The X Files: I Want to Believe, Dedication, Romance & Cigarettes, Chess in Concert

The X Files: I Want to Believe was boring. Sally and I both fell asleep before the end. I missed the entire climax of the film, but I did see the kiss at the end. I read the X-Files wiki page on the movie though, so I really didn't feel like I missed anything by sleeping. It was so utterly boring. It would've been ok as a midseason non-sweeps episode of the show, but there was absolutely no tension in the film at all. I did wonder what the hell happened to Annabeth Gish and Robert Patrick's characters, but maybe Chris Carter had the sense to act like most of the last two seasons of the show didn't exist, like I have. Because they were not good. How can Fox have such a huge problem with running some shows into the ground and then cut so many others so short? Sigh. Anyway, I really feel like I should have more to say about the film, but the fact that I fell asleep watching a movie with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, and Callum Keith Rennie says a lot. Also, thanks, Chris Carter for your very subtle point about religion with the whole stem-cell treatment. I knew that there was something missing from the movie, and inept moralizing about how religion can kill hit the spot! There were two priest characters: one was a pedophile and the other wanted to kill a sweet kid because it would have been expensive and against his morals to save him. Ugh. If you aren't able to do so well, all you do is make people who agree with you pissed off. PETA, I want to eat sea kittens even more than I want to eat fish. They will be delicious and adorable as I eat as many as I can. And then I will continue to complain about your frickin' tone-deaf attempts to be the biggest assholes on this planet. At which you are succeeding.

Dedication was the first in an unintentional Mandy Moore filmfest. I definitely didn't go through and add movies from Mandy Moore to my queue. This one is a romantic comedy with Billy Crudup being a children's book writer whose longtime collaborator and only friend Tom Wilkinson dies, and so Bob Balaban pays Mandy Moore to illustrate his contractually obligated book. Martin Freeman has a small role as an English author and competitor for Mandy Moore's love. Justin Theroux began his directing career with this. He didn't do badly at all, and he's still one of those guys that you don't know you know. This film is a romantic comedy, but the script is slightly more interesting than others, at least in the details, because the plot is extremely basic romantic comedy tropes.

Romance & Cigarettes has a great cast, and lots of talent. And is terrible. James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris, and even Cady Huffman and John Turturro in small roles were not nearly enough to save this overblown mess. The musical aspects are just poorly done. I can understand wanting to get good actors, but their singing was usually terrible.

Chess in Concert is something I watched because I remembered watching this at Washington University in St. Louis back in... 1995? and hating it. I wondered if it was just the drama students or whether it was the musical itself. One Night in Bangkok is not a particularly good song, lending credence to the latter, so I was not entirely looking forward to this. But it's a musical by Tim Rice and the two male members of ABBA. Basically three people who are talented (seriously, once Tim Rice stopped working with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andrew truly sucked) were behind it, but it's a musical about two chess matches and the cold war maneuvering behind them. But beh to this, and pretty much the musical as well. I did like seeing Clarke "Lester Freamon" Peters in it, even though he didn't really sing, but that was hardly worth the 2.5 hours of mediocre music.

Helvetica, Grey Gardens, Gone Baby Gone, & She's Gotta Have It

Helvetica is a documentary about a font (haha, typeface nerds, I said font, not typeface, so remember, there is a comment section so complain there). There were some interesting stories in it, but 80 minutes about it were at least 20 minutes too much. I get it, some people find Helvetica a nice clean typeface. Others object to its nice clean typeface look and prefer crazy grunge fonts. The best parts were when they talked to the English guy who had a great accent and good stories about the typeface. And when they went to the archives of the company that owns the rights to Helvetica and we met the dude with the blue bow tie and the plaid jacket. Most of the others were ok, but I just felt like it was a lot about the font.

Grey Gardens is the story of two of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' relatives, first told in a documentary in 1975 by Albert and David Maysles and was then filmed by HBO and aired earlier this year, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, along with Jeanne Tripplehorn. I felt so bad for the Beales and it was basically painful to watch. They're basically crazy cat ladies who have lived together for so long that it's clear that they've sniped at each other for years over the same issues. To watch them slowly attempt to clean and be more social just makes the arguments just worse. I watched both, and while the documentary is all the more painful due to the actual characters, the movie has great performances, even from Drew Barrymore. There are certainly some differences in scenes from both notable mainly due to watching them one right after the other.

Gone Baby Gone was pretty good, especially for a film from Gigli. Mainly due to great performances from actors like Ed Harris, Amy Ryan, and even Casey Affleck. And the cast was full of some other good actors, like John Ashton, Michael K. Williams, and Morgan Freeman (not playing a magic negro like normal!). Michelle Monaghan, however, was terrible. Other than that extremely weak link, it was a pretty good story, although I have no idea how much of it was due to Dennis Lehane's novel, as Mystic River was almost an amazingly good film, until the ending few minutes which were utter crap. Really, Amy Ryan was so much better than Laura Linney that it's almost enough to note how the female characters are extremely one-dimensional. Which may also be due to Dennis Lehane's book.

She's Gotta Have It is Spike Lee's first feature length film, a feminist look at sex and relationships in the 80s. The acting is... well, pretty weak from almost everyone besides Spike Lee. That was kinda surprising, but then again, he was given the best male role in the film. But it's really Nola's film, and it's a shame that Tracy Camilla Johns never really had much of a career after this film.

Pierrot le fou & Play Time

Pierrot le fou is the first Godard film chronologically that starts to be too political to actually be much of a movie. Except that it keeps insisting it is a movie. Which is one of the charms of Godard, but this felt like a warm up for Week End, a better film, as they're both about a couple who goes on a trip and the world around them devolves. That one at least had the amazing tracking shot of the car accident, still one of the best things ever to be put on film.

Play Time is a semi-sequel to M. Hulot's series of films that included Mon Oncle. This is another satire of modern society, with a higher budget, and apparently did very poorly at the box office. I understand. I felt the length more this time. There were still some funny bits, but it felt like it was a satire for the 60s and I just don't find it as enjoyable. Maybe I'm getting jaded. Need new movies please.

Telekinesis! at the Black Cat 6/17

Somehow, someway, I wasn't actually the first person among my friends to find this band. They put out an album on Merge in April. And I didn't hear about them until around then. But MBG came in to work one day and said, "My new favorite band is on Merge." So I got the album and he was right. It's the best thing I've heard this year. There isn't one single bad track, and therefore no real standouts, as "Tokyo", "Coast of Carolina", "Awkward Kisser", and "I Saw Lightning", among others have been stuck in my head for various amounts of time over the last week. That was helped by my usual listening to the entire discography of the band before the show, along with a Tiny Desk set webcast on NPR (apparently Michael is a huge fan of Bob Boilen, and it'll be posted here at some point). During that, they played a bit of the old ELO song, Can't Get It out of My Head, which luckily I can't get into my head. My favorite thing about the picture? The Beatles Anthology book bookended with the Beatles bobbleheads. I want those.

The show was part of a co-headlining tour. An Horse opened at the Black Cat, when Telekinesis! has opened for them the night before in Philly. I'd never heard of An Horse, although they had apparently opened for Death Cab for Cutie in Australia and for Tegan & Sara in the US. There were many people there just for them, as the crowd noticeably thinned after they played. I didn't love them, but they were enjoyable enough, even with the thin sound only a guitar and drums can make, and certainly got me in the mood for Telekinesis!'s set. There were also many underage people there. I guess both bands were kinda emo-y, but I felt very old fogey-y. During An Horse's set, all of the members of Telekinesis! were within a few feet of me at various times. I did not know what the other, non-Lerner, members looked like, but I was too shy to tell him how great his album was. But I was literally standing right next to the other members and I didn't know.

With only one album at only 31 minutes long, and with only a couple EPs and a single out (most of the tracks on those were rerecorded for the album), they certainly couldn't play for very long. So I wasn't expecting all that much when they came out around 10:40. They played for around 40 minutes, missing "Awkward Kisser", but whipping out a pretty good Kinks cover in "A House in the Country" to replace it, and doing every other song from the album (I think). Yes, Telekinesis!'s touring band features an Asian female bassist (who was tatted up). Michael Lerner looked quite a bit like a muppet (Animal in particular), once he took his glasses off and was flailing around but still kinda in one place. The two guitarists, hipster/pedophile/70s Swedish softcore porn actor and Jared Leto were pretty good. The in-between-song banter was slightly repetitive (they said they were very excited about being in DC a few times), but it seemed like it was due to being charged up rather than anything else.

After Michael got out from in front of the drums (to play his small guitar for Rust, he saw there was also a slight problem with the stuffed raccoon on top of Michael's drum kit, as an anti-fur person put an anti-fur sticker on it. And then had a shouted disagreement with Lerner (a vegetarian) over whether it was a real raccoon or not. Seriously? It's, very obviously, a stuffed raccoon. What the hell? I may agree with you guys that fur is evil, but I think you're just a huge bunch of douchebags. You and PETA.

iTunes Meme Takes the Fifth

Four years into this, and I've decided to add to the content by reposting my old blog. So I'm redoing the iTunes meme again again, and noting that I saw 216 films this year (total of 3838 films), meaning I saw 79 fewer films this past year than the previous year. Successfully dating is to blame. Wouldn't trade it though. My consumption of most media has decreased over the past year. I don't even get the shakes if I don't see a movie in a few days.

