Robyn & Kelis at 9:30 Club 8/2

Fembot
Cry When You Get Older
Cobrastyle
Dancing on My Own
Who's That Girl
Dancehall Queen
The Girl and the Robot
Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do
Be Mine
Show Me Love
Konichiwa Bitches
Dream On
With Every Heartbeat

I fell in love with Robyn back in 2005 or so, around when her eponymous album first was released in Sweden, and her videos hit the blogs. Then people started to tell me that she had some songs back in the 90s that were popular. That was fun. I was obsessed, raved about them to everyone, and have pre-ordered every album since the first one finally was released in the US. So, I've been waiting to see her in concert for a while. When I realized she was touring, I purchased fan club tickets, rather than actual tickets. Because I'm apparently a member of her fan club now.

I missed the beginning of the show. So I only saw the last few songs of Kelis. To start off with, Kelis mixed Milkshake with Madonna's Holiday. I am sad that I missed that. That link has a review of the concert itself.

As for Robyn, well, she was just as awesome as I expected, although it was difficult to see her tiny dancing, what with all the tall gays who love her. Ms. Albright and I were trying to figure out how many straight males there were who were not there because of their girlfriends. It couldn't have been very many at all. I wish she had played longer, and hadn't messed with songs from Robyn quite as much as she did, but it was dance-poppy bliss anyway. And I sang along to everything. As did most of the crowd.

Scott Pilgrim, Under the Banner of Heaven, Terry Sanford, Hear the Wind Sing, & Pinball 1973

Scott Pilgrim is finally finished. And only two weeks before the movie comes out, could you really expect me to not have preordered his Finest Hour way back when. Which just makes me wonder why I hadn't even talked about the series in any depth yet. Scott Pilgrim is quite good. Well, he's a forgetful jerk who makes me feel dirty, but he's also full of awesomeness. As are the books. Sure, the first one starts out without Bryan Lee O'Malley having found either a consistent drawing style or evenness in plotting. But once the League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends shows up and the series kicks into overdrive, he gets to the heart of what makes 20-somethings tick. There was ridiculousness, there was fighting, there was fanservice (and the immediate mocking of said fanservice), and an ending that was very far from sucking. I need to get O'Malley to sign the last two issues. Just to match the signed first four. I am looking forward to whatever he ends up doing next. And the movie wil be awesome as well.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is Jon Krakauer looking at the history of Mormonism, with a focus on the polygamist sects, as a fight against "normal" American society. Having watched the first three and a half seasons of Big Love, I may have been more familiar with the story than I would've been without having seen it, since whole plot threads are straight out of history. Mormons are squicky. And knowing more about the history, and the stuff that they don't want you to know about the murderous tendencies of the official church, just confirms that. Mormonism may be the most American of all religions, but being an American Religion isn't really good. We tend to kind of be dicks.

Terry Sanford: Politics, Progress, and Outrageous Ambitions is as far from being about dick-y Americans as you can. Terry Sanford is a hero to any progressives with Southern ties. He was an FBI agent, a volunteer paratrooper in WWII, a liberal Democratic Governor of North Carolina during the Civil Rights era, president of Duke University for fifteen-ish years, a Senator from North Carolina. Who lost to his former driver who had switched parties due to fighting over who was going to run in 1986 for the seat Sanford won, but only because he had a heart attack a month before the election. He also helped to stop the civil war in Nicaragua that Reagan and North and Bush helped to prolong by funding the Contras. He was a great man, and although this book barely mentions my boss (who would be very important in Sanford's last two campaigns), I liked it. Sanford has a fascinating life story, and I enjoyed reading it.

Hear the Wind Sing is Haruki Murakami's first novel. Only published in Japan, and in a limited run of helping young people learn English, along with his second book, Pinball 1973. Neither are particularly good, although they definitely presage Norwegian Wood in both content and tone, being set in the late 60s and 70s in a real Japan. Hear the Wind Sing is not weird at all, while Pinball 1973 starts to bring in the strange characters that dominate his later works. Don't read them unless you're very into him, because there is a good reason for them not being published in English here. Besides the fact that they're very short.

Inception, Zombieland, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, & Le Corbeau

Inception is Chris Nolan just sayin' "Try to follow this, and if you can't, well, at least you get to see a fight in a spinning hallway." I'm not sure what more I can add to what's been written about this. I loved it, want Joseph Gordon-Levitt to get more roles, want more Lukas Haas, and want there to be a sequel: "Inception 2: The Sleepquel". If you haven't seen it, go out and see it. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It's Nolan's best film, hands down. For those who have seen it already, check out this clean chart of the dream sequence, which I think is the clearest and most accurate version of it. I do think the people who are listed as in Limbo end up there by the end of the film. And if you haven't seen the video about the score, check it out here and read about Hans Zimmer's thoughts on it.

