Blades of Glory, John Adams, Fear & Trembling, Michael Clayton, & Richard III

Blades of Glory has a great comedic cast, full of people who are very funny in general, and it also has Will Ferrell and Jon Heder (and Coach, who is not funny). Just about everyone with a speaking part was someone I recognized, which made it all the more painful when Will Ferrell and Jon Heder got so much screen time and were so not funny. Anytime that Will Arnett and Amy Poehler were on screen, there was funny. And even the few scenes with Jenna Fischer and either Ferrell or Heder were funny, but put Ferrell and Heder together, and you get not funny. Plus, the homophobia in these films really bothers me. Maybe if someone made it funny, it would be less offensive, but haha, people might think they're gay just isn't cutting it comedically.

John Adams was long. And it was also great, Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney (who wasn't bad at all) along with the rest of the cast, including Tom Wilkinson, Steven Dillane, David Morse, and Sarah Polley, were all very strong. Famous people agree: it's worth your time.

Fear & Trembling is based on a memoir of a Belgian, born in Japan, who goes back to Japan to work for a large company as a translator and is put through a brutal lesson in Japanese culture. It's quite a terrible job, and apparently she stays there to prove them all wrong and to stare at her supervisor, an attractive Japanese woman, who is 29 and not married. Amelie starts out with actual jobs, then is broken down to an accountant, fails miserably at that (and ends up going crazy and doing naked gymnastics around her office late at night, with the help of a body double for Sylvie Testud), and then spends the rest of her contract year cleaning the bathrooms. It's insane that anyone would keep that job, but it did inspire her to write, which I can only assume is a good thing (I haven't read any of her before). I did have some problems with how someone is that incapable of typing numbers into a calculator, but who knows, maybe she was a little incompetant. And her debasement at the hands of her supervisor... horrible.

Michael Clayton is an extremely well-made film, with absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. The cast, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollock, and Tom Wilkinson, all turned in immaculate performances. In fact, the technical brilliance of it is somewhat distracting, as there wasn't much heart there, SPOILER until the final scene, where it completely kicked ass and made the film far better than a techically great thriller had any right to be. END SPOILER. Still, it does fit better in the "Best Picture" category than did Juno, even if I liked Juno more. That said, I have now seen four of the five from last year, and this is the first time this decade where I haven't had some serious problems with one of the five. I should be seeing Atonement sometime very soon, to see if that holds up. Usually there's a couple films I don't like, but I'm still missing two films from last years awards as well. And as long as no more movies like Crash win, I might actually stop complaining about them. Fat chance.

Richard III is famous for Laurence Olivier's performance, parodied many times over the years (I'm sort of a fan of Blackadder, but that may just be me). He is quite good, and Richard III is my favorite of the Histories, easily the worst of the three sections of Shakespeare's plays. In case you were wondering, it's Tragedies (King Lear, then Hamlet), Comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream, then Much Ado about Nothing), and then Histories (Richard III, then Henry V). Richard III is just such a delightfully happy romp. Of a scheming hunchback who murders anyone who gets in his way. And has some good soliloquies.

Destroyer at Black Cat 4/25

I feel like I don't have that much to actually say about the concert. So I'll start with the meal beforehand. We ate at Rice, full of delicious Asian fusion. There were green tea dumplings, ginger tempura (bean sprouts, pumpkin, and papaya!), and coconut grapefruit shrimp. There were also pumpkin empanadas, not something I would have expected, but were apparently good as well. And the worst pad thai I've ever had. Weird that they could do these amazing things with tempura but would horribly mangle the pad thai. It was just a sort of thick peanut sauce that didn't match the rest of the pad thai. But I'm not really a food blogger, so I'm not particularly useful when it comes to that.

