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

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

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

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

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

American Swing, 1984, & Slap Shot

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

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

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

Arabesque, Emma, Coraline, & The Invention of Lying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright Criminals, The IT Crowd, Tropic Thunder, & more TV notes

Copyright Criminals is worth it just for the amazing editing job on some video remix sequences, done by Eclectic Method. It's about the use of sampling in music, with slimy entertainment lawyers and notoriously pissy Steve Albini (still frickin' talented) on the anti-sampling forces, and DJs, MCs, and other hip hop/funk artists on the pro-sampling side, including Miho Hatori, Matmos, Public Enemy, Mix Master Mike, De La Soul, Negativland, George Clinton, Danger Mouse. Every time they start showing the mixed songs, they just edit together footage of the artists to match the mixing, which is really an incredible editing job. Were it not a pretty fascinating look at how you structure from samples to finished song. May not be the most in-depth look at it, but probably the best sampling documentary you will ever see. If you have any interest in this at all, you owe it to yourself to get a copy of it and take one hour out of your day to see this. I can't recommend this highly enough to anyone interested.

I also watched, over the last two weeks, the entire run of the British sitcom, The IT Crowd. As an anglophile, along with a former IT person, I loved it, but probably a lot more than Ms. Albright, who loved Moss most of all. Who is a great character, and I have another reason to hate the WGA strike. Besides killing Pushing Daisies (although who knows if it could have kept increasing in ratings had it come back), it killed the American version of this, which had a more traditionally attractive Jen (who also probably would have had a less annoying voice), but brought in the original Moss, which would have helped. And Roy, well, Roy would have been played by Joel McHale. Which would have meant no Community, if this show were popular, but damnit, I want this to turn into something like The Office, where the show starts out in the same place, but goes on and gives me years of enjoyment.

Tropic Thunder is a waste. A waste of everything in it. It's not funny, it's way too long, Robert Downey, Jr. is offensive, and I wonder how the flip this movie was made. Seriously, the only thing that isn't completely frickin' worthless is Jay Baruchel, who whips out a Renny Harlin speech that was a brief bright spot. I really don't understand huge, high budget comedies. There's no way they're going to be funny, because they're going to be "funny" to the largest group possible. This rarely leads to anything remotely funny. Comedies should be low budget, and frequently low rated, because otherwise, you're not going for actual comedy, but for lowest comedy denominator.

Similarly to Tropic Thunder, Leno goes for the lowest comedy denominator. As disappointed as I am in Leno winning anything, I have to say that I'm kind of excited about Conan being forced to do something different. He's too wacky to really be comfortable in the Tonight Show. I'm more pissed at the winning of the people who laugh at things like the Dancing Itos. That all being said, knowing that he wasn't going to continue on the Tonight Show allowed Conan to do some absolutely brilliant stuff over the last two weeks, with some of the best stuff he's done on the Tonight Show. And his final speech was great, a classy call to doing good things and avoiding cynicism. Really, really classy way to go out.

Kung Fu Panda, Up, & Up!

Kung Fu Panda is the perfect example of a Dreamworks animation film: lots of action, comedy, huge famous cast, and much, much less than that should add up to. So many movies out there make me want to keep quoting Shakespeare's "Sound and Fury" bit, but that could just be the description of many films. I think there's a sequel coming out. Ugh.

Up, on the other hand, is Pixar at its best. Famous cast? Ed Asner? Christopher Plummer? Delroy Lindo? Not really, but everyone in it is great. And I, like anyone who has a heart, cried during the opening montage. I also cried when he looks at the scrapbook. Pixar has proven me right. Everything they do is brilliant, short of Cars, which I knew was going to suck. Dug is a great character, and the entire dogs with voices idea was excellently executed. Really, quite a great film. It's a shame that I have this strong desire to compare it to other Pixar films, but that would be a shame. Comparing just leads to madness: is Wall-E a better lead than Carl? What about Edna vs. Abominable Snowman? Could Ratatouille have been better without it's disturbingly pro-rat cooking stance? Sure, those are all minor questions, ignoring the overall greatness of their oeuvre.