Zombieland is a romantic comedy. That happens to be a remarkably stupid romantic comedy. There are zombies to enjoy, and there are long stretches that work well, but the actual romance is bad, and everyone in the movie does very stupid things, almost constantly. And the big "secret"? Woo? Honestly, it was just another thing that was a good idea but the execution was a little short of successful. It was so close to being a great film, but sudden turns to the very stupid by previously very smart people lead to stuff that doesn't make any sense. Come on, the film is better than that. Or at least, I want it to be better than that.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired makes me feel bad for Roman Polanski. That makes me sick. He's a messed up dude who likes to rape young teenagers. Who also happens to be one of the most talented directors of all time. Director of one of the two movies that still freak me out in Repulsion (with The Shining being the other). Director of one of the best film noirs to come out after the 50s in Chinatown. Director of one of the best Holocaust movies ever in The Pianist. Director of one of the best Hitchcockian movies since Hitchcock's death in Frantic. Director of the best movie to ever deal with Satanism in Rosemary's Baby. Director of the best Polish film of all time in Knife in the Water. And raper of at least one drugged 13 year old girl. Who got off lightly and then skipped out on a horribly messed up sentence due to a judge who should've been dejudged. And this documentary makes me feel sorry for him. It's quite a good documentary, but then again, I'm a guy who has never been raped and who loves his movies. I may not be the best judge of Polanski.

Le Corbeau is Henri-Georges Clouzot doing a very brave thing: writing and directing a movie in Vichy France about the dangers of spying on one another and not being unified in the face of someone who wants to destroy someone for petty reasons. Actually, that comes out sounding less impressive than I meant it to be. It's sort of about someone who's going to take revenge for reporting people to the government for collaborating with the Nazis or the Vichy, and the film was financed by the Germans. The film itself isn't as good as Clouzot's later films like Quai des Orfvres, Wages of Fear, or Les Diaboliques.

Our Man in Havana, The Man in the White Suit, What a Way To Go!, & Far from the Madding Crowd

Our Man in Havana comes in this ridiculous Martini Movies package, with instructions for making martinis and picking up women. What the hell? It's a Carol Reed spy movie, based on a Graham Greene novel, starring Alec Guinness and Noel Coward, it needs nothing else to recommend it. Guinness is a vacuum cleaner salesman who embezzles money from the British government to run a spy ring in pre-Castro Cuba (filmed in Castro's Cuba due to it attacking Batista's corrupt regime), and the ridiculousness that ensues. It's funny and well-made, everything you'd expect. And it ends with two terrible cleaning puns. How can you hate a movie like that? I certainly can't.

The Man in the White Suit is the second in my little Alec Guinness mini-fest. It's about a dude who invents a suit that cannot get dirty. And everyone wants it destroyed. It's an Ealing Studios comedy, so there's a comedic sheen, along with some very clever plot twists, even if it never quite gets to loud guffaws.

What a Way To Go! is a Shirley MacLaine starrer, with Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly, Dean Martin, and Dick Van Dyke starring as her husbands. Each story of how they made millions and then died is told in a different film style: French New Wave, big budget Hollywood, musical, and silent. It's also a comedy. That isn't funny. But clearly cost a lot of money. Comedies, as a general rule should be funny.

Far from the Madding Crowd is very long. There was an intermission. It's also based on a Thomas Hardy Novel. So it was very depressing. Good acting from Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, but mostly just very depressing.

Chocolate, Sex Machine, & World Sinks Except Japan

Chocolate puts forth the interesting idea that the first step to being a muay thai master is to be autistic. It's also offensive in that sense. Let alone all the transgendered individuals in it. However, it was directed by the guy (Prachya Pinkaew) who did Ong-Bak (mentioned in my review of Tom Yum Goong), and stars a young girl as the star, doing ridiculously awesome things in an ice factory, a butcher's shop, and on the side of a building. If you were wondering how people didn't die in the film, just wait until you see the end credits, which is pretty much showing people having serious injuries. It explains some of the quick cuts in the otherwise well-done action scenes. Definitely see this if you like ass-kicking women. Also, it could've been much cooler: IMDB says "The film originally included Zen watching scenes from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, but these scenes were eventually cut due to licensing problems. The ice factory scene was originally shot as a split screen of Zen imitating the exact same moves she had seen Bruce Lee do in a fight scene. It showed a clip of Bruce Lee doing his fight moves at the same time as Zen was mimicking Bruce Lee's moves. The warehouse scene was shot in a similar fashion, but this time it showed a split screen of Zen imitating Jackie Chan, wherein she would do her interpretation of a Jackie Chan fight routine." I wish there hadn't been licensing problems. I want to see that movie so much.

Sex Machine is a wacky Japanese pinku film about a woman whose son has fighting cockroaches and so do most of her suitors. I honestly cannot recall why I added this to my Netflix queue. It's very short and softcore porn. Only one of those two are things I tend to like in movies. Maybe if it had been more like the original title: "The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine". That would've been better.

World Sinks Except Japan is a satire of Japan's relationship with the rest of the world. As a satire it falls flat. As a movie it falls flat. I basically kept watching because I wondered if it actually had anywhere to go. But nope, it just ended with a stupid Dr. Strangelove "homage" and me wasting my time. Boo.

