Wag of my finger for Netflix, Tip of my hat to the National Geographic Society Museum

Due to Netflix being a bunch of annoying people, I didn't get movies I should have, so I caught up on TV (Generation Kill is not as good as The Wire, but still a very watchable and good show, along with some great lines), watched an old movie I hadn't seen in a while (The 39 Steps, while excellent from a cinematic standpoint, still has a practically neanderthalithic sense of gender roles in that every woman with more than a line or two is either stabbed, beaten, or portrayed to be an idiot in the movie, sometimes all of them, and really, it's not like Hitchcock was always the most progressive when it comes to female characters, with Mrs. Smith enjoying the rape at the end of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (not the one with Brangelina)), and went to a museum. That last one was the National Geographic Society Museum, which I thought was a little small, but was pretty neat. One exhibit was on Zheng He, the most famous Chinese explorer. Basically, he sailed all over the Indian Ocean, being kind of awesome, even while being a Muslim Eunuch. The exhibit had a bunch of maps (one of which was nigh impenetrable, even for someone who knew exactly what it was supposed to be of), models of the ships they think he sailed on, some china from the time, and modern day photos of places he visited. The other main exhibit there was on Shaolin monks, with photographs of them practicing. And most of the monks were 33rd generation or the like. That's pretty amazing. I wanted this photo, but look at that price: $600! I do not have that kind of money to spend on a photo. 50 DVDs, on the other hand... The exhbits are only there for a few more weeks, so you don't have much time.

The Secret Life of Words, They Live, The Burmese Harp, Pineapple Express, & Once

The Secret Life of Words stars Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins as people scarred by life. Polley is a former Yugoslav who is partially deaf and works in a factory in Northern Ireland. When she finds out about an oil rig that needs a nurse, she volunteers and starts to care for Robbins's scarred and temporarily blinded worker. And they tell each other secrets and learn how to live again. It's a kind of cheesy movie, but the acting makes up for it. Weirdly, I saw this the same weekend Elegy came out, which was also directed by Isabel Coixet.

They Live is a film that I've been meaning to see for far too long. But it was a Metafilter thread about Hollywood fight scenes a couple weeks ago that made me move it to the top of my queue. And I sort of don't regret it. Sure, John Carpenter has been mostly miss over the last twenty years, but this is twenty years old, after a string of enjoyable films like Big Trouble in Little China, Starman, The Thing, and Halloween, so I was hoping for something cheesy and fun. And this film is cheesy and fun. Rowdy Roddy Piper plays a drifter who ends up in a homeless camp, and finds some sunglasses which show that every rich person is an alien who have taken over society through subliminal messages. So he has to stop them. And toss out lines like, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." One of the best one liners in all of movie history. The long fight scene with Frank is ok, nothing nearly as amazing as I was led to believe, but the film itself was ridiculous enough in everything that I had to enjoy it. Also, for the record, about thirty seconds before the credits, there's a completely gratuitous topless scene. So add They Live to the list. Nothing is added, except a reason to make sure you keep paying attention during the denouement.

The Burmese Harp is an anti-war film by the Japanese. I think I need to watch a Mishima film just to see what a pro-war film from the Japanese would be like, since almost everyone of any talent in Japan basically makes anti-war films. This is about a platoon of Japanese soldiers retreating in Burma during the last days of WWII, and one of the soldiers has made the titular harp, and plays it when scouting ahead. After the war ends, they surrender to the British, but the harpist is sent to try to convince a group of soldiers who are still holding out to surrender. As anyone would expect, he fails and becomes a monk. It's a beautiful film, but it's depressing. Of course, now I have to see Fire on the Plain, which has been sitting in my Janus box for a couple of years now. And I'd like to point out that I saw the original, not the remake from the 80s.

Pineapple Express is a weed action movie. Emphasis on both descriptives. It's obviously a movie, and it's obviously about pot, but it seems like some weren't expecting the action. I wasn't expecting some of the gore. But it was enjoyable, and funny, even though I wasn't partaking of weed. It actually reminded me of a far more competent Dude, Where's My Car?, and now moves into first place on the weakly competed for "Best Pot Movie Ever Seen By Me" category. James Franco is just so dreamy. It's a damn shame that he had to go and do that James Dean movie after Freaks and Geeks, because otherwise he would have kept making comedies, and he's just very good in this. And David Gordon Green makes the film look pretty darn good. Some of the scenes in the forest were just beautiful. Also, since I haven't written up the last two concerts I've been to (since I wasn't particularly familiar with either band beforehand, but Regina Spektor and Statehood are quite good, and well-worth the no monies I paid to see them), a return of my favorite bit of concert going: douchebag of the movie going experience! No, not me for mixing popcorn and blue raspberry icee and feeling sick for the rest of the day. It was the two girls who walked up to the help desk at the Georgetown theater and asked "Is that new Ben Stiller film out yet?" And when they were told no, both sighed and walked straight back out the front doors. One: are there people that excited about the Ben Stiller film after seeing advertisements about it that they neglected to notice that the advertisements all say that it opens next week? Two: are these same people really able to go all the way to the theater and ask someone who works there before they realize that the movie isn't opening? Are these people Unaware of All Internet Traditions (like, say, google or yahoo or fandango)? I didn't realize there were people in this city that did stuff like wander in to a movie theater thinking that a movie was coming out one weekend rather than the next. Movies with enormous advertising budgets.

Once made me tear up. Falling Slowly deserved the Oscar. And I had to rewatch the best thing about this past Oscar ceremony. For the transcript, go here, but since the media companies don't understand the web, they don't actually have the video on youtube, but that first link has it. Basically, besides the touching speech, Jon Stewart is awesome. Anyway, besides Falling Slowly, there are a number of other great songs, and the acting is quite good, especially from two people who've never really acted before. Although Glen Hansard was also in the Commitments, a great movie about a blue-eyed soul group in Dublin, which I saw in the year without a blog. I actually think that the 85 minute run time was quite perfect for the film, even if I wish there had been more time to spend in their lives. But that ambiguity that exists, about a lot of the history of the characters, along with all that was said in Czech, works here, and I was touched. Sure, the budget is clearly tiny, there are a few times that the crowd looks at the camera, and you frequently see crew members and microphones on screen or in reflections, but the scenes of them making music together and separately are what makes the film magical. See this film.

Radio On, The One-Armed Swordsman, The Americanization of Emily, Rambo, & Yo-Yo Girl Cop

Radio On has a great soundtrack: it kicks off with Heroes (the mixed English/German version) and continues on with a jukebox playing Whole Wide World, which was also used well in Stranger than Fiction, which I didn't mention before, but had a great soundtrack. And the rest of it wasn't as well-loved by me, but there was still Kraftwerk and Devo. The plot itself was secondary, a road trip by a disaffected youth in England trying to find out information about his brother's apparent suicide. So basically, just listen to Heroes and then Whole Wide World while watching black and white scenery, and you'll get about the same out of it.

The One-Armed Swordsman was apparently one of the first big kung fu films of the Shaw Brother Age. It was also ridiculously obsessed with stabbing people in the stomach. Except for the arm cutting which gives the film the title, pretty much everyone who died was stabbed in the stomach. The fight scenes were pretty silly, as the good guys kept doing the same stupid things and then dying, and they were much slower than they should have been. When you have a guy with one arm, he may not be able to attack that quickly, but I'd be damned stupid not to try to take advantage of that fact when attacking him. It was quite an impressive set, though, with the early scenes in the snow being pretty. And one last thing: if some woman ever want to show that they care, do it by telling me, or kissing me, or something like that, not cutting my arm off. That is not cool.

The Americanization of Emily is a cynical as all hell film written by Paddy Chayefsky, and proves that he wasn't a one hit wonder like I postulated based on the Hospital. I don't blame him for Altered States, I blame Ken Russell. But anyway, this one was James Garner as a dog-robber in World War II, working for an Admiral who wants to play up the role of the Navy in D-Day, so he wants Garner to make a movie about the Navy's important role clearing the mines. And somehow that leads to Garner being the first man on Omaha. He falls in love with Julie Andrew's war widow along the way, who prizes him for his cowardice due to the fact that it would be unlikely he'd die like her former husband. And James Coburn plays Garner's friend who wants to fight, but has bad eyesight and was given a desk job. And this is all a ridiculous satire of bravery and the military, along with great performances from all involved. I recommend this film to all who like good films.

Rambo is a film I recommend to all who like terrible films. My comments on the series can be summed up as "Although the first one is actually not a bad movie, the next two (in II he single-handedly refights and wins Vietnam, and III where he single-handedly defeats the Soviet Army in Afganistan and paves the way for the rise of the Taliban and 9/11) are terrible." This one is also terrible. I'd also like to point out that there were 262 deaths in the film (in just 91ish minutes), and only two of them are white people, missionaries who basically have no personalities or names before their death. The Arab or Hispanic mercenary lives, I think, but the asian one dies, because no Asian must come out alive. Seriously, 260 deaths are Asian? There was a decapitation as well a throat being ripped out. Also, surprisingly anti-religion, as the missionaries had to overcome their reluctance to kill in order to save themselves. One final note: "sometimes a guy getting turned into hamburger by a jeep-mounted machine gun is just a guy getting turned into hamburger by a jeep-mounted machine gun".

Yo-Yo Girl Cop is no The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers. It's quite terrible, with precious little Yo-Yo fighting, although there are girls and cops. It's ridiculously bad. Also, it's an adaptation of a series of mangas, and the return of a tv and movie series of the mid-80s. At least they brought back the character from the original series for the movie. The titular cop somehow gets a bulletproof uniform at the end, but is still extremely stupid, like running towards explosions and ignoring the guy with the big sword who keeps cutting her. It was directed by the son of the guy who directed Battle Royale and The Yakuza Papers. Based on this movie, directing talent is not genetic.