How many total songs?
24268, that's 61 days, 22 hours, 28 minutes, and 10 seconds or 108.72 GB. That's 1866 more songs than last year, although by when I added current iterations of tracks, there are 2725 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
Same as last year

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

Sort by Time - first and last?
We're a Couple from the Spaced Soundtrack
Symphony no. 9 from the BBC Philharmonic's Beethoven's Symphonies
That cuts about six tenths of a second off last year's shortest.

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

Top Five Played Songs:
Holland, 1945 from Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea
Drill Me from Portastatic's The Summer of the Shark
Blue Bird from The Rosebuds' Birds Make Good Neighbors
Sex Is Personal from The Faint's Blank Wave Arcade
Temptation from New Order's Substance
Pretty similar, although my love for Temptation has finally entered.

Find "sex," how many songs show up? 166 (by track is 56, and Song against Sex at 7)
Find "death," how many songs show up? 161 (by track is 55, with 3 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrolls)
Find "love," how many songs show up? 1307 (by track is 769, with 15 Love Will Tear Us Apart's winning)
Find "peace," how many songs show up? 27, (by track is 24, (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding? winning this one at 8)
Find "rain," how many songs show up? 352, with 190 by track, having Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head winning with 5
Find "sun," how many songs show up? 343, with 219 by track, and Island in the Sun winning with 5
Find "you," how many songs show up? 2837, with 1887 by track and 11 Don't You Evah (well, one is technically Don't You Ever)
Find "home," how many songs show up? 233, with 110 by track and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) with 4
Find "boy," how many songs show up? 638, with 248 by track and Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? with 12
Find "girl," how many songs show up? 600, with 284 by track and I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me with 9
Find "hate," how many songs show up? 105, with 61 by track and I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me with 9
Find "wish," how many songs show up? 67, with 46 by track and I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine and Blown a Wish tied at 4

XXY, The King of Kong, Food Party & The Yiddish Policeman's Union

XXY is an Argentinian film about a 15 year old hermaphrodite who is struggling to find out where she fits in society, and society trying to come to grips with him. I think him, as that is what the end of the movie would suggest is Alex's choice. It's a shortish film, but great acting, and about something that a lot of people don't think about very much: hermaphrodites, and whether to allow them to make their own choices about what gender to live as. Few hermaphrodites are given that choice, as it is customary to turn them into women soon after birth. In many cases, however, this leads to a gender identity crisis and later decision to undergo a sex change operation. I would like to think that this sort of issue is well-understood, but it really isn't. And until the day when we can stop having huge articles in major magazines about the sexuality of some pop singer, I doubt that we'll ever have an honest discussion about gender identity.

The King of Kong is the great documentary about the world record for Donkey Kong. Of course, it's horribly biased, but I don't entirely care about its accurateness as history (so I'm actually looking forward to the fictionalized version coming to theaters soon-ish). It tells a extraordinary story with a huge asshole of a villain and an all-American hero. I never actually played Donkey Kong or most other arcade games (I have fond memories of the X-Men arcade game and the Simpsons arcade game, but not much else), so the bit of history was interesting, although I knew about the kill screen before, probably from reading a review when this first came out.

Food Party is a show on IFC. Normally I would ignore a weird cooking/craft/bizarre show. But I actually am friends (it's true, Facebook friends and everything!) with one of the cast members of the show. So I felt I had to watch it. I wasn't able to make it through any of the episodes on the website, due to the screaming and crappy sound, but the show itself was slightly better quality filming, and I actually laughed a few times, recognized my friend easily in his multiple roles. Will watch again.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a Michael Chabon novel I'd been meaning to read for a couple of years. And I finally started earlier this year until I was so rudely interrupted by my habit of buying and then reading comics. As a huge fan of The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and Wonder Boys, and to a lesser extent his other works, I somehow put off reading it myself. I did, however, buy a copy for my dad pretty soon after it came out. I loved the book, and highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in Yiddish, policemen, alternate history, and a great detective story. As the complicated history and plot of the book would be far too complicated for me to get into in any detail without just reading the wiki page, I recommend you just read the wiki page. At least the setting part, as the plot is twisty and kept me guessing.

The Naked Prey, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, 2 Days in Paris, & Elizabeth: The Golden Age

The Naked Prey has a monkey fighting a cheetah. Oh, and it's basically like The Most Dangerous Game, except in this case, it's far more racist because it's set in Africa in the 19th century and it has a white guide for a safari being the only survivor of a native massacre. But he only survives to be released naked and then hunted for sport. It was made in 1966. There's genuine footage of animal-on-animal and human-on-animal violence. And man-on-man violence. The story is based on the true story of a white man who was hunted by Black Foot Indians in 1807, and he survived after 11 days of running back to civilization (there's an awesome Paul Giamatti-read version of the story on the Criterion DVD). The movie itself is beautifully shot vistas in South Africa, but man, the racial implications of this film make Rush proud.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a much shorter film than I was expecting, even though it was only about a day in the life of a generally unpleasantly judgmental person. No, it wasn't about me. I have never been a maid. Or a social secretary. Frances McDormand was pretty enjoyable, I will never complain about Lee Pace getting work (the second to last episode of Pushing Daisies wasn't quite as good as the third to last episode, but still better than almost anything else on TV), Ciaran Hinds was enjoyable, as was Shirley Henderson and Amy Adams. Basically, an enjoyable film that doesn't really say anything or mean much of anything. But if you want an enjoyable fast-paced film, you could do far worse.

2 Days in Paris is clearly a personal story for Julie Delpy, writing, directing, starring, casting her parents as her parents (following Before Sunset), and her former boyfriend as her boyfriend. And I think it's mainly about the differences between the US and France. But it's also a belated let's make fun of Americans for being idiots and supporting Bush.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the entirely unnecessary sequel to Elizabeth, which was excellent and a much better movie than Shakespeare in Love. I just found this movie boring. Sorry, Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen. I generally like you both, along with Geoffrey Rush and Samantha Morton. But it appears that Shekhar Kapur just couldn't do it again. The sense of watching something that never needed to be made was something I couldn't get rid of throughout the film. And now you've made me retroactively less happy with Elizabeth. Success, Mr. Kapur? I hardly think so.

Weirdly all of these films have non-sexual nudity. 2 Days in Paris has weird pictures with penii and balloons. The others were mainly asses, although The Naked Prey has naked native women breasts.

The Wayward Cloud, Passing Fancy, & Exte: Hair Extensions

The Wayward Cloud is the final (?) film in Tsai Ming-liang's trilogy that includes What Time Is It There? and The Skywalk Is Gone. In this one, thet main male character is a porn star, and he meets up with the main female from the earlier films. There's a drought in Taiwan, so everyone is eating and drinking watermelons. It's extremely bizarre, slow-moving, there's not just a hint of necrophilia, and, oh yeah, it's a musical with very little dialogue. They sing old Taiwanese songs, almost all of which are terrible. Basically, there's a dude fingering a watermelon as a stand-in for a vagina, there's fake-looking sex (I mean, seriously, he wasn't even hard, how could he possibly have actual sex with a dead woman?), forced fellatio (at the climax of the film, pun intended), and man, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the earlier two films.

Passing Fancy is an early Ozu film, and it was released in a pack of 3 from Eclipse (the budget Criterion line). As such, it doesn't get the same treatment as Criterion from a visual standpoint, as it looks like crap. And there are far too many intertitles. Hitchcock would have objected to that. I just objected to the boringness. I don't know if there's anything else I could possibly get out of watching more Ozu, considering how many I've seen, so I actually just took the others out of my Netflix queue.

Exte: Hair Extensions is a Japanese Horror film. About murderous hair extensions. Somehow this is not the most ridiculous Japanese horror film I've ever seen. It stars Chiaki Kuriyama (Kill Bill and Battle Royale) as the hero, and Ren Osugi (The Twilight Samurai, Dolls, and a huge bunch of awesome Takeshi Miike films) as the insane morgue attendant who sells hair extensions that start taking over the brains of those who wear them and then having them kill people. Evidently, there's some story about a woman who is kidnapped and her body parts are sold for transplants, or something, but who really cares? Hair kills people! And grows out of wounds and around tongues and over eyeballs and through fax machines and you get the idea. Sion Sono (who did the earlier (and not nearly as deliriously funny) Suicide Club) shifts tones like a wild man, but it just feels like it is supposed to be like that. And I didn't even mention my favorite part (besides the abusive mother and her boyfriend getting their comeuppance and why people would ever want to grow up to wear stupid hair like that): the movie introduced Chiaki's character by having her bike in to work late but narrate everything like she's a film noir heroine. Except that instead of doing it in her head, she does it out loud, explaining she saw someone do it in a terrible TV show and found it funny so she started to do it herself. Which is strange, but then she meets up with her best friend, who also does it, and it becomes another layer of hilariousness.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Syndromes and a Century, Mr. Arkadin, Get Smart, & The Jane Austen Book Club

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a mid-70s Werner Herzog film. To give you an idea about the film, it is based almost entirely upon the extremely strong performance from Bruno S. And because it's Herzog, Bruno S. is crazy. Here's his biography from the IMDB: "The unwanted son of a prostitute, Bruno S. was beaten so severely by his mother at age 3 that he became temporarily deaf. This led to his placement in a mental institution; he spent the next 23 years in various institutions, often running afoul of the law. Despite this past, he a self-taught painter and musician; while these were his favorite occupations, he was also forced to take jobs in factories such as driving a fork lift. Director Werner Herzog saw him in the documentary Bruno der Schwarze - Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn (1970) and vowed to work with him, which led to his major roles in Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974) and Stroszek (1977). He was very difficult to work with, though, sometimes needing several hours of screaming before he could do a scene." It's absolutely insane, and it's based on a true story. A guy is found in Nuremburg in 1828, with a note, and saying that he had been kept in a dungeon for as long as he could remember. And he has problems adjusting to society. Kinda depressing film, and I'm not sure exactly how this fits in with my idea of every one of Herzog's films being about someone being obsessed, but it could work somewhat as an outsider, rather than being obsessed, as Nosferatu is more outsider than obsessed.

