Copyright Criminals, The IT Crowd, Tropic Thunder, & more TV notes

Copyright Criminals is worth it just for the amazing editing job on some video remix sequences, done by Eclectic Method. It's about the use of sampling in music, with slimy entertainment lawyers and notoriously pissy Steve Albini (still frickin' talented) on the anti-sampling forces, and DJs, MCs, and other hip hop/funk artists on the pro-sampling side, including Miho Hatori, Matmos, Public Enemy, Mix Master Mike, De La Soul, Negativland, George Clinton, Danger Mouse. Every time they start showing the mixed songs, they just edit together footage of the artists to match the mixing, which is really an incredible editing job. Were it not a pretty fascinating look at how you structure from samples to finished song. May not be the most in-depth look at it, but probably the best sampling documentary you will ever see. If you have any interest in this at all, you owe it to yourself to get a copy of it and take one hour out of your day to see this. I can't recommend this highly enough to anyone interested.

I also watched, over the last two weeks, the entire run of the British sitcom, The IT Crowd. As an anglophile, along with a former IT person, I loved it, but probably a lot more than Ms. Albright, who loved Moss most of all. Who is a great character, and I have another reason to hate the WGA strike. Besides killing Pushing Daisies (although who knows if it could have kept increasing in ratings had it come back), it killed the American version of this, which had a more traditionally attractive Jen (who also probably would have had a less annoying voice), but brought in the original Moss, which would have helped. And Roy, well, Roy would have been played by Joel McHale. Which would have meant no Community, if this show were popular, but damnit, I want this to turn into something like The Office, where the show starts out in the same place, but goes on and gives me years of enjoyment.

Tropic Thunder is a waste. A waste of everything in it. It's not funny, it's way too long, Robert Downey, Jr. is offensive, and I wonder how the flip this movie was made. Seriously, the only thing that isn't completely frickin' worthless is Jay Baruchel, who whips out a Renny Harlin speech that was a brief bright spot. I really don't understand huge, high budget comedies. There's no way they're going to be funny, because they're going to be "funny" to the largest group possible. This rarely leads to anything remotely funny. Comedies should be low budget, and frequently low rated, because otherwise, you're not going for actual comedy, but for lowest comedy denominator.

Similarly to Tropic Thunder, Leno goes for the lowest comedy denominator. As disappointed as I am in Leno winning anything, I have to say that I'm kind of excited about Conan being forced to do something different. He's too wacky to really be comfortable in the Tonight Show. I'm more pissed at the winning of the people who laugh at things like the Dancing Itos. That all being said, knowing that he wasn't going to continue on the Tonight Show allowed Conan to do some absolutely brilliant stuff over the last two weeks, with some of the best stuff he's done on the Tonight Show. And his final speech was great, a classy call to doing good things and avoiding cynicism. Really, really classy way to go out.

Kung Fu Panda, Up, & Up!

Kung Fu Panda is the perfect example of a Dreamworks animation film: lots of action, comedy, huge famous cast, and much, much less than that should add up to. So many movies out there make me want to keep quoting Shakespeare's "Sound and Fury" bit, but that could just be the description of many films. I think there's a sequel coming out. Ugh.

Up, on the other hand, is Pixar at its best. Famous cast? Ed Asner? Christopher Plummer? Delroy Lindo? Not really, but everyone in it is great. And I, like anyone who has a heart, cried during the opening montage. I also cried when he looks at the scrapbook. Pixar has proven me right. Everything they do is brilliant, short of Cars, which I knew was going to suck. Dug is a great character, and the entire dogs with voices idea was excellently executed. Really, quite a great film. It's a shame that I have this strong desire to compare it to other Pixar films, but that would be a shame. Comparing just leads to madness: is Wall-E a better lead than Carl? What about Edna vs. Abominable Snowman? Could Ratatouille have been better without it's disturbingly pro-rat cooking stance? Sure, those are all minor questions, ignoring the overall greatness of their oeuvre.