The Middleman

The Middleman on ABC Family: yes, in some ways, you're giving money to Pat Robertson. I think, all I know is that he's somehow still on ABC Family. How they can show the 700 Club and The Middleman back to back is painful to my brain. But man oh man, The Middleman may be the best comic book adaptation ever. For those not in the know, Javier Grillo-Marxuach (a former writer for Lost) wrote the pilot episode for the series some years back, but no one wanted to pick it up, so he turned it into a comic in 2005. And published three trade paperbacks over the next few years until ABC Family (in their infinite wisdom) actually picked this up for series. Originally planned to be 13 episodes, the ratings have been bad, and so the order was cut down to 12. I don't want this to go the way of all the other awesome shows I love on TV (unlike Pushing Daisies and Lost) and get canceled. Anyway, the plot is that a temp, named Wendy Watson (nicknamed Dub-Dub, which always makes me think of Jubjub), ends up hired by mysterious superhero The Middleman to be his replacement and they end up having to fight crime with the help of an alien android and lots of crazy technology with ridiculous names (like the BTRS Scanner, which stands for Beyond the Realm of Science). And more puns and references to pop culture than I could have thought possible. Every episode seems to have a lot of references to one particular subject matter, like the trout zombie episode having many references to the band, The Zombies. Episode titles include "The Sino-Mexican Revelation" (a group of Lucha Libre wrestlers kidnap the Middleman's sensei (played by the Chairman, Mark Dacascos, shown here with the Middleman), "The Flying Fish Zombification" (about a guy turning people into trout zombies...), and "The Boyband Superfan Interrogation" (about an alien who is trying to stop a boy band from destroying the planet through the use of wormholes). Honestly, this is just about the smartest show I have seen in years. But beyond the absurd plots (Supersmart Gorillas Obsessed With Gangster Movies! Recovering Succubi! A Cursed Tuba From The Titanic!), the best thing is the characters. Wendy (adorably played by the adorable Natalie Morales) lives in an illegal sublet with another young photogenic artist, played by Brit Morgan, and is friends with Noser, who generally speaks all in song lyrics and plays "Stump the Band" in a highly entertaining fashion. These are real people in a bizarre but enjoyable world and their interactions are what make the TV show worth watching.

I've been watching it with Tweaks and Meat. And for those of you who want advanced studies in Middlemania, go here to see a bunch of behind the scenes videos and promos giving you a bit of the idea of the ridiculous awesomenosity of the show. This week's episode is about ghosts at a sorority, and constantly references Ghostbusters and Wendy talks about how she watches terrible zombie films to remind her of how awesome the good ones are. It was just great. And there will be upcoming episodes with Kevin "TV's Hercules" Sorbo, vampire puppets (can't possibly be as good as Smile Time, but I'm happy that there will be more vampire puppets on TV), and an evil parallel universe (with goatees!). I defy you to watch this show and not enjoy it. Please watch it. Please.

The Dark Knight, Rush Hour 3, & The Simpsons Movie

The Dark Knight is something I really don't need to say much about. Like with the original Spiderman, I was there the first weekend, contributing to the largest weekend box office ever. I have some serious problems with the film: the Bat-Sonar fight was confusion to an extreme, the film was far too long, Christian Bale was somewhat disappointing, and the turning of Two-Face made little to no sense, let alone him being wasted in what was clearly Joker's film. And this was Joker's film. As good as Gary Oldman is (and this cast was friggen amazing, with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Aaron Eckhardt all being quite good), Ledger owned the film. The Joker is one of the classic comic book villains. And I also want to say, again, that Edison Chen is an ass. His role had to have been slightly bigger before that happened. The film is clearly cursed, with Ledger's death, Bale's arrest, and Chen's sex scandal. Even with all this, I liked the film, it's slightly better than Batman Begins, but it's not the best film ever, IMDB. What the hell, nerds?

Rush Hour 3 should prove, once and for all, how masochistic I am when it comes to movies. I knew it was going to suck when the words "Directed by Brett Ratner" were first announced. He's a terrible, terrible person. And Chris Tucker should, umm... stop making movies? Please. That all being said, the stunts were crappy, it was depressing to see the constant stereotyping (Youki Kudoh as "The Dragon Lady"? You couldn't even be bothered to give her a name?), and Jackie Chan is too old to be doing this. There are others in the cast I like, like Max von Sydow, Yvan Attal (quite possibly one of the luckiest men on the planet), Philip Baker Hall, Roman Polanski (well, I don't like him, but I think he's a great director), but this movie was just even worse than the second one. Partly because that one had Zhang Ziyi. But Ratner is just making crappy movies as an excuse to sleep with attractive women and do enormous amounts of blow. I hate him. Only partly because I want to be him. Not the blow part.

The Simpsons Movie just depressed the hell out of me. It's basically like three episodes of the series strung together. But not the good series (I recently watched a couple of early episodes on TV, and loved them again, but I stopped watching the show back in 2002), the recent stuff, of which I rarely crack a smile when watching and never laugh. I only catch it when others are watching and I happen to be there. But the movie was just crapping all over my memories even more. This is the reason that shows need to be cancelled. I can count the number of shows that didn't have enormous drop offs in quality: those are the ones that got cancelled. No scripted show has ever deserved twenty seasons. There's such a thing as diminishing returns, when you run out of ways to make it fresh. They ran out years ago.

The King Boxer, My Young Auntie, & Hana & Alice

The King Boxer had me convinced in about five minutes that I was being had. And I was. See, I thought this was King Boxer, aka Five Fingers of Death, the classic Hong Kong martials arts film. Instead, I got a crappy VCD version of The King Boxer, a mediocre at best martial arts film made a year earlier and about the only thing to recommend it is the music, which Sbug was enjoying even as I was saying that this was an elaborate joke on me. And that it's a weird metaphor for World War II, with the Japanese guy going around being evil and the Chinese and Thais needing to band together to kill the Japanese dude who has help from Chinese collaborators. I'd go into more detail, but I was pissed. Damnit.

My Young Auntie, on the other hand, made up for that entirely. Quite, totally, awesome in every sense of the word. There were six main fight scenes, and each were outstanding in their own way. The first, starting with Kara Hui (as the titular auntie) kicking ass beginning while sitting on a pedicab, while the second was funnier with the Auntie fighting her grand nephew. The third, however, was where the film kicked into overdrive. The auntie was from the boonies, and goes into the city to shop. And ends up in a gorgeous white cheongsam and high heels, neither of which she is used to. And proceeds to kick the ass of some mean men. While having problems with the heels, and the dress having problems staying down. It's just a funny and well-done fight. To get back at the auntie, the grand nephew gets her to dress up in a 18th century dress and a blond wig to go to a masquerade where they end up having to sword fight some ponces with everyone in ridiculous costumes, most of which isn't that much better than well-executed slapstick, but the Kara Hui bits with her fighting with a Chinese sword against a guy in a mask with an épée were excellent. The next fight is the last one that Kara Hui participates in, which pissed me off, since she is gorgeous and graceful (with her studies as a dancer), but she and her grand nephew try to break into a house, and end up having to fight a guy who is basically impervious to weapons. Very, very well done. The last one is a little disappointing, but that's mainly because the previous one was so great. Sure, there was a lot of slapstick, most of it wasn't very funny, but the fight scenes... wow.

Hana & Alice is a film directed by Shunji Iwai, who also did All about Lily Chou-Chou, another film that is a little long and episodic. This one, however stars Japanese actress Anne Suzuki, who first came to prominence in the US in Snow Falling on Cedars, and then in Initial D, but the only Japanese film I've actually seen with her in it (before this one), is Steamboy, a good looking but hollow anime, but I think I saw that in the dubbed version, so not even her voice. This one is about two Japanese schoolgirls (and isn't pornographic) who fall for the hot guy who bumps his head and loses his memory, thereby allowing one of the girls to convince him they are dating. But of course this just causes a lot of strain between the two girls.

Brideshead Revisited, Color Me Kubrick, & The Queen

Brideshead Revisited is a British TV miniseries (again Granada, not BBC, like The Jewel in the Crown) that my parents have been telling me to watch for a long time. They recently rewatched it as well, alternating that with discs of the first season of The Wire. Sometimes my parents are actually sort of cool. It's number ten on the list that had The Jewel in the Crown at 22. I've actually seen quite a number of these, or at least the ones that are not just news-y things. This one has Jeremy Irons (who has never not looked old (he was only in his early 30s in this, and he was playing a college student), who is quite excellent. It also had Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, John Gielgud, and Diana Quick, so the acting was uniformly strong. I did not mean to watch this right before a theatrical film came out, and only discovered the existence of that film when I first IMDB'd this one. The book is all about Catholic repression and British upperclass repression. It's all a big bunch of repression.

Color Me Kubrick is John Malkovich playing a gay con man, Alan Conway, who convinces people he's Stanley Kubrick. I sort of wish that Kubrick had actually been able to make some of the movies described in the film. I do recall reading about this guy back in the 90s, especially after the Frank Rich scene, which just jogged that in my mind. Malkovich is, as normal, quite good, and the director, Brian W. Cook actually worked with Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining, and Barry Lyndon. A brief bit of fun for those interested in a weird-ass story.

