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.

Caseus Archivelox: Diabolique, The Importance of Being Earnest, Happy Accidents, & The Two Towers

2002-12-29 - 11:38 p.m.
First off was Diabolique, or as the actual movie called itself, Les Diaboliques. Very Hitchcockian, and it's clear why he wanted to make the movie. There were some things he never would have gotten away with had he made it though: a scene of a preteen diving into a pool in tighty-whiteys and then walking around in them, kids said both f--- and s--- (taboo till the late 60s and certainly not ok for kids), and for most of the last ten minutes, the protagonists nipples were clearly visible through her thin nightdress. There is no way this would have been OK for a Hollywood film in the mid 50s. But beyond these little bits of French-ness, the movie was masterfully tense and there were definite things Hitchcock had to have loved, most dealing with how much of it revolved around the bathrooms and the loud pipes playing a big role. The theme of guilt was great and there was even a last scare that predated slasher films. The Criterion DVD had no extras and had some problems with the picture and the subtitles on my computer were not always legible, but the movie built suspense with minimal music and not much dialogue. Because the filmmakers want me not to spoil it (even having a title card at the end asking viewers not to tell the secrets of the film), I won't, but it predates Hitchcock asking movie theater owners not to seat people after Psycho started. I really recommend it if you like Vertigo, Psycho, and the like.

We watched The Importance of Being Earnest (the new one), which is one of the funniest plays of all time. However, it was cut a lot, but it had most of the funny lines. My dad fell asleep halfway through.

We watched Happy Accidents, sort of a mixture of 12 Monkeys and Sliding Doors, being not as good as either. And it also went back to La Jetee with stills and stutter-y motion for future scenes. Still, it wasn't even close to as bad as I was expecting, and Vincent D'Onofrio and Marisa Tomei were good. And the surprise cameo was hilarious.

2002-12-30 - 11:08 p.m.
I took most of the evening off, and watched The Two Towers. Which kicked the ass of pretty much every other movie out there. Although it isn't fair to compare them, because this is the second 3 (or so, depending on how long the movies extended editions are) hours of the greatest cinematic achievement of my lifetime. F---, another damn year of waiting for the next one. 'Course, I may just have to see it again. No more free ticket though. Maybe I'll just wait until they bring out the 4 minute fan trailer for the next one. They did have a great line though. Which I'm probably misquoting for my title (EDITOR'S NOTE: which was "Well, you are short. You are also smart.").

Caseus Archivelox: Safe, The Rules of Attraction, & Blade II

2002-12-09 - 11:27 p.m.
I just watched Safe, the Todd Haynes film with Julianne Moore. And I can't recommend it highly enough. Very disconcerting movie, (in a good way, unlike Titanic which was disconcertingly long or Armageddon which was disconcertingly suck) and Moore was excellent. It is a great multi-layered film like Haynes's other films, and it makes me want to see Far from Heaven an immense amount. And I still want to see Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story more than any movie ever made. Mainly because it's illegal, but also because Haynes, while frequently frustrating, is one of the most talented directors out there. Anyway, Safe had so many good things that the few things wrong with it were overcome.

2002-12-15 - 11:06 p.m.
Last night I went to see The Rules of Attraction, and have decided that the movie had more style than almost any other movie I've ever seen. The travelogue of Victor's trip to Europe was absolutely stunning. It was pretty well done. A little too snazzy for it to be perfect, but it was easily the best thing that James Van Der Suck has ever done. And it makes me realize that I probably would like Bret Easton Ellis. And I'll get to him at some point.

2002-12-19 - 9:50 p.m.
I got Blade II in the mail today, and it really wasn't as good as the first one. A little too sequel-ly. And then there's always the fact that Del Toro made a much better vampire movie in Cronos. Would have been much better had it been more like that one.

Caseus Archivelox: I Am Trying To Break Your Heart & Baran

2002-12-08 - 10:58 p.m.
I saw I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. It was a really good documentary about Wilco. If you hadn't heard of Wilco, then you probably wouldn't like it. For those who like them, then it's a generally well-done, if unenlightening, look at the band. And the performances are very good. They did play a lot more from Being There than I was expecting. And only one song from Summerteeth. So I was surprised, if not unhappy. And I didn't know that Jeff Tweedy is me as I want to be. In that he's a rock star, and he has migraines. Ok, so I don't want to have migraines, but he gets them, and the camera follows him into the bathroom to watch him puke. Which is just not right. There also wasn't much about Jim O'Rourke. Which isn't cool. And it was a little too "We're sticking it to the man". The music was good enough that I can forgive a lot of problems with the movie. Which is just the opposite of Muriel's Wedding, which was a good enough movie to overcome serious problems with the heavily ABBA soundtrack (EDITOR'S NOTE: I am complaining about Dancing Queen).

