Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sarah Vowell books, video games, & Dandelion Fall

Neil deGrasse Tyson came to DC to speak on March 11.  I only started following him on twitter a few days earlier, so when he said that he was going to be at the Lisner Auditorium to speak, I was very excited, as was Ms. Albright.  So we trekked down there (mmm, under $3 for a hotdog, chips, and a pink lemonade for easy gulping) and sat through an extremely enjoyable a little over two hours of him blowing our collective minds (although slightly less if you'd been reading his twitter feed for a while, accessible at neiltyson).  He is, without a doubt, my biggest mancrush of all time.  He's so smart, funny, and just plain informative that it's a shame that he's not more famous.  But he is famous enough to get hate mail.  Awesome hate mail.  If you aren't watching NOVAScienceNOW, you are missing out on probably the most informative TV program ever.  I am completely biased, but man, he is as enjoyable in person as he is on TV.  If you want to have an intelligent day, just do a search for Neil on youtube and get some great clips, including the best tale of what happens when you get close to a black hole.

Dandelion Fall is a film by a woman I went on a date with in college.  Yep, I extremely briefly dated a woman who has made a film about a lesbian busker who's basically a kept woman for a fancy lady in New York.  With lots of artfully shot nudity!  Her most recent film, however, has won multiple awards.  This was actually much, much better than the other half a film I sat through on She Likes Girls 3.  Which is not a porn DVD, just a collection of lesbian short films.  I made it through about five minutes of the first movie which was a terrible lesbian vampire crapfest.  Maybe I'm holding it to too high a standard, what with my knowledge of lesbian vampires, but the acting was subpar.  I then realized that I don't usually like film school shorts and that the reviews for the disc as a whole were horrendous and that I only got it because I was friends with a director.  So I can safely say "Don't rent this disc for anything other than seeing Lauren Wolkstein's work.  Which is good."

I also listened (yes, listened, audiobooks are great) to The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Assassination Vacation, and The Wordy Shipmates, all by Sarah Vowell.  They're all entertaining and interesting, although Assassination is, by far, the best of the three.  The Party Cloudy Patriot just brings up horrible memories of the 2000 election, and The Wordy Shipmates is all about 17th century American History, which I don't find as interesting as the strange links between Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley's assassinations.  I recommend them all, with the caveats as listed.  And if you listened to the audiobooks of them, you get to hear famous people be other famous people.  My favorite is Conan O'Brien as Robert Todd Lincoln.

One reason for the lack of updates and actual content for the updates is that I beat Fallout 3 last month (woo! First platinum trophy!), a fun look at a post-nuclear DC, made more fun by the geographical inaccuracies, and started to play Final Fantasy XIII this month.  I've put around 20ish hours or so in so far, with a little bit of back-tracking when I screwed something up, and it's a very pretty game.  Not the best story or characters or anything, but Sazh is a lot less questionable from a racial standpoint than Barret "Mr. T" Wallace.  Gameplay is moving towards Progress Quest levels of interactiveness (I'm a Puma Burglar Panda Man!), but the Paradigm Shifting is not only a proactive approach to success in conflicts, it's surprisingly deep.  I still haven't made it to the opening up of the world yet, so it's still linear at this point.  But that isn't really that bad of a complaint.  Fallout 3 was possibly a little too open-world.  If it weren't for getting trophies, I would've been very confused about what to do.

Over the Edge, xXx, Ghost Town, Boycott, & Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks

Over the Edge is Matt Dillon's first film. It's a film about kids rebelling because there's nothing else to do in their planned community. It's not the best film, but it's quite enjoyable, and the soundtrack is great, with lots of Cheap Trick, The Cars, and even a Ramones track. As a portrait of misspent youth, I am very thankful I never spent time with delinquents like these. My delinquent friends were much more sarcastic and much less destructive.

xXx was really, really stupid. I normally would not have watched this film. Because it's a stupid film. But Meatball Surgery decided it would be funny to give me it on DVD. It's now sitting next to my Wong Kar-Wai and Wes Anderson DVDs, keeping them company and occasionally trying to read the backs and failing. I understand why Asia Argento is kinda famous, since her dad is Dario and she's willing to be naked. I wonder why the hell anyone would cast her in a PG-13 film that precludes nudity? She's a horrible actress. I really liked Pitch Black, his voice is great in The Iron Giant, and he was good in Saving Private Ryan, but I don't like Vin Diesel much at all. The Rock at least has a sense of humor. Vin just has a great voice, but can't act.