The Queen was about the Royal Family and Tony Blair's week after the death of Princess Diana. I was never a big fan of the Royal Family, or Princess Diana for that matter, and Tony Blair's been permanently lowered in my estimation by his love affair with W, but the movie still worked very well. Even as an anti-monarchist, I felt myself siding with Blair against Campbell and getting sort of teary when the Queen came to her senses. Stephen Frears is an immensely talented director, and he does quite a good job, although the stag bits were a little heavy-handed. But the use of archive footage, blended seamlessly with the footage made to look archive was quite excellent. I do want to say that naming your female child Laurence (as in Laurence Burg, the Princess Diana stand-in in the film) is just going to make me think that there was a weird message being sent, but nope, just a woman with a man's name. Silly French. Also, weirdly, there was a film called The Deal made in 2003, that stars Michael Sheen as Blair and was written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears. I wonder if all that was a coincidence...

Harry Potter

Being in the United States and 18, I hadn't heard of Harry Potter when the first book was released (September 1998, the beginning of my freshman year), and wouldn't have heard of it until the first movie was close to coming out, had I not participated in Toys for Tots my freshman year in college. I had a choice of a book and a toy to buy from a prescribed list, and when I went to the bookstore, the clerk recommended the first book. So I took the advice, and didn't think of Harry Potter until the first movie came out, and people started to compare it to The Fellowship of the Ring. Being a huge nerd (but not one remotely familiar with the book, but with Chris Columbus's history of filmmaking), I came out very clearly on the Tolkien side. After seeing the film in college, I was even more sure. From the lost blog on March 25, 2002: "I went to see "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" last night. I know that this is going, at least, to annoy some of the readers of this, but that movie was 2.5 hours of the biggest crappy-ness that Hollywood could throw at me. I am positive that it's a combination of Chris Columbus's no-talent directing and J.K. Rowling's derivative book. And what's with the Deus Ex Machina ending? It apparently wasn't in the book, but they decided to include so much of the book, and then change the ending to something that pissed me off more than the entire crappy CGI of the Quidditch match? The movie was complete tripe. At least I didn't completely piss Brady off by being too vocal in my scorn in front of her brother. I think that the book is probably a little better than the movie, but not much, as it's so derivative of the Star Wars trilogy and LOTR that I hated it. I mean, I really like the cast (as it's English), but dear god, that was 2.5 hours long. I remember sitting there looking at my watch and saying, "Dear god, there's 45 more minutes of this crap?"" So you can see, umm, I really didn't like it. Even with that horrible reaction to the first film and quite a few more screeds against Harry Potter when the second movie and the fifth book came out, when I saw Mean Girls in May of 2004, I wrote this: "I was actually hoping that the new Cinderella story was the new Harry Potter trailer. I'm tempted to see it, because Cuarón is a very talented director. Oh well." Cleary, my mind had changed.

In 2005, I finally saw Chamber of Secrets, as I am a huge fan of Alfonso Cuarón, and will see anything he's done (A Little Princess and Great Expectations are gorgeous films, even if not as good as Y Tu Mama Tambien), so his directing the third one made me need to have some background. And yes, I enjoyed Prisoner of Azkaban. So clearly, after watching the second and third ones (and accurately predicting the release of the 7th book in 2007), I was planning on reading the books. I watched Goblet of Fire in the theater with my family later in 2005, again hoping for faster writing of the last book. I finally saw the fifth one (in HD on my fancy TV, which is so awesome, by the way) in the midst of reading the others, and man, if my nerdiness didn't make me get a little annoyed at all the changes made, even though I had only read the books once and that was in the two weeks right before watching the film. And still, the thing that annoyed me most was making Cho Chang's role smaller, because I want more attractive Asians with accents, please. Anyway, seeing the movie was a little ahead of where I was in my story.

So back in late June, I was unceremoniously dumped by email late on a Friday when I was at work. I went home, and instead of sulking like I normally do when this occurs (some of my sulks are better than others), I started to read Harry Potter. I made it through the first one in a day, the second one in a couple more, the third by the end of the first week, the fourth over that second weekend, the fifth over the next week (it's long and I can't read all day when I'm at work), and the sixth one made it a little over a day (I had to watch the fifth movie first). And somewhere after I started to read I noticed that Tweaks (it's a long post but you got mentioned), had two copies of the fifth book but no copy of the seventh. And those two Order of the Phoenixes were the English version (so no pictures at the chapter headings, boo! but I liked reading the English version anyway). So I really tried to hold off on the sixth one, but I was into it and epic fail. And everyone else in DC I knew who read it didn't have their copies of the books, and so I had to wait for four days to get to start reading the seventh book. Which is nothing compared to the two years for everyone who read it when the books came out, but I was getting a little antsy anyway. And I finished the seventh by staying up until almost 3 am after Tweaks's birthday party and 2 am the next night (couldn't stop reading with so little left). So I was a little less social than I would have been over the last few weeks, and now you know why I haven't actually posted too many movie reviews lately.

Now to the actual books: I liked them. Certainly not the deepest or best written books I've ever read, but they're extremely enjoyable, and probably quite good for an early teen. Not being an early teen, the bits of self-censoring and willful ignorance (you're putting a whole bunch of boys and girls, ages 11-17, in rooms without any kind of watching besides some kind of charm that makes a noise when a guy tries to enter the girls dorm, and there's no sex? Really?) made me question how realistic it really is, but then again, it's a story for youngsters, and as much as I know that sex happens among those under 18, encouraging it probably isn't the best social policy. Now that I've gone off on that tangent... well, I knew that the books would end with some bad things happening, but with an ultimate happy ending, because man, you can't give a story with a down ending to kids. So my major problems with the books were that I was too old for them, which makes sense. A little more depth for some of the characters, and possibly less sullen Potter in the last few books, and I would have been even happier. If you haven't read them, I recommend them, but the movies are basically the same: suffer through the sort of basic first two, and then they get better. I was sort of surprised how much of the books were set up in the first one, although some of that was due to the almost constant repetition of the important plot points from the previous books when necessary near the beginning of the book. So again, my problems with the books were more about the fact it wasn't written for someone my age.

So I want to thank Tweaks (for the first six books), Vermonstrous (for the last), and all my other friends who suggested I read them (going all the way back to this Alicia in college telling me that they weren't crappy kids books and told me to give them a chance). I can, without a doubt, say that Harry Potter are good books, and worth reading.

The Beast with a Billion Backs, The Last King of Scotland, Fay Grim, Notes on a Scandal, & The Family Stone

The Beast with a Billion Backs is the second Futurama movie, and as such, there are countless flamewars across the internet about whether it's better than Bender's Big Score, but it's still going very far into the "we're not on network tv so we can do crazy sex jokes constantly" thing that makes them very enjoyable. I think a little bit of the novelty of new Futurama wore off a little, and I probably need to rewatch this (which will be very easy once it arrives in my grubby little hands), but I sort of preferred Bender's Big Score to this. Maybe I just didn't care for the Kif-Amy plot.

The Last King of Scotland's compressed timeline bothered me. You really are never sure what year it is, and the expulsion of the Asians was well before the hijacking, but that's just nitpicking. James McAvoy was quite good, as was Forest Whitaker. I have to say that McAvoy's character was a moron (not just for his blind eye towards Idi Amin, but his utter inability to fall for an available woman, or even one that isn't just a stupid idea, as the first woman on the bus he has sex with, and then the two married women). But I liked it, even with the liberties it took with the facts.

Fay Grim is Hal Hartley's follow-up to Henry Fool, a film I watched years ago, in a brief bit of Hal Hartley-itis, and it had been a long time since I had seen a true Hal Hartley film (No Such Thing wasn't nearly as much of a Hartley film as Henry Fool or Trust or Amateur), so it took me a while to get into the rhythm of his language, which is far more unnatural than David Mamet. It's also far more plot driven than I was expecting, which a very international setting, Jeff Goldblum, and quite a bit about the dangers of terrorism. Definitely not a movie for all tastes, and I'm not sure whether rewatching Henry Fool would have increased or decreased my interest in the film. Hartley is fascinating, and I like that he's working, but I'm not as sure that I like him.

Notes on a Scandal is quite good, although the evil twist in the film just pissed me off. SPOILER! I hate that gay people in films are either the comic relief or are some evil twisted person bent on destroying some straight person. Why must you do that? END SPOILER. That being said, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench were quite good, and I will always love me some Bill Nighy.

The Family Stone is another film that I watched due to a roommate. And man, I hated it. Although I do think that there's absolutely no choice between Sarah Jessica Parker and Claire Danes. And I won't object to Rachel McAdams ever, although Luke Wilson can be very up and down. And Craig T. Nelson and Diane Keaton are also in a very solid cast that is in a very unsolid film. I also want to point out that it was utterly unnecessary to see Diane Keaton's scarred chest from her double mastectomy. That was just bushleague. I do like the pro-gay message of the film though. Gay deaf people are people too!

The End of Summer, The Bow, Les Enfants Terribles, & The Sorrow and the Pity

The End of Summer is another Ozu film, and basically the same plot as the others. Family struggles with a variety of issues, this one being about a father who has a mistress, possibly an unknown daughter (who dates white boys! Shock! Horror!), and the three daughters who have to figure out what to do. It's quite as good as the other films in the late Ozu collection.

The Bow is a Kim Ki-Duk film, and it's just as f'ed up as most of the others. An old guy has found a seven year old girl, and instead of trying to find her parents, he raises her on a fishing boat until he marries her on her 17th birthday. And then she falls for a boy who goes on one of the fishing jaunts. Oh, did I mention that there's almost no dialogue, he drives men away from the girl by shooting at them with a bow and arrow, and that he tells fortunes by shooting at a buddha on the side of the boat with the bow as the girl swings back and forth in front of it? Kim Ki-Duk, you're crazy.