Up! is the Russ Meyer film. You can tell it's a different film because of the exclamation mark. Beyond that, however, you can also tell it's a different film because of everything enumerated here. It's a Russ Meyer film, so there's huge tits, unfunny humor, and this one has Hitler. And Hitler's secret daughter. It's an extremely odd film, full of acrobatic sex (every sex scene is set in many, many different places, with no regard for realism), Hitler being sadomasochistic, multiple axings, bloody fake penii, multiple rapes, and absolutely no redeeming value. Not even as fun as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Sorry Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert.

Le Deuxième Souffle, Werckmeister Harmonies, & Osaka Elegy

Le Deuxième Souffle is another gangster film from Jean Pierre Melville, but unfortunately it's his worst gangster film. That's still quite a good film, but it just isn't as strong as his other films, as I think that it is missing a strong central performance, or particularly a good plot. I was kinda disappointed, but I figured that he couldn't keep up that 1.000 batting average on gangster films.

Werckmeister Harmonies starts out with a great scene (done in one shot) with the main character explaining the universe using others in the pub. Unfortunately, the film never quite reached that again, and instead goes into some mumbo jumbo about revolution and a huge taxidermied whale. And two hours after that first scene, the movie ends, and I'm not sure what the hell just happened.

Osaka Elegy is a look at the unfair double standard towards women and men in affairs. The boss goofs around, gets embarrassed, and mocked lightly by his coworkers, while the woman gets slowly destroyed, forced to have an affair and prostitute herself for the extra money to protect her father who is in trouble due to embezzlement. Of course, this is clearly extremely frakked up, and this is unfortunately something that we still deal with today, the stud/slut dichotomy that tortures young women. Screw you, patriarchy. The film itself isn't all that good, an early sound film with some overacting typical of the time. Just save yourself the time and go punch someone who congratulates some dude for having lots of sex and then attacks some woman for having lots of sex.

Hud, Paranoid Park, & Hallam Foe

Hud has a strong anti-hero performance from Paul Newman, and I can see why it would become popular, but I thought that Brandon De Wilde was pretty much worthless in his role. Depressing, but Larry McMurtry really never wrote a happy thing, so it wasn't all that unexpected.

Paranoid Park was good, not great, but much more watchable than Elephant or Last Days. Certainly a hell of a lot better than Finding Forrester. Could've been shorter, what with all the slow motion shots of him walking around, but I still thought it was not a waste of my time like Last Days, which I never even finished. Good soundtrack of northwestern bands.

Hallam Foe is a pretty good Scottish film, with a great Scottish soundtrack, and a great disturbing performance from Jamie Bell as a disturbed kid who can't connect with reality except from a distance. I also loved Ewen Bremmer in his small role, and Sophia Myles and Claire Forlani do fine jobs. It was pretty dark, but really good.

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean along with sports and TV notes

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean is a kind of mess of a film, filled with lots of tonal shifts, awkward humor, and... well, very 70s stuff. It's actually quite militant, with all the terribleness that a John Milius script brings with it. Now, the problem is that Newman does a great job, so it wasn't completely ridiculous, and John Huston and the rest of the cast make it almost a good film, but I just have to lay the failures of this film on the script. It's far too violent, unsurprisingly misogynistic, characters appear and then disappear very quickly, leaving little to build into a movie.

The Bengals really just know how to rip my heart out. Well, maybe if I had expected them to win the game. What I didn't expect was Landon Donovan having a good game against Arsenal and helping Everton tie after being crushed 6-1 in the first match of the year. Yay for Donovan not embarrassing himself or Everton.

Better off Ted is one of the funniest shows on TV. I just wish they could air this because that is some high quality cursing. You should watch it even if it isn't full of classy cussin'. Also good: Dollhouse. Really, when the show came back after being taken off for November sweeps, it went crazy and got very Whedontasticly terrific. If only people liked good TV. Speaking of which...