Syndromes and a Century is by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Thai, whose parents were both doctors, and it's basically a fictionalized version of how they met and fell in love. I'm not sure I could do much better than A.O. Scott's opening paragraph of the review of this, "Ever since his films began to attract admiring attention from the international film festival crowd, the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has encouraged his tongue-tied Western fans to call him Joe. That friendly, disarming gesture reflects the sensibility behind the movies, which are at once stubbornly difficult — resistant to summary, at times even to understanding — and surprisingly warm and gentle. Unabashed art films that demand patience and close, quizzical attention, they are also generous, unpretentious and funny, posing thorny formal questions in a relaxed, democratic spirit." It's a slightly meandering film, intentionally so, with a final couple of scenes that seem to have little to no relevance to the rest of the film. But if you allow its rhythms to flow over you, it's a very enjoyable time.

Mr. Arkadin is a film that may never be what it should have been. Orson Welles had the film taken away from him in the editing room. The film actually started out as three episodes of The Lives of Harry Lime, a radio show based on his character from The Third Man. Then he started to film it as a multi-European country production, refilming two scenes with Spanish actresses for the Spanish producers. And over the time in the editing room, there were at least five different versions of the film. Two Spanish ones (named for the fake names they've given to Robert Arden) and three versions in English, one for European audiences called Confidential Report, one for American audiences, both of which were butchered from the complicated flashback structure, and a version found by Peter Bogdanovich in the Corinth film vaults. There was also a novelization that was "written" by Orson Welles, but was actually written by Maurice Bessy. So Criterion used all five movie versions, and put together another version in attempting to conform as much as possible to what Welles probably would have done. Unlike with Touch of Evil, where he wrote a 58 page memo detailing the changes he wanted to make, the only way anyone has any idea about what he wanted were some remembered conversations and taking the earliest films as the best indications of Welles's vision. There were some major changes to the structure, including scenes that were put before scenes that clearly said they were after others. The final Criterion Comprehensive version is really the only one that is needed. The film itself is actually pretty good in every scene that doesn't include Guy Van Stratten (played by Robert Arden), and is also good in some scenes with him. When I watched the three versions on the Criterion collection DVD set, I figured he was a terrible actor, mispronouncing words. Now, after thinking about it more, I'm not as sure, thinking that, especially with Welles' tendency to overdub everyone in his films, maybe this was intentional. Maybe he was supposed to be the obnoxious and ignorant American idiot. But man, I was really rooting for him to die.

Get Smart is far too big of a movie for the plot. It's really just too much. The special effects were extremely distracting, and the big action bit at the end was studiously not funny. I like Terrence Stamp, and basically everyone in the cast, but it is never as funny as the original show, just jokes spaced too far apart for any humor to build throughout the film. Sorry film.

The Jane Austen Book Club has a Buffy conference as a punchline (and has a girl identified as only "Girl with a Dog Collar" played by Messy Stench, and that might actually be her name). I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be offended or not. And I'm not sure Grigg is not supposed to make me feel terrible for being a guy who likes Jane Austen, and also is a big fan of science fiction. It's a fairly cheesy romantic comedy, with the Jane Austen hook being the only thing to make it remotely interesting. I didn't regret watching it, but it certainly isn't anything special. Just an inoffensive movie, probably more enjoyable for those who have actually read Austen's books, because otherwise, the parallels will probably be missed. Not that it makes the film much better. Maybe the book is better? Wait, I mean, I'm sure the book is better.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910, Runaways, Preacher, Dollhouse, & Better off Ted

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 is the first issue of a three-part third volume of Alan Moore's most detailed series. Basically, it's 1910, a new king is going to be crowned, and there's a vision of the future that suggests an apocalypse in downtown London. So the next version of the league has to stop it, meeting characters from the Threepenny Opera (who sing songs based on it), along with Jack the Ripper (along with a surprise answer to who it was, even if it's not a surprise for those who've seen The Ruling Class), a thinly veiled Aleister Crowley, and more (just take a look at this list of characters in the series). Of course, it has it's requisite sex and violence, along with a section at the end which references 2001: A Space Odyssey and then on the next page, The Story of O. Basically, it (and the earlier League books) may not be the most important comics of all time, but they're certainly near my favorite comics of all time. This was better than The Black Dossier, but not as good as the original two volumes. Yet.

Runaways was started by Brian K. Vaughn in 2003, and then restarted a couple of years later, and then taken over by Joss Whedon after Brian took over the Buffy Season 8 comics. So I wanted to read them, and I have. Not as good as I personally would have liked, but a generally enjoyable "Don't trust anyone over the age of 18 (later increased to 19)" story about six teens who see their parents sacrifice a teenage girl and realize their parents are all very, very evil. And then the series continues, adding in new characters to replace dead ones, having a psychically linked velociraptor from the future show up, magic, the 1900s, robots, and have cameos from much more famous comic book superheros (it's a Marvel comic, so it's Wolverine and Captain America (along with Kingpin and The Punisher) among others). Basically, I liked it, I'll continue to read it, but it just confirmed that I don't actually like superhero comics in general.

Preacher is gratuitously violent, gratuitously naked, and gratuitously profane (in both word and religious senses). I loved it. There were vampires, crazy ultra-religious types, horse thieves, inbred southerners, a sex-crazed Nazi Harvard-educated lawyer, a disgruntled astronaut (in one of my favorite bits), a war in Heaven, an orgy, a seriously misguided fan of Kurt Kobain who becomes a rock star, and more. Just a great series, and I'm a little disappointed I won't get to see an HBO miniseries based on this. Read it. I want to apologize for not having read this before the last month, as I read the first two collections years ago, but I wasn't buying comics then, and I never read past that, and then I tried one time after that, but I kept getting sidetracked, so I finally just started over.

Dollhouse and Better off Ted are two shows that are too good for network TV. And almost got cancelled as a result. I joined a save Dollhouse facebook group before the show had even started to air, because it was a Joss Whedon show on Fox airing on Friday night. After a rough (well, very rough) first five episodes, with only the previously mentioned Middleman episode particularly good, but once we got to Man on the Street (which Joss had promised would be the beginning of the show being awesome), the show became awesome, and by the end was as good as his earlier shows (Alan Tudyk was great). I didn't even mind Eliza Dushku. Better off Ted was a workplace sitcom. Boo, right? Non-boo. It's from Victor Fresco, who did Andy Richter Controls the Universe (which I purchased on DVD based on the remembering it was funny and my love of the "I'm building a temple to you, made out of shrimp, in my stomach" line, and did not regret that purchase one bit), and stars Jonathan Slavin (also from ARCTU) and Portia de Rossi. The two leads (Jay Harrington and Andrea Anders) are acceptable, but de Rossi, Slavin, and Malcolm Barrett are definitely worth watching the show for. Slavin and Barrett are Phil and Lem, two genius scientists who are like an old married couple, but with science! And de Rossi is the utterly insanely demanding boss. Basically, it's a little wacky, but very funny. I recommend watching both. But it just depresses me about how good ARCTU was, and how pissed I was it got cancelled. I didn't remember it lasting almost two seasons though. So, good on Fox?

Lust, Caution

Lust, Caution is strangely, a movie that would have gotten very little notice, save for the explicit sex scenes. Not that it didn't deserve some of the press, as it's actually a pretty good film, with very strong performances from the good Tony Leung (now matching the not as good Tony Leung as Good Actors Whose Penises (Or Balls) I've Seen (GAWPOBIS? nah, not going to add the tag)), Wei Tang, and Joan Chen, among others much less known. Sure, it's a little too long, and the sex scenes are almost completely gratuitous. Yes, seeing Wei Tang naked was gratuitous (but only in the idea that it does little to show how obsessed with each other they are sexually). I am, however, very proud of everyone who allowed those scenes to be left uncut in the final version. However, the length of the film, along with a fairly basic plot means that it isn't quite as enjoyable as Black Book, which was trashy fun with not as many sex scenes, another movie about a woman having lots of sex with an evil man during World War II. Speaking of sex, the most disturbing part of the film was the initial rape scene. Rape is always disturbing.