Les Enfants Terribles is an early Jean-Pierre Melville film, although it isn't nearly as good as his later ones. And it's clear whose fault that is: Jean Cocteau, who sabotages the adaptation of his novel by putting a completely inexpressive male lead in the film. Otherwise, it's an interesting story about two siblings who drift through life getting everything they want and being evil, evil people. And, of course, how they're not emotionally healthy due to that.

The Sorrow and the Pity is a 260 minute long French documentary about a town, Clermont-Ferrand, during World War II, and the collaborators who lived there. Did I mention it was 260 minutes long, in French, and a documentary including people justifying their collaborations with the Nazis? Why the hell did I think it was a good idea for me to watch it? Stupid Annie Hall.

Meme-ifying Me

I'm doing the meme of the best album of each year since my birth with only one album from each band allowed, which leads to some crazy things. Basically, I had some years that just had to have that album listed. And others were much more difficult. Also, I listed only albums that I have, not single songs or anything. This was actually a little hard for some of the years, especially 1990 and 1993, where there wasn't an album that stuck out as utterly awesome. Which led to less good ones getting the nod.

1980: Elvis Costello & the Attractions' Get Happy!!, with a special bit of love for The Feelies' Crazy Rhythms

1981: Mission of Burma's Signals, Calls, & Marches

1982: Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska

1983: Talking Heads's Speaking in Tongues

1984: The Replacements' Let It Be, although The Smiths' eponymous and Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. are both very good

1985: The Jesus & Mary Chain's Psychocandy, with The Replacements' Tim getting edged out

1986: The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead

1987: U2's Joshua Tree, although I'm sorely tempted to pick either Sonic Youth's Sister or Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel Of Love

1988: Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, although My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything and Pixies's Surfer Rosa are both up there

1989: Pixies's Doolittle

1990: Fugazi's Repeater/Galaxie 500's This Is Our Music, with Yo La Tengo's Fakebook, Jawbreaker's Unfun, and Pixies' Bossanova being very good

1991: Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted, with Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend, Fugazi's Steady Diet of Nothing, Nirvana's Nevermind, Superchunk's No Pocky for Kitty, Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque, and U2's Achtung Baby

1992: My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and then Superchunk's On the Mouth, Sonic Youth's Dirty, The Magnetic Fields' Wayward Bus, and Luna's Lunapark all had the definite unfortune of being released in the same year

1993: Velocity Girl's Copacetic/Björk's Debut, and then Archers of Loaf's Icky Mettle, Nirvana's In Utero, The Breeders' Last Splash, The Flaming Lips' Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, Pavement's Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, and Yo La Tengo's Painful

1994: Superchunk's Foolish/Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, and then Built To Spill's There's Nothing Wrong with Love, Guided by Voice's Bee Thousand, Jeff Buckley's Grace, Luna's Bewitched, The Magnetic Field's Holiday & The Charm of the Highway Strip, Velocity Girl's Simpatico, Weezer's eponymous

1995: Radiohead's The Bends, and then Guided by Voices' Alien Lanes, Archers of Loaf's Vee Vee, Björk's Post, The Flaming Lips's Clouds Taste Metallic, Elliott Smith's eponymous, Jawbreaker's Dear You, Luna's Penthouse, The Magnetic Fields' Get Lost, Portastatic's Slow Note from a Sinking Ship, Superchunk's Here's Where the Strings Come In, and Yo La Tengo's Electr-O-Pura

1996: Weezer's Pinkerton, and then Belle & Sebastian's Tigermilk & If You're Feeling Sinister, Guided by Voice's Under the Bushes Under the Stars, Jawbox's eponymous, Modest Mouse's This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing To Think About, and Wilco's Being There

1997: Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, and then Beth Orton's Trailer Park, Björk's Homogenic, Built To Spill's Perfect from Now On, Elliott Smith's Either/Or, Radiohead's OK Computer, Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out, and Superchunk's Indoor Living

1998: Jets To Brazil's Orange Rhyming Dictionary/Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea, and then Air's Moon Safari, Belle & Sebastian's The Boy with the Arab Strap, and Spoon's Series of Sneaks

1999: The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs/The Faint's Blank-Wave Arcade, and then Wilco's Summerteeth, Beth Orton's Central Reservation, Built To Spill's Keep It like a Secret, The Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I, The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, Sigur Rós's Ágætis Byrjun, Sorry about Dresden's The Mayor Will Abdicate, and Superchunk's Come Pick Me Up

2000: The New Pornographers' Mass Romantic/Crooked Fingers' eponymous, and then The Clientele's Suburban Light and Spoon's Girls Can Tell

2001: Ted Leo & the Pharmacists' The Tyranny of Distance, and then Crooked Fingers' Bring on the Snakes, Fugazi's The Argument, Superchunk's Here's to Shutting Up, New Order's Get Ready, and Quruli's Team Rock

2002: Spoon's Kill the Moonlight/Sleater-Kinney's One Beat, and then Beck's Sea Change, Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It in People, Consonant's eponymous, Crooked Fingers' Red Devil Dawn, Destroyer's This Night, Imperial Teen's On, Jets to Brazil's Perfecting Loneliness, The Postal Service's Give Up, and Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

2003: Portastatic's Summer of the Shark/The Notwist's Neon Golden, and then Belle & Sebastian's Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Bishop Allen's Charm School, The Exploding Hearts' Guitar Romantic, The Ladybug Transistor's eponymous, Metric's Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, The New Pornographers' Electric Version, Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, The Rosebuds's TheRosebudsMakeOut, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists' Hearts of Oak, and The Wrens' The Meadowlands

2004: Arcade Fire's Funeral, and then A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder, Air's Talkie Walkie, Charlotte Hatherley's Grey Will Fade, Franz Ferdinand's eponymous, Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Puffy AmiYumi's Nice, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists' Shake the Sheets, and Wilco's A Ghost Is Born

2005: The Rosebuds' Birds Make Good Neighbors/Robyn's eponymous, and then Crooked Fingers' Dignity & Shame, The Decemberists' Picaresque, Metric's Live It Out, The New Pornographer's Twin Cinema, Portastatic's Bright Ideas, Sigur Rós's Takk..., Sleater-Kinney's The Woods, and Spoon's Gimme Fiction

2006: Asobi Seksu's Citrus, and then Belle & Sebastian's The Life Pursuit, Camera Obscura's Let's Get out of This Country, The Decemberists' The Crane Wife, Destroyer's Rubies, The Essex Green's Cannibal Sea, The Long Blondes' Someone To Drive You Home, The Pipettes' We Are the Pipettes, Portastatic's Be Still Please, Snowden's Anti-Anti, and Yo La Tengo's I Am Not Afraid of You & I Will Beat Your Ass

2007: Stars' In Our Bedroom after the War/Jens Lekman's Night Falls over Kortedala, and then Radiohead, In Rainbows, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Bishop Allen's Bishop Allen & the Broken String, The Broken West's I Can't Go on, I'll Go On, The New Pornographers' Challengers, Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, The Polyphonic Spree's The Fragile Army, The Rosebuds' Night of the Furies, Shout out Louds' Our Ill Wills, and Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers

The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers starts with a warning: "Attention Content includes violence". They neglected to mention gratuitous panty shots (and the close-ups on said panties and nipples), lesbianism, shower scenes, terrible "diving" into the pool, a bunch of JAV idols, two (that's right two) scenes of men going to the bathroom, and weird birthmarks on the breasts and moles on the necks. Basically, a virus turns people into zombies and the swim team is immune due to the pool water. So the new girl was trained as an assassin and joins with the rest of the swim team to fight the zombies.

All times are approximate. First nude scene: 7 minutes in. First murder: 9 minutes in. I'm not sure which looked more fake. First completely gratuitous panty shot: 11 minutes in. First decapitation: 18 minutes in. First time the basic plot is described: 26 minutes in. First battle between teacher-zombie wielding metal rulers and a protractor and who is a fire breather vs. schoolgirl with aluminum bat and a brick: 27 minutes in. First training montage in a bikini and a ballgag: 31 minutes in. First lesbian sex scene that starts as a mouth-to-mouth feeding: 34 minutes in. First screeching orgasm: 40 minutes in. First chainsaw sighting: 42 minutes in. First wearing of intestines as a scarf: 44 minutes in. First girl who is erotically stimulated by a flute: 45 minutes in. First heterosexual sex scene: 47 minutes in. First hero shot of the swim team with improvised weapons and black speedos: 51 minutes in. Murder of most of the swim team: 53 minutes in. First Mission: Impossible style taking off of a face mask: 54 minutes in. First horribly fake explosion: 56 minutes in. First fight scene between the mad doctor who injects himself with the virii and the new girl with a lot of swimming equipment with sharp edges: 58 minutes in. First and second ball-kicking: 59 minutes in. First major surprise twist: 63 minutes in. Second major surprise twist: 67 minutes in. First laser shot out of a vagina-mounted weapon to explode the bad guy: 72 minutes in. Last major surprise twist: 75 minutes in. Movie over: 78 minutes in. Me wishing there had been a monkey or a pirate or a robot in it: 1 minute after the credits.

So why did I watch this cinematic travesty? Basically, I read this review yesterday, this review of that review today, and had to see it. For those of you who can read German, or just like looking at pictures of some of the scenes described above, go here. Most of the high points are included.