Up! is the Russ Meyer film. You can tell it's a different film because of the exclamation mark. Beyond that, however, you can also tell it's a different film because of everything enumerated here. It's a Russ Meyer film, so there's huge tits, unfunny humor, and this one has Hitler. And Hitler's secret daughter. It's an extremely odd film, full of acrobatic sex (every sex scene is set in many, many different places, with no regard for realism), Hitler being sadomasochistic, multiple axings, bloody fake penii, multiple rapes, and absolutely no redeeming value. Not even as fun as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Sorry Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert.

Le Deuxième Souffle, Werckmeister Harmonies, & Osaka Elegy

Le Deuxième Souffle is another gangster film from Jean Pierre Melville, but unfortunately it's his worst gangster film. That's still quite a good film, but it just isn't as strong as his other films, as I think that it is missing a strong central performance, or particularly a good plot. I was kinda disappointed, but I figured that he couldn't keep up that 1.000 batting average on gangster films.

Werckmeister Harmonies starts out with a great scene (done in one shot) with the main character explaining the universe using others in the pub. Unfortunately, the film never quite reached that again, and instead goes into some mumbo jumbo about revolution and a huge taxidermied whale. And two hours after that first scene, the movie ends, and I'm not sure what the hell just happened.

Osaka Elegy is a look at the unfair double standard towards women and men in affairs. The boss goofs around, gets embarrassed, and mocked lightly by his coworkers, while the woman gets slowly destroyed, forced to have an affair and prostitute herself for the extra money to protect her father who is in trouble due to embezzlement. Of course, this is clearly extremely frakked up, and this is unfortunately something that we still deal with today, the stud/slut dichotomy that tortures young women. Screw you, patriarchy. The film itself isn't all that good, an early sound film with some overacting typical of the time. Just save yourself the time and go punch someone who congratulates some dude for having lots of sex and then attacks some woman for having lots of sex.

Hud, Paranoid Park, & Hallam Foe

Hud has a strong anti-hero performance from Paul Newman, and I can see why it would become popular, but I thought that Brandon De Wilde was pretty much worthless in his role. Depressing, but Larry McMurtry really never wrote a happy thing, so it wasn't all that unexpected.

Paranoid Park was good, not great, but much more watchable than Elephant or Last Days. Certainly a hell of a lot better than Finding Forrester. Could've been shorter, what with all the slow motion shots of him walking around, but I still thought it was not a waste of my time like Last Days, which I never even finished. Good soundtrack of northwestern bands.

Hallam Foe is a pretty good Scottish film, with a great Scottish soundtrack, and a great disturbing performance from Jamie Bell as a disturbed kid who can't connect with reality except from a distance. I also loved Ewen Bremmer in his small role, and Sophia Myles and Claire Forlani do fine jobs. It was pretty dark, but really good.

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean along with sports and TV notes

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean is a kind of mess of a film, filled with lots of tonal shifts, awkward humor, and... well, very 70s stuff. It's actually quite militant, with all the terribleness that a John Milius script brings with it. Now, the problem is that Newman does a great job, so it wasn't completely ridiculous, and John Huston and the rest of the cast make it almost a good film, but I just have to lay the failures of this film on the script. It's far too violent, unsurprisingly misogynistic, characters appear and then disappear very quickly, leaving little to build into a movie.

The Bengals really just know how to rip my heart out. Well, maybe if I had expected them to win the game. What I didn't expect was Landon Donovan having a good game against Arsenal and helping Everton tie after being crushed 6-1 in the first match of the year. Yay for Donovan not embarrassing himself or Everton.

Better off Ted is one of the funniest shows on TV. I just wish they could air this because that is some high quality cursing. You should watch it even if it isn't full of classy cussin'. Also good: Dollhouse. Really, when the show came back after being taken off for November sweeps, it went crazy and got very Whedontasticly terrific. If only people liked good TV. Speaking of which...