Also, for some terrible human people, read the IMDB message boards for the movie, and just wallow in the misogynistic (Wong is a slut for falling for Mr. Yee), homophobic (OMG, thank god I didn't see Tony Leung's penis), and racist (Asians are hairy and weird) postings. And then enjoy the occasional post that's actually intelligent and well-thought out.

Caseus Archivelox: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones & Persona

2002-05-16 - 11:19 p.m.
I also went to see Star Wars Episode 2, and it was neither as bad as some people were saying, or as good as others (admittedly many fewer were saying that). Lucas set himself up to be trashed with The Phantom Menace. No matter how good this movie was (maybe if he had another Empire, but that's so unlikely that I'll just ignore that possibility), it would be trashed by many, just because it was no Star Wars or Empire. The final battle scenes are really cool, and Yoda certainly does kick ass, as does Samuel L. Jackson. Too bad C3PO is the new terrible character. At first he was just a gay robot, now he's horribly bad comic relief, with just bad puns. Not that there are good puns, but it's like Lucas and Hales couldn't think of a way to add some levity to a serious battle, and thus put C3PO in the Jar-Jar role. Ignoring the fact that in the original trilogy the battle scenes rarely had comedy. There were funny things, but there was not one character that is there only for that. The Ewoks banging on the AT-STs, the tow cables causing the AT-STs to trip, and Porkins were all funny to a certain extent, but back then, they knew that comedy wasn't really for those scenes. When Han and Chewie chase the stormtroopers in Star Wars, that was funny, but it wasn't in the midst of many characters dying and mass mayhem, it was in the middle of comedic rescue attempt of the Princess. Sure, Jar-Jar Binks is the most evil character of all time, for his obvious racist stereotype, but now also because he just was responsible for the downfall of the republic. But that is just one of those things that we have to accept from Lucas. That he's a racist and won't admit it. Jar-Jar is so evilly bad. The dialogue and love scenes were also terrible, while, surprisingly, some of the CGI was also very fake. It's one thing for a movie like Young Sherlock Holmes to have below average CGI (at least compared to now, for the time, it was incredible, even if it was only around 12 polygons), but for a movie that cost $130 million or so and had the top of the line CGI group working on it is almost irredeemable. Lucas is so evil. So, I give the movie a 6 out of 10. Star Wars is a 10, Empire also is a 10, but would be an 11 if I bent the rules, Return is a 9 (I don't like Ewoks and Jabba's palace was terrible (mainly from the Special Edition)), and Phantom Menace is a 4, and that's almost entirely for Ewan McGregor, the pod race, and the final lightsaber duel. Those were good, the rest was bad. Another way to judge the movie is to say that you can pretty much ignore any scene with Anakin until the duel at the end of the movie, because he's just bad until then. Padme isn't much better. Yoda, Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi are cool, as is Dooku (Christopher Lee) and Jango and Boba Fett and the rest of the clones. But the movie is just disappointing, not as terrible as the Phantom Menace, nor as transcendentally great as the original trilogy.

2002-05-23 - 1:39 a.m.
Then I watched Persona. That is one weird movie. But v. v. good, and it would have made my lesbian vampire film paper v. v. interesting. The paper could have been better, had I had more time to work on it, and an unlimited amount of space to write about them. Like if I were writing a dissertation on it. That would be really funny if I were to graduate from Duke's F/V program and they list all the dissertations in the program, so you'd see "Lesbian Vampires: Empowered Female or Male Fantasy?" in there, next to all the useful ones. That would be good. Anyway, cool thing noticed while watching Persona: the somewhat jarring credits (and music) were reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail's opening credits. I am positive that they were spoofing not just Persona in particular but Bergman's films in general.

Caseus Archivelox: Salvador, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Point Blank, The Girl on the Bridge, & Y Tu Mama Tambien

2002-05-06 - 11:22 p.m.
Salvador is really good, even though Oliver Stone showed his biases against the American military. Not that they aren't well founded, but it's colored a couple of his movies to the detriment of them. James Woods is incredibly good in it. It's just a little long. And of course, the fact that it agrees with my politics, and views of Reagan, helps it. I felt like I needed to see it, because it's an Oliver Stone film, and he is a very skilled filmmaker, even if insanely paranoid.

2002-05-07 - 8:16 p.m.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller had most of what I like about Altman (with great overlapping dialogue and nice camerawork, which was muted somewhat by the pan-and-scan tape), except that I can't like Warren Beatty in anything. He wasn't that bad in it, but he's such a despicable character that I didn't care whether he lived or died. The whores in the movie were much better, because they at least wanted the men to be clean before they had sex with them. Every time I think Julie Christie, I start singing "Tom Courtenay". That isn't that bad, but just slightly annoying. The Leonard Cohen songs were nice. Still, even with Beatty, the film was good.

2002-05-09 - 12:19 a.m.
Point Blank was a really good gangster type movie from 1967 directed by John Boorman. He also directed some other very good films: Deliverance, Excalibur, and Hope & Glory, and some trash: Zardoz and Exorcist 2. This one had a lot of flashbacks and forwards, partially because it may or may not be the case that the main character died in the first scene. That isn't really spoiling it because I doubt any of you who read this will ever watch it, and it doesn't hurt the appreciation of the film to know that. The movie was really stylish and Lee Marvin was impressively stoic and cool. I highly recommend it. In fact, the knowledge of his possible death makes the film much better than it would have been otherwise.

2002-05-09 - 5:27 p.m.
I watched The Girl on the Bridge this afternoon, and damn if that isn't one of the better love stories I've seen in a long time. It was made for the romantic film fan, with so many things to take a viewer out of the "real" world within the film, that had it been much longer, I would have found it frustrating. But it was so well made that it knew when to stop, when to push the viewer to suspend their disbelief fully, and be the incredibly romantic film that it set out to be. Very good film.

2002-05-13 - 5:56 p.m.
Then I saw Y Tu Mama Tambien, which was really good. I knew I had seen the main woman before, and it was because she was in Belle époque. And Emilio Echevarría from Amores Perros was also in it. But the movie was just good, with long takes, good acting, and excellent camerawork. The historical signifigance of the entire movie was not lost upon me either.

Caseus Archivelox: Spider-Man

2002-05-05 - 2:21 a.m.
I went to see Spider-Man tonight. Pretty darn good. Much better than most movies from last summer. I think the only movie I spent money on last summer was Planet of the Apes. I of course regret that. Bad movie. Bad. Spider-Man had some cheezy lines, and was pretty predictable. The scene where the New Yorkers attack the Green Goblin wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Lucy Lawless had a brief scene in it, even though she was not mentioned on the IMDB. [Ed. note: This has since been fixed.] Which is weird, because she was credited in the film. The special effects were, as advertised, very touch and go, with some impressive parts, but most were obviously fake. But then again, CGI is pretty easy to spot for someone who has seen a lot of it. And for someone who has written a paper about it, it's even easier. Oh, sure, the paper was pretty bad, but I did write one. About three and a half years ago. I wish I had been able to wait until The Phantom Menace had come out, so I could have trashed that in my paper, but I just had to trash Titanic instead. Oh well.

Back to Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire was really good in it. Kirsten Dunst's nipples are perky. Willem Dafoe continues to be one of my favorite actors currently working. The scene where he does both Osborn and the Green Goblin into the mirror is great. James Franco continues to look just like James Dean. It's freaky, but at least he was really good in that movie about Dean. Even when he's not playing Dean, he just channels him. He's good. J.K. Simmons as Jameson chewed the scenery well. Ted Raimi was fun. Macy Gray sucks.

For some disturbing Sam Raimi trivia, apparently he has seen Kevin Costner fully frontally nude, when filming for For Love of the Game, in a scene that was cut out. Because his penis was hideous. Or they just need to have a PG-13 film. Costner is one of those actors that I hate with a vengeance, even if I like some of his work. The Postman was one of the worst films I have seen in a long time as well. I mean, it wasn't as bad as Battlefield Earth (not much is), and I haven't seen Glitter, but it was still pretty darn bad. He was good in Silverado, JFK, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams. Not much else. And The Untouchables is so overrated. He has sucked in most of his films. I couldn't make it through 3000 Miles to Graceland, because it was just terrible. Or maybe it was because I was bored and playing computer games at the same time. That could be more of the reason, but the parts I saw were bad.

Caseus Archivelox: The Goodbye Girl, Silverado, The Gathering Storm, & The Gorgon

2002-04-28 - 3:00 p.m.
I also had three movies on in the background when attempting to write the paper. The Goodbye Girl, Silverado, and The Gathering Storm. The first was a sort of dissappointing Neil Simon-penned film, with a good performance from Richard Dreyfuss (especially as an extremely fey Richard III). Silverado was a really good revisionist western with an incredibly good cast (Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner (in a good performance outside of a baseball film or JFK, who knew?), John Cleese, Brian Dennehy, Roseanna Arquette, Linda Hunt, and Jeff Goldblum). Very fun film. The Gathering Storm was based upon the part of Winston Churchill's unfinished 3-part autobiography set from 1936-1940. Incredibly good. I'm a big fan of Churchill, and this was good. Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave were excellent as Mr. and Mrs. Churchill.