Cobra Verde, Sans Soleil, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, & Tokyo Twilight

Cobra Verde is the last collaboration between Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog, and is thus, insane. He's a bandit in South America where he impregnates three daughters of a landowner, and is somewhat exiled to Africa to restart the slave trade, but ends up leading a rebellion of an army of topless women to topple the leader of the country. You'd think I tried to make that more insane than it is, but actually that's what happens. It's pretty, but not as good as the other three Kinski/Herzog films I've seen (I haven't seen Woyzeck). A little less about obsession.

Sans Soleil I watched mainly due to wanting to rewatch La Jetée, which I'd seen a couple of times in college, and is excellent. Sans Soleil is more of a meditation on earth in general, a travelogue that also spends some time focusing on the obsession in Vertigo and time in Tokyo. Not quite as vital as La Jetée, but if you want to watch that, the Criterion DVD with them both isn't a terrible way to spend a couple of hours.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is two hours of crazy kung fu. Fight scenes range from great to outstanding, the story of an anti-Manchu student who goes to a Shaolin temple to learn kung fu in order to get revenge on the warlord who killed his parents. And then becomes a total badass and gets revenge and starts teaching kung fu to the general public to stop the Manchu. Definitely a must watch if you like martial arts films.

Tokyo Twilight is a late Ozu film (not unsurprisingly in the Late Ozu box set) and is pretty darn similar to most of the other post-war Ozu films, with Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, and a few others from other Ozu films in the roles. It's sort of like you see one Ozu film, and you have seen most of them. The Ozu style of filmmaking, with static shots and characters talking directly into the camera just adds to the sameness. Of course, the abortion subplot extremely annoyed me, because women who get abortions have to be punished. Damnit, it isn't a first choice, but most women who get them don't die. Except in movies.

Bedazzled, Billy Budd, In Which We Serve, & Days of Glory

Bedazzled was amazingly better than the remake with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. Somehow, huh? Dudley Moore and Peter Cook were quite enjoyable, but Eleanor Bron (for whom I have a soft spot due to Help! and Yo La Tengo's Tom Courtenay) just looked like she was wearing far too much makeup. Still, one of the better 60s British comedies. Raquel Welch with a terrible southern accent was weird.

Billy Budd is Terence Stamp's first film, a Peter Ustinov guided adaptation of the Melville novel about good vs. evil on a British Navy ship in 1797. Stamp is good, Robert Ryan is evil, and Ustinov the captain whose need to follow the rules leads to the conflict between good and evil. Stamp is, of course, amazing, and Ryan is as well, but all props go to Ustinov for putting the film together in the first place, writing, directing, producing, and starring in it.

In Which We Serve is a Noel Coward-David Lean co-directed film about a British ship that sinks in the Mediterranean in 1942, and it includes flashbacks about how the soldiers got to where they were. It's the first film directed by Noel Coward or David Lean (who actually did most of the directing), has Richard Attenborough in his first role, and is about how awesome the British Navy is. Weird sort of counterpoint to Billy Budd.

Days of Glory was way too long, and was more about how North Africans are actual people. Maybe other people needed that lesson, but it's not something for which I needed two hours of drumming into my head. Of course, the French needed it, due to their inability to give proper military pensions to the North African soldiers. One thing that really bothered me was Jamel Debbouze (married to Mélissa Theuriau), who is unable to use his right hand, is portrayed as a normal soldier. Were the French so hard up for soldiers that they'd put a one-armed soldier on the front lines? I understand that he's a French-born Moroccan, and a famous movie actor, but he also basically has one arm. Just go for someone who could conceivably be a soldier, please. Also, they ignored the Marocchinate, the rape of French women by the North African soldiers in Italy. Seriously, just gloss over that. Good for you France, for coming to grips with your past... Oh, I mean, not coming to grips with your past. Sigh, humans suck.

Ocean's Thirteen, Sense and Sensibility, The Good Shepherd, & Superbad

Ocean's Thirteen is probably the last of the Ocean's films, and honestly, the fun of watching a bunch of attractive people messing around will never get old, but the plot was stretched very thin. I liked it, but not as much as 11 or 12. And Al Pacino was basically himself. Again.

Sense and Sensibility, the new BBC miniseries version, isn't as good as Ang Lee's version, but it isn't as bad as the new Mansfield Park or Persuasion. Well, they weren't bad, but just not as good as the books. And Willoughby wasn't nearly as old as he seemed in the books. He seemed like he was in his very, very early 20s, and that just isn't old enough to be the dashing rapscallion of the novel.

The Good Shepherd was far too long, and I just didn't think it was all that impressive. Great cast, but why not just use the actual story, rather than making this one up. Eh.

Superbad was pretty funny, but ultimately, I think far too much time was spent with the cops, probably a result of Seth Rogen actually writing the film, and giving himself the role. I wanted more time with Michael Cera. Or just the same amount with Cera, and just less with everyone else. Jonah Hill was funny, but I really hated his character. A total ass and extremely self-involved to the point where he doesn't even realize how much he's holding everyone else back. And I remember reading some people were totally misreading the final scene as that Jules was going to get with Seth. It's so freakin' obvious that will not happen. Also, The Vag-Tastic Voyage is clever, but I just wondered if the actual porn site that's based on refused to allow them to use the name? They do use the actual Mr. Skin in Knocked Up, right? I haven't seen that yet. The penis drawings were a nice touch though.

iTunes Meme Goes Forth

Three years in, and I'm apparently still going strong, although with fewer movies and more concert reviews. So I'm redoing the iTunes meme again, and noting that I saw 295 films this year (total of 3623 films), meaning I didn't even make one a day, but made two more than last year. Moving, dating, and game nights are to blame. Restricting my movie watching, damnit!

How many total songs?
22402, that's 57 days, 4 hours, 17 minutes, and 6 seconds or 97 GB. That's 3143 more songs than last year, although by when I added current iterations of tracks, there are 3372 more tracks.

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
iTunes changed the way it structures the alphabetization, putting numbers and other characters after the letters rather than before them.

Sort by Artist - first and last?
a-ha
+/-
I still like Take on Me and +/-, even if they may suck live, according to other people.

Sort by Time - first and last?
Intro from The New Pornographers' 9/20/2007 KCRW set
Symphony no. 9 from the BBC Philharmonic's Beethoven's Symphonies
That intro is just slightly shorter than the Ani DiFranco from last year. It's less than four tenths of a second shorter than that Ani track.

Sort by Album - first and last?
The A List by Wire
() by Sigur Rós
I don't actually own The A List, as it's a mid-period Wire album.

Top Five Played Songs:
Holland, 1945 from Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea
Blue Bird from The Rosebuds' Birds Make Good Neighbors
Kicks in the Schoolyard from The Rosebuds' TheRosebudsMakeOut
Throwaway Style from The Exploding Hearts' Guitar Romantic
Drille Me from Portastatic's The Summer of the Shark
Last year had Kicks in the Schoolyard, but I've just listened to the others more.

Ten Last Played
Neil Jung from Teenage Fanclub's Grand Prix
She Don't Use Jelly from The Flaming Lips' Transmissions from the Satellite Heart
Too Young by Phoenix on Lost in Translation
Galang by M.I.A. Live on KEXP 11/16/2007
Ça Plane Pour Moi by Sonic Youth on Freedom of Choice
15 Step from Radiohead's In Rainbows
Falling out of Love (with You) from The 6ths' Wasps' Nests
The National Front Disco from Morrissey's Your Arsenal
Pretend To Be Nice by Josie & the Pussycats on Josie & the Pussycats
Better Things by Fountains of Wayne on This Is Where I Belong - The Songs of Ray Davies & The Kinks

Find "sex," how many songs show up? 123 (by track is 46, and Song against Sex at 6, and most of the songs are from The Essex Green)
Find "death," how many songs show up? 151 (by track is 47, with 3 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrolls)
Find "love," how many songs show up? 1176 (by track is 719, with 15 Love Will Tear Us Apart's winning)
Find "peace," how many songs show up? 26, (by track is 23, (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding? winning this one at 7)
Find "rain," how many songs show up? 340, with 180 by track, having Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head winning with 5, although these numbers include things like train and brain and drain and rainbows and woodgrain
Find "sun," how many songs show up? 274, with 205 by track, and Island in the Sun winning with 5
Find "you," how many songs show up? 2627, with 1751 by track and 10 Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me
Find "home," how many songs show up? 160, with 99 by track and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) with 4
Find "boy," how many songs show up? 615, with 233 by track and Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? with 12
Find "girl," how many songs show up? 573, with 284 by track and I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me with 8
Find "hate," how many songs show up? 88, with 55 by track and I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me with 8
Find "wish," how many songs show up? 64, with 43 by track and I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine at 4

Tanner on Tanner, March of the Penguins, & Coyote Ugly

Tanner on Tanner was a little disappointing, being far more about the difficulty of making a documentary film in today's marketplace (well, at least in 2004, which I believe is considerably harder than in today's marketplace) than Tanner '88, which was a great look at running an underdog campaign. It, with my very little first-hand experience in doing so, seemed real. I have never tried to make a documentary film, but I have seen many, many movies about making movies, and very few of them bring much new to it. Day for Night is an obvious exception. But I just thought it was a little navel-gazing. They did have why Barack Obama is (fingers-crossed) going to be the next President of the United States, though, with the rhetorically brilliant, "The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states." Those lines right there. If only Kerry had half as much talent giving a speech as Obama does, we'd be working on re-electing John Kerry. And this country wouldn't be crappy.