I wouldn't be a fan of Conan O'Brien if I went too long without noting just how crappily NBC has treated Conan for years. Their refusal to promote the show was a running joke, and for some reason Leno gets the benefit of not having Leno as a lead-in. I could go on and on about how Leno is an unfunny hack and is directly responsible for Conan's poor ratings. And Conan is a classy mofo, much, much more than Leno's hackery. As much as I have been a Conan fan since I started watching him back in 1998, Letterman was clearly the model of his humor, and Letterman was much funnier than Leno, as long as I could remember. After watching The Late Shift, there is no question in my mind that NBC made a horrible mistake. Conan's show last night was vicious about NBC. Deservedly. I am firmly on Team Conan, and refuse to say anything nice about Leno ever again if NBC screws over Conan.

Diary of the Dead, The Hand, La terza madre, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mongol, & Stuck

Diary of the Dead is the first in a slightly unintentional horror film fest. George Romero may, possibly need to stop making movies in the Dead world. I know he made another one, which probably won't be released for a while in the US, but he should stop. Because this was just a crappy retelling of the origin of the zombies, from the perspective of a bunch of film students. Movies where characters go through lots of horrible experiences and yet somehow still have a camera available to catch the important plot points are just completely ridiculous. This, Cloverfield, and The Blair Witch Project just strain credulity to such an extent I can't enjoy them at all.

The Hand is an early Oliver Stone film, and is worthless. Somehow, Michael Caine is the best person ever for reasons why he takes horrible movies. He's said, "You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one", "I've made an awful lot of films. In fact, I've made a lot of awful films", and "I have never seen [Jaws: the Revenge], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." This one he apparently did because he needed a new garage. This movie has hand cam. And somehow, Michael Caine can make things reanimate. Except for this script. Oh, just ridiculousness straight through.

The Third Mother is the third movie in Dario Argento's Three Mothers Trilogy, with Suspriria and Inferno. Suspiria is a masterwork, Inferno is middling, and The Third Mother (for some stupid reason translated as Mother of Tears) is horribly bad. Asia Argento proves that the only reason she ever gets roles is because of her name. She is horrendously bad. About the only thing ok in the movie is Udo Kier being ridiculous before he has his throat slit and then his head hacked in half. Other than that, the nudity is silly, the kills are eh, and the plot makes no sense.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the surprisingly good version of the Sondheim musical. As my main problem with Sweeney Todd before was my inability to understand many of the songs' lyrics, I appreciated it much more than I liked it, but with the subtitles, and the impressive acting from Depp and Carter (let alone Rickman being his normally awesome bad guy) make it a great movie. I know that it won some Golden Globes, but eh to thinking they could have gotten anything right. Burton clearly was enjoying himself with some mirrors and differing thickness of glass to make people's faces look Burtonesque, and also loved the visual of the dead bodies falling through the chute and landing. Sondheim does an amazing job writing beautiful, funny songs about some extremely evil people.

Mongol doesn't seem like it fits with my theme of horror films, but it really is when you come down to it. It's about the creation of a mass murderer. Endless torture, having his wife raped repeatedly, you know, all the normal things that lead to mass murderin'. Apparently, the history is a little off, but it works fairly well as a movie. Beautifully filmed and with strong performances by Tadanobu Asano and Khulan Chuluun as Temudjin and Börte, which the movie wants you to believe is the love story of all time. I know that reality is likely to be like this, but I bet it's far more accurate than The Conqueror.

Stuck is the last film in my mini-horror fest. Stuart Gordon fictionalizes the story of the woman who kills a homeless man by driving into him and letting him die trapped in the windshield of her car. It really does work as a slasher film for the sections with Stephen Rea as the homeless man, and a weird, but very different, horror film with Mena Suvari as the car driver. It's quite an effective little film, a quick and dirty movie, with a sick sense of humor.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan & Caprica

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is really pretty darn unnecessary. About the only thing that it added was gratuitous nudity. I'd have to rewatch the entire series to see whether there's any sense made by these "revelations". But Cavil knowing the Final Five I don't think makes sense at all.

Caprica, on the other hand, is just completely messing with the Battlestar timeline. How could the cylons be created both thousands of years ago and 58 years before the events of the show? Just silly. I also found the gratuitous nudity just distracting. It's so blatantly an excuse to get people to buy or rent the DVD of something that you could see on TV, just like The Plan. Basically, I like Stoltz and Battlestar, so I'll watch it, but it's unlikely to either be particularly good or as important as that show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Gen-Y Cops

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

Is that not amazing?

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

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

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

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