On to the actual show, and opener Andre Ethier. Who is not the Dodgers outfielder, but the Canadian musician. If anyone ever wondered whether the Canadians were capable of making bad music and somehow forgot Celine Dion, just know that Andre Ethier had a rock flautist who also played saxophone. There is no such thing as rock flute. And that is the surest sign of a crappy band. But it just kept getting worse and worse, with some horrendously bad lyrics about black lips and Hebrew noses, and music that sounded like a fifth rate Dylan impersonator who just got Greetings from Asbury Park and thinks that the band would be better if only Clarence Clemons had a bigger role in the band and sucked harder. Really, I was this close to heckling them. So horribly horribly terrible. The Maestro and Tomahawk Chop agreed, but for some reason, MBG actually liked them. I can't figure that out.

Setlist from someone on Last.fm, as I failed again as a Merge fanboy, even though I own all their albums and EPs. I don't know them enough to say that I was disappointed by the setlist, as there was no way that I was going to know all the titles (all albums save Trouble in Dreams were purchased at once in a great bit of reasonableness and Merge fanboyism).

Rubies
Dark Leaves Form a Thread
Rivers
Foam Hands
From Oakland to Warsaw
Trembling Peacock
Leopard of Honor
My Favorite Year
Crystal Country
Tonight Is Not Your Night
-----------
Certain Things You Ought To Know
Hey, Snow White

I only wished for Shooting Rockets, or even possibly a Bejar track from the Pornos, but I enjoyed the set anyway. Started a little late, as he didn't go on until 11:10ish, but he played for around 70 minutes, and was his normal shy self, but didn't seem overly drunk.

Who was drunk were the douchebags of the show: those guys who spent a good portion of the show trying to see how high they could get the bench on the back of the raised section off the ground by sitting on one edge. And then they'd fall off and it would make a big slamming sound. I hated them. Also: how could people not sell out the Black Cat on a Friday night for Destroyer? Did Andre Ethier really scare off everyone?

Overall, I'd put the opener as one of the worst bands I've ever seen, the food as sometimes delicious (tempura!) and sometimes crap (pad thai), and Destroyer as probably the least fun show I've been to in April, but when the earlier shows are New Pornos/Okkervil River, Spoon, and Jens Lekman, it's pretty difficult. And I'm seeing some more amazing shows over the next few weeks.

King Corn, Breach, Hot Fuzz, & Juno

King Corn is a documentary about corn. And if you do a search for King Corn on the IMDB, the first hit is Ron Jeremy. That was strange, although supposedly he is "The Porn King", which is somewhat close. But the movie itself is disturbing, telling of two Yale grads who head back to Iowa to grow an acre of corn, find out just how much the corn business has messed up our country, and how the large subsidies have not helped. Again, it didn't really have anything new for those of us who've been against farm subsidies and high-fructose corn syrup for years, but the making of the corn syrup was probably the most interesting. That just doesn't seem right. The two leads... (what are their names?) made no impression on me at all. In fact, I had to read the IMDB just to remember who they were.

Breach was filmed in DC, always fun to play the "I've been there" game with a movie. And hey, I remember why I like Ryan Phillippe, because when he's not making crap like I Know What You Did Last Summer and 54, he's making interesting films. And Caroline Dhavernas needs more work. And not work like the weird-ass Tulse Luper Suitcases. Man, Peter Greenaway is weird. Billy Ray may be responsible for some crap (Color of Night is mostly famous for little Bruce on screen, and somehow making Jane March (that terrible, terrible actress) famous in the US for a little while), but he's done some good stuff in the last five-ish years, as Shattered Glass and Breach were very good, and Flightplan was far better than it had any right to be. And Chris Cooper was outstanding, and I didn't hate Laura Linney, only one of which was unexpected. Certainly a movie to see.

Hot Fuzz interestingly enough is filmed in places I've been in England, including a pub in the town where my great aunt and uncle lived for many years. So that was interesting. And it was very funny. Although my love for zombie films is much stronger than my love for 70s and 80s (and Point Break) cop films, so that probably had something to do with me not caring it as much. But Timothy Dalton was great, and the joke of the policemen (Martin "Tim Canterbury" Freeman, Steve "Alan Partridge" Coogan, and Bill "I'm in too many awesome things to count" Nighy) was fun for me, being a fan of all three.