March of the Penguins is 80 minutes of nature footage with a slightly boring narration by Morgan Freeman. How the hell did this make as much money as it did? Ok, looking at Box Office Mojo, it turns out it didn't break $100 million in the US, but still, it's a glorified nature documentary that isn't remotely as impressive as Planet Earth. Which is frickin' awesome if for some reason you haven't seen it yet. Also, what the hell was up with the 2005 Oscars? Crash I've railed against many times before, and I was disappointed with Tsotsi, but Darwin's Nightmare, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Murderball, and Street Fight all would have been better choices. Well, maybe not Murderball, but the other three were quite good documentaries. Nature films are interesting, but I never feel the need to see this, or think about March of the Penguins ever again. The others at least have some kind of relevance to reality. If I never knew that penguins marched 70 miles a bunch of times a year, my life wouldn't change. There are some issues with evolution (God, did you really need to make penguins do that? Really, you did? What a douche!) and monogamy that made this some weird cultural benchmark. Honestly, the movie would have been even more disappointing had I not seen it on blu-ray. I do wish the French soundtrack had been a different track (well, it may have been, but I didn't actually look for it), because that movie needed the penguins to talk and pop music played.

Coyote Ugly is terrible and almost unwatchable. Train wreck to an extreme. Do I need to explain why?

Sansho the Bailiff Recounts The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai

Sansho the Bailiff was a depressing film about a good governor exiled for not being evil to his subjects, and his wife and their two kids are separated from Sansho and sold into slavery. I just got so sad because the film is pretty unrelentingly miserable, and pretty much any time it could possibly be not miserable, they just toss in some other terrible thing. Not as good as Ugetsu, another Kenji Mizoguchi I enjoyed.

Recount was written by Danny (Jonathan from Buffy and Doyle from Gilmore Girls) Strong. If that wasn't enough to make me want to watch it, it's about the Florida Recount. Of course, the major problem with it was the liberties it took with history. Which I heard about in detail from someone who was there. And did some of the things attributed to others in the film. That person also tried to watch it, but was understandably upset by both the changes and by the reminder of history. If you, for some reason, weren't also traumatized by the 2000 election, you could do worse than watching this film. If only for Laura Dern as Katherine Harris. So damn frustrating. I definitely get more and more disgusted with pretty much everyone involved in that the more I read. Maybe I should stop reading. I do want to say that Sydney Pollack's death is a damn shame. I'm a huge fan of his, and I can't help wondering what he would have done with Recount had he been healthy enough to direct it. This does actually make one (1) thing that Jay Roach has done that isn't responsible for the demise of America, though, so good for him. This just is about the demise of America, not responsible for it.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai has, in my opinion, one of the best trailers ever: it's the director calling up the office of the prime minister of Japan and trying to get the secretary who answers to agree to show the film to Koizumi for a comment. And the film is a softcore Japanese film about a prostitute who gets shot in the head, develops genius-level intelligence, has her sense of taste delayed by a long time, gets the severed finger of a cloned George W. Bush, and has to avert a nuclear attack. It references Noam Chomsky (misspelled as Chomski every time), features copious cumshots, a horribly fake floating George W. Bush finger that has sex with her, stock footage of Bush giving his Mission Accomplished speech with ridiculous dubbing, and very basic liberal political points. It's totally awesome. Plus, I think that most of the "smart" things she says actually make some sense.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot, The Story of 1, Green for Danger, Samurai Spy, & A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a short 17 minute documentary that's about how much Judas Priest sucks. Seriously, they suck, and their fans in Landover, Maryland and who went to see them in 1986, are evil. A bunch of drunks, drug users, and underage girls wearing terrible fashions and not afraid to be proud of all of it. I sort of wish that these people would have done enough drinking and drug-using so that we didn't have them around anymore. People do stupid things as kids. Once you hit your 20s, though, your excuses start to sound as ridiculous as Judas Priest.

The Story of 1 is an hour long documentary about the number 1. It was strange. Terry Jones, from Monty Python, is the host, and there are some very stupid jokes, and silly things all throughout, but the thing is that it is interesting. Maybe I'm just a nerd (well, ok, I am), but I love that this important part of history has the documentary to explain it to people who have no interest in reading boring nonfiction.

Green for Danger is a British film about a murder at a hospital during a V-1 attack during WWII. Kept me guessing until the end, and I was convinced the murderer was someone other than who it was. I also was a big fan of Alastair Sim as Inspector Cockrill, who is just about perfect as the annoying, whimsical officer. It may be a slight film, but it has enough pleasures to make it worth watching for those who enjoy English films and mysteries. That's me.

Samurai Spy is the last of the four Rebel Samurai films from Criterion (Sword of the Beast, Samurai Rebellion, and Kill!). This is about as good as Sword of the Beast and Kill!, but not nearly as good as Samurai Rebellion. I wasn't entirely familiar with the history of Japan at the time, but I seem to be learning a bit. I just didn't like enough of the film. The soundtrack, occasional fight scenes, and cinematography are great, but the twisty plot doesn't always make sense.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints got New York Groove by KISS stuck in my head. I will never forgive the film for that. But it also has Robert Downey Jr and Rosario Dawson, two of my favorite actors currently working. Add in Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest and there's a lot of talent there. The story was interesting, but some of the decisions by Dito Montiel in scenes like the ride to Coney Island just got on my nerves and the film never quite was what I was hoping for.

The Long Blondes at Rock 'n' Roll Hotel 5/17 & Bishop Allen at Black Cat 5/18

Figured I should actually write these up.

Shorter The Long Blondes: second album not nearly as boring as I was led to believe from the actual album, but I won't be seeing them again unless they put out another album that is more like the first one, which is awesome. Setlist fairly similar to, if not exactly, this. Every time they'd play one from the first album, the crowd would go wild. Second album songs were much less raucously cheered for.

Rock 'n' Roll Hotel wasn't too bad of a place, smaller than I was expecting, but the location was terrible. The stage had a lot of speakers blocking parts of the stage even from those not too far back and in the middle, so what the hell? I'm going to have to really want to see a band if I go back.

Shorter Bishop Allen: they didn't play long enough. How can any headlining band play only 45 minutes plus a 5 minute encore? So frickin' awesome while playing though. I took a pic of the setlist, but it was all red, and somewhat hard for me to read.

Empire City
The Monitor
Like Castanets
The Light of the Lost
Quarter to Three
Middle Management
Rain
Choose Again
The News from Your Bed
Click Click Click Click
Busted Heart
Flight 180
The Same Fire
-----------
Butterfly Nets
EDIT (Thanks, The Maestro): Things are What You Make of Them
Also, how the hell did they not play Corazon?

Also, I failed in being able to purchase both Bishop Allen albums, because no one was there when I was there at the beginning. $10 for the albums was much cheaper than what I could get online. I wanted the actual CDs. I was over there during The War on Drugs, which had one song that was this pounding drumming, and was ok, until the vocals just started to get to me.

I was in the second row during Bishop Allen, a place I hadn't been at a concert since I was in the front row for Superchunk in 2001. Not a particularly big fan of being that close unless I really want to see the band. I also wanted to mention that Justin Rice had very tight jeans, did weird dances throughout, Christian Rudder rocked the Rockelele, and Darby was delightful.

Infamous, The U.S. vs. John Lennon, Samaritan Girl, Free Zone, Casino Royale, & Curse of the Golden Flower

Infamous is the second Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood movie that came out in the 2005-2006 time frame. And I have to say that Capote actually isn't as good as Infamous. Well, I still like Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Capote and Catherine Keener as Harper Lee, but Lee Pace and Daniel Craig, along with Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels are considerably better. Toby Jones and Sandra Bullock (yes, her) are not bad at all, so overall the acting is somewhat better. Plots exactly the same, although a little more explicit in Capote falling for Perry Smith, so there really isn't much to compare besides acting. Everything else seems to be pretty similar, so uh... both are good, but not great?

The U.S. vs. John Lennon really wasn't anything particularly interesting unless you're a Beatles fan. As I am one, I spent the entire running time ironing and singing along. Because I'm apparently domesticated now? Maybe. And I'll always be a Beatles nerd. As a Beatles fan, I enjoyed it, and it made me sort of like Yoko a little bit more. It wasn't Yoko's fault that the Beatles broke up, it's the Beatles's fault. Also, Richard Nixon.

Samaritan Girl is a film from Kim Ki-Duk that really makes me question what the hell is up with him. He's a messed up guy. Also, are there really that many high school girl prostitutes? This isn't the only film about this, but I never hear about teens selling themselves in the media. I mean, having sex for money. Sad frakkin' film, with two girls making money for a trip to Europe together by one of them being a prostitute and the other being the pimp (can a pimp be female?), until the prostitute dies and then the alive one starts to sleep with the same johns and gives them their money back. But the dad finds out. And miserableness ensues.

Free Zone starts with a long scene of Natalie Portman crying in a taxi. And then becomes a journey into Jordan for $30,000. It's directed by Amos Gitai, who did one of the better sections of 11'09"01, but also did the supremely boring Kippur. This one unfortunately was far more like Kippur. Only for Portman completists. Unless you like your women Israeli. Which she sort of is, so ummm... she's hot? Just rewatch Closer. Not Beautiful Girls, Leon, or Heat, because those're just icky now. Even if at the time, she was my age. Creepy now.

Casino Royale was considerably darker than I was expecting for a Bond film, although I don't see how Bond would fall so much harder for Vesper Lynd than a lot of other Bond Girls. I know this was a "restart" of the Bond story, but she wasn't all that. I mean, I've seen her naked. The movie also was about 20 minutes too long. I didn't care for the entire ending section of the film. Certainly far better than most post-60s Bonds, as I vastly prefer the non-ridiculous ones. Well, the non-ridiculous are generally better than the ridiculous ones (seriously, Moonraker can suck it), even if On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice are my two favorite Bonds. Certainly better than the Brosnan or Dalton Bonds, maybe better than The Spy Who Loves Me, but only better than Dr. No, Thunderball, and Diamonds Are Forever of the Connerys. It's also a metric frakton better than the earlier Casino Royale. And I wanted to point out that Daniel Craig's eyes are ridiculously blue.

