The Sho 'Nuff

List Time (2009)

2010-04-26T01:02:00.016-04:00

And now, way after everyone else... the top 50 of 2009!

50. Dangermouse & Sparklehorse Present - Dark Night of the Soul

49. Franz Ferdinand - Tonight

48. DJ Vadim - U Can't Learn Imaginashun

47. Bon Iver - Blood Bank

46. Empire of the Sun - Walking On a Dream

45. Doves - Kingdom of Rust

44. The Whitest Boy Alive - Rules

43. Bike for Three! - More Heart Than Brains

42. Death Cab for Cutie - The Open Door

41. Jarvis Cocker - Further Complications

40. Coldplay - Left Right Left Right Left

39. The Temper Trap - Conditions

38. Pearl Jam - Backspacer

37. Arctic Monkeys - Humbug

36. Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster

35. Calvin Harris - Ready for the Weekend (Bonus Tracks Version)

34. Röyksopp - Junior

33. The Veils - Sun Gangs

32. Massive Attack - Splitting the Atom

31. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

30. Flight of the Conchords - I Told You I Was Freaky

29. Karen O and the Kids - Where the Wild Things Are
(Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

28. La Roux - S/T

27. Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You

26. Muse - The Resistance

25. Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe (Deluxe Box Set)

24. Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care

23. James Lavelle - Global Underground 037: Bangkok

22. Antony & The Johnsons - The Crying Light

21. Florence + The Machine - Lungs

20. Nirvana - Live at Reading

19. Weezer - Raditude

18. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

17. The Big Pink - A Brief History of Love

16. Kings of Convenience - Declaration of Dependence

15. David Guetta - One Love (Deluxe Edition)

14. V/A - Dark Was the Night

13. Julian Casablancas - Phrazes for the Young (Bonus Tracks Version)

12. Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3

11. K'naan - Troubadour

10. Morrissey - Years of Refusal

9. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

8. Silversun Pickups - Swoon

7. The Duckworth Lewis Method - S/T

6. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - S/T

5. Passion Pit - Manners

4. The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love

3. Paolo Nutini - Sunny Side Up

2. Leonard Cohen - Live In London

1. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Kick-Ass (Review)

2010-04-15T18:58:00.001-04:00

Matthew Vaughn has helmed 3 quite disparate films in his short career to date. British mobsters, a fantasy land with celestial princesses and now a superhero yarn. What ties these together is the sublime combination of violence, comedy and genre knowledge that make his films some of the most watchable pieces of deconstructionist pop to come along in the last 10 years. Teaming up for the second time with writing partner Jane Goldman, Vaughn once again plays with genre hallmarks to craft something that is both reassuringly familiar and refreshing new.

The superhero eras are equally represented with some characters that brood, fret and worry about their lifestyle choice while others simply save the world and move on to saving it once again, consequences be damned. These eras are reflected in the ages of their respective characters. The child knows no better, the teen is self-aware and emotionally insecure and the adult is damaged, though knowing the repercussions seeks the greater good. And the script deals out comeuppance commensurate with each one’s level of guilt.

In a cold open, Vaughn sets up the basic high-wire act that he will attempt to pull off over the following two hours. A man in a bright and sculpted outfit stands atop a tall New York building as onlookers cheer on down below. A voice-over goes through some of the problems with both the possibility of superheroes in the real world and the possibility of a (movie) middle-of-the-road kid getting a date. The wings of the hero costume extend and he leaps off into the blue afternoon… to crash a half second later onto a yellow-cab. You can almost see the panels framing the action on the page. The only scene that doesn’t quite work is the one that actually is animated in panels. It’s a lengthy bit of exposition saddled on a minor character and is the only low point in an otherwise expertly paced film.

The line that is drawn in that opening scene though, is that this film is set in a world that is neither real, nor a comic book fantasy but some hybrid of both. A world where only someone who’s lost their mental capacities would dare to don a cowl and roam the streets at night… but their arsenal would include bazookas and jet packs. A world where criminals can pretty easily beat up a guy in a wet-suit but one that also has an arch criminal that controls the cops and walks about with the kind of malevolence that is rarely seen off the silver screen. This is the key to enjoying Kick-Ass, because if it leaned too much into either direction some of what you are asked to sit through would elicit either indignation or an eye-roll. The events get very violent at times… but the dialogue, editing and Nic Cage combine to pre-empt recoil and reassure the viewer that this is just a real-er kind of superhero flick.

A-

Green Zone (Review)

2010-03-11T03:08:00.000-05:00

So the screening I saw of Green Zone was spliced out of order… I’m not sure that the audience noticed. Such is the frantic chaos of Greengrass’ latest handheld actioner. The film starts in the middle of the first bombings of Baghdad in 2003. The camera tightly frames a collection of nameless but official looking Iraqis as they scurry about a house grabbing documents and being rushed into get-away cars. The subtitled dialogue is terse and specific. As they flee the house we get a harrowing crane shot of the US bombs falling all over the city.

Cut to four weeks later and the official ground war is all but over. Captain Miller (Matt Damon) leads a team attempting to recover potential WMD. There are not enough soldiers in the first team to secure the building from the thousands of looters that have taken to the streets and a sniper who has taken high ground in a tower so Miller sets up an approach and gets shit done. This happens over and over again. Green Zone is at heart a political thriller attempting to explain the lack of WMD on the ground despite the Army Intelligence sources and press reports citing very specific sites and locations. The Wall Street Journal and AI are the conspiratorial bad guys while the CIA and Damon are the good guys who try to unravel the conspiracy in the middle of one of the most hostile environments on earth.

Layered on top of the conspiracy plot that whisks the audience thru the film is an indictment of the Iraqi War – both the evidence used to get us there and the execution once we were on the ground. The CIA’s Iraq expert warns of the eminent danger of an unemployed army wandering the streets. In the middle of the film there’s a very Neroesque scene where Miller and his men walk into the heart of the protected green zone – Saddam’s palace – and see journalists, bureaucrats and very attractive hangers-on in bathing attire lounging around the crystal clear water of Saddam’s pool. At this point we’ve already been shown thousands of Iraqis protesting water shortages.

Greengrass of course is a master of camerawork. His loves the shakeycam and I’m pretty sure he chooses projects to fit that desire as opposed to the other way around. Naturally when the chaotic cinematography stops it means something – such as the slow dolly shots by the pool. The film’s final shot recalls that earlier one at start of the war, but this time when the crane lifts us above the din it’s not the beginning of US operation in Iraq, its the beginning of the long and bloody insurgency that we’ve all since come to know. And you can just see the nameless but official looking Americans scurrying around Washington wondering what the f*ck is going on.

B

Follow Follow Follow Follow Follow the Guy On a Bike

2009-07-12T13:06:00.005-04:00

His name is Blake and he is biking across the US to raise money for an AIDS orphanage in Honduras.

Check out the great photos and live diary of the journey right here. Apparently he's really into showering. I guess the road is dirty.

How much do I suck?

2009-06-19T13:33:00.003-04:00

4 posts in 6 months? That is completely lame. I'd promise to do better but it would mostly be a lie.

Terminator Salvation

2009-05-20T15:25:00.000-04:00

Terminator Salvation has all the action you’d expect from the franchise. The film is filled with high-octane sequences of humans and robots and robo-men and hu-bots all shooting the crap out of a beautifully designed and filmed (Shane is a FUCKING PROFESSIONAL!) post-apocalyptic California. But still the film leaves you unsatisfied. McG can certainly handle the BOOM! but it’s the script and story that make this the least interesting or enjoyable entry in this long running series.

The plot is pretty simple – humanity’s future ~~Keanu Reeves~~ savior (John Connor as played by Christian Bale) must save Kyle Reece (his daddy for those hat still remember 1984, played by the awesome Anton Yelchin). There’s also some cool new robots to look at and an attempt by the clever Skynet to get Reece & Connor first with their new ultimate weapon – a 25 year old, digitally rendered Ahnuld! The problem is that where Cameron’s films and even that 3rd one knew that they were trying to be awesome-cool summer blockbusters, this one actively tries to completely forget that. Salvation it totally humorless (save a single joke… yes there is ONE line in the films that asks you for a chuckle). On top of that, there is really nothing in here that gives you a sense of awe that each of the previous entries offered. The best parts of the Terminator films are the whole big brother aspect hinted at around the awesomeness of the action that takes place right in front of you. Each film is part of a grand mythology about the future of the human race. This one offers none of that epic joy. It’s a self contained series of fights and escapes and the big reveal is… a production line! Seriously? That’s all you got for us? No hint of what is in store for mankind after this? No hint of what could lead to the time travel so integral to the rest of the series? No hint of what technological breakthroughs might lead to the T-1000? Come on give offer up a little Skynet R&D. Even Lucas teased the Death Star in the prequels.

Beyond that, Connor himself is not really someone who screams savior of humanity. He’s not even the lead in the film but a strong supporting character the people look at in awe… but the film never really gives a reason why. The character doesn't actually do anything. The actors aren’t even at fault here – again it’s just the cold, robotic script that hurts what is otherwise a visually compelling film.

[C+]

Up (Review)

2009-05-16T15:55:00.003-04:00

I’ve never gotten the effusive gush that comes over normally sane people when the subject of Pixar comes up. The “everything they’ve ever done is a masterpiece! (well except Cars)” just gets irritating after the 82nd time. I’ve never hated any of the Pixar flix I’ve seen but found only two worthy of some of the extraordinary praise that is trumpeted (or syndicated) from the pages of the entertainment section of America's newspapers.

Take Up (please!... sorry) – the industry trades of record (Variety and The Hollywood Reporter) each gave the film a score of 100… 100! Really? So this is an immaculately conceived and flawlessly delivered piece if work that will herald the sweeping of the world in joys unity like a 70’s Haskell Wexler ad? Seriously how much sway do these folk’s have?

Anyway, no this film will not teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Though it fits the Pixar formula nicely - two odd couple type characters learning that they need each other despite initial reluctance on the part of one or both of them. Toss in a goofy sidekick or 3 for comic relief and you got yourself yet another Pixar flick.

The opening act is actually pretty interesting. We start off with newsreel footage and a young boy taking in his hero – Charles Muntz, a world renowned adventurer at a local theater. On his way home he (the silent type) meets a girl (very much NOT the silent type) who is equally enthralled with Mr. Muntz. They play in a broken-down house for a bit and realize that they are both determined to follow their hero on a great adventure in South America. We then flash forward to their wedding day. This next section contains no dialogue – pleasant after the over-caffeinated set-up that preceded it – but offers scenes from their marriage. They buy the rundown house, fix it up and furnish it with love. Then the emotional downward spiral of this section catches you off guard as their life slowly becomes a series of unfortunate incidents that hinder the the fulfillment of their dreams both financially and emotionally. It’s quite bold and I salute that but those bringing kids might have to do some explaining – heard at least 3 in the audience ask their parents questions here. I'm not surprised the rating on this was bumped to PG. So finally we are left with just a curmudgeon and a world that has passed him by… time to intro the fat kid with the speech impediment! They go on the adventure the old guy planned for years and there are some talking dogs.

The emotional build-up of the first act echos thru the film but I never felt as though it was done all that successfully. Carl (the old man) talks to a picture of his wife that sits in this house (furnished with love) and eventually the house comes to symbolize the spirit of the wife but its never totally sold to the audience and its brought back every so often in a clumsy way that screams “EMOTIONAL MOMENT!.” Much like Ratatouille, partially realized ideas on theme hold the film back from true enjoyment.

The adventure itself is filled with slapstick that is often funny but sometimes very predictable – to the 8 year old who called out the upcoming sight gag for all to hear, you are awesome. There are also some nice allusions to other films including Star Wars that will work for the parents. On the technical side I thought they were a bit lazier in how they used light in this compared to their last beautiful flick. The shadows move around the characters very nicely but the colors of the source and its reflection are strangely off at times. Also the whole picture didn’t spring to life nearly as well as their last couple of films, everything felt quite flat. That cannot be said though of the fine vocal performances nor of Michael Giacchino 's strong but simple scoring. Over all I wasn’t wowed by this nearly as much as Wall-E, which is a shame because there is a core here that could have been really great.

Oh and I did not see the 3D version of this – maybe that will pack more of a visual punch than this one did.

Philadelphia Film Festival 2009 - Opening Night

2009-04-01T20:54:00.002-04:00

(500) Days of Summer

With his first feature film (500) Days of Summer, Marc Webb quickly launches himself into the New Quirk cannon. Stirring indie rock soundtrack? Check. Brief flirtations with animation? Check. Intertitles as storytelling device? Check. Humor that is both wry and charming? Check. Idiosyncratic characters including a young person way too wise for her age? Check. Show stopping dance sequence from outta left field? Check. Its all here and it makes for yet another essential post-millennial quirky boy meets girl yarn.