Juno has a little bit of annoyance for me, a mythology nerd. When she's talking about how she was named, she says that Juno was Zeus's wife. Which, ignoring the fact that it was common law if anything, is wrong due to Zeus being in Greek mythology and Juno being in Roman mythology. In transferring the gods from Greek to Roman, most have a direct linkage: Zeus to Jupiter, Hera to Juno, Ares to Mars, Aphrodite to Venus, and so on, but they are also slightly different. But the main thing is that she mixed Greek with Roman mythology.

Ok, after that little bit of nerdosity, I feel I can get down to the movie itself. If "Twee" was in the dictionary, the first definition would be If You're Feeling Sinister (I mean, Tigermilk is also twee, but thinking about it again, Electronic Renaissance, while a great song, isn't very twee), and the second definition would be Juno. And I officially find The Moldy Peaches to be too annoying for me. I do wonder which Sonic Youth album she bought that was "just noise". Because some of their albums are quite terrible. But their cover of Superstar (first brought to my attention when, interestingly enough, Jeffrey Combs in The Frighteners also loved the song) is just an amazing cover of the song.

As a fan of Alias (and Dude, Where's My Car? a vastly underrated (by most other people) movie), I wasn't surprised by how good Jennifer Garner was, or how much of a dick that talented Jason Bateman was. And Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J.K. Simmons, and Allison Janney were all good, and Rainn Wilson's convenience store clerk was funny.

And for those keeping track, yes, "a thirty-something graphic designer with a cool Asian girlfriend who kicks ass on the bass guitar" is something of my dream.

The New Pornographers & Okkervil River at 9:30 4/14

Being a huge fan of the New Pornographers, and it having been almost six months since I last saw them, I figured it was about time for them to come through. Luckily, they agreed, decided to have Okkervil River open for them, and bring Neko along (but not Dan, who's touring with Destroyer). Unfortunately for me, and those of us who bought the tickets early, before there was a Tuesday show, Neko got sick and missed Monday night's set. But it was only a slight difficulty, as Kathryn Calder (still hot, and apparently some gay guy agrees with me? and he also does an interview with Carl that touches on some interesting questions) was more than capable of not making me miss Neko. I was disappointed, since I'm seeing Destroyer next week, I didn't need to see Dan again, but Neko missing one night, and it happened to be this one, was the suck.

This is going to continue to be sort of all over the place. I left my phone in the car with my coat (the coat was on purpose, the phone not), so you miss out on my attempt to do a setlist. Basically, the doors were at 7, and there was no small opener (which is amazing, because Okkervil River is not an opener, although I've had that issue before (plus gratuitous slap at Hillary Clinton!)), which meant that Okkervil River was on at 8. I also had the exact same issue as at that show, as my shoes were ridiculously uncomfortable for standing up for three hours. And yet, I never learn, and wore the same uncomfortable shoes as over two years ago (admittedly, they're the same brand and model, but not the exact same shoes), but again, it didn't matter.

I didn't know that Okkervil River was also missing some people, although I did catch that it was Charles from the Wrens on guitar. I have heard all their albums, and I certainly loved their last two, but I can't say I was a fan who would be able to do a setlist. So, sorry, but they did play A Stone, Black, Our Life Is Not a Movie but Maybe, Unless It's Kicks, and No Key No Plan. All of which rocked to the appropriate level. And the drummer was sort like Animal, in that he drummed well but waved his hair around like crazy and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. When the band seems to be enjoying themselves, it helps a lot.