Curse of the Golden Flower is all pretty and no good. Also, every battle scene is narrated by every single person in it. Whenever they throw spears, "Throw", or to catch someone "Catch". What the hell? Are you treating everyone in the audience like they're 4, Zhang Yimou? What the hell happened to you? You make amazing films for most of your career, and then you start to stagnate by making enormous costume epics, and man is this one all costume and no epic. And what's up with the female costumes? I never imagined there could be as much cleavage in China now as there was in this film. Every female had an outfit that looked like it seriously constricted blood flow to the breasts for more impressive cleavage. But man, that was just distracting. And once you got past that, you realized that it was just a stupid plot. Full of incest for those of you who like that sort of thing.

Radiohead at Nissan Pavilion 5/11

So through all of my years of being a Radiohead fan, somehow I had never seen them live, so this was one to cross off my list of bands to see (and one of the few $50+ shows to which I'm willing to go). My brother has seen them a couple times, and I have wanted it to happen, but somehow they never played Cincinnati or Durham or DC when I was capable of going or getting tickets. Now that that's out of the way, I can hope that my next Radiohead-concert-going experience is a little different from this one. And that monsoon season in DC needs to be scheduled during a time when I'm not going to see an outdoor concert.

Also, I just wanted to say that Radiohead had little at all to do with anything bad during the concert. Except for a longer delay than I would have wanted before playing (due to the setting up of the LED lighting). Setlist (and I have this in bootleg form!):

All I Need
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Lucky
15 Step
Nude
Pyramid Song
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Myxomatosis
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Paranoid Android
Just
Reckoner
Everything In Its Right Place
Bangers + Mash
Body Snatchers
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Like Spinning Plates
Optimistic
Karma Police
Go Slowly
Planet Telex
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Fake Plastic Trees (not planned, based on the setlist, but dedicated to those on the lawn (that's me!))
National Anthem
House of Cards

I was a little late walking out of my house to meet up with the 9 others going (I could list them all, but MBG has already written this up, so I'll keep some of it briefer than otherwise). But I saw Sherpa Herpes driving down my street, park directly in front of my place and then run off. I was intrigued and decided not to continue on to the Castle, and instead, call him and then wait for him to return. It was raining, but not that hard by that point. I had remembered to bring my umbrella and "waterproof" jacket, along with putting my garbage can on my bathroom sink (it started to leak again, but not as badly as before). Everyone else was getting ponchos and rain boots and the like. I ended up riding in the back of MBG's car from Target to the Castle and that wasn't an entirely fun trip. I used to like riding in the backs of cars, but then again, riding in the back of a Suburban is what gave me my blog handle, so it isn't my favorite thing to do anymore, nor do I eat Handi-Snacks. I switched my shoes for a pair of Flux's waterproof boots that were too big. Unfortunately, I don't own a pair of long underwear and didn't wear any of my thick and long socks. And I had a hot dog bun for dinner (after a large and delicious brunch with sorbet), which was nice, as I wasn't going to eat anything more for a while, and I wasn't near the garbage can, so I just put the bun bag in my pocket. This will come into play later.

We all ended up having to go in an SUV and a non-SUV, which isn't that bad, but will come into play later as well. We left around 5:30ish, and drove in the pouring rain for the next two hours to Nissan. And then came upon this. Not actually stopped, but not too far off. Luckily we just made it before they closed off the road we came in on. We eventually got to the far parking lot (Mountain Dew F-3, I believe), and started to soggily make our soggy way to the soggy venue itself. Which isn't that bad, sort of reminds me of Riverbend in Cincinnati, although larger and in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, there were enormous rivers running through the parking lot and near the gates. We went off to the side and started the trudge up the stairs. And then the walk through the mud to a place on the lawn that seemed ok. The Liars were on then, and I couldn't tell if I hated them because I was miserable or because they sucked. Probably a combination of both, but I wasn't impressed with them at all. And they were off some time after 8. Times will be approximate for most of this, as my phone was ensconced in the plastic bun bag, because that was the only way it wouldn't have been completely waterlogged and probably non-functioning. Somewhere in between sets, a very drunk group of people start screaming for people to move, and stand clear. After a few minutes of this, one of them does a belly flop slide down the hill, luckily taking out no one, and he seemed to enjoy himself. But there is no way I would have done the same thing. So much mud getting in so many places...

Radiohead started setting up their Awesome LED Light Show. The long strings of LEDs were all in rows (much clearer when you're there), and would light up with the songs, and could display images. Behind that was a large LED screen that would show each member of the band in all their monochromatic glory. The light show was itself extremely cool.

Radiohead started to play around 9ish, and I can't complain about anything they did. Great setlist (especially with the added Fake Plastic Trees, although to make up for the rain, we could have used a little Electioneering...), with a fine mix of newer and older stuff. And Thom was clearly very apologetic about the rain and how miserable everyone on the lawn was (and Colin posted this). By Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, I was pretty uncontrollably shaking and there were puddles of water in my boots. I was regretting my decision to come. But I was determined to stick around, because I knew that the encores would be awesome.

And they were. Oh man, I regret nothing about the concert. For the chance to see Fake Plastic Trees live, singing along in a monsoon, and attempting to move while freezing and wet, well, there are few experiences in my life that will be as unique. Sure, I was concerned about my ability to move after the show, and I was concerned that I might lose a toe, but those were pretty minor compared to seeing one of the best bands of my lifetime play a show. For those of us who made it all the way through, yay. To those of us who didn't, well, I hope you enjoyed the dry car.

After House of Cards, a song that gets better every time I hear it, they finally finished. It was sometime just after 11, and we started trudging up the hill, and spent another 20 minutes or so getting from there to the cars. When we got there, we started to take off as many wet things as possible, but only one of us had extra clothes. So I spent a while trying to take off my boots in the small backseat, and then had people empty the boots and I squeezed my socks out onto the pavement. Then we sat, me with my wet bare feet and soaked through clothes, and everyone else just soaked. And sat. And sat. After an hour, Vermonstrous noted that we hadn't moved in an hour. Tomahawk Chop went off to the bathroom and came back, confirming something we'd heard earlier: all but one road had been washed out and it would be a while (apparently, many people were turned away from the venue entirely, which completely sucks). After almost an hour and a half, there was some movement in the parking lot ahead of us, but we still didn't move for about a half an hour. It only took about ten minutes to get out of the lot once we started to move, but that two hours to move thing was rough.

And there was still a 70ish minute drive, slightly longer due to us taking the first exit to Lee Highway off 66 rather than the second, so I didn't get back to my place until 2:45, and I was soaking wet, and I couldn't put shoes back on, so I ran back to my place from the street in the rain, freezing. I piled my wet clothes on the floor in my bathroom and went to sleep sometime around 3. Woke up with my alarm at 7 and then promptly went to bed for another hour, making me late to work, and cranky. Well, crankier than normal.

I usually use a few different status messages for my gchat, and the one I had switched back to last week was "Rain also falls in an Earthward direction." Somehow I can't find the original quote anywhere, but it was about something being very obvious. After the concert, I have to say, that isn't true. It was raining sideways. And the crowd was cheering every mention of rain in the lyrics.

Random things: Thecar (that's his new blog name, until someone comes up with something better) was on the phone with the other car after the concert, and asked them if they had any wasabi peas. I just heard that, didn't realize he was on the phone, and asked if he was talking to me. After he got off the phone, I told him I had some wasabi peas in my bag, because I didn't really eat beforehand, and wanted to make sure I had some way of getting some food later. Apparently, he really really wanted wasabi peas, and as I will buy them whenever I see them in a store, I had a bag of what he wanted. He then said, "Let me try this again, do you have any matzoh ball soup in your bag?" If only. Hot soup would have been perfect to warm me up.

Wounds of concert: I have a cut on my hand from my umbrella, which was so wet it was dripping through for most of the concert, and two big red marks on the back of my Achilles tendons where the wet boot rubbed my skin for a few hours. And I've been limping slightly for the last couple of days because of it. The only thing that wasn't soaked when I got home was my phone. It was only slightly wet. I had to toss a bunch of business cards and hold all my money and wallet up to a space heater to dry them out. And even with all that, Radiohead was worth it.

The Rosebuds & British Sea Power at Black Cat 5/8

Food before show: delicious turkey burgers (really some of the best I've ever had) with chipotles, jalapeños, and onions (and probably other things) with pepper jack cheese, spinach and mustard. Great way to have dinner.

Made it to the Black Cat in time to see the beginning of a song about the Chinese Communist Revolution performed by Jeffrey Lewis. Who is an anti-folker, not Jenny Lewis in drag. Which would have been awesome instead of terrible. I stood there for a second, thought: this is terrible, and then went straight to the merch table where I purchased the Rosebuds' 2008 Tour EP. Mine had a plastic flower attached. Then I stood for a bit longer watching this interminable "song" go, and then found my friends.