We are introduced (via ironic baritone voice over) to our leads and their specific philosophies on love at the outset and thru the next hour and a half the film jumps back and forth through the titular 500 days of their relationship, or rather through Tom’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) lengthy obsession over The One called Summer (Zooey Daschanel). He’s shy and insecure, she is strange and guarded but they are both caring people who feel for each other… but not always to the same degree. They meet on her first day working at a greeting card company and finally consummate the relationship a couple weeks later... leading to the aforementioned dance sequence which is a riot. From there they have ups and downs but the story mostly stays true to a traditional 3 act story arc.

I do not use the term Quirk disparagingly but rather as a genre that includes specific tropes and identifiers like any other. Webb would seem destined for this style of film given his 12+ year background in music video direction for the likes of Miley Cyrus, Maroon 5, My Chemical Romance & Matisyahu… and that’s just the Ms! He sets so much of the action in this film to music and the film has a certain rhythm that pulls the viewer into its world. Its IKEA furnished, art musing, Joy Division t-shirt wearing world. Writers Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber give us in their script a film about a relationship that hits so many perfect notes even before Webb gets his hands on them though. From the opening dedication you get the sense that this is a very personal story for them (a girl is named… then disparaged) and it’s these personal connections that make for wonderful characters with all the minor hang-ups that make you fall for them instantly. And when the characters are brought to life from two perfectly cast actors like Joseph Gordon-Levitt (with boyish good looks and a tendency to brood) and Zooey Daschanel (aloof but with eyes to get lost in) it all makes for a sublime viewing experience if you’re into the Quirk. And why wouldn’t you be? Does life not hum along to its own soundtrack? Is Swedish furniture not the shiz? Don’t we all just want to live in Annie Hall?

[A-]

List Time

2009-01-19T16:57:00.011-05:00

Sorry loyal reader, I've been busy catching up on all the sights and sounds of 2008. Also playing with a new PS3 and watching awesomely awesome Blu-Ray. Anyway, it is the time of year that everyone who thinks they have a valid opinion for some reason or another puts out their best of lists. Not being one to upset the apple cart... here... we... go!

Top 50 Albums of the Year

50. Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer

49. Fleet Foxes - S/T

48. Cold War Kids - Loyalty to Loyalty

47. Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul

46. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing

45. R.E.M. - Accelerate

44. The Verve - Forth

43. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

42. The Killers - Day & Age

41. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

40. V/A - A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All

39. Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - Angels

38. DeVotchka - A Mad & Faithfull Telling

37. The Roots - Rising Down

36. Flight of the Conchords - S/T

35. Islands - Arm's Way

34. Amadou & Mariam - Welcome to Mali

33. The Mars Volta - The Bedlam In Goliath

32. Hot Chip - Made In the Dark

31. Beck - Modern Guilt

30. Okkervil River - The Stand Ins

29. V/A - Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog

28. School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms

27. British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?

26. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

25. Coldplay - Viva La Vida

24. The Streets - Everything Is Borrowed

23. The Music - Strength In Numbers

22. Kings of Leon - Only By the Night

21. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

20. Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak

19. Santogold - S/T

18. Man Man - Rabbit Habbits

17. TV On the Radio - Dear Science

16. The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust

15. Pale Young Gentlemen - Black Forest (Tra La La)

14. Portishead - Third

13. Q-Tip - The Renaissance

t11. Glasvegas - S/T

t11. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

10. Hercules and Love Affair - S/T

9. Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It

8. The Republic Tigers - Keep Color

7. Bloc Party - Intimacy

6. Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple

5. M83 - Saturday=Youth

4. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

3. Conor Oberst - S/T

2. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

1. Vampire Weekend - S/T

The Killers Leaked - A Day & Age Before the Street

2008-11-19T03:51:00.001-05:00

In what might be the biggest week ever for the illicit file sharing side of the nets another of next week's new set drops... er... drops.

Guns N' Roses, 808s N' Heartbreak & Day N' Age all debut in the next week, just in time to be the last CDs Circuit City will ever sell and most of those 3 are all out & about.

The big question is, who takes #1 on the charts (and where is the magazine cover detailing it)? Actually it will likely be Tom Jones, his fanbase still buys albums.

(Review to follow when its not 4 in the morn.)

First Impressions of a Chinese Democracy

2008-11-18T04:01:00.003-05:00

Skipping the title track, we've all heard it by now...

- "Shackler's Revenge" (METAL! and TECHNO! - meh)

- "Better" (Second Single - better than the first, is that a 303? and whats with the Linkin Park sound?)

- "Street of Dreams" (Power Ballad!)

- "If the World" (Flamenco & Funk?!? YES! - best track on the set)

- "There Was a Time" (This one was leaked last year and its a big improvement, the rerecorded vocals are a huge improvement over the strain of the first take and the whole thing no longer sounds like a Chili Peppers reject.)

- "Catcher In the Rye" (Classic rock thing happening here - very 70's, very Queen - Edit: HA turns out Brian May was brought in on this one for a sec)

- "Scraped" (a chorus of strange howls, i think Axl recorded 2 vocal takes of this then badly spliced them along with effects and overdubs)

- "Riad N' The Bedouins" (I just can't get past the awful lyrics)

- "Sorry" (another power ballad, i like this one, lyrically axle still being a twat though)

- "I.R.S." (This'll be a single - catchy w/ great licks)

- "Madagascar" (NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!)

- "This I Love" (decent if a little too indulgent)

- "Prostitute" (album closer, Lyrics: "It Seems Like Forever and A Day, If My Intentions were Misunderstood, Please Be Kind, I've Done All I Should..." A little too on the nose but the track rocks)

There is sooooooo much hubris in this album, sometimes it works often time Axl's christ on the cross pose is just painful and when he compares himself to MLK its just wrong. But everything that has been leaked to date sounds much worse than this final product so hats off to that last polishing. Now off to get my Dr. Pepper!

The Boy In the Striped Pajamas (Review)

2008-11-06T03:13:00.004-05:00

More of a Greek tragedy than anything to grace the silver screen in a while, The Boy In the Striped Pajamas is a poignant look inside the emotionally tumultuous lives of the family of an SS officer during WWII as viewed through the eyes of an 8 year old boy.

visit videodetective.com for more info

The film opens on a group of young kids playing at an aerial dog fight in the streets of Berlin. One of them is Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the son of the above mentioned Officer played by David Thewlis. He comes home to find that his father has received a promotion and that there is to be a party to celebrate later that evening and that they are soon going to leave the city as the promotion comes with reassignment to a rural location. When they arrive we realize that it is the running of a concentration camp that Thewlis his been charged with but he and his wife (Vera Farmiga) try to keep this from the young boy. As the child tries to make sense of the new situation he finds himself in and to alleviate his boredom he sneaks out of the house and through the woods to the edge of the camp where he befriends Shmuel, a small boy of the same age who is hiding in a corner of the camp on the other side of an electrified fence. They grow to become friends although there is a disconnect in their experiences. Bruno, fed by childhood innocence, propaganda films, a strict nationalist tutor and the blind love of his father believes that the people in the camp are living a life of hard but enjoyable work while the horror of the place, written all over Shmuel face, cannot be adequately conveyed to his friend by his young mind. Bruno is forced to grow up quickly in this environment even to the point of questioning the goodness of his own father, especially after his mother finds out the true secret of “The Final Solution” and deteriorates into an almost catatonic state.

visit videodetective.com for more info

Mark Herman’s film is as stark in its set design as in its affecting story line with a haunting quality that constantly unnerves the audience. Based on John Boyne’s novel of the same name, the story takes quite a few liberties with historical accuracy but due to the power of material, much like the Bruno himself, we look on with a child’s eyes totally engrossed in the tale being told. And not one of those eyes is dry when the film reaches its ultimate climax where the eerily calm home life of Bruno is finally contrasted with the frenzied confusion and shocking conditions of life inside camp and Bruno see for the first time what has been hidden from him. This is not a Disneyfied fairy tale like The Kite Runner or a piece of life affirming Oscar bait but a profound tragedy that will leave you in solemn silence but with an appreciation for the brave talent who decided that this is a tale that should be told.

visit videodetective.com for more info

Zach & Miri Make a Porno (Review)

2008-10-31T03:06:00.000-04:00

Kevin Smith loves three things – profanity, schmaltzy love stories and a naked Jason Mews. It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that all three are on… er… display in his latest film Zach & Miri Make a Porno. (Using the actual title of the film thank you very much.)

The film gets off to a bit of a shaky start as Smith’s first act is just littered with unclever and over abundant uses of various expletives. Smith has a tendency to layer it on thick when he can’t find any pop culture references to riff on for 6 pages and this happens quite often here. The dialogue isn’t sharp but just as you start to get annoyed the leads arrive at their high school reunion and we meet Justin Long (playing a character named Brandon) doing his best Harvey Fierstein impression as a gay porn actor and beau of superman himself, Brandon Routh (playing a character named Long). And for the next hour or so this is a pretty good film. Smith keeps the plot on a steady pace, the jokes funny and the characters that matter developing. The addition of an Apatow alum cast (Long, Elizabeth Banks, Seth Rogen, Gerry Bednob, Craig Robinson) helps with the natural chemistry and the two porn actresses in the cast (Traci Lords & Katie Morgan) pull off their roles adequately. Then something strange happens – Smith goes meta. Or at least tries to. When the inevitable second act bottom-out happens the film jumps 3 months and Craig Robinson’s producer shows up to find Rogen so he can tell him that “the film has no ending.” Charlie Kaufman can pull this type of thing off without seeming hackneyed… Smith cannot, so for 3-4 scenes the film just falls flat on its face but once again the ultimate resolution is saved by the strong bond between the characters and the chemistry between the actors as Banks and Rogen get all sappy and live happily ever after – under cut of course by cursing and a naked Jason Mews… I don’t mean Mews was improperly sniped… I mean he may have been I just tried not to look… I mean I’m sure the doctors did a fine job on him as a baby… I should just stop talking.

B/B-

EZ1 Winter Game Starting Soon

2008-10-12T17:48:00.002-04:00

The final season of the EZ1 boxoffice game for 2008 starts soon - follow the link to sign up and play. The winter game is run not by Eddie but by Jana and has several unique aspects including the presence of Limited Release titles and poetry based "hints" to each price change. Sign up at http://www.ez1productions.com/.

Eagle Eye (Review)

2008-09-26T04:00:00.000-04:00

Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.

I just want to know what Jerry Bruckheimer did to piss Spielberg off so badly as to assure his virtual banishment from the action spectacular producers’ club? This is something that JB’s name would have been all over 3 years ago – hell, so was his boy Bay’s Transformers – but instead the Exec credit on both of these (as well as the last D.J. Caruso/Shia Labeouf pairing Dis turbia) goes to Mr. Hollywood himself. And like the man about town this film is all oohs and ahhs with almost nothing left to say.

That said… those instinctual squeals of delight are totally real and totally worth it. The extravagance of the set pieces that aren’t edited beyond recognition are combined with an edge of your seat plot that is meticulously lifted piece by piece from so many better sources (visuals too) are tossed in an orgy of suspense and explosions that despite your mind saying no, your eyes give into again and again. The only thing worth singling out for any specific memory is Billy Bob Thornton’s performance as a counter terrorist agent as he is given all the sweetest lines in the film and wouldn’t you know it delivers ‘em with that silver-tongued glee we expect from a man in his uniform. The rest of the cast is a bland group of pretty faces, even when you know they’re capable of so much more (Rosario Dawson… hello!) but it works here because it’s not about them or their characters or their feelings. It’s about the sport of it all which the film has in spades. That is until the climactic (and literal) money shot. There’s some drivel that comes after when you realize the whole experience was meaningless and that now the film wants to cuddle a bit while you just need to kick it out of room.

Yes, Eagle Eye will leave you feeling dirty and ashamed but that’s not until after. While the ride is in progress there’s really nothing going on but the sheer enjoyment of the whole thing.

C+/B-

Choke (Review)

2008-09-24T17:58:00.000-04:00

Let me get this out of the way first. Choke is my favorite Chuck Palahniuk novel. There was no way a rookie actor-turn-director was gonna take the material and do anything interesting with it the way Fincher did with Fight Club. The best I was hoping for was that it would be a serviceable adaptation that got the source material right without leaving too much of the dark comedy on the floor. Surprisingly Clark Gregg (also playing Lord High Charlie) went slightly beyond not ruining the film in heightening the emotional tone between both Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) and his mother (Anjelica Houston) and his (main) love interest (Kelly Macdonald). All three actors are strong in their roles but none more-so than Rockwell who ability to suck you in with his loser charm is once again in top form. Despite the stronger emotional bonds though, some of the frenzied sexual absurdism is lost in the adaptation, giving the film a much flatter tone than the novel. However I find that this works in a way similar to Garden State while not getting overly somber or maddeningly cutsey as that one did (BTW this was also filmed in a certain national armpit). Gregg allows the humor and wry titillation to undercut his dramatic moments just enough that the film never loses its steady pace or Palahniuk's cynical world view and leaves enough of the novel intact that those looking for an insider moment or two will feel all warm inside.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (Review)

2008-09-16T14:16:00.001-04:00

Glamorous indie rock and roll, New York is thy name. This aspirational film for hipster kids everywhere paints a portrait of overly talented and highly connected high school kids with fake IDs running amuck in NYC over one shimmering night of comically tumultuous coming of age set to some of the finest music the kid down the street insists is the best thing ever (on his blog). Welcome to Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Starting out in North Jersey (as all nights in Manhattan do) we are introduced to Norah – a brunette who seems indefinably uncomfortable in her private, single-sex school with a group of blonds who are nicely movie-plastic. She is in love with the desperate ex-boyfriend of classmate Tris whom she’s never met but knows only through a series of mixtapes that he has sent (and which Tris heartlessly trashes) over a six month period. This, of course is Nick, reluctant arbiter of taste and the straight bassist in a queer-core band struggling to come up with a name. Being in mourning still, he rebuffs his bandmate’s when they try to get him to come out for the evenings gig.