Ghost Town is another Ricky Gervais Hollywood romantic comedy. It's better than The Invention of Lying, but not by much. It's a little sad seeing Alan Ruck have such a small role.

Boycott is directed by Clark Johnson, aka Meldrick Lewis, aka Gus Haynes, aka director of many good TV shows.  He takes a decidedly post-modern approach to the story of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, with shots in black and white, breaking the fourth wall, having it be a documentary in some shots of scenes and not in others, and just in general bringing a cinematic approach to the material.  Jeffrey Wrights is quite good as MLK, Jr, as is the rest of the cast in their roles, but I just can't see Terrence Howard without thinking about how he doesn't use toilet paper, but baby wipes, when he goes to the bathroom.  He probably has a silky smooth anus.  And that is an extremely weird thing to know about a person.

Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks is produced by Reggie Miller.  Of course, it's a huge lovefest for him, although with some humanism brought in by focusing a little on his history of being second fiddle in his family to his sister.  As someone who watched the NBA throughout the Jordan years (and with some love for the Kings that got screwed by the refs in the playoffs in the late 90s and early 2000s), I was pretty familiar with the Pacers-Knicks rivalry.  I think the city-hick aspects were played up a bit, but there was definitely genuine bad blood between the teams.  It's also surprisingly funny for a documentary on two basketball playoff series.  Spike Lee was great, and while some might fault him for framing the covers of the NY Post that lambasted him after Miller went off in the 1994 series, if I were on the front cover of a "major" newspaper, I would also frame them.  Unless it were because I was in jail.  Probably wouldn't do it then.  If you watched NBA basketball at the time, you'll love this.  If you like trash-talking, you'll love this.  An extremely enjoyable film.

Renaissance, Into the Wild, & In the Loop

Renaissance is an animated film about a future Paris, where a large company controls everything, and a cop starts to investigate a kidnapping of a researcher, and eventually gets involved in crazy genetic experiments and weirdness. The animation is very stylish, but the plot is nonsensical. It's kind of like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: occasionally pretty, but mostly not worth the money spent on it. How they got Daniel Craig, Ian Holm, Romola Garai, Catherine McCormack, Jonathan Pryce, and Sean Pertwee in it, I have to imagine it was only about the money.

Into the Wild is a pretty film, and depressing as hell. I somehow never knew Christopher McCandless's story, so I really didn't expect the ending, at least, not until I started to pick up on the foreshadowing. Also, Kristen Stewart may be the least expressive actress in years. Just a terrible actress. Emile Hirsch, however, helps anchor the film.

In the Loop is a gloriously profane and awesome film. I wish that The Thick of It were available on DVD in the US. Because I want to spend much more time with Malcolm Tucker. Another depressing film, although in a much bigger fashion than Into the Wild, a personal tragedy rather than the destruction of American moral superiority that was the completely trumped up war. See this film.

Jet Li's Fearless, Women of the Night, Street of Shame, & The Panic in Needle Park

Jet Li's Fearless has a couple good fight scenes, but overall, it's a terribly nationalistic film. Which is to be expected from an accepted Chinese government funded film.