I wouldn't be a fan of Conan O'Brien if I went too long without noting just how crappily NBC has treated Conan for years. Their refusal to promote the show was a running joke, and for some reason Leno gets the benefit of not having Leno as a lead-in. I could go on and on about how Leno is an unfunny hack and is directly responsible for Conan's poor ratings. And Conan is a classy mofo, much, much more than Leno's hackery. As much as I have been a Conan fan since I started watching him back in 1998, Letterman was clearly the model of his humor, and Letterman was much funnier than Leno, as long as I could remember. After watching The Late Shift, there is no question in my mind that NBC made a horrible mistake. Conan's show last night was vicious about NBC. Deservedly. I am firmly on Team Conan, and refuse to say anything nice about Leno ever again if NBC screws over Conan.

Diary of the Dead, The Hand, La terza madre, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mongol, & Stuck

Diary of the Dead is the first in a slightly unintentional horror film fest. George Romero may, possibly need to stop making movies in the Dead world. I know he made another one, which probably won't be released for a while in the US, but he should stop. Because this was just a crappy retelling of the origin of the zombies, from the perspective of a bunch of film students. Movies where characters go through lots of horrible experiences and yet somehow still have a camera available to catch the important plot points are just completely ridiculous. This, Cloverfield, and The Blair Witch Project just strain credulity to such an extent I can't enjoy them at all.

The Hand is an early Oliver Stone film, and is worthless. Somehow, Michael Caine is the best person ever for reasons why he takes horrible movies. He's said, "You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one", "I've made an awful lot of films. In fact, I've made a lot of awful films", and "I have never seen [Jaws: the Revenge], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." This one he apparently did because he needed a new garage. This movie has hand cam. And somehow, Michael Caine can make things reanimate. Except for this script. Oh, just ridiculousness straight through.

The Third Mother is the third movie in Dario Argento's Three Mothers Trilogy, with Suspriria and Inferno. Suspiria is a masterwork, Inferno is middling, and The Third Mother (for some stupid reason translated as Mother of Tears) is horribly bad. Asia Argento proves that the only reason she ever gets roles is because of her name. She is horrendously bad. About the only thing ok in the movie is Udo Kier being ridiculous before he has his throat slit and then his head hacked in half. Other than that, the nudity is silly, the kills are eh, and the plot makes no sense.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the surprisingly good version of the Sondheim musical. As my main problem with Sweeney Todd before was my inability to understand many of the songs' lyrics, I appreciated it much more than I liked it, but with the subtitles, and the impressive acting from Depp and Carter (let alone Rickman being his normally awesome bad guy) make it a great movie. I know that it won some Golden Globes, but eh to thinking they could have gotten anything right. Burton clearly was enjoying himself with some mirrors and differing thickness of glass to make people's faces look Burtonesque, and also loved the visual of the dead bodies falling through the chute and landing. Sondheim does an amazing job writing beautiful, funny songs about some extremely evil people.

Mongol doesn't seem like it fits with my theme of horror films, but it really is when you come down to it. It's about the creation of a mass murderer. Endless torture, having his wife raped repeatedly, you know, all the normal things that lead to mass murderin'. Apparently, the history is a little off, but it works fairly well as a movie. Beautifully filmed and with strong performances by Tadanobu Asano and Khulan Chuluun as Temudjin and Börte, which the movie wants you to believe is the love story of all time. I know that reality is likely to be like this, but I bet it's far more accurate than The Conqueror.

Stuck is the last film in my mini-horror fest. Stuart Gordon fictionalizes the story of the woman who kills a homeless man by driving into him and letting him die trapped in the windshield of her car. It really does work as a slasher film for the sections with Stephen Rea as the homeless man, and a weird, but very different, horror film with Mena Suvari as the car driver. It's quite an effective little film, a quick and dirty movie, with a sick sense of humor.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan & Caprica

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is really pretty darn unnecessary. About the only thing that it added was gratuitous nudity. I'd have to rewatch the entire series to see whether there's any sense made by these "revelations". But Cavil knowing the Final Five I don't think makes sense at all.

Caprica, on the other hand, is just completely messing with the Battlestar timeline. How could the cylons be created both thousands of years ago and 58 years before the events of the show? Just silly. I also found the gratuitous nudity just distracting. It's so blatantly an excuse to get people to buy or rent the DVD of something that you could see on TV, just like The Plan. Basically, I like Stoltz and Battlestar, so I'll watch it, but it's unlikely to either be particularly good or as important as that show.