When an announcement is made on a radio station that the uber-cool and mysterious band Where’s Fluffy? (yes, their name is part of their gimmick) will be playing one of their infamous sets somewhere in the city that night though, everything swings into action for your typical night in the city romp as people meet, separate, lose cell phones, miscommunicate, get tired, get drunk, have sex, fall in love, get jealous, make mistakes and figure it all out before the first NJT train of the morning leaves Penn Station. Did I mention this is all set to the swirlingly warm tones of the most lauded indie tracks of the day?

The film really is a trainspotter’s dream. They name drop every lauded rock venue in two boroughs (cuz there is no need to ever go to Queens, The Bronx or SI) and the ever present soundtrack changes from minute to minute during the night that one has to be an astute trainspotter to keep up with it all. The story itself is rather conventional and Cera (Nick) shows once again that Apatow (who, for the record has nothing to do with this) is a genius at type casting but not so great at finding “actors.” Still when you fit the part you fit the part. The one person I’m happy to say has impressed me quite a bit in the performance department from said machine is Jay Baruchel who, after a strong turn in Tropic Thunder, takes on a seedy struggling musician in the mold of Julian Casablancas who is trying to use the other casting stand out, Kat Dennings’s (Charlie Bartlett, 40 Year Old Virgin) Norah, as a way to get a record deal for his Zion Fire Rock outfit. Also of note on the comic relief front are Norah’s bff Caroline played by Ari Graynor who provides the bulk of the B-story as she gets wasted and then gets lost by the super-gay bandmates Rafi Gavron (Breaking and Entering) and Aaron Yoo (21, The Wackness, Disturbia) who try to take her off Norah’s hands so that Nick can get the rebound started. (Yoo btw, is almost 30 and is still playing a kid in HS – take that Luke Perry).

While not earth shattering N&NIP is a nicely crafted piece of escapist fluff and if this is you kind of scene or, more likely if you’d like it to be Mr. Minnesota blogger, then I would say to rush out and see it like 8 times while you listen to the leaked soundtrack on your iPod. For everyone else – how do you feel about Before Sunrise light?

B/B+

Kings of Leon Leaked All Over My Internets

2008-09-08T05:33:00.003-04:00

So uh... yeah Only By the Night seemed to pop up last night whilst scanning the 'sphere. I know, I couldn't believe it either! Rest assured the kids will begin rapidly sharing tracks post haste. The actual release date is 9/23 and the iTunes pre-order comes with a CSS remix of The Bucket which I'm anxious to hear.

They've been trotting out a few of the tracks on the road recently and I'm totally boutabout 'em.

Peep the first ever live performances of "Sex on Fire" & "Manhattan" from the APW fest last month.

(I'm completely in love with this one)

along with oldie "Milk"

They somehow shoehorned 20 tracks into their "opening" slot before Radiohead took the stage and sounded phenomenal. If the KoL swing by your town (and even if they don't) on the current tour pick up tickets - you won't be sorry.

Also props for making the first single free for all.

Kings of Leon - "Crawling"

(and to 12mc for still hosting)

And in case you need more they Kings are putting up a series of home movies via their YouTube Channel all month (well until the "actual" release date.)

late-

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Review)

2008-07-11T05:18:00.005-04:00

Congratulations Guillermo del Toro, you are the most frustrating filmmaker working today. I used to be able to write you off as an overrated and untalented filmmaker – no more. Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a technical marvel. This film is beautiful in a way that surpasses everything that del Toro had done to date… combined… including Pan! Unfortunately, like every film he has made, the story is flat, the pacing is poor and many of the emotional moments just seem to hit the wrong note.

The film opens with a flashback of John Hurt (killed off in the previous installment) telling an adolescent Hellboy a bedtime story about a war between Men and the creatures of myth (Goblins, Trolls, Elves, ect). The visuals that accompany this story are not of the same motif as the rest of the film but instead they are rather like a CG version of a Quay Brothers film with wooden figures and mechanical gears propelling armies toward each other. The story then jumps ahead to present day and Jeffery Tambor’s Tom Manning upset that Hellboy doesn’t listen to him. He is the cause of so many of these wrong notes in the film’s first hour. Also Abe Sapien is back but the voice of David Hyde Pierce is not – this is not a good thing. So the story unfolds though too many coincidences and there are some action scenes including one in Diagon Alley!! There are some great references to John Landis and Jim Henson and some overly overt ones to Universal creatures (Frank specifically). There is a love story that never feels right and a bunch of relationships that are fairly unbelievable. On the other hand the action scenes are nearly perfect as is one scene in the middle of the film where Hellboy and Abe break into song! The ancillary creatures are stunningly rendered (as the fantasy world of Pan was) and final battle is a seamless blend of CG and live action that isn’t edited to death.

I wanted to like this film, I really did, but del Toro once again fails to connect as a storyteller. Throughout the film he either coaxes the wrong notes out of his actors or edits the wrong takes into the film. It must be all that time spent in his own imagination that gets in the way of him getting the human aspect of his films right. Guillermo del Toro is an utterly hopeless filmmaker who needs to be kicked out of the director’s chair and restricted to a creature house so that we can all enjoy his visual tour de force stylistics without sitting through his failed attempts to hang them on his lackluster scripts. Feel free to leapfrog George Lucas on the way.

C/C+

Hancock (Review)

2008-07-01T01:31:00.005-04:00

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME NANCY GRACE MAKES AN APPEARANCE AS THE VILLAIN!!!

Ok, now that that’s out of the way… Shoehornin’ is the word I’d use to describe Hancock. Peter Berg’s film wants to critique the superhero genre while at the same time giving that big summer-blockbuster superhero-event widest-possible-audience feel. It wants to fit in an American allegory. It wants to have good actors actually acting instead of being superhero cutesy. It wants to play with our expectations but also possibly set up a new franchise. It wants to do all these things and pretty well succeeds in doing so.

This does not start out as an “origin story” film instead we are dropped right into a chase scene and our hero emerges and saves the day… well kinda. We find out pretty soon that there is little love for Hancock and that he has drinking and anger issues. Queue Jason Bateman. Bateman plays Ray, a struggling PR rep with a heart of gold (a movie first I believe) who wants to help Hancock in exchange for saving his life and despite some evil stares that his wife (Mary - Charlize Theron) gives when he first comes over for dinner. As Hancock’s latest incident had lead to an arrest warrant Ray sees a golden opportunity (PR 101) to get people on Hancock’s side. Of course the plan works as while he's voluntarily behind bars, the crime rate rises and a newly sober Hancock is called into action. THEN we get the twist and the intro of the origin story. All of this happens surprisingly fast – there’s very little downtime in this plot heavy film.

Berg grows in his journeyman director status with each films and this is no exception. The quick pacing, handheld camera work and high octane action that never get in the way of story or acting that was a hallmark of The Kingdom is taken up a notch here. There are some shaky transitions between acts and some bits that feel vaguely off but they more or less help to build to that twist.

Smith, Theron and Bateman all shine in their roles especially Theron who is the best female character I’ve seen in a superhero film ever. And as a superhero Hancock is unique. (Allegory in 3…2…1…) He is the only superpower in the world all his actions seem to lead to disaster for a lot of people even though his intentions are good and he does in fact save lives. He is alone, but unlike Supes, Hulk, ect he has no alter-ego in which to hide and commune with us regular folk. He just has to accept what he is, flaws and all and try to change what he can in order to make the world a better place. (Oh yeah his symbol and a repeating motif of the film is a bald eagle and his name is in fact John Hancock). The mythology of his creation is interesting but delivered in a pretty off hand matter leaving little to sink ones teeth into.

Hulk tried to go for emotion and failed miserably while Iron Man was content to forget all about that in favor of breezy charm. This one has an emotional side that is far better than that green thing but despite some huge laughs in the first 2 acts it’s not over the top charming. It is indeed a well rounded package and I hope word-of-mouth is far better than the critical reaction so far as this film deserves a big audience and a couple sequels to flesh out some of that Highlander style back story.

B+/A-

Wanted (Review)

2008-06-27T03:43:00.000-04:00

Mrs. Pitt is really the only bankable action heroine in business these days. But you never really know what your gonna get when she shows up all guns blazin’. Surprisingly she has very little to say in this film compared to what the trailers would have you think. She is pretty much the shapely facilitator for James McAvoy’s rippled assassin… but not just yet.

The film opens with a helping of Matrix set up and a McAvoy voiceover telling us all about how much his life sucks stuck in his office job and how his dad left a week after he was born. This could be the guy we just witnessed get blown away after jumping through plate glass across the Chicago skyline and killing 4 assassins on the opposite building. This trite and badly staged intro is made more surreal due to the fact that this is the first time we’ve seen Mac putting on an American accent. In fact the whole first act of this film screams “set-up” and brings you out of the film. However, it becomes a little more worth it when Fox (Jolie) shows up and the bullets rain and rubber is burned. Even more so after Gibson (Mac) wakes up the next day with a attitude that actually feels believable (the whiney kid bit at the outset feels more like a role for Hayden Christiensen). One of the best scenes in the film occurs when he finally gets fed up at work and gives his tormentors their due. After which he is scooped up by Fox and his assassin’s training begins.

The Fraternity, (a little too on the nose) as they are called consist of a gunsmith named Gunsmith (Common), a knife guy, a healer and they're all lead by Morgan Freeman (Sloan, or Ra’s al Guhl). Gibson is told that his father (indeed the dead guy) was one of the worlds greatest killers and that he has inherited some of his “powers” that just need to be harvested in order to kill Cross – a rogue member who took out daddy and a lot of other frat boys. What follows is an extended montage wherein we are introduced to the world through our hero and he is broken down so that his skill level can be built up. We are also introduced to the great power the Fraternity believe in… 1000 thread count sheets!! They were started by weavers who discovered the secret of binary code in their weaves and thus decided they should kill people (Cross for some reason questioned this).

This all sounds completely ridiculous and it is. The comic the film was based on pretty much stole from a whole lot of other yarns (pun intended) and what wasn’t stolen is the least believable stuff but is all just a place to hang the action. And what fine action it is. Timur Bekmambetov brings a lot of his creative techniques that made the Night Watch films so great but tones it down just a bit and it really fits perfectly. The set pieces are expertly staged and never (ok once) feel like a Michael Bay looky-what-I-can-do moment. As the killing starts an the chance is joined our cardboard characters pursue Cross around the world but just when you think things are gonna go in a different direction the Empire Strikes Back leading up to the big finale with a V for Vendetta round the room bit and a lot of exploding rats (Willard maybe?)

Once Mac gets going he’s actually an ok action star though he might need a few more improving montages before he can take on Bale or Jackman. Freeman uses his persona to good effect here especially in the final act where he gets some big lines and even bigger laughs. Jolie as I said earlier had very little dialogue despite a large amount of onscreen time but they way she exudes confidence eliminates the need for words. This is a fun summer spectacular and as such the brain should be left in the Abby Normal jar on the shelf but as far as summer blockbusters go this bests all but Iron Man so far this year.

B

Get Smart (Review)

2008-06-18T17:56:00.000-04:00

When updating classic TV shows there is usually a formula that is followed – short intro quickly placing characters in their respective rolls followed by the bulk of a ridiculous plot featuring where possible cameos from people associated with the original show. This film thankfully does not follow this formula. Instead Get Smart takes the Casino Royale (apropos) origin story and overlays it on one Maxwell Smart.

The film opens with a quick montage then its off to the Spy Museum in DC (again - nice touch) with Steve Carell carrying a stack of papers that is just slightly to large for him. We hear a tour guide mention that C.O.N.T.R.O.L. has been defunct since the end of the Cold War and then a smirk show’s up on Carell’s face as he enters the secret entrance. But Maxwell does not start out the film as an international super-spy. No, he is only a lowly analyst awaiting his Field Agent’s test results. Anne Hathaway’s Agent 99 isn’t even introduced for a half hour! After a leak exposes most of C.O.N.T.R.O.L.’s agents its up to rookie 86 (Smart) & a facially reconstructed 99 to take on K.A.O.S. and their attempt to get their hands on a stock pile of nuclear weapons… and fall in love along the way. Carell plays Smart somewhere between the unconfident Andy of 40YOV and Michael Scott’s bumbling never admit your wrong attitude on The Office. While this feels like a retread for the first ½ of the film, once he starts to become Agent 86 (about the time he first utters the famous line “Missed it by that much”) the film become an effortless piece of summer fun. They even take some time to lampoon Entrapment to hilarious results.