After that I decided to watch the movie I had taped last night, Hammer film's 1964 classic The Gorgon. Combining Greek mythology with great acting from Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is great. Sure Megara doesn't look good at all, but it has a lot of atmosphere to make up for that failure.

Caseus Archivelox: The Man Who Wasn't There

2002-04-21 - 1:27 a.m.
I went to see The Man Who Wasn't There, which is one of the funniest films of last year. The Coen brothers really know exactly how to make an incredibly funny film where the characters in the film have no idea that what they are doing is funny.

I was laughing out loud for so much of the movie. The only problem with it was the slightly messed up print that they sent us, with some scratches and other things messed up, but the movie was absolutely brilliant. Better than most Coen brothers movies, although not as good as Miller's Crossing or Fargo. The Big Lebowski is the funniest of their films, but it doesn't have the deeper meaning (if you can say that their films have any meaning, which is debatable) of the previous three movies. But the problem when attempting to rate their movies (as the same occurs when rating any brilliant director (or in this case, directing team)) is that I think of why I like the other movies a lot. So this will probably change the next time I see any of their movies. Like the next time I feel like watching The Big Lebowski. About the only thing that is clear is that The Hudsucker Proxy is their least good. But I like lots of things in it. Maybe Raising Arizona is not as good as that. I'm not sure, stupid mind.

Caseus Archivelox: Mifune & All about Eve

2002-04-17 - 10:16 p.m.
When I came back to my room, I finished off the first thing I taped yesterday, Mifune. AKA Dogme 3. Iben Hjelje (High Fidelity) was really good in it, but the movie suffers from the Dogme filmmaking style. And from an almost unrelentingly sad script full of many unsympathetic characters. At least until the main character gets attacked by prostitutes and dressed up in woman's clothes. That was useful. I haven't enjoyed anything I've seen from any Dogme film. Or anything directed by anyone who has done a Dogme film besides Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. At least of which I can think.

Then All About Eve again. One of the most brilliant showbusiness movies of all time. Maybe even the best. I can't think of any movies about plays or movies that are better. Few movies are almost perfect. Fewer are perfect. This is one of the few. Even with an annoying rear projection of Anne Baxter and George Sanders walking down the street. But the acting, the script, the directing. George Sanders is one of the great actors of the 40s and 50s. He was great in Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Ivanhoe. The movie was just incredibly good. And I of course recommend it to all lovers of cinema. I also have to eat my words about Marilyn Monroe. She has her talents as an actress. I don't think she is the most beautiful woman of all time, but she has comedic talent.

Caseus Archivelox: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer & Metropolis

2002-04-16 - 11:22 p.m.
Then we watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Michael Rooker, he of Mallrats, JFK, and Eight Men Out fame (among others) was incredibly good in it. The movie itself was pretty disturbing, but mainly because it focuses entirely upon a homicidal maniac who never feels regret. However, I tend to agree with Roger Ebert, who decried the film's release as unrated, and I support his proposal for a new A rating for adult, for films that are not pornographic, but too far from mainstream for the MPAA to give it an R. Kids and Requiem for a Dream would have been two other films to get the rating in my opinion. The film wasn't scary, but it was definitely disturbing.

Then I went off to Griffith to watch Metropolis. It was a really crappy VHS copy of the movie. Watching VHS movies on the big screen is bad, because the colors bleed way too much. Also, again, the movie took a somewhat muddled plot full of incredible visuals (Metropolis 1926) and made it into an anime movie (i.e. completely incomprehensible plot with nice visuals). Anime just makes no sense. [Ed. note: my opinion has changed slightly since then.]

2002-04-16
After the previous few movies (since Peeping Tom) disappointing to some extent (although The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was bad mainly for its length and the fact that I was not watching it on the big screen like I did last Halloween), Henry was a slap in the face. Here is a serial killer movie that does not bother with the normal clichés of the genre, with a pair of mismatched detectives triumphing over all odds and making huge leaps of judgment to catch the wily (but ultimately insane) serial killer. For Henry, it really is a Portrait of a Serial Killer, as it focuses entirely upon the serial killer, his motives (or lack thereof) and his sick sense of quid pro quo. After he seemingly recants his life when running away with Becky in the line “I guess I love you too”, he brutally murders her off screen. My guess would be that he used his razor to do that, but the main clue to the brutality is that she ends up in a suitcase on the side of the road. There will be no happy ending for this killer and no redemption for the audience. Although the audience despises Otis for his incestuous, homosexual, and drug dealing ways, Henry is a mass murderer, and clearly has some serious mental issues, and cannot be a fully sympathetic character, and thus when Becky is hacked up, the audience is symbolically as well, with parts wishing that she had been able to change him into a functioning member of society, parts wishing that she had killed him, and parts wishing she had turned him in to the police. However, the movie is unsure exactly what it really wanted to say about Henry’s deeper conflict. The little that is there in an attempt to explain why he is a killer are told with so many contradictions (baseball bat, knife, gun) that we are left wondering whether there is nothing inside him, and that is shown when he looks into the mirror shaving before the last scene. There is nothing that can save him, and nothing that can save the audience from having to face the reality that there are people out there who kill because they can.

Except for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (where the meaning is somewhere in the film, but is completely irrelevant to anything remotely linked to the semblance of a plot), every film we have seen has had a killer of some sort that had a reason to kill, but for this, we have no real reason for the killing. Few films are as mindlessly brutal as Henry, and few films as completely disturbing. Is it as scary as Halloween or Psycho or the Shining? Not really, but it is much more disturbing than most movies I have ever seen.

Baby Mama, The Ten, Paprika, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, & The Long Kiss Goodnight

Baby Mama is basically like the worst of 30 Rock this season, the generally silly adoption subplot (but still funny), except, you know, without it being remotely funny. Good thing: using Be My Baby over the credits. Bad thing: sitting through the rest of the film.

The Ten is a bad sketch comedy movie about the ten commandments. Done by most of the State, you'd think it would be funny. Especially with Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, John Hamm, Winona Ryder, Ron Silver, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Jason Sudeikis, Justin Theroux, Liev Schreiber, Jessica Alba, Oliver Platt, Janeane Garofalo, Rob Corddry, Rashida Jones, and Bobby Cannavale in the cast, but pretty much everyone of them does some of their worst work. And anal rape jokes are... not funny. Basically, extremely disappointing. Sometimes I really should just listen to the reviews.

Paprika is a great movie, twisty and turny, an anime that actually works. Probably because it's by Satoshi Kon, who also did Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. He's really a very talented guy, and he does a pretty good job with a very complicated story of a group of scientists who have invented a machine that allows people to watch and get involved in other people's dreams. This leads to crazy dream sequences and excellent weirdness. Strange and awesome.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is basically worth watching for three things: the constant mocking of CSI: Miami's David Caruso's ability to be a terrible actor with sunglasses, Jason Segel's comfortableness with showing his penis, and his Dracula puppet musical. Other than that, it's a semi-enjoyable romantic comedy, but I don't quite understand why Russell Brand is a famous comedian. He was kind of enjoyable, but all the stand up of his I've seen has been just vulgar and not actually funny. But man, I would so see that Dracula puppet musical many times. I can't wait for Segel's new muppet film. Him singing the Muppet Show theme song was fun.

The Long Kiss Goodnight is overwritten crap. When every single line is acting like it's the greatest line ever written, and characters are stupid but somehow able to stop time so they can run away from an explosion, then it's crap. There were some good lines, but not nearly enough to carry a film, especially one that basically killed Geena Davis's career. Also it was weird to see Craig Bierko play a badass. He's a musical comedy star.

Bounce Ko Gals, Drunken Angel, In Between Days, The Prisoner of Zenda, Midnight Madness, & The Apple

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Lilya 4-Ever, The Quiet Family, Time, Gunhed, & Real Life

Lilya 4-Ever was not a depressing Russian film, no matter what I thought. It was, in fact, a depressing Swedish film, mostly in Estonian, about a teenage girl whose mom leaves her in Estonia to fend for herself when she goes to the US to marry some dude. And, of course, she starts having to do things for money (or candy!) to make ends meet. A younger boy falls in love with her and tries to get her to see that others are using her, but of course she doesn't listen and it just becomes this huge shame spiral that only ends when she kills herself. Just a very depressing film, made worse by the fact that it was based on a true story. People, we suck. Not this movie, though, it's just a horrible downer, but quite good otherwise.

The Quiet Family was remade a few years later. Normally, I would be all aghast, but Takashi Miike remade it into The Happiness of the Katakuris. This film was the original Korean film, and a much more subdued, although still with a wicked comedic streak, look a family who buys a remote hotel and whose guests all start dying. Although it isn't as crazy, it's an actual good film, ratcheting up the tension, and being just kooky enough to keep you guessing. I can certainly see why Miike was so tempted to remake it in his own image.

Time is another Kim Ki-Duk film, about a very messed up relationship. Are there any of his films that aren't about a crazy relationship? I can't think of any. Some better than others, but almost all are about obsessions and how they can destroy even possibly happy people. This movie is about a jealous girl who thinks her boyfriend is cheating on her, so she disappears for a long time and gets extensive plastic surgery to test his love for her. And then comes back and tries to get him to fall for her in some weird ass proof that he was going to cheat all along. And then he does the exact same thing. That's just cracked. Also, there's apparently a sculpture park on an island somewhere in South Korea with a nude reclining with a book over his face and his hand on his hard penis. No actual point, really, just saying.