Today I watched Baran, which is about as far from an American film as you could imagine. One: it was about Iran. Two: it had, as a main character, Afghanis. Three: both Iranis and Afghanis were portrayed sympathetically. Four: it was in a foreign language. Five: the ending was not a traditional American ending. It was open to debate what would happen at the end. And six: it was slowly paced. But it was very good.

Snow Angels, Taxi to the Dark Side, The Damned United, Sita Sings the Blues, & The Prisoner

Snow Angels is a depressing film by David Gordon Green, director of the excellent George Washington, the less excellent Undertow (the first time I think I'd ever seen Kristen Stewart), and Pineapple Express. This falls much more towards the first two, a look at a divorced couple and their daughter and the boy that the wife used to babysit. It's full of good performances: Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Nicky Katt, Amy Sedaris, Michael Angarano, and hipster-to-be Olivia Thirlby (seriously, just look at the glasses and the camera). I think I wouldn't have liked it as much had there not been as much growth from Michael as the boy, because otherwise it would've been a little too depressing.

Taxi to the Dark Side is another in a long line of documentaries about how messed up Iraq and Afghanistan are/were. Better than some, although not as masterfully frakked as Standard Operating Procedure. Maybe I should check to see if I have any more documentaries about the War on Philosophy and maybe move them much further down in my queue. Possibly even off it entirely. I'm not sure I need to keep watching them.

The Damned United is the story of probably the biggest flameout in sports history. Seriously, it's the stupidest job decision ever. What the hell was the board thinking when they offered Brian Clough the job at Leeds United? And what the hell was Brian thinking when he took it? It's really quite a good film, with strong performances from Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall. It's about a time in English soccer that I really didn't know that much about. Dirty soccer being played with lots of diving and cheap shots? Certainly wouldn't pass in current days, and I imagine the better sports coverage allows for more obvious penalties. Certainly that New Mexico player may have gotten away with it during the game, but the cameras caught everything.

Sita Sings the Blues is an animated film almost entirely done by Nina Paley. It combines the story of her husband leaving her, the story of Sita and Rama (told by people who can't quite agree on what was happening and when), and has musical interludes of Annette Hanshaw songs that comment on the links between the two stories. It's an interesting film, although I wouldn't say it was great. I object immensely to the rights issues that she had to go through to get this film released. Annette Hanshaw stopped recording in the 1930s. This was released last year. The rights holders were asking for $220,000 for a small film that few were going to see? That's utterly ridiculous. These were state laws rather than federal laws, but this is clearly stuff that should be in the public domain, because it's been almost 80 years since some of these recordings were made, and the performer is dead. There's no excuse for this. None.

The Prisoner ends with seriously one of the most messed up finales of all time. It's batguano insane, and although the episodes leading up to it were also pretty messed up (I watched it in the KTEH order, as opposed to the DVD order, which is really annoying, having to change DVDs almost every episode, or at least the order), it's really pretty hard to understand just how messed up it is. I know that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have seen this show, and I have this fear that they're going to go this route with Season 6. But they're at least going to have a little more time to put this together, since there're some weird shifts. I don't want to be more specific, because you should really see this, in order (I almost totally agree with the KTEH order rather than the DVD order, which is what I saw it in college). Lost has been pretty trippy, but I expect an online revolt on the order of the ending of The Sopranos except nerdier (and far less stupid) if the ending is anything like this.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Mad Dog and Glory, Knocked Up, & The Rug Cop

You Don't Mess with the Zohan is occasionally very funny. And frequently very stupid. If only hummus could actually solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Maybe we need to send Michael Buffer there to unite them in anti-Bufferness. Did you know he's doing the intros for Duke players at Cameron this year? What the hell?

Mad Dog and Glory would have been better had it been cast the way it was planned with Robert DeNiro as the gangster-comic and Bill Murray as the cop-photographer. Uma Thurman can be the moll anytime. Richard Price scripted it for John McNaughton, two talented people, but it didn't work as a comedy or as a drama. I did like seeing Richard Belzer as the MC at the comedy club.