(Listen to the classic theme)

The acting is mostly top notch. Alan Arkin re-teams with his Little Miss Sunshine co-star and he is again great and the back office shenanigans between tech-geeks played by Masi Oka & Nate Torrence and sidelined field agents Terry Crews & David “Whammy” Koechner fill the b-story gaps nicely. The only disappointments in the cast are the bland Dwayne Johnson and the surprisingly uninteresting Terrence Stamp who seemed to be phoning in his role as Siegfried, head of K.A.O.S. There are also a boat load of cameos including James Caan (President), Geoffrey Pierson (Veep - demoted from 24), Kevin Nealon & Larry Miller (CIA), Patrick Warburton and Bill Romanowski (Air Marshall). Bernie Kopell – Siegfried in the original show makes and appearance as does Leonard Stern, writer and exec. producer of the series. The only cameo that didn’t work for me was an odd turn by Bill Murray as Agent 13 who spends his entire scene inside a tree and is desperate for attention (was Agent 13 aways like that?).

As one who has only ever caught a few episodes snippets of the show from Nick at Nite I’m sure there are a ton of geek out moments that I missed (shoe phone makes an appearance at the end). I also didn’t have much of an attachment to the series or characters and was not expecting very much from this one but in the end Carell’s turn as Maxwell Smart won me over. The film is fun, mostly solid and an excellent addition to his career, which I thought was headed downhill after last year’s output.

The Incredible Hulk (Review)

2008-06-13T07:01:00.000-04:00

One can hardly blame Marvel for wanting to hit restart on the Hulk films. As one of their big 3 properties and second only in character mass appeal to Spidey, it must have been hard to stomach the fan reaction to the Ang Lee joint. I guess this one is for the fans but as a stand alone film it’s only just OK. During the opening credits you see (silently) the creation of this version of the Hulk. Interesting that despite the reset this is not an origin film and it is set 5 years after the events of the credits… which also happens to be 5 years after Eric Bana went GREEN. I’m still not sure what to make of that. But in the present day Ed Norton’s Hulk is hiding out in South America doing odd jobs, keeping a low profile and taking anger management courses. One small misstep sends William Hurt’s General Ross down Amazon way with hired gun and all around psycho Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) in tow. Norton of course escapes but only after long foot chase and a teaser of a hulk-out. Back in the good ol’ USofA Banner has returned home to find his girl Betty Ross – daughter of the general (Liv Tyler – daughter of the rocker). They catch up but an ambush is in the works and we finally get a full on fight… one in which a slightly enhanced Blonsky is left a shattered husk. But that slight enhancement kept him alive and he juices up for fight #3 where we switch coasts (Iron Man already trashed LA) to Harlem(!) where Banner and Ross go to meet a not all there scientist type overplayed by Tim Blake Nelson. He succeeds in quashing the genetic changes of one outburst but in doing so Banner is captured. As he’s flown away Blonsky who is now totally off his rocker forces the doc to give him the Hulk treatment turning him into the Abomination and setting up the next villain in the process. And then there’s the final Showdown at the Apollo!!!

While this film doesn’t quite touch the lows of the former film, it never comes near the highs either. Lee explored the psyche of the character while Norton’s version is worried about how a lusty romp might excite him too much. Lee’s brilliant comic book editing, stunning visuals (non CG) and iconic superhero moments are all absent from this film as are the great acting abilities of Bana and Connelly. The villains though are a step up with Hurt’s no nonsense General getting a slight edge and Roth’s seething but never hammy performance blowing Nolte away. The tone of this film is more “bland damsel in distress melodrama” with pithy jokes tossed in, ya know - a superhero movie. Its also chock full of full on geek-out moments that will have the fans cheering which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Unfortunately, Hulk drops a month after Marvel Studios brought us the revelatory RDJ as Iron Man and this one just can’t hold a candle to that. It’s not an abomination but it ain’t nothin’ to ink home about either. If Marvel can keep all their output somewhere between this and Iron Man though, I’ll be quite happy with the master plan.

Geek Note: no need to stay for the credits – they bumped the Tony Stark cameo to just before it fades to black.

C/C+

Viva La Vida or Big Brother Is Watching You

2008-06-12T03:44:00.001-04:00

So as a denizen of the blogosphere you already know about the "record company destroying" leak of the new set from Coldplay last week. (Legal Listen) But there is also the little business of their US tour fiasco with production delays forcing postponement by almost a month - and now the kick off is in LA? Philly deserves better. (j/k - let them work the kinks out on the left coast).

I did however win tickets to the free live show up at MSG on the 23rd (jealous?) which as of yet has not been bumped. This means it should be a nice little productionless fan/band/jam in the most famous arena in the world. When checking the inbox today I found this:

This is your order number for your pair(2) of tickets to the Free Coldplay show
at Madison Square Garden on June 23rd, 2008.
Doors are scheduled for 7:00pm. Showtime is scheduled for 8:00pm You will learn your seat locations when you receive your tickets in the mail. Tickets will be mailed via US Mail - Delivery Confirmation. Tickets will be mailed on or before June 13th, 2008. They will be mailed from Musictoday in Crozet, VA. You will receive a white bubble padded package in the mail. Be on the lookout!
You will also receive a shipping confirmation email on the day that your tickets ship. We know we've told you before, but we're going to tell you again.
DON'T SELL THESE TICKETS.
We're watching and we'll catch you. Trust us!
If you can't make it, email or call us. We'll find some other fan who
will go in your place.
Thanks again. We'll see you at the show!

Ya just have to laugh at this. Not sure who is behind the watching but i'm keeping my blinds closed till next Tuesday just in case. I don't plan on selling these but I fear they might catch me in some kind of compromising position (NSFW). Can't wait for this and the eventual "big show" when the tour stops by the Wac... wait minute - they are playing at the Wachovia center. Wachovia/WatchOvaYa... I feel like Agent Mulder, or Nic Cage in those Indy rip off movies.

Late-

Bonus MP3: Bloc Party vs. Coldplay - Hunting for Witches In My Place

The Promotion (Review)

2008-05-29T17:48:00.000-04:00

The Promotion

“Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.” That quote (credited to everyone from Woodrow Wilson to Henry Kissinger) pretty much sums up this film about a cut throat struggle for a corporate grocery store manager position in the Chicagoland area. Unfortunately this one should have either been a whole lot funnier or a whole lot more vicious. With a cast featuring Seann William Scott, John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer and Fred Armisen one would expect the former and there are some really funny moments. More of the film though, feels like a first draft of a Mike White screenplay teetering on the dark comedy edge but with characters who aren’t really flawed enough to make for solid schadenfreude.

Scott is the assistant to Armisen’s manager at the outset and when a new store opens up in their chain Armisen says he’s a shoe-in. The wrench in the works come a few days later in the form of Reilly (in his lovable loser mode), another AM who has transferred from a sister company in Canada in order to try for a new life with his Scottish immigrant wife played by Lili Taylor. This makes for some truly awful accent play that seems to change from scene to scene. They both apply for the job and the rest of the film takes place as they compete for the spot. It starts out and simple competition and then things get a little nastier and the characters for frustrated at every little thing that goes wrong. The whole thing ends in a kind of bland détente that fails inspire enjoyment. Scott and his on screen fiancée Jenna Fischer though have great chemistry and it’s a shame that they don’t have more of that screen time together.

Chicago has never looked worse on film. This isn’t a criticism, there are certain parts of cities that are just not photogenic (the Philly shown in Unbreakable) and when filmed in flat lighting it does add to the drabness of the whole piece. But even the scenes downtown aren’t anything to write home about. Poster isn't bad though.

I'm not sure why they lead the trailer with one of the worst swing and a miss jokes in the film - the black apple bit. Over all this one is more rotten than fresh and I can’t recommend seeing it in the theater. A slow Saturday afternoon on cable? Sure.

C+

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Review)

2008-05-22T03:22:00.000-04:00

Still processing...

Didn't love it, didn't hate it. Twas a fun, serviceable summer blockbuster but lacking the charm of Ark. When Karen Allen finally appears after an hour or so it feels right again but the plot is unwieldy and really only serves to backdrop the action scenes. (Jungle chase = cool).

Ford settles into the roll much better than Willis did last year - he's not really changed which is good. LaBeouf is eh... early on but when his plot line really kicks in he shines as well. Hurt, Winstone & Broadbent are criminally underused and Blanchett is just so-so (where is the leather outfits that were promised?)

Oh, and Spielberg finally nails an ending – more than that the beginning shot is hilarious as the Paramount logo (vintage 1981) literally fades into a mole hill. Giving an initial wink to just have fun and go with it. I’ll recommend the same.

B-

Summer Gaming

2008-05-14T01:27:00.002-04:00

The new Summer Box Office Challenge game is starting soon and runs thru Labor Day. Head over and sign up to test you skills at playing the movie market and creating the most blockbusterisious summer movie line-up possible and maybe win a prize!

Click the pic below or the banner above to take part.

The EZ1 is also running the Pick 5 and Movieline games which will start in June and If you join the boards there is a "summer survivor" lounge game starting soon as well. All there are based on your Box Office prediction prowess, take a little less time commitment (you're spening time reading this blog anyway) and you can even compete against avid player and BO pundit/film reviewer the Weekend Warrior (aka Edward Douglas) from ComingSoon.net.

Browse around and have fun!

And now... Music!

2008-05-13T01:45:00.000-04:00

OK, enough with the movies for a bit time to drop a few new tracks as I've not done that yet this year.

Let's start with the return of N*E*R*D! The Neptune boys are back after a 4 year hiatus with their pocket protecting entourage and they have a nice funky new single that drops today. You can buy it at iTunes or if ya wish download it right there:

N*E*R*D - Everyone Nose (All the Girls Standing In the Line for the Bathroom)

Video is not yet out but you can see a sneak peek as well as some behind the scenes clips:

Catch 'em on tour at Kanye's Glow In the Dark Tour.

Next up is a triple hitter from Welsh rockers People In Planes. Out to conquer all media with the first single off their sophomore set (Due 6/24) they have tossed out a assault on your eyes, ears and index fingers. The track about suffering in silence comes with with a stylish video from the Walter Robot directing team:

Of course they are giving away the anthemic piano rocker away on their website:

People In Planes - Pretty Buildings (The b-side acoustic version is available as a 2-fer-1 deal on iTunes.)

And finally just to make sure you can't escape they've rejiggered an addictive flying game (naturally) from Net-Games with the track. Head over to play Metro.Siberia Underground: People In Planes Edition and see how far you can get. Got to past 2000 on my 3rd try.

Now, in their promotional tour they played an in-studio set in Chicago. Here is the first track from that set:

People In Planes - Mayday (Maidez) [Live in Studio at Stray Dog Recording Co. for BFN Networks Podcast]

Click here for the other full podcast episode with 2 more live tracks and interviews.

Kewl, that should keep ya busy for a bit. Enjoy!

Festival Day 7

2008-05-12T16:03:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the delay, since last I posted there has been a wedding, a bachelor party (different grooms) and a move. This was written over the course of the two+ week break but couldn;t finalize till today.

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Saturday 4/12

Violent Saturday
USA 1955, 90 min

I couldn’t very well start this final weekend of the festival with anything else but Violent Saturday. The film played as part of the Noir Series but it really was more a heist film than a noir. Directed by Richard Fleischer (20000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Compulsion) this forgotten film centers on a gang (including Lee Marvin) who make their way to a small mining town in order to rob the town bank. We see them plot their deeds and also are treated to seemingly meaningless slice of life segments from different people in the town including the peeping tom bank manager, a librarian purse-snatcher, a young girl who works in the pharmacy, a wealthy mine owning couple with marital difficulties and a family with father/son issues. As the plot unfolds, mainly in the light of day, they all become key parts along with an Amish family who lives out of town on a farm which will serve as the robber’s hideout and scene of the final climactic shootout. The patriarch of this family? None other than Mr. Ernest Borgnine!

(Opening totally over the top credit sequence)

This is a recently remastered print in brilliant De Luxe Color, but the real shine on this gem comes from the film’s snappy dialogue. The audience was left chuckling quite a few times as sly insults are were hurled amongst the various flawed characters – whether they be real city criminals or the strange small-town peccadilloed folk. The film in not available in any format currently (a VHS was made sometime in the 80s) but the print source is listed as Criterion so I’m eagerly awaiting a shiny DVD release from the boys over there. If this one comes by your local festival or retrospective theater though, get a ticket right quick, you won’t be disappointed.