Skins & Futurama

Skins is a British show about the decline of youth and the sex and drugs they get into. The first season is a little strained, but is fairly enjoyable, with kids doing stupid things and having sex (lots of nudity, and many shots of the male cast in underwear) and doing lots of drugs, in a mostly believable fashion. But the plot twist at the end of the first season is clearly a jump the shark moment, and while the first episode of the second season is still ok, the second is terrible (short of the Osama! musical (it's at least the third English spoof of an American musical with an ! after it, following The Tall Guy's Elephant! and Gay! A Gay Musical from The IT Crowd (and by the way, I've since seen the American IT Crowd pilot, and it's terrible, as it's the same jokes as the English version, but Joel McHale as Roy is no good, and the woman who they brought in to do Jen was way off, and although Moss was the same, it wasn't nearly enough to make that a travesty of television), which I think is making fun of Oliver!) which is funny), and it just gets worse and worse. The third season starts over with an almost entirely new cast, so I didn't even bother watching those. So, Skins first series is watchable, but second isn't.

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder is something I saw back when it came out on DVD. I also realized I hadn't rated it back then. It seems like a good time to do that, now that Futurama has started airing new episodes on Comedy Central. Those two episodes made me very happy, but weren't quite up to the high level of the show pre-cancellation. Maybe still more nudity and ridiculousness than the Fox episodes, but they fit in quite well with the movies. Back to which, it really is very much for fans. Call-backs to previous plots, along with obscure science references are classic Futurama, but it just wasn't as funny as I would've wanted.

The Informer, The Informant!, Toy Story 3, & Day & Night

The Informer is a John Ford film about the IRA, and made just after the Hays production code was introduced. As such, the IRA was made into much more of a quasi-governmental organization than it really was at the time. Also, the woman in it was so clearly a prostitute, and they went to a whorehouse. And yet, they couldn't possibly mention either of those things in the movie. About the only surprising thing is that the eventual execution is portrayed as completely justified.

The Informant! is Soderbergh messing with you. Having listened to the This American Life episode a couple times, I knew the plot, so it was easy to enjoy Mark Whitacre's insanely random thoughts, and just how crazy he really was. The cast was full of extremely funny comics (Joel McHale, Tony Hale, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Thompkins, Scott Adsit) and some other Those Guys (Scott Bakula, Thomas F. Wilson), but the movie really belongs to Matt Damon and Melanie Lynskey's reactions to him. As much as it can be anyone other than Soderbergh. He needs to make more movies like this. I will watch anything he does.

Toy Story 3 has Day & Night in front of it. Day & Night is the typical Pixar short, winning, almost dialogue-less, and impressive technically. The many women in bikinis was a little surprising, but there are no real complaints with it. Toy Story 3, however, has a lot to answer for: after 11 years, why the hell was it made? After watching it, though, it follows along perfectly with both those who saw the first one as children's growing up, along with Pixar itself. And it has one of the most depressing scenes of all time in a kids film. Even with that, I was laughing and crying throughout, and I just can't say enough: Pixar's batting average is the highest among all production studios. Only A Bug's Life and Cars (the latter the only one that is an actual bad movie) are not masterpiece's.

The Special Relationship, Blood Diamond, Funny People, Repo! The Genetic Opera, & How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

The Special Relationship is from Peter Morgan (and starring Michael Sheen as Blair), who also wrote The Queen and The Deal. Unfortunately, this is a 90 minute version of Blair and Clinton's relationship, which really doesn't give enough time to do anything other than gloss over details and hit some high points. Also, I really didn't like Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton. He was much better as a faux-Bush in American Dreamz. Sheen is again perfect as Blair, but there is little else to recommend about this film.

Blood Diamond hits all the major points a good liberal movie about Africa in the 1990s and 2000s has to: conflict diamonds, child soldiers, mutilation to send a message, apartheid, mercenaries, white journalists trying to make a difference, Rhodesians unwilling to acknowledge that their country isn't called Rhodesia anymore. Oh, wait, that last one is just funny to me. It's also way too long, trying to fit all of those things in, and suffers for it. Leonardo DiCaprio's accent comes and goes, and that may be the best thing I can say about his performance. Sorry, Leo, but this was far from your best performance.

Funny People is indulgent. Did we really need Judd Apatow's duaghters in the movie, let alone one singing Memory being a huge plot point? Also, two and a half hours was way too long. There were some very funny bits, but the "emotional" parts were just ugh. He needs someone to take a vicious scalpel to his films to cut them down to a reasonable amount. Some subplots really went nowhere (The charity stuff? What the hell was the point of any of that?), and we really didn't need quite so many unnecessary cameos (the Eminem-Ray Romano bit was funny, though). I'm sure there were many other things you could've cut down or out to make it closer to two hours, or even less.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is utterly unwatchable. I am a huge fan of Anthony Stewart Head. I made it through 20 minutes before I had to turn it off. The songs are horrendously bad, full of muffled lyrics and unnecesary guitar and industrial flourishes. Nothing can save this film from just being aggressively terrible. Do not watch. Do not consider watching. Do not consider considering watching.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is full of a great cast. Including both non-Moss IT Crowd people. It does, however, suffer from having multiple elevator wipes. Plus an all-too-obvious transsexual. Not-too-obvious that they actually showed penis. Maybe the only one in a major film besides The Crying Game. That one was a great movie full of fine performances. This one is... mediocre. Not quite good enough to recommend to anyone, not bad enough to watch as a bad movie. Actually, the faux trailer for the fake Mother Teresa movie was the best thing in it. Otherwise it's a crappy version of The Apartment.