The New Pornos came out, and rocked a lot. The audience didn't entirely agree, but screw them. The setlist wasn't all that different from last time, and I will never be happier about alcoholism than when I'm singing along to The Slow Descent into it. But basically a not very surprising setlist, even if they did pull out Jessica Numbers during the second encore, and introduced it as their most prog song ever. Although they opened their first encore with ELO's Don't Bring Me Down, proving, once and for all, that I know all the words to songs I didn't think I'd heard in years, before they started to play it. Good for me? but I definitely saw that video at some point so... I guess I listened to it in the last month? I certainly have an immense amount of useless information up in my brain. There were a couple of Dan songs, sung by Carl and Kurt, who were able to approximate Dan, but they were slightly off. Maybe not drunk enough?

During a quiet part, and I think because Neko wasn't there, someone in the crowd screamed out, "I love you Synthesizer Girl!" (Whoops, thanks, V.) Which led to Carl going off on a riff about how Blaine was Synthesizer Boy, and that they all had grappling hooks and thus were all superheroes. It was one of the few bits of banter I remembered, but he did discuss Neko not being there, and it being his birthday (which, according to Wiki, made it his 40th birthday). This lead to a predictable terrible version of Happy Birthday (is there a song out there designed to be sung more often that is as terrible as Happy Birthday? I don't think so), which Carl referred to as being a round. He wasn't too far off.

In a random bit of trivia, according to Wiki, Todd Fancey, goofy dancer and all, portrayed the voice of Hunter in Dinner Party, the most awkward (and therefore awesome) episode of The Office ever.

Apparently the douchebag of the show (not that I actually saw her) was Angela Valdez of the City Paper. Yes, she of the front page Late Night Shots article that ruined any feeling of schadenfreude over them ever for me. And I'm not the only one. Seriously, the WCP is worthless in general, but Valdez in particular. As stated earlier, Okkervil River, Will Sheff's emover aside, was awesome, and their last two albums basically put any reservations I had about the band aside. And there is no way that someone actually enjoying the set and saying "Fuck Yeah" or singing along can possibly be worse than the "I'm too cool for people who are enjoying the concert" air that she clearly had. In all my years of concert going experience, I have actively heckled one band, the openers for Yo La Tengo (I'm pretty sure it was the 9/18/00 show at the Cradle, if someone wants to confirm that I hated those openers rather than some other band). Then I realized that the lead singer's girlfriend was standing in front of me, and I realized it was a total dick move, and I haven't heckled since, no matter how much I might think they suck. Like the Walkmen last week, I didn't enjoy them, but I showed my displeasure by snarky comments, barely heard by the people I was standing next to and not screaming or clapping. But I wouldn't actively leave due to the band sucking, unless I had actually gone to see Superchunk opening for the Get-Up Kids, and then I probably would have sat through that as well. Leaving due to being exhausted after a long day of work is different. But I still want to apologize to John Vanderslice and The Clientele, two bands I like, for being tired. Plus, I sort of was at Vanderslice to see Portastatic, rather than him.

Spoon at Sonar 4/11

Alternate title: I only get my rocks off while I'm seeing Spoon

So MBG, V, SH, and I made the long trek to Baltimore to see Spoon. We had pretty good Korean beforehand, because Spoon wasn't scheduled to go on until 11:15. Which is ridiculous. Anyway, I forced MBG to listen to classical music while I attempted to relax and hope that I would be fine at the concert after being exhausted. I was, and we got there after White Rabbit, but right as The Walkmen were starting. We all struggled to come up with the most appropriate way to describe them: Tucker Carlson with Bob Dylan's voice fronting the Strokes but sucking was my personal choice. They really weren't good. And the sound sucked, and we started to badmouth Sonar about it. The main issue with Sonar is that it isn't nearly as good as the 9:30, as it's on one level, with big pillars and poor ventilation (so frakkin' hot), so they have to set up large video screens so that half the audience can see the stage. It's pretty ridiculous. Not nearly as awesome as where we saw The Pipettes, the bar area to the right of the entrance. Anyway, we originally were not happy with the venue, and I was actually hoping that The Walkmen would cut their set short so that I could just relax and not have people around for a while. They really weren't bad, it's just that they were aggressively mediocre and the frontman's voice was crap. Sort of like my singing, for those who have heard it. After they finished, the venue started to play awesome early 60s songs, like Needle in a Haystack by the Velvelettes, Keep Your Hands off My Baby by Little Eva, and the like, which is guaranteed to get me in a good mood. Then Spoon came out at 11:05, ten minutes early. Also making me happy. But I had no idea what was about to come.