B+

Son of Rambo
USA 2007, 95 min

Another Sundance hit (2007 vintage though) finally makes its way to Philadelphia accompanies by 3 grey suited security guys with night vision. A semi-autobiographical story from Garth Jennings and his Hammer & Tongs team, Son tells the story of creative but gullible Will. Living in Hertfordshire, UK (‘bout an hour north of London), he has grown up in a fundamentalist family who forbid TV & film viewing. When he sees First Blood for the first time it kicks his mind into high gear and he teams up with Lee, another outcast though in a totally different way, to create their own film in which Will is the titular son and is on a quest to spring his “father” from prison. An exotic French exchange student who has the British kids wrapped around his finger gets wind of the film and wants to play a role catapulting the boys to instant popularity and straining their relationship.

(Trailer)

This is cute, smart and has a ton of heart and should do well with audiences… IF it weren’t being released at the beginning of May. Seeing as how it garnered the highest price ever paid for a Sundance film I’m really questioning Paramount’s release strategy on this one. It screams for an August buzz garnering platform release ala Little Miss Sunshine. I do hope people will seek this one out.

A-

Soo
aka: Su
South Korea 2007, 122 min

Wow, its been a while since I’ve written anything on this and the mediocre films have rapidly left my memory. From the festival website I am reminded that this is a revenge tale about twin brothers (orphans?). We start in their childhood when one decides to rob a mobster. In chasing him down they end up catching the twin – thus the previously good twin becomes part of the criminal element while the previously bad twin becomes a cop. When they finally meet years later the criminal is now the titular legendary assassin with a price on his head but his brother is gunned down a few feet away. The twin of course assumes his identity in order to track down his killers and struggles to make people believe that he is not Soo but his brother. Once again the fault of the film is the fact that people get shot, stabbed, beaten, and even have their throats slit and yet somehow still stay alive. This comedic superhumanism really takes you out of the film. In fact up until the final (painfully elongated) showdown it’s a decent if not overly compelling yarn with good performances but the amount of blood and hobbling in the final minutes had the audience laughing at the screen.

(Trailer)

C

Nothing to Lose
aka: TBS
Netherlands 2008, 88 min

Of course films like this tend to stay with you. Nothing to Lose is a dark tale of a mentally unstable man, Johan who escapes a criminal mental institution in Holland along with a friend by kidnapping a doctor. They go on the lam and when things turn south they split up. Johan kidnaps another young girl and set out to find his mother who he hopes will prove that he did not murder his father and sister. Along the way the director’s deft hand reveals details that change your perceptions of the characters and what they may or may not have done all coming to a final chilling climax that will have you on the verge of tears.

(Trailer)

The film won the Best Picture jury prize for the film festival though it also finished pretty far down in the audience balloting and it’s not surprising why. What is surprising is that this is based on a series of real crimes that happened in the Netherlands due to a very lenient penal system. The director Pieter Kuijpers was on hand to reveal this in his Q & A after the screening. He also revealed that the film’s star Theo Maassen is actually one of the top stand-up comics in the country but that he cast him in order to throw off expectations. For his part Maassen is brilliant as the troubled and desperate Johan, the strongest single performance of the fortnight. This is not a film I’d watch over and over but is it a strong statement and a searing indictment of the Dutch prison system. Sadly one woman at the Q & A didn’t hear what he was saying stating that they were lucky to have the system that they do in comparison to that of this country.

A

Well after this I was scheduled to see an animated film called Film Noir that updates the genre in a really interesting looking style. However since an old college roommate was in town for the night I ditched that and drank the night away!!! (This lead to the missing of even more films on Sunday but more of that in the next chapter) .

Speed Racer (Review)

2008-05-09T04:35:00.001-04:00

Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer. He’s a demon on wheels.

The all to familiar lines reinterpreted 5 or so times during this film and running during the closing credits had a dozen or so hipster kids dancing in the IMAX isles and singing along as their nostalgia trip was aided by a little Wachowski LSD. Of course like most trips you start out with awe and anticipation and close with rapture as the destination finally comes into view 2.25 hrs later but there sure are some stretches in the middle when you’re about to fall asleep.

Listen to the classic theme

But let’s gush for just a bit. I spent the first 20 minutes of this film totally slack-jawed by the candy colored eye feast that sat before me. A solitary Speed sits in the locker room then cut to the track and real life in cartoon motion begins. The film flits between several differing timepoints in an ADD firestorm of editing techniques that would leave Michael Bay speechless. Collage, CG, 2-D, rotoscoping, wipes, slo-mo, ect. The Wachowski’s throw a kitchen sink of fun at you in all colors of the rainbow. Oh and the sound, much like a race track wipes from side to side along with the edits. Finally things settle down and we start to follow a single plot line. Unfortunately this is where the film get’s mired in its own story. The whole thing deflates to the kind of long windedness that had so many pissed at the Matrix sequels and it lasts for a good hour until we finally se a second race. For some reason the Ws like their baddie’s talkative which kinda kills their menacing powers. Roger Allam hams it up the way the villain in a summertime kid’s flick should but they have him saying too much and the main crux of the story he tells Speed which partially motivates him the rest of the film rings hollow especially as it feels like it is not justifiably paid off with comeuppance for all involved. I think the film would’ve moved along much better if this thread was totally abandoned. To add some action in this wasteland they dream up an imaginary fight that Spritle and Chim-Chim have with a couple villains on TV which really feels out of place but does show their effort in bringing Manga style animation to an unanimated feature. One of the most interesting things is how they incorporate Manga backgrounds and video game concepts. At one point while Speed is flying through a track he is remembering a record his brother previously set – they show this via a shadow car that can be seen in many racing games that shows where you are in comparison to a previous time and it’s a fantastic lift.

(Watch the first 7 minutes of the film)

Of course you gotta have a big finale – and we get 2!!! There is a penultimate multi-day rally race with a big ninja fight in the middle that really gets things going again and then the final race begins. Just when you don’t think there are any visual tricks left that could impress you Speed flies down the track at colors mix, characters collage and action blends into an orgasmic explosion that just has to be seen… then Speed drinks milk.

For their part the cast is decent in their intentionally over the top roles. Sarandon is completely wasted and Hirsch starts off pretty good but eventually falls as I feared he would in to uber-earnest territory which mirrors the tone of the film which starts out a family flick but then has some cursing (actual and bleeped) in the last 30 minutes or so which slightly hit the wrong note. Despite that dragging middle and unevenness of the whole thing this is really something that has to be seen on the big screen – preferably the biggest one available… IMAX!

B/B-

Festival Day 6

2008-04-22T18:34:00.004-04:00

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Day 5

Friday 4/11

Help Me Eros
aka: Bangbang wo aishen
Taiwan 2007, 103 min

Two of the most challenging films of the festival came on Friday night. The first, Help Me Eros is a Taiwanese take on the Contemplative Cinema of Béla Tarr, Theo Angelopoulos, current period Van Sant, ect. The films are meant to give you time to process and read what you may into them while the film is running as well as long after. But the problem with contemplative cinema is that it is very culture specific and the meditations and queues that are there to pick up are often lost on people who don’t know that culture and thus the contemplative aspects are seen more as space in which to fall asleep. This neon poem to Taipei is filled with loneliness and sadness and life that is soulless but plot queues, while interesting are alien to me.
The plot that the film floats about involves and man who has lost millions and is now holding onto the last vestiges of his previous life – an ultra modern home atop a sweet shop and a mighty impressive pot plant. Having also lost all his friends he pawns off pieces of his life to buy water and sweets at one of the most bizarre establishments I’ve ever seen – a drive though neon candy shop with a stripper poll and girls in skimpy outfits. He falls for one of 3 girls working there but ends up getting high and fornicating with all of them… in very visually memorable ways. His love interest, obviously pissed, destroys the plant and his depression spirals further out of control to the point that he buys 50 thousand dollars worth of lottery tickets. In the final scene he disappears but bills rain down from his window.

Its brilliant looks may entice some while the poetic meditations on life will suit others and some may put up with it to see the more titillating aspects of the film but on the whole this is a very art-house film. If you appreciate any of the directors mentioned above though seek this one out.

A-

Defecit
aka: Déficit
Mexico 2007, 75 min

This is Gael García Bernal’s directorial debut and its not that interesting to tell the truth. Bernal plays the lead Christobal, the teenage scion of an upper-class Mexican family. He is down at the family’s vacation house with his friends for a weekend and there are a bunch of class issues and drugs and jealousy and swimming and daddy hating and barbecue. It’s fairly melodramatic and very well trodden territory (you can actually see people coming of age!) but at least it’s also short and well acted.

C+

Far North
Great Britain, France 2007, 89 min

The final film of the night was to be Irina Palm but the print was apparently lost in transit (I’m assuming USAir was to blame). Instead it was replaced with this film directed by Asif Kapadia (The Warrior, The Return) and staring Michelle Yeoh and Sean Bean. The title refers to the lands above the Russian Arctic Circle for which special benefits are given to those who chose to work there. Yeoh plays a native woman whose village was attacked by some of these men. She flees for parts even farther north with the only other surviving member, an infant child. Together they live as survivalists in the harsh climate avoiding all human contact. When Yeoh discovers a man come down from a glacier (Bean) her nurturing instincts get the better of him and she brings him into their camp and nurses him back to health. The now grown infant and adopted daughter falls for him and they make plans to leave all leading to an unexpected showdown that will leave you speechless.

Part horror film, part psycho-drama and part travelogue with hints of an environmental message the scenery is the real star of this film reflecting the seeming openness but hidden dangers in the characters and well as their relative stoic silence. Yeoh gives one of her most powerful performances to date as the damaged, protective survivalist who becomes jealous of her ward and the new interloper. Much like Mother Nature when something new emerges to throws off the balance she moves to bring things back to a natural equilibrium.

B

Festival Day 5

2008-04-21T16:27:00.000-04:00

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Thursday 4/10

The End
Great Britain 2008, 74 min

Thursday was doc day at the festival with the only 2 docs on my list playing at opposite ends of the city. Interestingly enough, I started with The End. This is a doc about the life and death of London’s notorious East End as told by the men who lived and “worked” there. The filmmaker is the daughter of one of the leading criminal entrepreneurs. After realizing that he life was so different from most other peoples she decided to take stock by shooting this film (this is based on the Q & A after, she isn’t a character in the film) and was able to get privileged access to these usually tight lipped men. The film is shot in grainy black and white which adds to the chilling effect of the conversations with these (current and) former cockney gangsters and the music fits the mood perfectly as well with a DJ Shadow style melancholy [stream]. From their conversations you learn that their story is much like that of any community with a thriving organized criminal element: working class upbringing, family loyalty, ethical codes, being there for your mates, ect. These are tough guys but they are also family men and they all share a sense of loss because this neighborhood and community no longer exists. 2/3 of the way through the film one of them takes a walk through the current East End which has turned into an open air bazaar as peoples from the middle-east and the Indian subcontinent have replaced the white population. There is a sense of loss but its really not racially motivated as one might think but it’s the idea that the life that these men knew and grew up in is now gone forever and that they are really the last cockney gangsters that will ever be. Most have moved on to decent sized estates outside the city (thanks to ill-gotten gains with one man proclaiming "Crime Pays!" while showing off his posh digs) while a few others are actually hiding out from authorities. This film serves as an outstanding document of a culture that has since passed, for better or worse, from the land. Oh and the strong accents are thankfully subtitled.

There was a Q & A with the director and producer of the film – unfortunately the first for me of the entire festival – which was very enlightening. The film stands on its own but some of the details and back story of these characters was nicely fleshed out afterward. I hope they do a commentary track if this eventually gets a dvd release.

A-

Milk In the Land, Ballad of an American Drink
USA 2007, 90 min

Thankfully the previous film was a scant 74 minutes which left ample time even with a Q & A to get down to Old City for the start of the next film, a startling documentary on the history of Milk in America. The filmmakers obviously have an agenda as this film while not explicitly anti-milk (though it talks with people that are) is definitely anti-corporate dairy farming. The film starts detailing the history of the American dairy industry – cows were kept in New York City as a way of disposing of left over grain from whiskey distilling so people could get swill milk year round… though it killed quite a few people. It goes through the growth of the industry as a replacement for breast milk that was not being produced by middle class urban dwelling women (corsets), the breeding of cows that would produce year round and in great quantities and how the Dairy Lobby grew to national importance and scandal under the Nixon administration. They also visit a family farmer in Wisconsin who advocates drinking raw milk over the pasteurized store bought version. Surprisingly little is mentioned about rBGH or Monsanto.

Frankly looking at all that sloshing chalky liquid made me a little queasy and outside of cereal and coffee I rarely drink the stuff. However, I found many parts of the film fascinating especially where it digresses into the effect this drink has had on American culture from the religious to the hobbyists and how these people in turn affected its pervasive spread to our refrigerators and tables.