3:10 to Yuma, Ride Lonesome, Smash His Camera, & The Devil and Daniel Johnston

3:10 to Yuma is the remake of the 1957 Glenn Ford-Van Heflin film, this time starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, with Peter Fonda and Alan Tudyk in supporting roles. It's quite good, holding up as both a remake and as a standalone film. If you like westerns, you'll like this.

Ride Lonesome is a Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher western, referenced in "The Cursed Tuba Contingency" episode of The Middleman. Which is why I added it to my Netflix queue. It's a short little movie, about a bounty hunter trying to bring in a murderer, and ending up trying to keep the brother and his gang from setting him free. He gets involved with a couple of petty criminals and a widow. They also have to fight off Mescaleros. The ending scene in the film is very awesome, with some quick cuts and rampant symbolism.

Smash His Camera is a documentary about a famous paparazzi who basically hounded Jackie Kennedy. There are some interesting stories (Jack Nicholson punched him in the face), but overall, the guy is just annoying and only worth half-watching while doing something else until he talks about his more interesting stories.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston offended me on a very basic level: I like Daniel Johnston occasionally, and some of his music is good, but all of his friends and family comparing him to Bob Dylan and the Beatles and saying he's better than them? You're wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He's an obviously mentally unstable man who was able to pull himself together a few times in his life to make good music, but mostly just needed to get serious help that his family and friends were unable and/or unwilling to provide.

Flesh + Blood, Running out of Time 2, & Le Doulos

Flesh + Blood is Paul Verhoeven doing an utterly ridiculous middle ages movie. Rutger Hauer is the lead mercenary, who kidnaps a virgin from the son of the man who refused to pay him for helping to take back his town. It's violent, full of sex (although a fairly explicit rape scene is disturbing), and kind of funny, exactly what you'd expect from Verhoeven's films. It isn't as good as his last Dutch films, or his later English films, but it's enjoyable enough.

Running out of Time 2 is the sequel to the non-2 movie, but this one isn't nearly as good. It's still kinda stylish, but the plot is just extremely silly. A magician basically shuts down all of Hong Kong by being utterly ridiculous and doing very elaborate tricks. Including a lot of coin flips that all end up the same way. Every times I saw him flip coins, all I could think was that they never actually showed the coins. They didn't have to actually flip the coins and have them end up all the same side. This bothered me. Gives you an idea about how much I cared about the plot when this was all I could focus on.

Le Doulos is a Jean-Pierre Melville noir film, and the Netflix summary says "Fedoras, trench coats, dark alleys and jazz pervade this intricate crime drama", which basically should just be "Noir, noir, noir, noir, noir." It's stylish almost to a fault, with a great interrogation scene, but also lots of characters doing stupid things because they look cool. Can you really blame someone for doing something that looks cool rather than being the most sensible thing at the time? It's not as great as Melville's best, but I greatly enjoyed it anyway.

Now We Are Six

Now we are six years, so I'm redoing the iTunes meme again again, and noting that I saw 222 films this year (total of 4060 films), meaning I saw 6 more films this past year than the previous year. Woo!

How many total songs?
26366, that's 67 days, 28 minutes, and 1 seconds or 121.19 GB. That's 2098 more songs than last year.

Sort by Song Title - first and last?
A.B.C. by The Jackson 5 on the Hitsville USA box set
___ from Regina Spektor's Soviet Kitsch
Same as last year.

Sort by Artist - first and last?
a-ha
+/-
Same as last year.

Sort by Time - first and last?
We're a Couple from the Spaced Soundtrack
Symphony no. 9 from the BBC Philharmonic's Beethoven's Symphonies
Same as last year.

Sort by Album - first and last?
The A List by Wire
() by Sigur Rós
Same as last year.

Top Five Played Songs:
Holland, 1945 from Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea
Drill Me from Portastatic's The Summer of the Shark
Blue Bird from The Rosebuds' Birds Make Good Neighbors
Which are the same top three, and there is a four way tie for fourth:
Miracle Drug from A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder
16 Military Wives from The Decemberists' Picaresque
Two-Headed Boy from Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight from The Postal Service's Give Up

A Serious Man, Frozen River, The Thief of Bagdad, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, & My Name Is Bruce

A Serious Man is the Coen Brothers doing the story of Job, with an ending straight out of John Sayles's excellent Limbo. Michael Stuhlbarg is outstanding as the put-upon professor, husband, and father in 1960s Minnesota, whose wife wants to leave him for a neighbor, whose son is a pothead who owes the neighborhood bully $20 and has to prepare for his bar mitzvah, whose job is in jeopardy, and whose brother's neck cyst is both hilarious and disgusting. The Coen Brothers really can do no wrong when working from their own scripts, and this one is defintely going to be a much tougher road for non-Jews (or non-Biblical scholars) to follow. But for me, even without any real knowledge of the story of Job, I loved the little Jewish touches (and I am very happy I didn't have to use a record player to learn my maftir and haftorah, as I am terrible at playing records). This is also a great excuse to remind everyone of the greatest trailer ever made. Although if someone wants to challenge me and and try to convince me otherise, you can try.