Women of the Night and Street of Shame are the last two films in Kenzo Mizoguchi's fallen women series of DVDs from Eclipse. It's interesting looking at these two films after the other ones, the slight difference in approach to prostitution both before and after the war. Not to mention the fact that Street of Shame is widely cited for having caused if not significantly influenced the criminalization of prostitution in Japan. I don't entirely see how this film, amidst what has to be many stories of the problems with prostitution, could have done that. It's more about the problems that occur due to the changing post-war society. I do not object to prostitution (depending on the reasons for entering into it, see below), although the completely unequal approach to gender in post-war Japan is far more disturbing to me. The films themselves are blatant, telling what could be shown. None of his films are as good as Kurosawa or Ozu, and they're a little frustrating.

The Panic in Needle Park is Al Pacino as a heroin addict. And the thing about the film is that it's clearly set up to make it seem like Pacino's character is in the worst shape of anyone in the film. But all I could think about was my 6th grade social studies teacher who had me read The Jungle for extra credit and then give an oral report. During it, she asked who I thought had it worst in the book, and I picked the main character, but she pointed out that his cousin went through some similar degradations and then went farther down, due to going into prostitution. It was one of the first times I can remember having my male privilege questioned, and one of the many things that have made me a proud feminist. And this movie is set up the same way. I felt bad for Pacino, but Kitty Winn's Helen goes through much worse, including prostitution and being beaten by her abusive boyfriend. Seriously, Helen's time is much worse than Bobby's. Also, Pacino's decline as an actor is obvious even from this early film. He's clearly going to overact in the future.

Return to the Scene of the Crime, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, & Snow Crash

Return to the Scene of the Crime is the DVD version of the filmed version of the This American Life radio show done last year. As I didn't see either time it was shown in theaters, but I did listen to it when broadcast in abbreviated form, I appreciated the chance to see it. And see Joss Whedon performing in public. As a big fan of This American Life, I enjoyed it. Even if knowing how most of it ended already slightly detracted from my watching it, watching the commentary and hearing Ira and the rest of them nitpicking was pretty interesting. Plus, supporting the show is always good.

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 is a Barbara Tuchman book. And it won a Pulitzer prize. As such, it's a great book. Well worth reading if you have any interest at all in Chinese history. And if you wanted to know why the hell the Nationalists were so corrupt, this is a pretty good way to find it out. Clearly, Chiang Kai-shek deserved to lose China, but the most frustrating aspect of it (and, of course, we had the exact same problem in Vietnam) is that our desire to prop up anti-Communist but horrible despots led to much suffering. For some reason, we haven't learned our lesson. The enemy of my enemy may be our friend, but if we just give blind allegiance and support to everyone, we tend to screw up things. Should we look at our support for Iraq and Afghanistan and dictatorships throughout Latin America, we see this trend continues to cause problems.

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records is great if you have any interest in learning about indie rock in the 1990s. Just like Our Band Could Be Your Life is the definitive look at indie rock in the 1980s, it's hard to imagine anyone covering just what it's like to be in an indie rock band and run an indie rock label over the last 20 years and doing it as well as this book did. Having all of the interviews with the people themselves makes it great. Ryan Adams is still a dick though. I learned a lot, even with my longtime Merge Records fandom (and enormous Merge Records music collection, owning somewhere around half the entire Merge discography), so definitely pick it up if you want to learn. Check out the website, full of fun Web 2.0ness.

Snow Crash, speaking of the web, is a great book, cyberpunky, and mixing my love of computers with mythology. If there were another author more designed for more of my interests, please point them out. A love of Japanese culture, post-apocalyptic America, the mafia, crazy Christians, and, of course, dentata just added to my enjoyment. I absolutely loved the book. Definitely one of my favorite books I've read. I'm not sure if I like it more than Cryptonomicon, but I think I like the approach of religious history more interesting than the history of cryptology. Either way, I need to read more of his work.

American Swing, 1984, & Slap Shot

American Swing is 81 minutes of messed up. Far be it from me to start going all moral all over people, but having sex with lots of people without protection, on dingy mattresses, in swimming pools, and the like is just disgusting. And the guy at the center of this, Larry Levenson, is a creep and tax evader. With possible mob ties. I was surprised by just how much they showed in the movie, that unrated movie is NC-17, so be forewarned. You will see wangs and hoohas, from not particularly attractive people. The movie didn't take a side as to whether Plato's Retreat was evil or not, and Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman got some great interviews. Sure, it's a deeply messed up story, but I look forward to seeing what they come up with next. Also, Ed Koch is very, very gay.