Back in 2003, the last time I saw Spoon live, I had been hoping to see them play Stay, Don't Go ever since I first heard it (in fact, I wasn't particularly impressed with Kill the Moonlight when I first heard it, except for that song, but by the third listen I had changed my mind), and here's what I had to say about that show way back then: "Spoon setlist: All the Pretty Girls Go to the City, Small Stakes, Metal School, Lines in the Suit, Utilitarian, The Minor Tough, Take the Fifth, Something to Look Forward To, Paper Tiger, Someone Something (with everyone doing the handclaps), Everything Hits at Once, Back to the Life, Chips and Dip, The Way We Get By, Me and the Bean, Car Radio, Take a Walk, Vittorio E., and then the encore of Fitted Shirt, Anything You Want, No You're Not, and Jonathon Fisk. Sometime in there, Britt said it was the best show they'd done this tour. And it was a damn good show. Nothing from Telephono, and only one thing from their EPs (the great Chips and Dip), but it was reasonably well spread out between their three most recent albums. I was enjoying the sitting for the show, and it was well played." So I've seen them play a lot of stuff from their two earliest albums, and I certainly don't need to see them play those again, but man, Series of Sneaks is a great album. Anyway, back to Friday night's show.

They came out and started right in on Chicago at Night, not the way I would have started the show, although it was just a warmup for what was to be one of the best pure rock shows I've seen in a long time. Just totally on, no blather between songs, songs were played with horns even when they didn't originally have them to add to the sound, and they even played Stay, Don't Go, although it was sadly lacking in beatboxing. I didn't recognize the Paul Simon cover, although I knew it was a cover (listed as such in my setlist on my phone), and they played Nefarious, from Telephono. The end of their main set... well, basically after Back to the Night was totally awesome, but bringing out the horns for Cherry Bomb, Valentine, and Underdog was just perfect. I knew they had to play Underdog in the main set, because it was pretty clear that many people were just waiting for that (and I'm not saying at all that I wasn't one of them), so the last song was pretty expected by me. The first encore had no horns, but I did hear someone scream out Anything You Want about five seconds before they started to play, so clearly one person was happy. SH and V headed to the back after the first encore, and I think MBG was about to join them before I noticed the lights hadn't come on, the music hadn't started up again, I wanted to see if they had anything else up their sleeves, and Britt hadn't even thanked us for being there. They came out again, pretty quickly this time, and brought the horn section. I said to MBG that they didn't have any more songs with horn parts in them. Then they made me insanely happy by starting in on the riff to Rocks Off. I think I had known they cover it, but it wasn't near the front of my mind. The first track (and probably best-known song, although that may be Tumbling Dice) from Exile on Main Street had me even more excited than the previous songs, it was a pretty damn good way to end it, and I was completely blown away. Interestingly, they've also done The Smiths' Panic, which probably would have made me about as happy.

Full setlist (90 minutes including the encore breaks):
Chicago at Night
Rhthm & Soul
Stay, Don't Go
Jonathan Fisk
The Delicate Place
Nefarious
The Ghost of You Lingers
Peace Like a River (Paul Simon)
Don't You Evah
Don't Make Me a Target
Someone Something
Back to the Night
I Summon You
I Turn My Camera On
Finer Feelings
You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb
The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine
The Underdog
-------
Anything You Want
The Beast & Dragon, Adored
Small Stakes
-------
Rocks Off (Rolling Stones)

I sang along to every song, bounced, and just was very happy throughout. According to their setlist seen here, they just whipped out whatever from the long list on the right for the encores. So, short of Lafitte Don't Fail Me Now, they did a great job with the encores. These are also the only pics I can find of the show.