Frozen River stars Melissa Leo (who's excellent in everything she's ever done, including 21 Grams, Homicide, and Treme) as a newly single mother who lives near the Canadian border and starts to smuggle immigrants over the border to raise money to save her house. It's a little depressing, but it's interesting and well-acted.

The Thief of Bagdad is a sort of amalgamation of a lot of different Arabian Nights myths, and there's some significant links to things like Aladdin, and a mess due to being filmed in both England and the US, and having six different directors. It's interesting to see not just brownface, but also actual non-white actors in an early Hollywood film. If only it was a better film.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona makes me feel like it's Woody Allen trying to do something different, but no matter how hard he tried, with this one, he just failed at making anything much different from normal. The two American girls are typical Woody Allen's impression of how people talk rather than anyone who remotely exists. But hey, it's filmed in Barcelona rather than New York and they speak Spanish a lot! Congratulations, you've found the two things different from every other Allen film. Even the much hyped "Penelope Cruz kisses Scarlett Johansson" scene couldn't move this past any of Allen's mediocre films from the past twenty or so years. Boo.

My Name Is Bruce is Bruce Campbell's self-deprecating film. It's him being a huge ass, in a sort of Three Amigos but instead of a gang of bandits, it's a tofu demon. Yes, the Guan-Di, Taoist God of War and defender of bean-curd sellers, is the big bad, disturbed by a huge Bruce Campbell fan who goes to a graveyard to make out with a goth chick. He then goes on to start killing people in the town, magically appearing just at the best time to kill people. Problems with the film include Ted Raimi being racist stereotypes (yeah, two different ones), terrible acting from everyone, unfunny humor, crappy gore effects (lots of decapitations), and a winking tone that makes itself want to think that it's a much cleverer sendup of low budget horror films than it is. Sorry, Bruce, you're much funnier doing stuff like this in your books.

Life, Foyle's War, Blind Mountain, & Woman on the Beach

Life is the follow-up to Planet Earth, although it doesn't quite have the mind-bending awesomeness that was seeing that on a huge HDTV, back when that was fancy and unexpected. Having seen many things (including politician pores and McCain old man creepiness) in HD, it's not quite the novelty. Also, Oprah is no Sigourney Weaver. In fact, before I even started to watch it, I pre-ordered the Blu-ray version with David Attenborough's narration from the BBC version. Because Sigourney Weaver isn't even Sir David. Definitely check out both of these if you ever want to show off your HD TV. Seeing all the adorable creatures trying to deal with life, like the macaques in Japan and the seals and meerkats really are impressive.

Foyle's War is apparently over, unfortunately skipping most of 1944 to the very end of the war in Europe. The last three episodes, one about Russian POWs, racism, and traitors covers some pretty awesome ideas, and it's just a shame that we never get to see Foyle getting back at the American war profiteer. Because I want more Michael Kitchen being a complete badass. He's really just an extremely enjoyable actor.

And from a couple months ago, I watched Blind Mountain, which was a depressing story of a woman who gets kidnapped by a shady dude, and sold into slavery to be a man's wife in a small town in rural China, and how that's how things go there, and the horrible degradations she has to go through to try to let her parents know about what's going on and try to get rescued. If you want a depressing movie filled with rape and beatings, go for it.

I also watched Woman on the Beach, which was a depressing story about a director with writer's block and his relationship with his assistant's girlfriend. Not a particularly good or interesting movie.

Babylon A.D., Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Eye in the Sky, Throwdown, Real Fiction, & Otto; or, Up with Dead People

Babylon A.D. is a really interesting idea, although a little Children of Men, but with Vin Diesel instead of Clive Owen. Oh, and a talented director and good script is also lacking. This does have Michelle Yeoh in it. Unfortunately that is about the only thing this has going for it.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno proves that a film marketed as a comedy can be known for two things: comedy that isn't funny at all and impressive lightsaber dildos. Sadly, other things I can remember: Katie Morgan's horrible fake tits, gay people being "funny" due to talking about sucking cock, and... um, the hockey team is named the Zombies? I've now seen Jason Mewes's dick? Ugh. Just a worthless film.

Eye in the Sky was produced by Johnny To, but it is less like his straight up action films than more about the mentorship between a sargeant and his newest student in a police surveillance unit. It's actually pretty enjoyable, even if it does have the not as good Tony Leung. It was fun to see Simon Yam be the good guy, though. Not an amazing film, but not bad.

Throwdown was actually directed by Johnny To, but it wasn't actually any good. Overacting and a nonsensical plot.

Real Fiction is Kim Ki-duk just messing with you. Shot in basically real-time (there are a few cuts that I think slightly elide time), it's about a guy who basically goes around and kills everyone who upset him. Kim really is just a jerk, and he uses the girl who follows the lead around to implicate the audience in the crimes themselves, at least, until he literally beats you over the head with a rock near the end. I'm not sure exactly what the ending scene really meant, if it was just to try to release some of the immense amounts of tension created in the film, or if it's some weird alternate version of the main character.