Knocked Up is a movie I'd seen over half of on E! in a censored version, which is probably not the best way to watch it for the first (or, really, any) time. Eh, I'm not really that sure that anything could have made this movie a comedy through and through. Maybe I just shouldn't expect that from a Judd Apatow film, but this bodes poorly for my appreciation of Funny People. I want them to be funnier than they are, and the overly treacly baby montage really just sucked the funny out of the end of the film. Because otherwise, it's a completely unrealistic relationship, but things were pretty funny otherwise. Actually, can anyone, anywhere, remember an actually funny music montage (besides meta-montages like in Team America)? I'm probably being far too hard on the film.

The Rug Cop is by the same guy who did Executive Koala. So it's weird. In this case, it's about a cop who gets dumped because he's bald, and then discovers he can use his toupee as a weapon. He joins a police station with a handsome cop (women commit crimes just to be interrogated by him), an old cop, a fat cop, a short cop, a young female police officer, and a cop nicknamed Big Dick, who uses his enormous penis as a weapon when he gets aroused. Normal cop film otherwise, really: cop discovers terrorist plot, and then through a series of investigations and random coincidences, solves everything, and ends up with a happy ending. The musical interlude was way too long, causing the film to feel much longer than the short 80 minute running time. The best scene in the movie, though, is the first one, where the Rug Cop foils a bank robbery using only his toupee. Oh, and the most important thing about the robbery is that the robber is the ventriloquist dummy. Not the ventriloquist. It's delightfully low budget. Not as good as Executive Koala. See that one first, and if you want more weirdness, see this.

The Serpent's Egg, The Last Laugh, Inglourious Basterds, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, & Star Trek

The Serpent's Egg is just depressing. David Carradine is a Jewish trapeze artist whose brother kills himself and whose sister-in-law starts to break down, and this is all against the backdrop of 1923 Weimar Germany. And there's lots of foreshadowing of the rise of Nazism and the horrors of the Holocaust. Ingmar Bergman moved out of his comfort zone and just whiffed on this one.

The Last Laugh is one of the most famous silent films of all time, mainly due to there being no intertitles. Well, there's one, and honestly, I would have liked the movie much more had the entire ending not been there. When you have the movie just come out and say "I've added a happy ending because I don't want you to be depressed", that's just crap, although the coming out and telling you just how cynical the ending was made it clear that Murnau never would have done it without being forced. Before that point, it's a depressing look at a doorman, played by Emil Jannings, who is fired basically for being old, and he starts to be ignored by everyone and spirals into horribleness. Technically masterful, definitely a worthwhile silent film.

Inglourious Basterds has Emil Jannings appear, who was in real life a huge Nazi. I think that was just the topping on the cake that was the most satisfying WWII film I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. Really, the film has a Jew beating on a Nazi with a baseball bat (what can you do?). Besides that, it has Quentin Tarantino being ridiculously awesome with his dialogue and full of hilarious film references. There's just so much awesome in it that it's hard for me to remotely objective. Samuel L. Jackson as the narrator of the story of Til Schweiger as the Nazi-hating German, B.J. Novak in the interrogation scene, Michael Fassbender's explanation for his accent, everything that Christoph Waltz does in the entire film (especially the strudel), and Brad Pitt. Just the way he says "Oblige him" is worth the movie. I also loved the switching fonts in the credits and the words not translated in the subtitles. Just all the bits of the film that call attention to the filmness of it just made me love it more. The few references to the original Inlgorious Bastards were minor, and really completely secondary to my enjoyment. Except that it's clear that if you want a great movie, you need actual talent involved.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is... utterly unnecessary. Even if it did finally give people something to say other than Jump the Shark. Nuke the fridge is only one of the many ridiculous things involved in this film, including ripping off better things from earlier Indiana Jones films, and is just... eh. Honestly, if the film were worse I'd have some kind of interest in mocking it, but it's really just not good enough to praise or bad enough to mock. Just eh.

Star Trek is the flip-side: big budget filmmaking that works pretty much unreservedly. Sure the lens flares were annoying, but when that's the biggest complaint you have about a film, that's not too bad at all. Everyone was just about right, the story was exciting, the call backs to Star Treks before were quite clever, and I am curious to know if this new timeline also has an extremely annoying Wesley Crusher? Actually, I really haven't seen any of the shows (an episode here and there), but I've seen 2-6, plus the first two Next Generation movies (so that's 7-8?). So I'm not a hard core Trekkie, but I am familiar enough with the Internet to know memes when they exist, and I've picked up quite a bit of Trek knowledge from my friends. But the film works quite well as an action movie.

More Gen-Y Cops

I'm not sure that I fully expressed the terribleness that is Gen-Y Cops in my review of it. As such, I think you need to go here and watch that video. Seriously. I'll wait.

Is that not amazing?