B+

Pistoleros
Denmark 2007, 90 min

The final film of the night was this Robert Rodriguez/Guy Richie inspired genre flick from Denmark. I should’ve caught another doc. The story within a story within a story is that some film school kids are making a fiction piece based on the legend of a heist gone awry so they meet a seedy character in a bar who starts telling the yarn. At some point the party is crashed by another man with a story to tell and some people in the story also… well you get it. The big question is “where’s the money?” and the resolution to this question contradicts everything that transpired in the 85 minutes of set up. Also people get shot, beat with pipes, kicked in the ribs thrown through hard objects and just keep on fighting. Most of the characters are just annoying and some do things in back to back scenes that completely contradict each other. And unlike either of the two that this movie cribs from the director, Shaky González, has an awesome name but no visual flare. The look is ugly, under lit at night and flat during the day. The only interesting thing about this is the fact that the lead actor looks exactly like David Beckham so when he gets the crap beaten out of him it’s kinda funny. Worst film of the fest. (Apparently there is an epilogue after the closing credits that explain some things - I didn't know this and didn't stick around at the time)

D

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Review)

2008-04-18T12:42:00.001-04:00

I do not ever want to be Jason Segel. He is the writer and star of this film and frankly I think he is exactly like this in real life. I always thought Apatow cast him as a stand in for himself but now I’m sure that he is just this way and Apatow used him effectively as such.

Segel plays Peter, a well to do musician who scores the TV show that made his titular girlfriend (that sounds dirty) a star. After 5 years together she breaks up with him and he become a wreck… well more of a wreck than he was before. Peter is a schlub with a big heart who is overly sensitive to everything but his own shortcomings. In order to clear his head he goes to a Hawaiian resort that Sarah had always talked about… surprise she’s there as well and with her new lover, an English rock lothario. Hijinks ensue. In fact, I think this was how the first 40 minutes of the script was “written.” There is almost no story and everything is improv. While this is par for the course for the Apatowniverse, first time director Nicholas Stoller’s sloppy handling of it took me out of the film. Yes, its mostly funny but you can only take so much of Paul Rudd looking into the camera and running lines before it gets old. You could see the improving which is not a good thing. Still when the story gets back on track after what seems like forever it turns into a decent romcom. Mila Kunis is actually good in this (I usually can’t stand her voice) and Segal plays his role like a well worn sock. And there are a lot of laughs but more dead jokes than I’m used to from this crew. If the beginning of the film was tightened up and focused more on story this would be close to the top of the Apatowniverse films but as it is its middling at best.

B-

Festival Day 4

2008-04-17T17:05:00.001-04:00

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Wednesday 4/9

The Other Boy
aka: Der andere Junge
Germany 2007, 91 min

The kid’s aren’t all right in this German look at the troubles of suburban teens. Paul and Robert have grown up together as their parents are close friends but as the boys aged they became very different people. Paul is tall, smart, confident and good looking and Robert… um… isn’t. Unbeknown st to the parents Robert is the target of Paul’s bullying. One day Paul goes too far with tragic results and his parents are forced to betray their own friendships in order to protect their son. Things get tense all around as the police close in and tragedy gives way to tragedy.

This is a slow and tense film that the write-up in the festival program likens to a combination of Clark’s Bully and Haneke’s Caché. Like the later film its approach too setting up tension comes from lingering shots and a sparse soundtrack though not quite as effective as Haneke’s mesmerizing film as the plot is a little predictable. Boy plays out like an episode of Law & Order: SVU with a European art house aesthetic… turns out this is not a bad thing though.

B+

Eye In the Sky
aka: Gun chung
Hong Kong (China) 2007, 90 min

I included this in my fest schedule because it was produced by Johnnie To, director of Exiled – best film of the 2007 festival and staring Tony Leung. Unfortunately not THAT Tony Leung, who knew? The Hong Kong Actors Guild needs to arbitrate this one stat.

This is a mentor/mentee story in the surveillance group within the Hong Kong police department, the… er… eyes in the sky if you will. The first scene of the film features “Piggy” (the new blood – everyone has an animal code name) boarding a trolley and observing as several suspicious looking men board and leave the train. One is her boss, Dog Head, and as we later find out this was her entrance exam. The other is the shadowy figure behind a team of jewelry store thieves who are actually pulling off a heist at the same time. This becomes her first case as the inevitable baptism by fire starts. This film is chock full of Yin-Yang: details of both the cop’s and the criminals surveillance methods, a scene during the exam is repeated for real later in the film and Piggy’s Sophie’s choice of sorts between work and life on 2 occasions are among them. The camera work is also evocative of the surveillance theme with a lot of dutch angles and shots from up above or far away. This is a solid procedural yarn and well worth the time.

B+

Mystery Film!
aka: The Wackness
USA 2008, 110 min

Well, I had initially planned on seeing Roman de gare which looked really good but upon logging into my email earlier in the day I saw a message that blew the lid off of what the mystery film was going to be (thanks PFS). So I changed plans and took up with this Sundance smash. I’m SOOOOOOOOO glad I did.

The Wackness is a coming of age – check that – to paraphrase Roger Ebert, this isn’t a coming of age film, this is a coming of age film’s wet dream of itself. Set in Manhattan circa ’94 the film uses some combination of soft focus, over exposure and digital filters to achieve an enticing nostalgic, dreamy look. This is the final summer before college for Luke Shapiro who is the ultimate outsider. He is from a family with financial troubles but goes to school with upper-class kids. He is the school pot dealer so everyone knows him but he’s friends with no one. With most of his customers jetting off to summer in wherever he’s left with his fantasy girl, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) who’s parents are in anything but marital bliss. It just so happens that her father Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley) is one of Luke’s best customers but as a psychologist he pays in sessions. As Kingsley’s marriage crumbles he latches onto Luke and they become friends and confidants as he tries to hide a growing relationship with Stephanie. The film is filled with colorful characters including Method Man as a Rastafarian drug king and Mary-Kate Olsen as a hippie who makes out with Kingsley in a phone booth (weird) who all add to the atmosphere

This is writer/director Jonathan Levine’s second feature but seems to be set to debut before his first (All the Boy’s Love Mandy Lane) which has been sitting in the can for 2 years now. He turns in a pitch perfect pop culture dumpster dive through 1994 and characters that have rightness and truth about their motivations and reactions, and lead actor Josh Peck offers up a substantial leap from his character on Nickelodeon.

My only issues with the film are the over use of Giuliani’s NYC clean up as a reference point and the cringworthy delivery of the titular line by Thirlby “Me, I see the dopeness. But you, you just see the wackness.” Other than that this was the best film of the festival and the best of the year so far.
A+

Festival Day 3

2008-04-15T15:54:00.001-04:00

Prelude
Day 1
Day 2

Tuesday 4/8

California Dreamin'
aka: Nesfarsit
Romania 2007, 155 min

This is one of those things you rarely see, an epic Romanian culture clash comedy staring… Armand Assante? Set in 1999 during the war in the Balkans, a train with supply equipment and a US Marine detachment bound for Kosovo is held up in a rural Romanian village due to a local strongman who runs the rail station. Over 5 days that it takes for their papers to arrive, all the forces at work in the village erupt and things will never be the same. The mayor sees this as an opportunity to attract commerce and investment and decides to re celebrated the village anniversary that was held the previous month. The station manager’s daughter sees this as a way to escape her uninteresting surroundings so she gets a high school outcast to teach her English. The marines see a lot of village girls. The station manager sees a chance to get back at the Americans for not coming to his childhood rescue in WWII and the captain (Assante) sees red.

The film is a critique of US policy in Eastern Europe from WWII thru the end of the century from the lack of support for Soviet Block countries to NATO bombings in the former Yugoslavia. The final climax of the film serves as an echo of the Prague Spring of ’68. But there is also the mystical realism that is common is many films from the region that serve to ground the film in the fantastic characters and the strange events that are sometimes a part of life. The film’s director Cristian Nemescu was killed in a car crash during post production and this is the final edit he did before his passing. While a powerful tribute, there is some fat that could be cut from the 2.5 hr print and a lot of ADR work that needs to be done to make this a finished product.

B+

The Sperm
aka: Asujaak
Thailand 2007, 93 min

This is everything The Host should have been: a fun, campy, creature flick that actually holds your attention for the entire film. Our hero is a Thai 20 something in a band who has a huge crush on a pin up girl and dreams about her daily. When he finally meets her he blurts out something a little to forward… not realizing this is reality & he’s live of national TV. As he runs off red faced in a downpour he spies a poster of her in an alley and relieves his frustration. His little swimmers join the rain water and pass by some experimental lasers going haywire. The next thing you know they are airborne and impregnating the Bangkok’s women. The spawn are all horny kids with the same face who’s ultimate goal is to get off and send millions more flighted spermies off on a new adventure. There is a mad scientist with a hot daughter and her clan of inflatable ninjas who help our hero, his band and the pin-up girl defeat the JO juniors as well an a 50 foot version of himself that was born by a very old woman… and thus mutated.

The film never takes itself seriously and while the special FX leave much to be desired they fit the tone of this low budget piece perfectly. The contractions that are used are modified garbage (painted water bottle ray gun anyone?) but the characters are funny and you enjoy spending time with them. That’s really all you can ask for in the genre… love to see an MST3K take on this though.

B/B-

Festival Day 2

2008-04-10T02:57:00.001-04:00

Prelude
Day 1

Monday 4/7

Blast of Silence
USA 1961, 77 min

Another subdivision of the film festival is screenings in conjunction with Noircon 2008. Three classical period films will be shown in addition to a recent animated update on the themes. The first of these I took in Monday was Blast of Silence. Note to the Fetsival: Please provide details in the program when a film will be shown on DVD instead of a print. The quality of projecting a DVD to the silver screen, even one from the Criterion Collection, is not near that of a film print.

The film itself, while coming after the classical period (released in ’61), shows many of the hallmarks of the genre without the self-awareness of neo-noir. Our lead, one of God’s lonely men, is a Cleveland hitman come to NYC for the holidays on a job. The big city in this film though is unlike that of previous efforts with the influence of the Beats. Cassavetes’ Shadow’s (released 2 years prior) has as much influence here as Chandler. The sneering, oppressive narration by a raspy, sight unseen, voice grounds the film in grit and beat poetry while the club and party scenes feature greasy men in black with bongos chanting and yearning over harsh times in the city. We watch as the hitman, “Baby Boy” Frankie Bono, played by writer/director Allen Baron stalks his kill and the repetition of certain key phrases by the narrator betray the workings of his nerves while the character remains cool on the outside. When he runs into an old flame and things go amiss with a particularly repugnant weapons supplier though Frankie’s work breaks down and he wants out of course this being noir his shot at redemption isn’t likely to end in a house with a white picket fence.

B+

Mister Foe
aka: Hallam Foe
Great Britain 2007, 95 min

The story of a young man’s struggles with the loss of a parent has won quite a few awards since its debut at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. All deservedly so. Jamie “the only thing that saved Jumper” Bell is the leading British actor of his generation and here crafts a sublime performance as Hallam Foe, a young man who it trying to find someone to blame for his Mother’s death and a way to reconnect with her. His well-to-do family lives on an estate in Scotland yet he hides in a tree house that his architect father designed for him as a child. When his sister moves out, his step-mother (played by the always awful Claire Forlani) makes her move to get him off the property as well, further damaging his fragile psyche. He moves to Glasgow and resumes his favorite pastime… peeping. As he peeks and follows the denizens he runs into a woman with a striking resemblance to the deceased. He charms her into giving him a job at the hotel she works for and after work he bounds across the roof tops of the city to her skylight and peers at her from afar inside the hotel’s iconic clock tower. After a few drinks with coworkers on his 18th she takes him back to her place and they begin a disturbing love affair that grows to understanding of his condition and Foe looks like he’s overcoming his past. But when his parents seek him out again a few well placed daggers from the step-mother send him over the edge leading to a climax at the loch on the estate with badger skins and a lot of make-up.
Hallam Foe - Full Length Official Trailer

Complimenting Bell’s performance is Sophia Myles (Tristan + Isolde) who shines as the unsure of her self late 20 something who has her own issues with love and life. Ewen Bremner is unfortunately wasted in the story which is a shame as even his cameos are usually top notch. Director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) turns in a strong psycho-drama with charm and more than a little humor that should win continue to win over audiences throughout the world.

A

Young People F*cking
Canada 2007, 90 min

With a title like that how could I not add this to my fest schedule? And that is really all you get in this steamy, awkward, painful, funny Canadian comedy. The film features 5 sets of young people (Roommates, Couple, Exes, First Date, Friends) and takes them through 6 “stages” (prelude, foreplay, intercourse, interlude, climax, afterglow). These aren’t intertwining stories but intercut vignettes, each with a bit of set-up before the title card. The film also screams CBC in terms of comedic set up as well as aesthetics.