1984 is a movie I've been meaning to watch for years. Ever since I first found out that Susan Hamilton was naked in it. This was after I had read the book, and had little interest in actually watching it for class, and so the nudity was not nearly as high on my list of reasons to see it now as it was back in high school. I do want to say two more things about the nudity before getting to the film. One: there's a scene where Winston and Julia are standing at the window, and someone comes in the door, but Winston only turns the top of his body, so you don't see penis. This is both wrong and uncomfortable-looking. Two: Suzanna Hamilton has more hair in her armpits than John Hurt has on his entire body. Anyway, the film is pretty good, conveying the book's message well. That's pretty much all.

Slap Shot is a gloriously profane look at minor league hockey in the 70s. Really, it's a typically 70s sports movie, that many films have tried and failed to be (I'm looking at you Major League). The team is made up mostly of actual minor league hockey players, most of whom are based on the actors themselves, which lends an air of realism that make it work. Of course the stripping during the game wasn't real, but most of it actually happened. I can definitely see why this film has such a huge cult following. I've watched more hockey in the last week of the Olympics than I have in many, many years.

Arabesque, Emma, Coraline, & The Invention of Lying

Arabesque is Stanley Donen trying to redo Charade, but with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren replacing Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Of course, it is nowhere near as great. Also bad: the brownface. They couldn't find one single Arab to play an Arab in the film? Beyond that, Gregory Peck running was hilarious, but I don't think it was supposed to be as funny as it was. And the plot was basically nonsensical. Not a bad film by any means, but not particularly recommended either.

Emma is... well, it's the third version I've seen, and although others had lots to recommend them, this may be the best version. Romola Garai gets the right mix of innocence and attempting to do the right thing even when she is actually doing the wrong thing. This has Edmund Bertram vs Edmund Bertram for Emma's love. Which is kinda funny, because all of these Jane Austen adaptations share outfits (thanks BBC cost-cutting measures), it's only right that they'd also share heroes. And Edmund (the Jonny Lee Miller version, not the Blake "Emo-lton" Ritson one) wins. Michael Gambon needs to keep playing old guys who aren't completely all there. I think this is the new version of Emma to watch. Congrats BBC for showing everyone else how to do it.

Coraline is really good. It's a shame that so many good animated films came out this year. But it's also nice that so many good animated films came out this year. Henry Selick is quite talented, and I hope that the success of Coraline allows him to make many more films. I also wish that Other Father Song had been nominated for an Oscar rather than two from the Princess & the Frog. Randy Newman is vastly over-nominated as a songwriter.

The Invention of Lying is a kinda worthless film. Robb Lowe plays smarmy pretty well, and there are some interesting ideas about how ridiculous religion is, but still, its a waste of talent. Could possibly have been funny, but it never quite gelled. I watched it on a plane though, so there were some interesting edits. Basically, my high school friend wrote a review for it in the Village Voice that really covers my feelings on the film.

Transsiberian, Wanted, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Southland Tales, & District 9

Transsiberian is by Brad Anderson, director of Happy Accidents and Next Stop Wonderland, two interesting if flawed romantic comedies. This one is decidedly not a romantic comedy, but a story of two missionaries who get more than they bargained for when they meet two youngsters on the Transsiberian Railroad. Ben Kingsley does a fine job in the role of a cop who meets up with the couple. And Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson are also quite good, and Thomas Kretschmann just needs to be the first choice for creepy Eastern Europeans. He plays them so well. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the torture scene. Too realistic for me.