Gunhed was utter crap. So bad that there needed to be around five minutes of introduction, and the movie still made no sense. There was both an opening crawl, along with an introductory narration. And then it devolves into badly dubbed crap, so bad that the director actually took his name off the American version of the film. I can't blame him. I can't imagine that any film was intentionally that bad. Why the hell was that in my Netflix queue? I honestly can't figure it out at all. It's a terrible live-action anime thing about a fighting giant robot. It was supposed to be a Godzilla movie, but Godzilla was taken out early on in the process. Why was that in my Netflix queue?

Real Life is Albert Brooks's satire of what reality TV does to both the people on the show as well as those filming it. Of course, it wasn't made in the last decade. Yep, it comes from 1979. Somehow, he saw that reality TV is a degrading and terrifying new view into the American psyche, as well as giving him some great lines (and a truly demented final scene). Enjoyable, although your own feelings on the "respectableness" of reality TV and the watchability of it may affect your enjoyment of this. I still haven't found one single reality TV show that isn't a horribly fake, clearly staged, and remarkably self-centered, so this satire was right in my wheelhouse. For those who can get past the "reality" of reality tv and actually watch the crap, it might not be what you want to see.

Caseus Archivelox: Forgotten Silver, The Devil's Backbone, & Cronos

2002-04-13 - 1:55 p.m.
It was Peter Jackson Film Day. First was one I hadn't seen before Forgotten Silver, it was a mockumentary about the first filmmaker to use sound film and color film, and tried to make a 4 hour long biblical epic with the help of the communists and some corrupt American producers. It was really funny. Next was Bad Taste, which I skipped about ten minutes in the middle of because it was somewhat boring seeing those ten minutes again. It was definitely a low budget film. Then I watched all of the Frighteners, because I hadn't seen it in a while. It was good. Sort of silly serial killer at the end, but most movies have that. Well, most movies that have serial killers in them have that. Coolest thing about the movie is that Dammers tries to drown out Lynskey's screaming with Sonic Youth's version of the Carpenter's classic "Superstar". Then I watched almost an hour of Dead Alive. I decided that I only wanted to watch the Kung Fu priest scene, and the entire zombie massacre at the end. If I need to watch them again, it's not like I really have a problem.

After that I went back to coordinate the 9:30 showing of The Devil's Backbone. The movie was a really really good ghost story. Very atmospheric and had some good scares, at least according to a girl in the audience who screamed a lot. The movie only had a couple jump scenes, most were shots where the camera panned, tilted, or tracked away from a character to the disturbing thing, fully anticipating a sort of scary shot. Not really screaming quality scares. But the movie was incredibly well made. I think that Blade 2 is probably a better film than Blade. I really want to see that. Especially because of the midnight film Cronos. That was a great reimagination of the vampire mythos. Too bad there weren't any lesbians in the movie. Guillermo Del Toro is a really talented director, and even Mimic (easily his worst film, no matter how bad Blade 2 may or may not be) shows flashes of brilliance.

Caseus Archivelox: Seven, Halloween, & This Gun for Hire

2002-04-11
When rewatching Seven in class, I was struck by how long and boring the movie is when you already know what is going to happen. The movie gives the audience no pleasure from rewatching it, and thus, I question how this movie has entered the pantheon as one of the greatest films of the 1990s. Although the directing and acting are spectacular, the writing is frustratingly preachy and there is too much depressing worldview to make me watch the movie over again. Another problem with the film is that there are too few tense scenes in the film. Because of the preachy-ness of the script, it became very clear very early on that John Doe would eventually win, and the only tension would occur would be which sin would be next. There are also no scares at all in the movie, and all (any?) of the suspense is released in the last scene, giving the audience no feeling after leaving the film besides being disturbed by some of the imagery, but no feelings that any of this could happen to them. Unless the audience is deeply religious, they would not be disturbed by the seeming threat of eternal damnation for their sins, and thus would have nothing to fear from the film as they would already by scared by reading the bible and some of the (in my opinion) more disturbing religious imagery only referenced in the movie. More disturbing to me than the movie is reading Dante’s Inferno while looking at Hieronymous Bosch artwork. Seven just borrows some disturbing imagery and adds a dark layer of grime to create an ultimately boring parable to catholic values.

Halloween on the other hand, has an incredible opening tracking shot, adequate to good acting (for a slasher film), and a genuinely tense atmosphere throughout, created partially by the great score, but also by the almost constant subjective camera angles that put the viewer into the film completely. Carpenter uses the urban legend of the boogeyman to great effect here, with Laurie and Tommy constantly discussing whether either of them saw a shape or whether it exists. After Laurie stabs Michael with the knitting needles, she says that she killed him, but Tommy correctly states that you can’t kill the boogeyman, and after Dr. Loomis shot him six times, he confirms that it was the boogeyman, also in a way confirming that he will rise again, along with the closing shots of where his body was when it fell out of the second story window, and the shots of where Michael had been previously.

The creation of the slasher genre can be shown in Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but few of those films caused the huge number of copycat films that Halloween did. The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, and Halloween 2 all followed within the next few years, and those are just the ones with Jamie Lee Curtis. The problem is that few (if any) of the films were created with the style that Halloween was. The later slasher series (Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street) borrowed heavily from Halloween’s sense of moral retribution for sex, the indestructibility of the killer, while adding the twist that the audience begins to root for the killer to win and remove the stupid teens from the earth. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the film to start that, as Franklin is one of the most annoying characters in slasher history until that fat kid with the afro in Friday the 13th Part 3-D who gives the audience headaches until he is so kind as to give Jason the now trademark hockey mask. Thanks, I think.

2002-04-12 - 12:31 a.m.
I went to horror, which was boring, because we just watched Se7en. I don't remember it being as boring before, nor as preachy. Well directed, stylish, well acted. Wayyyyyy too preachy. Andrew Kevin Walker is not that good of a writer. 8mm anyone? Sleepy Hollow anyone?

Then I struggled through a meal at the Dillo before going to see This Gun for Hire. It was based upon a Graham Greene novel. For those who aren't familiar with him, he's an incredibly good writer of lots of things including spy novels and similar things, but also is just a great writer. If you don't like reading, watch The End of the Affair or The Third Man. The only problem with This Gun For Hire (and since I haven't read the book, I'm not sure whether it is Hollywood or Greene) was that I was able to figure out the ending from the first scene. Stupid Hays Code making it so obvious when a character kills someone, they have to be punished. Then again, the fact that it would have caused some weird sexual tension for him to have survived could have also lead to that.

Caseus Archivelox: Calendar & Ah! My Goddess

2002-04-10 - 1:24 a.m.
Then I went to go watch Calendar for Sexualities. Pretty good, if a little slow, look at how a videographer has problems associating himself with his wife who is falling in love with their guide through Armenia taking pictures of churches. He is more comfortable behind the camera, and it's sort of weird. At least it was short.

Then I went downstairs to watch Ah! My Goddess. When someone finds an anime movie that is not just internally consistent, but makes sense to anyone who hasn't read the manga or watched the show, please let me know because this one didn't. Why are there goddesses that can be summoned by misdialing for a pizza? The movie made no sense. Maybe next week's movie will make more sense. And maybe monkey's will fly out of my bum.

Caseus Archivelox: Novocaine & Little Shop of Horrors

2002-04-06 - 11:04 a.m.
Then at 9ish I went to Griffith to watch Novocaine. The movie was a pretty bland film noir, with the first half an hour or so bucking the trend of most movies by being boring. After Kevin Bacon showed up, it got better, even if it was really obvious what was going to happen at the end. It was just not that good.

I stuck around for the midnight showing of Little Shop of Horrors, which I hadn't seen in forever (and it wasn't even listed on my seen movie list), but remembered the musical version vividly which scared me greatly when I was about five or six or so (and saw in the theatre). The best part of the movie, besides Steve Martin as the semi-sadist dentist and Bill Murray as his masochistic patient, was that Tisha Campbell, aka Gina from Martin, was one of the chorus. Also for some added fun, your porn movie cannot be titled Little Shop of Whores, because that's already been taken. I wasn't going to stay, but [female friend] came by looking for [other female friend], and I stuck around to watch it again. I greatly preferred the musical ending to the movie ending. Just a little too convenient. It was neat seeing Christopher Guest as the first customer though. Even if I didn't realize it was him.

Caseus Archivelox: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

2002-04-04
It’s not every 85 minute long movie that can be said to be both the most influential slasher film of all time and one of the longest 85 minute long movies of all time. This movie of course is both influential and too long. There is too much time spent with the group of teens, as the audience begins to hate them and roots for them to be killed, as they are annoying, especially Franklin, who figures out a way to be the most annoying character in all slasher films that I have seen. Which is interesting, because in most films a guy in a wheelchair would gain the audiences sympathy, but in this one, the audience becomes quickly tired of his whining and complaining. Thus, the more shocking thing about his death is what it does to Sally who is one of the many shocked heroines that do not run away from the man with the chainsaw or knife or axe in so many later films.