Link found due to the awesomeness that is Paul Rudd's obsession with Mac & Me, and the AV Club's obsession with covering everything that is awesomely terrible with this My Year of Flops entry. I remember watching and liking it when I was 9, but I don't remember the dance scene at the McDonald's or the Buccaneers participating in it (although their dancing explains why they suck). I do remember being insanely happy when Paul Rudd would do Conan and pull out that clip (which I did remember from the movie, because it's horrifying). My favorite part of the Rudd clip from MYOF entry? THE ENTIRE THING!

Big Trouble, Butte, America: The Saga of a Hard Rock Mining Town, and video games

Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas is about the murder of Frank Steunenberg, probably by members of the Western Federation of Miners in Caldwell, Idaho in 1905. Throughout the awesome book, he weaves in Ethyl Barrymore, Walter Johnson, Clarence Darrow, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William Borah, and many more well-known people of the time, all of whom had some connection to the trial. Really, it's an amazingly well-researched book, and it's a shame that Lukas committed suicide before the book was published. I am a huge fan of sprawling historical epics, about society at the time as much as the "plot". This one has sections on theatre agents, detective agencies, baseball, lawyering, labor strife, forestry, the Spanish American War, racial strife, journalism, and... well... it really just covers so much. It may be a huge book, and it took me a few months to read it (with breaks for comics), but it's really good. I saw that PBS's Independent Lens was going to air a documentary about Butte, Montana and the mining industry there. Butte, America was only an hour long, and it focused much more on more recent labor troubles rather than the labor troubles that lead to Steunenberg's assassination, so I wasn't as into it as I thought. I wanted it to be much better than I got. Not to say it wasn't good, but I felt like it didn't go very deep at all. Ugh. Terrible pun.

Well, in the last three months, I've purchased five video games for the PS3 (The Beatles: Rock Band, Katamari Forever, Fallout 3, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, and Lego Rock Band) and one for the PC (Torchlight). Apparently, I do have too much money. I am singlehandedly keeping the video game industry alive. Well, at least I haven't purchased Dragon Age: Origins or Assassin's Creed II or any other games I've been tempted by, because my games are certainly taking up more than enough of my time as it is. Because that's why it was so long between posts. I am enjoying all of the games, and regret none of the purchases. Well, except for their effect on my ability to do anything else.

A Death in Tehran, TV Funhouse, Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7, Bored To Death, & Andy Barker, P.I.

A Death in Tehran is a Frontline episode about Neda Agha Soltan's murder at the hands of the government militia in Iran. Everytime I think about Iran, all I can think about is the Twittervolution, which is just one of the many times that I feel like technology could be something really important, and yet, it can't do everything alone. I appreciate that so many people tried to do things from outside Iran, but a lot of it isn't going to make any real difference without government support both inside and outside the revolution. But it also feels like a revolution without a great deal of support outside of the middle and upper classes. Which hasn't been enough for a revolution since... well, I can't think of one. It's normally the other way around.

TV Funhouse is the short run series from Robert Smigel with lots of puppets doing very dirty things. I don't remember if I saw all of them when they first aired, but it is an occasionally funny show. Curb Your Enthusiasm's seventh season has the Seinfeld reunion that will never happen in real life, but worked very well as about 15 minutes of material (repeated in various forms) within the normal craziness that is Curb. I am not sure that bits of episodes worked as well as previous seasons, but the overarching plot was about the same quality as expected. I miss Seinfeld, but that is the greatest reunion show episode ever. Bored to Death is probably a little too pot-hipster-y. Which for some reason I don't really care for? It was ok, great cast, and could be good in the future if it comes back and figures out that it's a comedic film noir, and not just a film noir. Plus, I've rewatched the new DVD of Andy Barker, P.I. and concur with my previous estimation. Of both that and American Idol (with the added note that it's not just Since U Been Gone, it's all of Kelly Clarkson's output).

The Small Back Room, An American Crime, & Prick Up Your Ears

The Small Back Room is about a drunk bomb expert with a metal leg doing his thing in WWII Britain. As such, it really isn't all that interesting, but it's a Powell & Pressburger film, so I watched it. It's melodramatic to a fault that their other films never approached.

An American Crime has Ellen Page, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, and James Franco in a small role. It's about the true story of a woman who has her children and neighborhood kids torture a boarder in 1965 Indiana. Eesh. Miserable film, especially with the Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge ending. That this is based on a true story makes me wonder how people can do this sort of thing to other people.

Prick Up Your Ears is the story of Joe Orton, a gay British playwright in the 1960s, who was murdered by his lover. Stephen Frears directed, Alan Bennett wrote it, Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Walters, and Wallace Shawn are in it. So it's really extremely good. Maybe a little depressing, but man, Gary Oldman is great.