Here's a video of You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb, and I definitely agree that the show was loud as hell. And, thanks to the awesomeness that is the internets, I'm downloading an audio recording of this show. You know you want it. Stupid Comcast and their blocking of bittorrent traffic is making this go ridiculously slow.

Tattoed Life & Fiend without a Face

Tattoed Life is a Seijun Suzuki yakuza film. It's also, notoriously, the first film to get him a warning from Nikkatsu, the studio that fired him after the brilliant Branded To Kill, and the film starts out completely normal at the beginning of the Showa period with two brothers involved in a yakuza murder and then going on the run. They end up at a construction camp and try to stow away to Manchuria but fail. So they end up falling for the wife and daughter of the construction organization head. The only strange thing throughout the first hour is the policeman's bright red shoes. Then, when the older brother goes to fight his yakuza enemies, it goes all arty. A shot from below a glass floor of fighting, lots of bright blue and yellow doors, fancy lighting, and just in general, think of the House of Blue Leaves sequence of Kill Bill, Vol. 1 with less blood, and a less hot vengeance seeker. There is no doubt in my mind that Tarantino saw this film before making that one.

Fiend without a Face is one of the first films to include gory effects. And, in comparison with today's films, or even older films like Romero's Dead trilogy or the Evil Dead trilogy, they pale in comparison. But compared to The Blob, for example, it's outstanding. Certainly the film is basically crazy professor performs crazy experiments which with the help of a nuclear reactor involved in long distance radar experiments disembodied brains and spinal cords move around by themselves and eat brains. You know, that age old story. Of course, the acting is nothing special, and the film only lasts 75 minutes, so it's over quickly, but it's worth it for the final scene, of the brains attacking our heroes in a scene that's basically just like Night of the Living Dead save it's brains not zombies. If you ever wanted to see brains attacking people, this is the movie for you. Also, note that this is a Criterion Collection DVD.

It's weird that both films were nothing particularly special until the final act. Both of which were very special.

Bright Lights, Big City

Bright Lights, Big City is a novella by Jay McInerney, the first of the "cocaine culture" novels, about yuppies involved with the drug culture, trying to find their way in society. I was initially very disconcerted by the book being written in the second person (I can't think of another book like that), but eventually I got over that and started to enjoy it, and I actually liked it, and the main character, more than Bret Easton Ellis's works. Of course, he's a dick, completely self-absorbed, self-destructive, but I just felt like he was so close to figuring out what he needed to do to turn his life around, and the writing style was hilarious. Full of clever bits of philosophical references, a ferret, a bald chick, and sarcasm, I enjoyed it immensely.

I then moved the movie to the top of my queue, and I have to say that Michael J. Fox wasn't at all what I pictured for the unnamed narrator (cleverly named Jamie Conway in the movie), nor Phoebe Cates as Amanda, the model, but Swoozie Kurtz was just what I pictured, and Kiefer Sutherland was also just right. Then again, apparently, Tom Cruise was up for the role, but he would have been even worse. The movie fits in most of the main plot points (even the coma baby in a freaky scene), but cuts them slightly short, and plays the ferret for slapstick more than the novel. Plus, an early David Hyde Pierce performance, as a bartender. But the music was mainly terrible 80s crap (except for True Faith), and the DVD was fullscreen. What the hell?

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood should be retitled "There Will Be Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis". And then left it at that. One of the all-time great performances. Ok, now that that's out of the way, can we get on to how depressing that movie is? As much as I loved it, it was pretty unrelenting miserableness for 2.5 hours. And that ending just made it all the worse.