Also, there are so many shots that are too long, as we do not need to see so many random canted shots of Sally’s face or the random bone structures around the house. Tobe Hooper has always been a somewhat messy director, not knowing how to make a tightly directed film that has no extraneous shots. Poltergeist is as close as he was to making a competent film, with more of that related to the influence of Steven Spielberg than Hooper’s own style. Few movies are as famous with as little plot or technical competence as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Caseus Archivelox: Psycho, Peeping Tom, Kids, & Jin-Roh

2002-04-02
Psycho is one of the best low budget horror films of all time. The main reason for it is that Alfred Hitchcock, a decidedly high budget director, decided to bring his talent to a low budget film. The black and white camerawork is impeccable, with the camera angles, especially during the police stop scene and, of course, the shower scene, being very well chosen.

Mothers play an important role, as Marion refuses to continue to see Sam until they are able to see each other in public and in front of the picture of her mother. The need to have societal acceptance of their relationship leads to the crime that introduces the more important mother to the story, Mrs. Bates. “Her” disapproval for the imagined relationship between Normal and Marion leads to her murder.

The famous shower scene gives the viewer the sexual thrill of watching her shower before giving us the visceral murder, and when we see Norman come into the bathroom with the knife raised high, we want to stop the murder. But as we cannot do anything about it, we are part of the reason for her death, and are implicated as a voyeur in the murder.

Peeping Tom on the other hand implicates the audience as the complicit voyeur of the murders even more. By filming the murders, we are able (except for Mark’s suicide) to watch the murders from the voyeur’s perspective, and then from the camera’s (and murderer’s) perspective. And the second murder scene goes on so long, and the audience knows exactly how it is going to end (with her death, and subsequent fall into the blue trunk that he has placed in the way of where she will die), that the audience begins to want Mark to kill her quickly and get the overbearing sense of dread to stop. Few movies at the time got the audience to identify so clearly with a serial killer.

Scopophilia is the inherent reason for people to go see movies, as they can spend a couple of hours to watch other people live (or in the case of horror films, die). In this way, it is sort of a mixture between Psycho and Rear Window, as it has the story revolving around the voyeurism of Rear Window with the depraved murder plot of Psycho. The interesting thing is that Psycho was beloved (even if it did scare many of its viewers), while Peeping Tom was reviled, and that is a direct result of the distance from movie-making that Psycho allows, as it has no characters morbidly discussing filming the deaths of the characters.

Another difference between the two movies is that Psycho is filmed in black and white, while Peeping Tom is filmed in bright colors. The black and white Psycho allows the audience to distance themselves from the plot because it is not in color like real life, and it contrasts with the obviously current Peeping Tom’s use of bright colors.

However, both movies use their murderer’s houses as symbols of their inner psyche, with the Bates house’s fruit cellar as the place where Norman hides his mother in an attempt to keep the others from finding her, while Mark uses the huge darkroom as the place where he works over his many inner demons from his childhood. These dark places are where the characters hide their dark secrets.

2002-04-03 - 12:24 a.m.
So I was late to Horror, and the lecture part of the class was shorter than normal, as we had to watch Peeping Tom, which was actually fairly good, if it did make me really uncomfortable to watch it. Mainly because the room was too f---ing cold. Why the f--- does the room need to be 55 degrees? That is completely f---ing unnecessary. The movie itself is a freaky movie about scopophilia and big phallic knives on camera tripods.

Then I came back to West to watch Kids. I ate a piece of matza for dinner before the movie. The movie itself (I had seen it six years ago) is really a bad movie. The acting is pretty bad for the most part (Chloë Sevigny is good, and that's about it for consistently good work), some actors look directly at the camera in crowd scenes, the handheld work is annoying, the characters are on the whole despicable, and it's a depressing look at teenagers. I would be remiss in not blasting Larry Clark for his voyeuristic zeal in filming teens in various states of undress as I had done for Brian De Palma. The only thing I can say about that is that Clark at least has some restraint, as some sex scenes are filmed with no nudity, but I can only assume that is mainly because the actresses were underage. The movie is complete trash. Except for the really good soundtrack by Lou Barlow and John Davis as Folk Implosion.

Then I tried to call some people from my game theory class to get them to explain the homework to me, but they couldn't get it at that point, so I just went to watch Jin-Roh. It was actually pretty good. Nice plotline (only occasionally confusing in a bad way) and well-animated.

Caseus Archivelox: Gosford Park & Lesbian Vampire Paper

2002-04-02 - 12:29 a.m.
I then went to see Gosford Park. I cannot tell you how much I recommend that movie. It's my third favorite film of last year. Behind only The Fellowship of the Ring and Amelie. Those who don't like Gosford Park do not like good movies. It's just that simple. The same can be said for the last two as well. Well, maybe not for FOTR, because those who don't like it hate movies that are literary adaptions of some of the greatest books of all time, that just happen to be an incredibly well made, casted, written, and everything else movie.

Altman is a sort of acquired taste, but the movie is so well constructed, even when it gets into its plot, that you cannot help but love it. Also, Bob Balaban is a god. Even if the movie is terrible, he is excellent.

So I then wrote my Lesbian Vampire paper for the next four hours or so. It turned out very well, as I got to use biting, cunnilingus and fellatio in the same sentence. I'm proud of myself. Here's the sentences I'm most proud of in this paper: Biting can be seen as a sexual act in and of itself, and the similarities to cunnilingus and fellatio are made even more explicit in later vampire films. The vampire's bites are occasionally even seen as kisses by both the viewer and the victim until it is too late for both: the viewer is sexually excited and the victim is dead, or, worse, undead. I almost used "the viewer is erect", but I realized that that would be a little much.

Tokyo Gore Police

Tokyo Gore Police stars the lead of Audition. That movie freaked me the hell out. Apparently I saw it before I started to write my blog, so you don't get my fancy thoughts at the time. But that movie was freaky as hell.

This one... Well, I wish I had watched it alone so I could justify trying to catalogue everything that was in the film, like I did with The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers (although this blog comes close (and adds some more pics here). You could read this or this, but I'll try to give you some idea of the film. It starts with an exploding head. There's also many decapitations, delimbinations, and a depenistration during a blow job (result here). There's an alligator-like vagina dentata, a quadruple amputee gimp (who gets both swords and machine guns attached), a golden shower from a flower vagina chair creature, sewn up by teeth breasts (along with a snail girl and a penis nose), a guy who loses his legs and uses the resultant sprays of blood to fly around, a rocket jump done outside of a video game, a broken glass bottle used to cut some dude's face off (result here), a serial killer whose methodology is to stick hollow metal poles through a woman to drain out the blood and then cutting her up to stick in a box (a box in a box, as long as the box was actually in the box...), a missed phone call because of a vibrator, a woman quartered by cars, the doctor has a gatling gun that shoots severed arms, and more. Oh, and I certainly can't forget the fact that the impetus of the film is that there is a very bad guy who turns people he meets into "engineers" who are able to grow weapons from wounds on their bodies. Like the alligator vagina dentata, a penis gun from the depenistrated guy, the woman who was shot in the chest and grew acid-dispensing nipple spouts, the chainsaw wielding maniac who gets his arm shot off and then grows a new arm with a chainsaw attached (end result is this), the main bad guy who rips the top of his head off and grows brain guns (and explains his backstory with a puppet show), and the lead who eventually grows an infrared eye and an alligator-like arm. But the best thing about it are the commercials interspersed (that recall the social satire of Starship Troopers) for designer wrist-cutters and anti-harakiri PSAs.

The movie is completely ridiculous, the pacing is off, but man, there are few things more enjoyable than a film that crossed the line into ridiculous within a minute of starting and just gets weirder and weirder. Some more pics are here of the all that stuff and more, along with clips. I'm not sure, but I think that site will either make you extremely jealous or extremely squikked. Also, um, all of those links are not safe for work, in case you were wondering for some reason.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, King Lear, Be Kind Rewind, Spider-Man 3, & Hostel: Part II

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a French spy spoof, done very straight up, but with many ridiculous touches, like the main spy is completely oblivious. I'm not sure exactly why I thought that I would like it, as it's a very goofy film, but never as funny as it probably should be.

King Lear was the theatre production shown on PBS, and so little Ian was edited out, which was a little disappointing. Otherwise, the cast was amazing, it's my favorite Shakespeare play, and it was overall a fun time. As fun a time as King Lear could possibly be. Thanks, PBS for at least broadcasting almost all of it.

Be Kind Rewind was a little bit of a good movie in a whole bunch of silliness. Gondry can't just slide on his visual talent, which is most evident in the insanely awesome Swede-ing of the movies. Other than that, though, there are some nice visual jokes, but most of it is just silly. Mos Def is the best thing in the film, and Jack Black just got on my nerves.

Spider-Man 3 is stupid. The dancing Parker? No. No to basically everything in this film. I like the idea of Venom, but the Sandman was worthless, the second Green Goblin was worse, and I am a masochistic idiot for watching this. I couldn't turn away.