Outsourced, Perhaps Love, & Wristcutters: A Love Story

Outsourced comes up with a fake Kama Sutra position: Monkey Pulls the Turnip. What could the turnip signify? I need to know, but since it's not real, I got nothing. The film itself is a fairly typical plotted romantic comedy, although this did have the added bonus of Indians in cheese-heads. And some kind of idea of cultural critique of outsourcing and ridiculous Americanness. The lead female had huge eyes, and was in a Doctor Who episode and Attack of the Clones. And there was a poop joke, pretty early on. So, recommend or no? If you see one film about outsourcing leading to a cheesy George Washington commemorative plate wearing a third eye, see this one. It really all depends if you want to see a non-offensive romantic comedy in there.

Perhaps Love is a big budget, for China, musical. It's about a director and actor fighting over the same woman, making a musical about two men fighting over the same woman. I think it's trying to say something, but I didn't enjoy the musical numbers and I didn't enjoy the film. Eh to it all.

Wristcutters: A Love Story stars Patrick Fugit as a guy who commits suicide (SPOILER ALERT!) in the first scene, and goes to a sort of halfway world of no smiles, weirdness, and little color. He meets a family of suicides and starts to wander around, picks up a hitchhiking Shannyn Sossamon, has to search for Tom Waits's dog, and watches Will Arnett be wacky. It's full of Gogol Bordello songs (and other great music) and Eastern European names, along with some strange ideas about what the afterlife would be like. But I enjoyed the film, and even though it's a little cheesy, it's an enjoyable film.

Day of Wrath, Alexander Nevsky, Love in the Time of Hysteria, Quartet for the End of Time, & Wedding Night

Day of Wrath was made by Carl Theodor Dreyer during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. And as such, it's a not-all-that-subtle attack on the Nazi occupation. A young wife falls for her older husband's young son (something that Bergman also dealt with, in much funnier fashion, in Smiles of a Summer Night), and when he dies, she's accused of witchcraft. But basically, it's using 17th century witchcraft and the craziness that came with it to comment on Nazism.

Alexander Nevsky is an anti-German Eisenstein film, with a remarkably wooden performance from Nikolai Cherkasov as the titular character. It isn't a film as much as an excuse for Russians to kill Germans. In the 13th century, which they're very careful to point out a few times. But really, Eisenstein definitely made better films, and the suppression of it after the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact may not have been all that bad. It really is just a horribly anti-German and Christian film. Also, the DVD is crap, with barely legible subtitles.

Love in the Time of Hysteria is an early Almodovar-esque sex farce, but made by Alfonso Cuaron (consequently much less gay sex), as the film that made him famous. And it's beautifully filmed with lots and lots of greens, as Cuaron is wont to do. And funny, but oh so wrong. A cad, who enjoys running down to get his paper in the nude, sleeps with his nurse, who gets very offended when he ends up having sex with a different woman in the next apartment basically at the same time, fakes tests so that he thinks he has AIDS. And then learns life lessons as he unwittingly sexually harasses his neighbor, a flight attendant. And there's a luchador and a conquistador in a bizarre dream sequence. And an American who microwaved her poodle is a running joke.

Also on that DVD are two short films, one from Alfonso, and the other from his brother. Alfonso's Quartet for the End of Time is about a loner. It doesn't work at all, but it's one of his earliest films, and as such, has a built in excuse. Carlos Cuaron's Wedding Night, on the other hand, shows his brother's focus on sex and comedy is a family trait, and is pretty funny.

Doomsday, Gen-Y Cops, & La Vie en Rose

Doomsday is a mess of a film, mixing 28 Days Later, Mad Max, and Reign of Fire together and getting a film that is much, much, much less than the sum of those parts. Bob Hoskins is fun, but Malcolm McDowell was utterly worthless, and Rhona Mitra is not a particularly good actress. Not a good movie, and makes me start to rethink my likes of Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Really, there's actual car stunts, decapitations, and crazy amounts of violence in this film, and I still hated it.

Gen-Y Cops is terrible. Paul Rudd, however, is in a Hong Kong action film where he helps to fight a robot. And, yet, reread that first sentence.

La Vie en Rose has some odd stylistic choices, like not one, but two newspaper montages, a completely gratuitous topless shot, and a wordless montage of Edith Piaf's big performance. The film was really just a mess. It could have been better, but it wasn't very good at all. Marion Cotillard was good, I guess, but I definitely do not think this movie was for me at all.