Ping Pong Playa seems to think it's funny to replace various cursing with the sound of a ping pong ball or a basketball. It's also a typical sports comedy with an added bit of cultural comedy. Actually, replace comedy with "comedy". It's not particularly funny. Sigh. It's really hard to trust reviews I half remember from two or three years ago. Sigh.

Otto; or, Up with Dead People allows me to say something I never thought I'd ever say: "I have now seen a zombie gay traumatically inseminating another gay zombie." If that's the sort of thing you want to say, have I got a movie for you! Bruce LaBruce made a zombie film. He's apparently a controversial gay Canadian artiste who makes films in Germany. Maybe he's found that Germany is more accepting of this? I'm not sure how anyone can really be accepting of a film that says that gays are zombies and that they are mostly interested in turning people into zombie gays. The only, and I literally mean only, thing that was remotely interesting in the film was that one character was basically a silent film star within the overall film, and so she spoke with intertitles, and when on screen with other people was in black and white with film grain. I guess if I wanted to see naked gay dudes having sex, that would have been interesting as well, but I was well on my way to falling asleep by the time the orgy started.

An American Carol, W., Swing Vote, & Bangkok Dangerous

Liveblogging An American Carol, which is just as bad as everyone out there says it is, and can't be defended no matter how hard anyone tries:
Starts with the strains of Sweet Home Alabama, clearly trying to evoke a sense of national pride by playing a song about a state that most of America doesn't really care about. And then Leslie Nielson shows up, as a granpa who apparently can't grill (is that supposed to be funny?), but not before he hits the first black person on screen in the face with a frisbee. Because that's the kind of movie this is going to be. He starts telling a story about a Scrooge who hates the 4th of July, and it starts on a hilltop in Afghanistan where Robert Davi tries to get a guy to help, but it's confusing because everyone is named Mohammed Hussein. Which is funny. And then he sends a kid to be killed, but blows up his own car. Which is funny. And then there're funny jokes about gay marriage and illegal immigration. There's a funny Goofus-Gallant Taliban recruitment video. Then it's mock Michael Moore time. Which is as tone deaf as everything else so far. It's just like, "It's been a while since we insulted gays, so here's two mannish lesbians who refuse to shave until the end of war." See, that's funny. And Michael Moore eats everything. Oh, I'm sorry, Michael Malone. And all of these lefties don't know who people like Nixon are. Funny! Porn jokes! Jokes about stupid documentaries! Jokes about Michael Malone stinking! Mocking Moveon.org! Mocking Nazi documentarian Leni Riefenstahl! I wonder if they intentionally picked Paris Hilton and Simon Rex for their previous work in porn to be announcers at this awards show? And attacking Edward R. Murrow is really classy. And joking about Islamic fundamentalists killing people is classy as well! Fake beard! Opium crop jokes! Seinfeld jokes! JFK is Marley's Ghost! And ignoring the part about fighting for liberty, not for America. Or something like that. And now it's back to "liberals are idiots and just like chanting slogans" jokes! Also funny are shots of Malone getting his faced stepped on. George C. Scott has got to be rolling in his grave at Kelsey Grammer as Patton. This slave-owning in the south thing is remarkably offensive to everyone. The Columbia Peace Studies scene continues the theme of an extremely simplistic view of everything. In fact, I honestly can't keep writing about everything in this. "Death to the uncircumcised"? ACLU Zombies? Attacking documentaries for not making money just never gets boring, does it? Jon Voight as George Washington! Hey, 9/11! More slapping of Michael Malone! And more fat jokes! Oh, my god... Seriously? Military college recruits are the good guys? Trace Adkins is definitely the Angel of Death. Country Music is not redemptive at all, idiots. A gay sailor joke? Followed by a gay marines joke? How exactly did a bunch of sick kids being dragged into the ocean become funny? About the only funny thing was how often kids resorted to the jerk off motion. Which is about the most American thing in the entire film.

W. is Oliver Stone's cliffnotes version of a drunk teens half-rememberance of what they once learned by reading a blog about George W. Bush's life. If you think I'm being too harsh, just think of anything that's been said about W.'s life or said by him and reported in the press that could potentially be either embarrassing for funny, and it's in the movie. I'm a little surprised they didn't keep the middle finger during the preparation for the TV interview. Otherwise, all the Bushisms you could shoehorn into an overlong and boring film are there. The cast is certainly an impressive collection of talent, it's just a shame that they were given absolutely nothing that's worth watching. Maybe Jeffrey Wright as the only reasonable person in Colin Powell, but really, it's just a waste of time for everyone involved and I highly recommend not watching this movie.

Swing Vote actually fits with the two previous films in an extremely cynical view of America and its politics. In this case, unlike An American Carol which is cynical in everything it does and W's cynicalness in its delving makeup deep into Bush's life, the cynicalness is that an unemployed drunk can decide an election and that both political parties will sell out their core beliefs to get that vote. Ignoring the basic fact that there's no way this wouldn't go to a recount and one vote not actually mattering across the state of New Mexico, along with how blatantly illegal the one on one campaigning and horse trading was, it was just kinda boring. About the only thing I was wondering was if they were going to chicken out or not at the end. They came really, really close, but the end made me like it a little more. Not this person on the IMDB message boards. Other things I kinda liked: Art Crumb clearly based on Bob Shrum and yet somehow not being incompetant enough, although Nathan Lane does get the desperate to be considered intelligent and successful right. There are some interesting bits, but overall, it's just a pox on both houses film.

