've seen him do horrible things and been told he's done much worse. But at the final moment, with his last words to Deckard there is a palpable sense of sadness and loss. What are all these moments and memories that are gone? We'll never know.

2007-11-03T08:23:00.001-05:00

YOU'RE IT

Damn. I've been tagged twice in 24 hours, by Kelly and Maria. I'll do the easy one first.

Total number of books:

I believe the proper number is a shitload. Possibly a metric ton. A lot, at least.

Last book I read:

I'm currently rereading "The Mist," by Stephen King, which is technically a novella and part of a collection, but they've gone and blown up the typeface and published it as a standalone volume that sells for probably about the same price as Skeleton Crew (just checked-it's actually one buck cheaper if you pay full retail for the mass market paperback), which is silly. The last two books that I finished reading were Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, and Making Money, by Terry Pratchett. I think there may be another that I've forgotten, though.

Last book I bought:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, by Oliver Sacks. Bought it last night at Politics and Prose and then he signed it. Neil Gaiman's Absolute Sandman Volume 2 showed up in the mail yesterday, but I suppose I actually bought it earlier.

5 Meaningful Books:

1. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volumes 1 and 2, by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill - Forget the movie. It's a joke. And I'm cheating because this is two books, but I don't really care. For me this is everything that fiction can be, because everything in fiction is here, or has the potential to be here. The "New Traveler's Almanac" section in volume 2 alone will blow your mind.

2. Assassination Vacation, by Sara Vowell - The most impressive thing is that it makes you care about President Garfield. Or that I can never look at Oneida dishes again without suppressing a dirty little giggle. Or that I was giddy that Mathilda shares a birthday with Robert Todd Lincoln and wouldn't have made the connection if I hadn't read this. Or a hundred other things. It's a rare book that actually changed my perspective on quite a few things. Like dirty, dirty Oneida.

3. Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier - A beautiful, brutal novel of the Civil War. The film does it no justice whatsoever.

4. A Year at the Movies, by Kevin Murphy - So Kevin Murphy decided to see a movie a day, presented publicly, for a year. And then wrote a book about it. I recently reread it and it's a wonderful read about movies, movie-going, and life (insert MST3K style comment here).

5. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov - A beautiful book about a bad, bad thing. (Although Jamee is younger than me...) I bought this with me to jury duty hoping it would get me out of it in case it was a pedophilia case, but alas, 'twasn't.

And I tag:

Maria
&
Emily

2007-10-20T17:05:00.000-05:00

BECAUSE JAMES SAYS THAT I DON'T UPDATE NEARLY ENOUGH

Thank you, Amy.