Here is the thing though. No Country for Old Men deserved the Oscar. And you will never get me to agree with you if you say that There Will Be Blood was a better film. They may be 1-2 over the last few years (and certainly, only the Departed ranks up there in American films during that time), but No Country for Old Men was nearly perfect. This suffers from no female characters, and really, only two characters are developed at all, Daniel and Eli. I wish that more films had women who weren't just there to be plot points or flash some tit, because it's depressing to think of the gender imbalance in Hollywood films. And man, just look at this post, from XKCD (one of the best webcomics ever), about the gender imbalance among the highest grossing films. Admittedly, I am not the typical moviegoer, but the trend is clear: Hollywood is chauvinistic, and there are too few strong women in movies. I also wouldn't mind seeing a River Tam kicking ass film.

Anyway, I felt the film just was all about greed and a very evil person, but without any leavening that No Country for Old Men had.

I do, however, want to drink a milkshake (drink it all up). Which is why, last night, in the middle of the ending scene, I had a strong desire to run downstairs and eat my mint chocolate cookie ice cream, purchased just for this occasion. Which lead me to staring at my fridge magnets and last night's post.

Anyway, next on my plate: a post comparing No Country for Old Men and New York Minute, again two stories of evilness and greed. I expect that No Country for Old Men will be in for a much tougher battle this time.

Listen to the colour of your dreams

It's time for the latest edition of Caseus Velox's magnetic fridge poetry. This is thanks to the fact that I still buy music, and I got a great set of magnetic poetry with the newest Destroyer album (because Merge Records is awesome and always give great stuff with every order, and there's a Merge Records magnetic piece included). Some great words in there, although the lack of prepositions is a serious limit to my writing skills (read putting magnets in random order until it makes sense). Anyway, here's a lot of those good words in a poem I'm going to entitle "Messed up on a Tangent That Was Wrong".

shivers, it pirouettes high around
flowing breeze of alabaster flowers.
the horizon sipping flame at sunrise,
torched sky, rivers in my favorite eyes.
ashen leaves, diamond foam, blind love.
thread cut, beware first night's dreams,
sadness, ecstasy form disgusting hands
wringing terrible applause from amateurs.

I actually wrote this in the middle of watching There Will Be Blood and eating Mint Chocolate Cookie. Apparently, a good evening.

I probably won't write any more poetry unless someone actually complements me on it, or I get more prepositions, articles, and other small words. And the "u" was intentional, as it's a lyric from one of my favorite songs ever, "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Jens Lekman at Black Cat 4/2

I unfortunately wasn't into Jens Lekman enough last October to go to the show. Somehow. Because it was back in February of 2006 that I first heard Jens (thanks iTunes!), the still my favorite Lekman song, I Saw Her in the Anti-War Demonstration. Somehow that didn't correlate into love for the Swede until November of last year. A few months after I first heard Night Falls over Kortedala. I have no clue why.

Anyway, when I had the chance this time, I said I was going and made it, going with MBG, Vermonstrous, Meatball Surgery, Banana Flux, and Tweaks. Gotta say I pretty much agree with her about the show. I missed the openers, and don't entirely mind. Jens himself was outstanding. I'm actually listening to a set from February in Copenhagen that has a pretty similar setlist, and it's reminding me of how fun it was. Plus, it's a hell of a lot better than listening to Billy Packer talk about how much smarter he is than Einstein and how that player just made the stupidest play ever and probably should not have been in the game at that time. Man, I hate him. Anyway, I really wish I wasn't tired as hell and I had waited around to see him play the third encore somewhere outside (probably, that's what I'm guessing from this interview). Because he was very enjoyable.

Pictures are available here at Brightest Young Things, the blog that makes me feel dirty every time I link to it, but they do seem to have someone at pretty much every show I go to. You can always check out Youtube as well, getting you things like A Little Lost from the show, with Jens on the Kalimba, and the second best thing at the show, A Postcard to Nina (not from the same show, but still the extended and hilarious expansion). But the best thing was The Opposite of Hallelujah. Just an outstanding song, fun and bouncy, and then when he breaks into Gimme Just a Little More Time, it was pretty much amazing. It happens at the 2:58 mark of this clip and gives the song a completely unneeded, but still awesome, kick.