I moved up for the Rosebuds, as they were the band I was there to see. And they were awesome. I didn't remember seeing that Matt McCaughan was drumming for the Rosebuds this tour, but I fully approve. He was great drumming for Portastatic, and it goes to show that the McCaughan family is talented. Playing a wide mix of stuff from their three albums save for one thing: they didn't play one single bad song. Closest they came was When the Lights Went Dim, which I would have replaced with I Better Run from Night of the Furies. Or maybe I would have had them play I'd Feel Better or Shake Our Tree, but that would have been far too much awesome for one show. Especially when it's an opener. They basically played my two or three favorite songs from each of the three albums, which is the sure sign that the setlist was fantastic:

Cemetery Lawn
Hold Hands and Fight
Bluebird
Back to Boston
Kicks in the Schoolyard
Drunkard's Worst Nightmare
Leaves Do Fall
When the Lights Went Dim
Boxcar
Get up Get Out

My only embarrassment was my ability to sing along to each song, and yet I still had problems remembering Drunkard's Worst Nightmare's title. Mainly because I forgot how long of an intro there was on the album version when I was skipping through the tracks on my iPod between sets.

After a while, and a long time of setting up plants on the stage, British Sea Power came out, and put on an amazing hour long set. Unfortunately they played for about 80 minutes, which sucked. The last twenty minutes or so was them playing feedback and attacking each other with the plant branches and getting on each other's shoulders and just messing around. By the end a large portion of the crowd left. Because it was not remotely what anyone wanted to see. Well, most of the people. Short of that last 10-15-20 minutes or whatever it was, the show was lots of fun, they played all the songs I could recognize, and basically really impressed me. Although Do You Like Rock Music? is what really made me impressed. The first two albums were sort of bland indie rocky stuff, not bad, but nothing to make me take much notice. Fixed that with the quite fun new album.

Interesting thing I noticed: Hamilton and Yan traded off vocal duties along with the bass for most of the set, with whoever was bassist not being the vocalist. This apparently changed immediately after I went back to sit down because my feet hurt. Also, Yan sort of looks like William Sanderson in Blade Runner (which I just saw the final cut of on Blu-Ray and recommend to anyone who hadn't seen it or hasn't seen the director's cut), while Hamilton looks like a mix between Mike Dunleavy, Jr. and Rocco Siffredi. Yes, that's what I was thinking about for most of the set. Sadly, once my mind decides upon something, it would take far longer than even BSP's last song for it to change.

Also, I wanted to boo BSP for not having enough copies of the most recent album at the merch table. I had to purchase from Amazon rather than you guys. Alternately, I should have just purchased it when I got the Rosebuds EP. But I talked to Kelly Crisp for a bit, told her how much the set rocked, and was again surprised by her Southern accent. Which doesn't come across in their songs much, but it really does when they are interviewed. She's an extremely nice person, but I find that most of the musicians I've met at merch tables and after shows have been very nice people. I guess if you're a dick you don't go out and have the possibility of meeting a fan.

Atonement, The Times of Harvey Milk, La Haine, & The Threepenny Opera

Atonement is the last of the Oscar Nominated films (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Juno, and Michael Clayton). And it's easily the worst. The other four are all very good to great films, and this is a film that wouldn't be out of place on a mediocre Masterpiece Theater episode. I have this feeling that the main reason it was nominated was the English accents and the (admittedly very impressive, yet distracting in its flashiness) scene of devastation at Dunkirk.

The Times of Harvey Milk is another of those annoying liberal documentaries about some do-gooder who is unfairly destroyed by an uncaring society. In this case, it's about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay San Francisco councilor, who was shot, along with the mayor, by a former councilor who clearly didn't agree with his lifestyle. It was made by PBS in the mid-80s, and certainly looks like an 80s PBS production. It's just a very frustrating film, not being as informative as I would have liked, but also the story itself with the fact that far too many people are still like Dan White.

La Haine makes me sort of want an Elvis shot JFK t-shirt. I guess I could make one myself, but it's so much easier to buy it. And I'm not a fan of the changing of Asterix and Obelix to Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Maybe no one else in America knows who Asterix and Obelix are (I have read almost all of them), but I'd prefer that the subtitles are what was actually said in the film. Also, the film felt like a talented student film, shot in striking black and white, but with very little actual plot there. Of course, that's sort of the point, as it's about three French youths, one Jewish, one Arab, and one African, who find a gun and try to figure out what to do with it. There's a lot of rage against the police, as they put one of their friends in the hospital during a riot.

The Threepenny Opera is the most cynical musical ever. And it's probably the only time I can imagine a tacked on happy ending fitting completely with the rest of the film without it being a total cop out. The most famous song in it was somewhat rewritten in the mid-50s and then recorded by Bobby Darin in 1959, Mack the Knife. I wasn't familiar with any of the other tracks, and it actually took me a little longer than it should have for that one. But it's a dark Romeo and Juliet tale of the love between the king of pickpockets and the daughter of the king of panhandlers. But with an added bonus of a smooth criminal lead, no whiny young teens, and music rather than iambic pentameter. Very enjoyable.

Dune Megapost

Back in the early 90s probably, I first saw Dune. I remember liking it, although the severed head on a plate, along with Paul riding a worm and the shield effects were about all I recall from it. I caught bits and pieces of it again over the next decade or so, becoming less and less impressed. But moving to DC along with talking with The Maestro and Tweaks lead to me buying Dune, which I read last month, and then I spent half the weekend (estimated) watching the extended edition of Dune and the director's cut of the Dune miniseries.

The 1984 film, in the extended 3 hour edition, has some inconsistent special effects, with the blue eyes disappearing occasionally among characters who should have them. And the CGI and blue screened effects are early and distracting now, and some of the changes from the book are weak. I liked the weirding way in the book, and the switch to a sonic weapon didn't really make any sense. I really didn't like what they did with the floaty Baron Harkonnen, and the Sardaukar definitely didn't look like people in hazmat suits. And the narration along with the many, many thought asides just goes to show that the book probably couldn't have made a successful movie. I'm normally an enormous fan of the book rather than the movie, although sometimes that isn't entirely the case, as Starship Troopers is a far more enjoyable movie than the rather fascist book. Not to say that the book wasn't slightly enjoyable, but the movie was better. In this case, Dune the book allowed for all the characters to be developed. Although most of the plot points survived the transition, three hours wasn't remotely enough to cover it all. Maybe the five hour miniseries will be ok.

That one follows the book considerably closer, and even adds a touch of nudity, something I really wasn't expecting in a Sci-Fi channel miniseries. I guess that's what the director's cut was for, though. Some of the cast in the movie was considerably better than the miniseries, but the ability to allow the characters to have some time to become interesting is helpful. The extra time with Princess Irulan wasn't really adding much, but at least the miniseries didn't end with it raining on Arrakis, which makes no sense at all. And it still has the Baron Harkonnen floating with his suspensors. Which isn't what I got from the book at all. And I always imagined the final battle to be in stillsuits, again distracting me. Certainly, if you are looking for following the book, more modern special effects, and an overall better experience, go with the miniseries, but the movie definitely has some things to recommend it. Acting was considerably better. And the final battle, short of the change to the weirding way was closer in the movie.

I've been told to read through the fourth book, but I almost definitely will not. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but sequels, especially ones that start to mess with characters just make me annoyed. I was having this discussion, although slightly different, with someone I haven't decided how to name on here, about how much I love both Pavement and Dismemberment Plan, and that I am extremely reluctant to listen to any Malkmus or Morrison solo stuff. Even if I now know a member of the Hellfighters. The chance to see something I enjoy ruined is something I try to avoid. No more Phantom Menaces please.

Tokyo Police Club and Smoosh at Black Cat 4/29

In the tradition of previous music posts, I start with dinner: Peruvian chicken and a cheese papusa. I should have ordered more. Oh well.

After seeing Smoosh last year opening for the Pipettes, I know I wanted to see them again. And for some reason (no new album), they were touring with Tokyo Police Club, another of those bloggy bands that everyone seems to love. Not quite as big as Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Vampire Weekend, but of the same level as Wolf Parade or Voxtrot. I liked their EP, but, like Voxtrot, didn't entirely care for the album that followed. So I really was going for the opener. Hadn't done that in a while, since Portastatic opening for John Vanderslice in 2005.

Smoosh was about as enjoyable as last time, and I do want them to release a new album now. Find a Way is still just as outstanding as it has always been. And they spent time at the merch table, but I did my normal too embarrassed to talk to them thing. I would have bought a shirt of theirs, but I think it would have been more creepy than I feel comfortable. Plus, as much as I like Smoosh, there are many bands I like far more than them.

Unfortunately, it was a Tuesday show, which don't go well for me, and this was somewhat the case for me again, although I made it through the entire show.

When Tokyo Police Club came on, I had moved up to the raised section, and was sitting on a bench next to the douchebags of the concert. Somehow the emo couple (the guy had the most impressive emover I've seen outside of a videogame or a music video) weren't them, or the woman who grabbed my ass when she passed me in the crowd during Smoosh. It was the kids from Maryland, one of whom was writing a paper and asked Smoosh some questions for it, and then asked me why I had my eyes closed during the show. If you've ever been to the Black Cat, you know that it's not an enormous club, and light shows are not normally too big. TPC, though, came with a light show that would have been slightly appropriate for the much larger 9:30 Club. So it was blindingly bright, and I was exhausted. Also, they played every song like it was from their EP, which normally would have been enjoyable for me, but everyone ended up sounding so similar I couldn't tell the difference. Even had I known them far better than I did, I wouldn't have been able. Pretty much it was screaming for the entire song or screaming after a quiet bit at the end. Plus bright lights. And I was not impressed. So with all that, I didn't feel the need to watch every second of the show. I basically only watched one song, and that was the one when Smoosh came out on stage and danced. Wouldn't have known, but Vermonstrous tapped my leg. So the douches from Maryland were talking about how could he sleep or why I didn't enjoy the show. I didn't want to get into an argument about the stupidity of the light show in the small club or the sameness and loudness of it all, so I just said I was tired.