Bangkok Dangerous is... wait, you were wondering what a movie about Nic Cage being a hitman in Bangkok has to do with three films about American politics? Well, this one was written by Jason Richman who also wrote Swing Vote. And somehow, this may be the best of the four films. It's certainly the one that I feel like I could recommend to someone with an appreciation for... I'm kidding. This is also terrible, has little to do with the original Bangkok Dangerous (aside from being set in Bangkok, having a hitman character, a deaf character, and a love story), and Nic Cage isn't even deliciously crazy in it. Come on. I wanted some Wicker Man crazy, or at least some hyperactive National Treasure wildness. Instead I got boring Nic Cage acting worldweary and doing lots of stupid non-hitman-y things. Yeah, still directed by the Pang Brothers, and Charlie Yeung is attractive, but a couple of stylish scenes can't make up for the rest of this tedious mess.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Pluto Files, Being Human, Life, & lots more TV

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is about the life of an obese Dominican and the history of his family tied up in a story of the Dominican Republic and the fuku that colonization has brought upon the world. Being both a history buff and a nerd, I really loved the book. It's just the kind of thing that I love. I'm enjoying the fact that there's books like this that are winning things like Pulitzer prizes. Because that means that I'm either becoming more literary, or, more likely, the literary establishment is becoming nerdier. I wonder when the first bit of fan fiction will win a major writing award. I really hope it's some good old Luke/Han Solo slash.

I finally actually watched The Pluto Files, and it was just as enjoyable as I was hoping. Neil deGrasse Tyson is just so engaging, and he makes science so interesting. Who doesn't make science interesting were the people who did Being Human. Which was a three part series about the evolution of man, but was pretty darn boring. Life, on the other hand, had annoying narration from Oprah Winfrey, but the footage in HD is worth it. I didn't enjoy it as much as Planet Earth, but it's hard to argue against HD nature footage.

In network TV news, Justified, the new FX series with Timothy Olyphant based on Elmore Leonard stories, is pretty enjoyable. Pacific isn't as good as Band of Brothers, but it's still fairly enjoyable. The Ricky Gervais Show, although based on podcasts, is funny, and Karl Pilkington is a magnificent moron. Community continues to be the best thing on free network TV. Treme, if you aren't watching, is a proud successor to The Wire. This is also about a city and people that is being failed by the institutions that are supposed to have protected it. There are so many things about this show that just make me giddy when I watch it.

Titus Andronicus at St. Stephens Church 4/16

I first heard about Titus Andronicus about a week before the show, so I wasn't really familiar with them. They were fun, though, and I have since enjoyed the albums. The openers, Sleeper Agent! and Amateur Party, were both bad. I normally avoid heckling bands loud enough to be heard by the bands themselves, but there was one very drunk person who was heckling, and I can't say I blamed him. The lead singer of Sleeper Agent! was coming very close to punching himself in the head. And the music was ugh. They both had good "liberal" lyric-ed songs but the musicianship was lacking. Titus was talented and made it worth the $7 with a can. It was a benefit for We Are Family DC, so it was for a good cause. I don't regret going at all, but man, the place was hot and unpleasant, smelled terrible, at least one person was dry heaving on the way out, and the many hipsters standing outside a church in my neighborhood smoking and drinking wasn't cool. But it's hard to skip out on a show less than a block from my place with a band I like.

White Dog, The Baron of Arizona, Forty Guns, The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets!, Hell and High Water, & Merrill's Marauders

Apparently, about two years ago, when Eclipse released a collection of Samuel Fuller films, I decided to add a bunch to my queue, and thus, you're going to be reading brief (or not so brief) reviews of a bunch of Samuel Fuller films. Starting with White Dog, a movie about a racist dog. Which, considering the recent episode of 30 Rock with the Black Dog was kinda useful. It's a pretty 80s film, with some completely unnecessary slow-motion, and the confrontation with the original owner was kinda hilarious in an unintentional way, but I liked the film more than the message. Which I get is a little bit of that people can be horrible to animals and it's better to kill those animals rather than try to fix them. Because that's about the only thing I got of it.

The Baron of Arizona is his second film as director, after I Shot Jesse James, and it's the weird, but true, story of a con man who tried to steal Arizona. Yeah, you read that right: back in the mid-late 1800s, a con man started to forge a huge amount of documents (and rock carvings) in order to convince people the King of Spain had given this family almost all of Arizona, and then he married "the last remaining" one, and tried to pull one over. It failed, and the movie simplifies his redemption (in reality, it's not clear if he ever was redeemed, and it's more of a depressing penniless begger ending than in the movie where he still has the love of a good woman and he confesses. Interesting movie from a historical standpoint, but it's pretty darn on the nose for most of it. The lynching scene was really well done, and Vincent Price (yes, Vincent Price!) as the con artist makes the film much more worthwhile than it should be. Also, screw Arizona.