And this begins the string of pretty much one show a week until the end of May. Or so, sometimes it's a couple in one weekend, or maybe a week and half between concerts.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Mommie Dearest, The Color Purple, Portrait of Hell, & Woman Is the Future of Man

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a Japanese film about a widow who has to find a way to live and support various members of her family. I found it interesting as a look at the life of a hostess in the post-war years, with the men willing to pay ridiculous amounts for companionship. Somehow it's not as disturbing as The Great Happiness Space, but that could just be that I'm a guy. I'd never seen another film by Mikio Naruse or starring Hideko Takamine, but they both do a great job. You really feel the heartbreak of this woman struggling to make ends meet in a terrible

Mommie Dearest has the famous line about coat hangers, stars Faye Dunaway and Diana Scarwid, and is utter trash. At least it doesn't have Bette Davis, so it's far less annoying than What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but it's just mean-spirited. Maybe I just didn't care for the mother or the daughter. Wait, that's not an or. Or a maybe.

The Color Purple was a terrible decision. Spielberg, a Jew from Cincinnati, directing a film that's quintessentially black. As a Jew from Cincinnati, I think it's very clear that picking Spielberg to direct it was a terrible idea. I have no idea what it was like to be a black person in the south in the 30s. And that shot going in to the mailbox was just too much. The constant incest, the beatings, and Whoopi didn't help either. So melodramatic that I'm not at all surprised it didn't win any Oscars. Just goes back to remind me that Titanic did. Which was, and always will be, a travesty.

Portrait of Hell looks like it was filmed entirely on soundstages. And thus has the same sort of feel of all films shot on soundstages: very few shots from below and everything has just this too clean feel. But those same limitations add to the feeling of claustrophobia of people stuck in a foreign land. Also, it continues the mini-theme of parents being overprotective of their daughters. No incestual themes in this one though. Lots of great color, ghosts, and impressiveness. And twistedness. Hubris and greed always seem to get punished pretty darn severely in these type of films. It certainly fits the actual tragic structure very well. It's based on a novel by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who also wrote the stories Rashomon was based on. I like him, and I should buy Jay Rubin's translations of 18 of his stories. Even though I have seven of them already. Jay Rubin is that good. Ooh, and it has an introduction by Haruki Murakami. Hmmm, what else can I buy that would put it over the $25 Amazon limit? 30 Rock Season 1, it is.

Woman Is the Future of Man had almost illegible subtitles. Not as bad as Green Snake (which I still haven't seen), but I had to strain to see them. Tiny little white subtitles are not good. Portrait of Hell had multicolor subtitles (my preference) and were completely legible. And the movie itself was little better. 88 minutes of Koreans having sex with each other, one rape, a couple of blowjobs, a couple of attempted pickups of the same waitress, and a lot of just worthless people. I didn't like it at all. It felt like a pretentious sex comedy without the comedy. And you gotta think that the boorish director probably reflects the director himself. He seems to have a lot of people working in film in his movies. I might try one other of his films, but it's not a very auspicious introduction to Hong Sang-soo.

Peter & the Wolf, The Aura, & Running with Scissors

Peter & the Wolf is the Oscar winning stop-animated modern day short of the Prokofiev work. I like the little twists they added to the story, with the bird's balloon and the bullies. Made it seem much more interesting. And the animation is really impressive, although not up to the standards of Wallace and Gromit. Still, definitely watchable, and at only 30 minutes long, you should be able to find time to watch it yourself. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a great way to introduce yourself to one of the most famous pieces of music.

The Aura was the last film by Fabián Bielinsky, writer-director of the twisty Nine Queens. I think I thought it was about a guy who got migraines getting involved in a heist, but it was about an epileptic taxidermist with a photographic memory getting involved in a heist. It wasn't nearly as good as Nine Queens, and it never quite felt right to me.

Running with Scissors was depressing. Are there people out there who are that messed up? And how old was Gwyneth Paltrow's character supposed to be? It has a great cast, but it just made me uncomfortable throughout. I think that I just can't relate to it at all.