B-

Festival Day 1

2008-04-09T13:29:00.005-04:00

Prelude

Unfortunately I was away during most of the first weekend of the 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival and missed out on quite a bit of viewing (fortunately I was at a bachelor party in New Orleans). So Sunday night I intended to catch 2 films after a take off to landing nap on the flight but given other logistical snags missed out on the first film. And now, with out further useless keystrokes… . (sorry) the start of 10 days of 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival reviews:

Sunday 4/6

Confession of Pain
aka: Seung Sing Hong Kong (China)/Japan 2007, 110 min

The fest is always heavy on the Asian crime genre. I like the Asian crime genre.

The first of 5 on my tentative schedule this year is Confession of Pain. Directed by the team behind Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau (also helmed the unfortunately named Legend of the Fist Master) & Alan Mak this is a cop-gone-bad story that unlike their previous landmark film chooses style over substance.

Beginning on Christmas Eve 2003 the film opens on dramatic helicopter views of Hong Kong in all its seasonal neon glory and closes in on a small (but equally colorful) holiday party with lead actors Tony Leung (aka The Man) as Chief Hei and Takeshi Kaneshiro (Jin from House of Flying Daggers) as Detective Bong, musing over booze and marriage – the two sides of the plot. A few minutes later we find that this is not festive celebration but a sting operation to capture a brutal murderer and the helicopter shots return as the whole party of cops follow the killer’s cab through the city. After the take down Bong returns home to find his wife dead from her own hand. Flash forward to 2006 and Bong is now a PI, a drunk (are there any other kinds?) and in love with a prostitute while Hei has a new wife with a rich daddy. The daddy ends up dead and the wife wants Bong to help out on the investigation. The directors choose to show us the murder up front but the investigation details the cause with all the aplomb of Mr. Magoo. The lead inspector on the case (as Hei is a suspect) is a bumbling fool, there is a too obvious red-herring stalker and we have to sit and watch 90 minutes of a drunk piece together what we already know with plotting that is anything but tight.

The acting from the leads is solid and the film is stunningly shot – especially the reenactment of the crime – but this film commits too many sins to be recommended. The connective tissue between scenes seems to be ripped out at times and there is no suspense whatsoever which would be ok if we had a deep character study but that is non-existent as well. Combine that with a score that beats you over the head with DRAMA and this is one to pass on.

C

2008 Philadelphia Film Festival

2008-04-08T02:23:00.001-04:00

I like anything with the word Festival attached. Here's what I'm planing for this year:

Your Festival Calendar
Day/Time Title Venue Neighborhood

~~Sun April 6 7:00 PM The Voyeurs Ritz Five Old City~~
Sun April 6 9:30 PM Confession of Pain Prince Music Theater Center City

Mon April 7 5:00 PM Blast of Silence The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Mon April 7 7:30 PM Mister Foe Prince Music Theater Center City
Mon April 7 9:30 PM Young People Fucking International House University City

Tue April 8 6:00 PM California Dreamin' Prince Music Theater Center City
Tue April 8 9:30 PM The Sperm The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City

Wed April 9 5:00 PM The Other Boy Ritz Five Old City
Wed April 9 7:15 PM Eye in the Sky Ritz Five Old City
Wed April 9 9:30 PM Roman de gare Ritz Five Old City

Thu April 10 5:00 PM The End International House University City
Thu April 10 7:15 PM Milk in The Land, Ballad of An American Drink Ritz East Theater 2 Old City
Thu April 10 9:30 PM Pistoleros Ritz East Theater 2 Old City

Fri April 11 4:45 PM The Year of the Nail Ritz Five Old City
Fri April 11 7:45 PM Deficit Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
Fri April 11 9:30 PM Far North Ritz Five Old City

Sat April 12 12:15 PM Violent Saturday The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sat April 12 2:30 PM Son of Rambow The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sat April 12 5:15 PM Soo The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sat April 12 7:30 PM Nothing to Lose Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
Sat April 12 10:00 PM Film Noir Ritz East Theater 1 Old City

Sun April 13 12:15 PM The Mugger The Bridge: Cinema DeLux University City
Sun April 13 2:30 PM Summer Scars Prince Music Theater Center City
Sun April 13 5:00 PM You, the Living Ritz Five Old City
Sun April 13 7:15 PM Triangle Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
Sun April 13 9:30 PM Storm Ritz East Theater 1 Old City

Mon April 14 4:45 PM Blood Brothers Ritz East Theater 1 Old City
-TBA Festival Favorite-
Mon April 14 9:30 PM A Song of Good Ritz East Theater 2 Old City

Tue April 15:
3x Festival Favorite Or Patti Smith Documentary.

OK, its an overly ambitious dream slate. I know I'll never get to all of these but if I see 25 of the 32 I can get to I'll be happy.

Reviews to come.

Oscar Nominated Short Film (Part 2)

2008-02-24T19:51:00.000-05:00

Animated

I Met the Walrus
This 5 minute piece is set to a recording a kid took of himself interviewing John Lennon in the late 60’s. He snuck into his hotel room in Toronto with a reel to reel recorder and captured this audio with Lennon talking about peace and war. The animation takes queues from the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine as it cascades over images as they blend into one another like a Bill Plypton short.
B-

Even Pigeons Go to Heaven
This is a CG short about a crooked priest who attempts to sell a old man a contraption that will take him to heaven since his list of sins wouldn’t let him get there on his own. The old man hands over all his cash when “Death” enters the house and we find that he’s not such a hapless old bat after all. This one is about 8.5 minutes long but the story is fun coherent and engaging so I think it is one of the two that could take the Oscar.
A

Madame Tutli Putli
This is a dialogue free, 18 minute short about a woman by herself on a train ride. The plot is almost irrelevant to the striking visuals which are stop-motion puppeteering I think, but the atmosphere that is created in the film is creepy.
B

My Love
A 26 minute Russian film about a 16 year old boy and his multitude of pubescent infatuations that conspire to ruin his young love life, this is the 4th animated short nomination for director Aleksandr Petrov (previously winning for The Old Man and the Sea). The style is like animated water colours and is beautiful yet tends to confuse some similar looking characters. The convoluted plot that jumps between reality and fantasy is also a draw back.
C+

Peter and the Wolf
Probably the best of the nominees as well as the longest at 32 minutes this BBC production is a retelling of the classic story with the score but no narration. Instead the stop motion animation creates simple yet engaging visuals that tell the story. I found myself reacting to this one more than any other nominee. And the ending of the story is change to a nice and PETA friendly conclusion that will garner votes among the Hollywood crowd.
A

Oscar Nominated Short Films

2008-02-24T18:04:00.000-05:00

The theater I saw this at was showing it on DVD input to he projection – this may be the reason all the films had a decidedly greyed out look to them.

Short (Live)

Om natten (At Night)
The story of 3 girls in an end of the line cancer ward on New Years Eve, their stories and how they try to cope with their situation. The film is antiseptic in its look as one would expect from the location with its florescence, metal surfaces and white accoutrement. We know from the start that the one girl with the jet black hair will cause the problems. The whole thing is packed with emotion and the acting from the three girls is superb but the pacing keeps you in their way too long for my tastes (not a hospital person). This is the longest of the shorts at 39 min, from denmark and produced by Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa.
A-

Il Supplente (The Substitute)
An Italian comedy with a twist. The film opens on a montage of images in a high school and brings us into a class where we are introduced to the new substitute teacher who proceeds to play with the students turning their stereotypical roles against them (kiss up, arty poet, dumb jock, ect). In the middle of this the principal comes in asking who this man is… he apologizes and jumps out the window. Then we follow him to see he is a business man working in a building overlooking the school while a voice over talks about the need to break out of adult thinking. Once in a meeting with his boss a new situation presents itself… will he use this new found mischievous streak or cave to the corporate pressure? This is a fun little film that floats by quickly. (17 min)
B+

Les Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)
A charming little film (how can it not be with that title) about a couple of affable tramps who find themselves with a deaf-mute (or maybe he just doesn’t know French) tag along after a pick pocketing attempt goes wrong. They realize they can use him to make some cash… but that turns out badly. Then the kid makes an unexpected haul in a theater due to his ability to crawl under the seats (checked my coat at this point). They celebrate and expand their operation until a stupid mistake on the part of one of the tramps lands them all in the slammer. This is a well shot and edited short that gets its story across in 31 minutes and I think will be the winner tonight.
A

Tanghi Argentini
This feels more like a super bowl commercial than a short film (though that is often a blurred line). This is the shortest of the films at 14 minutes and tells the tale of a Belgian office worker who makes a date online for Tango! In two weeks… you guessed it he doesn’t know how to tango. So he begs a fellow office worker to teach him… the office worker is a 6’ 3” bald guy – but a former tango master. Cue montage. We get to the big night and the dance is going great till she leans in to kiss him and he drops her. Feeling sad he heads off to the bar with the teacher. We see the woman sad at their table and he says that the teacher should make her happy by asking her to dance, which goes quite well. The next day the teacher comes to the office thanking the man and after walking away we find hi break out a sheet of paper with the names of all their coworkers and he crosses the teachers name off! It’s an office cupid! This is the best looking of the shorts with the camera and edits replicating the motion of the dancers on screen. But as I said it kind of feels like a long commercial instead of a short film.
A-

The Tonto Woman
A short from the UK, filmed in Spain, replicating the American Old West, this is easily the worst of the offerings. The plot is of a cattle thief who stumbles upon a naked woman in out in the desert range. She is white but her jaw is covered in the Native American tattoos of a skwa. He finds that she was kidnapped shortly after marriage by Indians and held for 11 years before her husband was able to get her back. She is now kept in this shack on his ranch away from polite society and he cannot even look at her. The cattle thief gets her a dress and takes her out for dinner enamored with her beauty and strength. Of course it all ends in a gunfight (off screen) between the husband’s men and the thief. The acting in the film is BAD, very, very bad. The characters are badly lit and the whole 35 minutes is just painful… have no idea how this got a nomination. Should have nominated Spider instead.
D

Charlie Bartlett (Review)

2008-02-20T12:21:00.003-05:00

Charlie Bartlett is amusing high school comedy teeming with pop psychology and self aware teens just waiting for the spark that breaks them from their clicks and inspires everyone to come together to have fun and fight the man. The spark is the titular character played by Anton Yelchin and the man is hard drinking Robert Downey Jr. Yelchin brings a kind of goofy charm to the roll much like he did as the unwitting victim in Alpha Dog and the character is given to flourishes of zany teenage wackiness, a refreshing break from the genre where most writers feel the need to bury these character building parts of their adolescent memory in favor of plot. Bartlett is the perfect aspiration character for a film like this, the mischievous outcast who uses his wits and to become king-o-the-school. Most of the characters in the film are archetypes with obvious psych 101 issues but since that is the plot of the film is don’t see it as a problem, the same with some of the more predictable and cheese ball moments that both flow from this and are pretty much par for the course in the genre.

What I liked the most was that the film isn’t about sex and parties – which are just treated as banal parts of the HS experience – or about the clique-y nature of HS politics but instead focuses on the identity quandaries and psych issues of the students. The film owes much more to John Hughes’s Breakfast Club than American Pie or Clueless but the black and white nature of authority that was present in that classic is also investigated in this film. The filmmaker’s paid more attention to the “moment” between Vernon & Carl and drew that out into a full character who is in the end also a victim of the system. I can’t say whether this will become a classic like those films – I guess TBS will be the judge of that when they get broadcast rights – but it was an enjoyable film none the less.

B/B+

Jumper (Review)

2008-02-14T01:37:00.001-05:00

So I can just barely recommend this. Wanted to get that out of the way just incase there was any question. This is not a good film. Hayden Christensen is once again terrible. Sam Jackson phones it in and Diane Lane's 5 minutes are a waste. Jamie Bell is good but he's done better. Characters are crap & their reactions dumbfounding at times. Christensen has 1 mode... follow people around and wine. He did it with Ewan McGregor, Peter Saarsgard and Kevin Kline and now he does it with Bell - always to mixed results. He's best when he doesn't talk. He's very much like Keanu but, like, earnest. I fear for Neuromancer now that he's cast as the lead.

Still, when that is all sifted thru the actual action in the film - something Liman usually aces - is thrilling. The jump fights are some of the coolest crap committed to film - like bampfing times 10 and at great distances... and with cars. The film doesn't really come alive until more than 1/2 way through when Bell's character is established and the training and fighting begins. But the scene drive/jumping a Mercedes CL Class through Tokyo at 100mph is a blast and the final 30 minutes of the film (save the ending) is solid popcorn delight.

However, you have to get past a whole hell of a lot of crap to get there and I know some people just can't stomach that. If you go bring your stupid hat and a teenage girl - she'll be the only one enjoying the first 30 of Christensen eye-candy and junior high angst set up.

C/C+

EZ1Productions - Start of the Spring Game

2008-02-05T17:26:00.000-05:00

The new Spring Box Office Challenge game starts today and runs thru April. Head over and sign up to test you skills at creating the best spring movie line-up possible and maybe win a prize!