Wanted is a film that makes me pissed. Short of its utter ridiculousness, I can accept it existing, but only for Morgan Freeman cursing. James McAvoy should keep his normal accent, not be an American. Thomas Kretschmann is utterly wasted, not being an Eastern European badass. Screw you film.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is also kinda frustrating, but less so. Hellboy was a fun film, far better than it should have been, as Guillermo del Toro is capable of raising up bad material to a good film. Unfortunately for this film, I just didn't care all that much about it. I know the first one made money, but I don't think this sequel was really needed. I hope that the ending suggests that they're not going to make a third. Otherwise

Southland Tales is a terrible film that makes me retroactively judge Donnie Darko much more harshly. Either Richard Kelly is completely messing with everyone or he is completely full of himself and thinks he's infallible. But he's very fallible. The Rock actually isn't too bad in it, but everyone else is either completely wasted or just horribly miscast. Basically, there's nothing at all to recommend it to anyone. Lots of good actors in it, but no one doing anything remotely worthwhile. So, Richard Kelly, you have horribly failed. The satire falls flat, and I think I am bothered much more by movies that set up an alternate "present" that are completely unrealistic.

District 9, on the other hand, is also set in the "present", but sets up an alternate timeline that makes sense. If aliens had arrived in Johannesburg, it is realistic that we might have a Blackwater-esque group that basically controls the aliens. And the film is quite a bit of fun, full of exploding bodies that Peter Jackson clearly loved. I can see him watching this film and saying, "This is the kind of movie I wish I had made." Since he gave Blomkamp $30 million to make the film, it's great that they're of similar interests. I liked the subtext about apartheid and human bodies rebelling and learning through being exposed to new technologies, along with the mostly anti-military and anti-mercenary aspects of it. My biggest problem, and something that really bothered me once I noticed it happening more and more, was that the film was set up to be a semi-documentary with footage from a camera crew filming but eventually drops that almost entirely, slowly but surely, really bothered me. First person camerawork generally doesn't work, because my first reaction to crazy stuff would not be to keep filming. This is a serious problem in other films, but here it just bothered me because of the original setup of the camera crew.

Sisters of the Gion, Up the Yangtze, Paris, je t'aime, & Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Sisters of the Gion is another Mizoguchi movie from the Fallen Women Eclipse series. The opening shot, of an auction of all of a husband's business, is impressive in setting up a broken man, but the rest of the film focuses more on the relationship between two sister geishas, the older "wise" one and the younger "vain" one. When the older one tries to help the husband, the younger one tries to get men to embezzle for a new kimono and expel him from the house. It's a big critique of geishadom, and it's very well-deserved. Geishas are creepy. I support things that point out just how creepy geishas and other paying for companionship things are.

Up the Yangtze is a documentary about a family that's being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, and so they basically sell their daughter into a job on a cruise ship catering to Americans. Of course, it's horribly depressing, with the traditional China being destroyed by modernization. The movie feels more like a fiction film, even though it's clearly a documentary. Very well done, but I kinda wish they had subtitles on the DVD, because, especially when they're trying to learn English, they're very hard to understand. And I felt really bad for these people who have to deal with these terrible patronizing tourists. The lessons not to discuss politics are hilarious, especially the warnings to avoid Quebec's independence movement or Northern Ireland are great. I wonder if tour guides for Chinese groups here are advised not to mention Tibet. Watching the clearly false representation of China that tourists are being fed is frustrating. But the scenery shots were really great. And of the people in it was still on the boat when my parents went on it, which they watched after they came back.

Paris, je t'aime is a collection of short films about Paris, each set in a different arrondissement. As with all short film collections, some are better than others. Things to take away from it: mimes are terrible, Oscar Wilde's ghost gives good advice to bad people, the Coen Brothers are great with their short films (their short in To Each His Own Cinema, which I have seen online, is hilarious), and the one about hair cuts was terrible. If you want to see it, just know that you will be bored by many of them, in search of a few that are fairly good.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is an interesting documentary about... well, it's in the title. Alex Gibney, director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side, does a great job trying to cover the crazy life of Hunter S., which, even with my knowledge of him, mainly from movies and some of his writings, was a lot of new stuff. Definitely a good watch if you're at all interested in him.

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.