Forty Guns is a mediocre western, with Barbara Stanwyck. With musical interludes. It's very odd to think of Samuel Fuller directing this. And yet, not only did he direct it, he wrote it. Sure there's violence and the movie is pretty messed up, but that musical interlude at the open-air bathhouse is painful. And a lot of the dialogue is horribly cheesy. And extremely Freudian.

The Steel Helmet is the first film made about the Korean War and it's also a lot about race relations in the first integrated war. It's not a particularly subtle movie, with the North Korean they capture explicitly talking about how we mistreated both blacks and Japanese, especially during their service in WWII. I'm impressed that it was made at all, what with some soldiers being cowards, the racist actions of America being such an important plot point, and the fact that the black guy doesn't die, but the temple scenes would never have been made today, what with all the shooting at Buddhas.

Fixed Bayonets! is about a rear guard action during the initial retreat in Korea. A platoon is left behind to stop the North Korean advance, and the troops are slowly freezing to death and dying one at a time. The main star of The Steel Helmet is one of the gruff sargeants here. I really didn't care for most of it, and the fact that the North Koreans didn't attack in force, or even try very hard before they did surprised me. But the scene in the minefield and the final North Korean push weren't too bad.

Hell and High Water has Richard Widmark as a submarine captain who is enlisted by a civilian group of scientists who are interested in stopping the Communists from starting WWIII. And there's a woman aboard a submarine, which, thanks to a friend of where I work, there will be many more of next year. Which is completely ridiculous that it hasn't happened before now. Submarine films are always exciting, and this one is about average for a submarine film. The use of Cinemascope in a submarine film was an interesting choice, but it definitely contributes to the claustrophobia that is very important to cover in a film.

Merrill's Marauders is based on an Army unit of about 3,000 volunteers in Burma who went behind enemy lines and beat the crap out of the Japanese under the ultimate command of General Joe Stilwell. He rode them as hard as he could before they succumbed to the jungle and the superior number of Japanese forces, soon after the movie ended. I am pretty sure I watched this back in the days when I'd watch anything that was about a war, but I didn't remember anything in particular about it. I did enjoy seeing Stilwell be a hardass.

My Neighbors the Yamadas, Broken English, Appaloosa, & Europa

My Neighbors the Yamadas is an animated film from Studio Ghibli's Isao Takahata, who did Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, and Pom Poko. This is an extremely episodic film, with no overarching narrative at all, just bits and pieces in the life of a family in Japan, based on a comic strip. Which makes sense, since the usually no more than a minute or two segments feel like setting, setup, punchline. That said, most are very true to life, and enjoyable, although the ending sing along to Que Sera Sera is not really needed. I understand that you kind of have to have an ending to let people know that the movie is over, but I felt it should be more like life, and just kind of end, rather than some big production number.

Broken English is a film that really didn't make much of a mark on me. I guess I kinda liked it, but the story of a hotel fixer who is unlucky in love until she meets a Frenchman and then goes to Paris to meet him just felt ok. It wasn't bad, and Parker Posey was good in the role, but it felt like someone wandering through life not knowing what to do until a random coincidence gives everything a happy ending.

Appaloosa is a pretty good western, anchored by strong performances from Ed Harris and, especially, Viggo Mortensen as lawmen who come into town to take down Jeremy Irons. He's protected because he was friends with Chester A. Arthur, so it's much harder than they'd expect. Definitely an enjoyable film, and felt like a great twist on the western genre.

Europa is Lars von Trier messing with you. But instead of following Dogme 95 rules (in spirit if not exactly), he messes with switching between black and white and color film, characters moving from foreground to being in scenes in rear projection, and it's all set in a story of post-war Germany and the Werewolves. You know, if I had seen this film before I started to hate von Trier so much, I probably wouldn't hate him. It's a balls-out film announcing himself as bored with film and saying that you have to pick a side, either with the status quo or trying to make the world a better place. And the lead in the film makes the wrong choice, and ends up in a pretty amazing drowning scene in a river. But von Trier really is just messing with you.

House of Cards, To Play the King, & The Final Cut

House of Cards, To Play the King, and The Final Cut are parts 1-3 of a British miniseries about the rise and fall of the Chief Whip of the Tories, who becomes Prime Minister and then has to keep power. They're based on a series of novels that diverge from historical record after Margaret Thatcher steps down. The first one is about how he gets power, and is, by far, the strongest. At the end of the first book/movie, the source and series diverge, as in the book, Urquhart dies, while in the movie, Mattie dies. This means that the series allows for sequels, although the author himself wrote sequels to the movie rather than the book (not unlike Jurassic Park). Ian Richardson is great as the slimy Machiavellian minister, and he makes the second two worth watching, even as they lose much of what made the first so great. To Play the King has Michael Kitchner as a Prince Charles stand-in who has become king after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and helps make the drop-off much less than in The Final Cut. Which adds a bit of backstory and kind of comes out of nowhere, not fully clicking. The entire series is a great behind the scenes look at how a Parliamentary system might work, although in a very cynical way. You might well think that I enjoyed it immensely, but I couldn't possibly comment.

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.