Hostel: Part II is just ugh. The first one was fun. This one goes too far. Did I need to see this? No, but this just follows in my mini-fest of "stupid sequels that are actually crap and not worth the time it takes to watch them". Hostel didn't go too far, but this one is utterly ridiculous. Although I appreciate the scene of the cat eating the neck of a body, the killing of Lorna in Bathory-esque fashion was gratuitous. The point is not to get to that point. But it never gets scary or anything other than unnecessary (yes, even the decapitated Eli Roth was little more than a giggle for me).

Doctor Who, Torchwood, 28 Weeks Later, La Chinoise, Dead Like Me: Life after Death, You Kill Me, & From Hell

So back in February, I started to watch all of Doctor Who (the new series), along with Torchwood. And, finally, in early April I finished. There were some delays (I watched the excellent State of Play and Let the Right One In from Netflix to break up the slightly cheeky (in the case of Doctor Who) and entirely cheeky (in the case of Torchwood) Britishness). But basically, I'm here to tell you that Doctor Who was actually fairly enjoyable, especially once Billie Piper left the show (somehow not for good... damnit), while Torchwood was not as good. I didn't watch them in broadcast order, so I already knew some plot twists at the end of the two seasons of Torchwood (sigh...), but I'm not sure even watching them slightly unspoiled would have made me enjoy it more. It just felt like it was trying far too hard to be "adult". Doctor Who was light and fluffy, slipped in funny references (the Shakespeare episode blows away Shakespeare in Love for pure nerdity), and was frequently quite good. Certainly there was some unnecessary returns (why keep bringing back the Daleks after you keep destroying them for the last time? along with each return of Billie Piper), but I enjoyed the show quite a bit, and have added it (along with Torchwood) to my DVR in the hopes that they will broadcast the next seasons at some point this year (in the US, I'm aware that the first Doctor Who special has already aired in the UK).

28 Weeks Later would have been better as a stand alone zombie movie. But comparing it to 28 Days Later just was ugh. The anti-militarism and nihilistic ending was just basically Return of the Living Dead 3 over again. Also, why, exactly was the mother left alone in the hospital complex with no one watching her at all? Seriously, U.S. Military? You aren't that stupid. Stringer Bell would never do anything that stupid. And the genetic immunity made no sense at all. Just a mess of a film that was more successful than it deserved. Danny Boyle would have rocked it. Hard.

La Chinoise is Godard at his most Godardian. I probably could have made more sense of it if I knew French, as some of the intertitles and graffiti were not subtitled. I feel like it suffers from being a little too radicalized, although there are touches of playfulness that made his earlier films so great, but the preachiness that ruined Godard is in full effect.

Dead Like Me: Life after Death sucked. Pure and simple. Especially with my complaints about the show not finishing the first time, to have it extended in this fashion, with a new Daisy and Mandy Patinkin not back (replaced with Desmond from Lost, but in a horrendously bad subplot), is actually worse than not bringing it back. So yeah, I complained about not seeing an ending back in 2007, but I still kinda wish it didn't have an ending. Or that they had splurged and brought back Laura Harris (who, even though Canadian, did a much better Southern accent than the Australian Sarah Wynter, who didn't even bother with the accent) and Mandy Patinkin and thought for a second about whether it would help to bring it back. Because we just got another character disappearing without much of a goodbye and a movie that at under 90 minutes long still felt like it was channeling the extended edition of Return of the King when it came to endings. Avoid unless you're a masochistic Dead Like Me fan.

You Kill Me is... why the hell did I add this to my Netflix queue?

From Hell is something I knew why I added it, although I definitely have added and removed it at least once before. It certainly isn't a particularly good movie, and I'm not going to go into the historical inaccuracies. Maybe I should try reading it again. About the only thing notable about From Hell is that Alan Moore hadn't yet gotten pissed enough with Hollywood to take his name off the film. I'm pretty sure that he didn't have a better impression of Hollywood after this. Eeesh. His feelings are well deserved.

Crooked Fingers & Neko Case at 9:30 Club 4/8

Again, the 9:30 Club conspires to mess with me about seeing the first or second nights of shows by announcing a second night after I've purchased tickets to the first night. Damn them. Neko sells out here in DC (mainly for putting on an amazing show, just like she did in 2007), so just acknowledge that there will be two shows and plan accordingly. This would have bothered me a lot more, had Crooked Fingers not been scheduled to play a show at Iota the next night, so they were only going to open for Neko on Wednesday, not Thursday (although man, bringing in Will Sheff to open instead is not a bad thing...). I got to see them, so I didn't care, but had I really wanted to see them, bought tickets to the second night, and found out they weren't playing, I would have been pissed.

Anyway, based on that review from two years ago, I was expecting a great show, and I got it. Crooked Fingers could play songs I don't really like as long as they play New Drink for the Old Drunk, and I will stupidly sing along at the top of my voice and love the show. I may not be a fair observer, but that is really all I need to love seeing Crooked Fingers. They haven't disappointed me yet.

Neko, on the other hand, just has to sing. That voice is so outstanding that the fact that the songs are quite good is just an added bonus. This time, she had a huge screen behind her band, with an owl overlooking the stage, and projected various images and videos behind it, including the video for People Got a Lotta Nerve.

One of the highlights of a Neko Case show is the banter, and it was again funny. But boo to her for going to both, and boo to Becca for the same. Kelly Hogan makes any concert more enjoyable, as she can talk while Neko spends time (an inordinate amount of time, not long periods, just almost between every song) switching guitars.

Also, Arne Duncan was kind of goofy. I mean, I appreciate the desire to reach out to those who might not listen to other arguments, but having the Secretary of Education request that people at a Neko Case show consider working in Education is a little weird. It's not like Neko is not political (far from it), but it's that her causes are much more geared towards animals. But if Neko gave it her blessing, I guess that's ok, even if I find it a strange.

With any complaints you may think I had about the show, you are missing my high praise. I will definitely go see both bands the next time they come through DC, especially if they continue this awesome trend of coming through together.

Setlists:

Crooked Fingers

Broken Man
Bad Man Coming (something like this version, but imagine the drums even more insistent and awesome)
You Can Never Leave
Let's Not Pretend To Be New Men
Luisa's Bones
Phony Revolutions
Your Control (for some reason, not with Neko, who performs on the album track)
Angelina
New Drink for the Old Drunk
So Long Savannah

Neko Case

Maybe Sparrow
People Got a Lotta Nerve
Fever
Hold on, Hold On
The Pharaohs
Middle Cyclone
Deep Red Bells
I Wish I Was the Moon
I'm an Animal
Prison Girls
The Tigers Have Spoken
Margaret vs. Pauline
Red Tide
Don't Forget Me
That Teenage Feeling
This Tornado Loves You
-------------
Vengeance Is Sleeping
Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth
Knock Loud

National Arboretum

It's not really a museum, per se, but it does have a museum on grounds (the awesome National Bonsai and Penjing Museum), so I'm going to review it anyway. Especially the Bonsai museum, which had stuff like this. It also had a Moon Gate where a couple were having their picture taken (one of many Asian couples there, along with just about everyone besides my family and Ms. Albright at The Dancing Crab later that night, which was the most Asians I've ever seen (percentage wise) at a non-Asian restaurant). Anyway, I really liked the ones that had little model people in them, and the ones that looked like the top of hills. Unfortunately, the Tropical section was closed. After that, we headed to the National Capital Columns (kind of incongruously placed on top of a hill, and there was a very pregnant woman taking pregnancy pictures in black short shorts and a halter top, which provided something extremely disturbing to look at), then drove around the Azaleas section (which wasn't blooming yet), past the closed for renovation fern valley, and headed to the Magnolia and Holly area. It was absolutely gorgeous, and Ms. Albright had to restrain herself from running from one Magnolia to the next and smelling the all the flowers. I tried to restrain myself from climbing a Magnolia that was perfect for climbing (and failed to stop, but I did only go a little way up it). The last thing we saw was the Asian Collection, which had a pagoda and some Chinese Redbud, which are not worth going off the path to smell, no matter what you may think they smell like. So basically, I really enjoyed my day, although I got a little sunburned (not as bad as last Memorial Day), but would definitely do again, in a few weeks when the azaleas and some other flowers are out.

Asobi Seksu at Rock 'n' Roll Hotel 3/28

Honestly, I don't have a lot to say about this concert. Hush isn't nearly as good an album as Citrus, which I consider to be almost as good as My Bloody Valentine's albums, but I still like all three of their albums. But I just couldn't get into the show all that much. And a set list would be utterly worthless. This guy has a lot to say about the concert (I did not notice Yuki taking her jacket off, but I am pretty sure I would not have needed to "change my shorts", at least partially because I was wearing jeans), although I disagree on the merits of Tyvek.

To give you an idea of the Tyvek lead singer see this. Also, imagine a huge douchebag who talks loudly in the back of the crowd during the headliner. So loud that you can hear him even with the wall of noise that is Asobi Seksu. So loud that you can hear him and he bothers you when you are wearing ear plugs because Asobi Seksu is so loud. Seriously, Asobi Seksu was the loudest concert I have ever been at, and I specifically remembered to bring my ear plugs because I knew they would be loud.

I did end up eating at Granville Morris with Ms. Albright ahead of the concert, which was very good, if the curry mayo was disappointing, as was the two-hour wait. So long to wait for mussels and frites (although I did get to watch the first half of the Pitt-Nova game). Food was better than Bistro Du Coin though.