Cloverfield (Review)

2008-01-17T14:45:00.000-05:00

It is shocking how similar producer JJ Abrahms latest offering is to The Mist. Both feature strange creature of varying sizes and mysterious origins. Both have scenes where people are in a grocery store with a cloud on the outside. Both set up everything you need to know about the characters through simplistic devices in about 10 minutes. And both weren’t as good as I thought they’d be. However this is the better of the two films and the reason is that I think the attempt at social commentary in this one works. The whole thing is filmed by one of the participants and no one really ever seems to question why the guy has a camera rolling for 7 hours – obviously it’s for YouTube…at first, and then it become citizen journalism. You have a couple other shots of people using their cell phones ect to record moments as well but this guy is what Time’s person of the year par excellance (2006, not Putin). But it also doesn’t beat you over the head with this, its just interwoven into the plot - this is not a film that takes itself seriously enough to atempt that.

Of course the acting is crap (esp the girl in trouble who’s sobbing in the last 20 minutes is annoying) and some character motivations are absurd, but it’s a giant creature movie…who cares. There are also times when the action drags a little too long in slowdown mode mostly toward the end of the film but the big action scenes – especially a night vision (it’s a really cool camera) escape from alien spider type things in a subway tunnel - are fairly pulse pounding. The creatures are CGed pretty effectively actually – much better than those in many recent films and I let out a yelp at one point. But over all it’s the migraine inducing action and sound that make this a fairly effective monster mash. This is something you have to see in the theater otherwise its probably not worth it at all, but try not to sit in the first 10 rows or so.

B-

The RIAA is Naughty and DFA Records Is Nice

2007-12-24T20:48:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays all, here are 3 more trax from DFA Records:

Hurcules and Love Affair - "Hurcules Theme" (my favorite of the bunch, nice disco/funk track, anticipating their debut disc in '08)

Shocking Pinks - "I Want U Back"

Prinzhorn Dance School - "Realer, Pretender"

And also I have an a$$ load of cards leftover from the Starbucks/iTunes Song of the Day promo that expire on the 31st. Since the RIAA has now decided everything that you've ripped from the cd's you bought constitutes an illegal use of the songs you should grab as many legal ones as you can, but please leave a comment letting others know which ones are used. These can also be used to open accounts in the UK, Canadian, French, Dutch, Japanese or Australian iTunes stores (all of which have weekly free tracks to check out) without a local credit card.

John Fogerty - "Gunslinger"
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Emily King - "Moon"
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Gloria Estefan - "90 Millas"
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A Fine Frenzy - "You Picked Me"
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John Legend - "Show Me"
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Patti Scialfa - "Looking for Elvis"
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Herbie Hancock - "Maiden Voyage"
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Annie Lennox - "Dark Road"
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Angie Stone - "Happy Being Me"
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Brandi Carlile - "Turpentine"
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Alice Smith - "New Religion [ƒ Pauletta Washington]"
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Rogue Wave - "Lake Michigan"
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Alice Russell - "Hurry On Now [ƒ TM Juke]"
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Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - "Grace Is Gone"
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Bitter:Sweet - "Heaven (Nicola Conte 'West Coast Vibes' Remix)"
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Greyboy - "Got to Be a Love [ƒ Sharon Jones]"
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Spanish Harlem Orchestra - "Sacala Bailar"
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Rissi Palmer - "Country Girl"
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Raul Midon - "Pick Somebody Up"
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Joss Stone - "Tell Me 'Bout It (Live from the Bowery Ballroom)"
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Federico Aubele - "Maria Jose"
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Sara Bareilles - "Love Song"
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Hilary McRae - "Consider Me Gone"
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John Mayer - "Dreaming With a Broken Heart"
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Galactic - "I Got It (What You Need) [ƒ Lyrics Born]"
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Bebel Gilberto - "Um Segundo"
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Suzanne Vega - "Frank & Ava"
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Sia - "Day to Soon"
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Paul McCartney - "Only Mama Knows"
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Enjoy!

The Bucket List (Review)

2007-12-12T21:35:00.000-05:00

Rob Reiner does a damned fine job of channeling former brother-in-law Gary Marshall in this flick. Its an overly sentimental, manipulative and predictable story. But the timing and performances from Nicholson and Freeman make this holiday feel-good fluff worth a look.

As anyone can see from the trailers, Nicholson plays a wealthy hospital corporation owner who gets sick and ends up in one of his own hospitals in a room with Freeman. They are both sick, form a bond and decide to do everything they ever wanted to do with the months the doctors give them.

There are the typical life lessons that one teaches the other and both characters have enough depth for you to invest in their happiness. The funny parts are great (Nicholson is the joker while Freeman plays the straight man as expected). While there is a whole lot in the film to be cynical about if you just take it for what it is, an enjoyable way to spend 2 hrs and you leave feeling just fine... though not worthy of lengthy review.

B (How this made NBR's Top 10 of the year I have no idea)

Atonement (Review)

2007-12-07T13:14:00.000-05:00

An actors film that is at times engrossing and often satisfying but there are flaws that hold it back from true romanic epic status.

This non-linear narrative starts off in a pastoral British country estate in the tense times between the wars. The owner's eldest daughter (Keira Knightley) relaxes after coming home from Cambridge and falls for the long time, yet upwardly mobile helper boy played by James MacAvoy. On a hot day the house gets packed with family and friends and mistakes happen... and other things happen that are not mistakes. Briony Tallis, the youngest daughter, allows her overactive imagination to get the best of her and MacAvoy is falsely accused of a heinous crime and sent to prision. 4 years later he enlists and before shipping to France the romance is rekindled providing the perfect set up for painful seperation and a sweet homecoming.

The deftly handled overlapping narrative of the first act flips between several first person set-ups to reveal several points of the story. The acting is pure british stage and uniformly impressive. The flaws aren't revealed until the war begins and the overlapping turns to flashback laden timeshifting and the story gets muddled. The small upstairs/downstairs intruigue of the early part of the film works beautifully but the the grand epic of the longing and horrors of war fail to live up to this start. There is one long-shot on the beach in Dunkirk that lasts for more than five minutes yet despite this technical feat the scene adds nothing to the plot and this is just one scene among many that while powerful in their own right are adrift from any relavance to the story and fail to build up MacAvoy's character.

Once back in Britian we catch up with the Tallis sisters and the film refocuses with strong character scenes and plot resolution on the way to an emotionally powerful finale which is tellegraphed by some subtle flightly camera work and a sense that something is slightly off but the bad taste of the second act still lingers. I liked the film for the most part and the leads are strong but it is far from the Oscar contender the hype would lead one the lead to believe.

B+

A special mention about the main title theme and its variations...loved it. Though I don't know him by name Dario Marianelli (did V for Vendetta) crafts a great piece around a base of type strokes from a typewriter and it works beautifully.

The Golden Compass (Review)

2007-12-05T12:20:00.000-05:00

Maybe this is what people who didn't read the LOTR books felt like while watching. The names of places, people, ect all sound very similar and it felt like there were some in there that were never first explained. This is a problem inherent in creating a fantasy world like this.

Other than that the whole thing is just very bland. The stakes are barely established and the main plot point in this area (played by Daniel Craig) is barely in the film anyway. The actual stakes of the whole series aren't revealed till the final act of the film just before is a visually uninteresting battle. If you've got a PG-13 rating anyway make a decently violent battle, and even thought it's set at night light it better. This looks like a 70m film for the most part instead of something that was at least twice that - they spent way too much on talent that didn't really show up.

Sam Elliot is the only decent name in the cast that acquits himself well. Most of the actors don't seem to know what is going on (Craig, Eva Green) likely because they have little to do and then there are Simon McBurney & Nicole Kidman who play so far over the top its laughable.

Director Chris Weitz for his part does almost everything wrong. It feels like he sat down to watch a hand full of fantasy epics and tried to copy them...badly. The editing is poor, this film has no consistent flow, and everything about that final fight is terrible. The sneak I was at last Saturday was 85% full and 5 or so people clapped at the end before realizing no one else was gonna join them and promptly stopped.

Kinda feel sad for New Line, the attached trailers looked pretty "bomb-y." The new Will Farrell flick Semi-Pro steps too far into the the dumb zone and another ghastly fantasy Inkheart. This is not good news for a studio having one of the worst years for both money and quality I've ever seen (Love in the Time of Cholera, Shoot 'em Up, Rush Hour 3, Rendition, Mr. Woodcock, Martian Child, The Number 23, El Cantante, Code Name: The Cleaner and now this).

C-

The Mist (Review)

2007-11-20T13:58:00.000-05:00

Frank Darabont, writer/director of two of the best and most successful Stephen King adaptations ever has teamed up with the man from Maine a for a fourth time to adapt his novella The Mist for the big screen…he should’ve stopped at 3.

Actually the film, for all but the final reel, is a capable if hackneyed creep fest with several solid scare moments. Every character is set up in seconds…they are stock and thus don’t need any fleshing out. There is the manly hero with a heart & his very unmanly child, the antagonistic neighbor/judge up from NYC for the weekend, the town crazy woman, the local yokels of limited intelligence, the new woman in town, the take-no-shit grandma, the marines, the young kid with bravado, the girl next door, the store manager with authority and the local clerk with some very helpful skills in his past and you’ve seen them all before. This being a movie about supersized bugs… you shouldn’t really expect much more and they all, to a one, make dumb decision after dumb decision in the way that makes you want to call back at the screen (and many did…it was a good audience) as if they could hear you. The film tries to touch on social issues and psychology with these characters but its so hyperbolic that that it can't come up with anything of use to say.

So the mist comes in and everyone is trapped in a grocery store. One woman has to leave to get to her kids and she goes into the mist and we hear screams. After a scene in the loading doc where we first glimpse the creatures and someone dies they realize their predicament and the cliques form. The film then becomes a battle between the crazy woman (Marcia Gay-Harden) who proclaims herself a prophet and reads fitting lines from revelations, the judge (Andre Braugher) and his hatred for the townies and the hero (Thomas Jane) and the sane people who are trying to find a solution.

There is one perfectly unnerving scene during their first night when the giant flying bugs come and start to land of the store’s plate glass window that is the highlight of the film but once the window breaks the succession of genre clichés becomes unbearable. After this, Harden’s overbearing preaching holds sway for much of the film and naturally the simpleminded folk join her fold leading to more death and showing us how terrible people can be without the restrictions of society. Finally, after a large confromtation, Jane escapes with his son and a handful of others, hops in his 70’s era Land Rover with 15 or so lights (looks really cool in the mist) and exits the parking lot while the lights wash over the faces.

If only the film had ended here. Instead we get this montage with an oppressive new age chant played at ridiculous levels and an ending that while screaming pathos rings cynical and hollow. This desperate attempt to rip your emotional core is just pathetic given the film that came before it and it is a total disconnect with the goofy interdimensional invasion plot. Why this grand attempt is here I have no idea – it was not in the novella from what I’ve read and feels like Darabont was just tired of people criticizing his tendency toward sap that he felt he would go completely in the other direction – neither work. Oh, and on top of this the woman who walked out is alive and well despite the earlier implication making the whole brutal stand in the store a useless exercise. This was one time when an ambiguous ending would’ve been perfect but instead it makes you realize that you will never get that 127 minutes back.

C-

Control (Review)

2007-11-17T17:22:00.000-05:00

If its fall it must be biopic time!

At least the arc of this one is different than most. Control is based on a book written by the wife of Ian Curtis and details his life and their relationship from 73 to 80.

The story of the band and the times in which they lived is part of the mythical annals of rock by now. The band was formed after the legendary Sex Pistol's show at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall in '76 and went on to sign with Tony Wilson's Factory Records and became the kings of Manchester. Two years later their debut album was released and two later again the band was done and Curtis dead by his own hand.

Much of this was already committed to film in 24 Hour Party People, an outstanding piece, but the tones of the two couldn't be more different.

The film is the first feature from Anton Corbijn, iconic photographer (U2, Depeche Mode) and music video director ("Heart shaped Box," "One - European Version") who has first hand knowledge of the people, scene and music in the film. The picture of Curtis portrayed in the film is much different than that in 24 HPP. He is a romantic poet who marries at 18, works contentedly for the British employment service whist not with the band and until his first grand mal seizure is a fairly upbeat person. Once he begins having fits though things turn south. His wife becomes pregnant and they grow distant while his is on the road where he meets another woman. He is also placed on a potent cocktail of medication in a (failing) effort to stave off the fits. Finally when faced with divorce and shame over his condition he hangs himself in his kitchen.

As one would expect from Corbijn, the film is in high contrast black and white and the composition of every shot is beautiful. What I didn’t expect (though perhaps should of) were the vast amounts of dry British sarcasm and dark humor that make up most of the film. The only time queues are at the beginning and end of the film but for the most part Corbijn keeps the pace strong and steady until the last act where we see Curtis falling apart. And as Curtis, Sam Riley (who also had a part in 24HPP) is stunning. He’s cool and tortured all at the same time and knocks out the vocals with eerie likeness.

Of course, the music (iTunes) though is the real highlight. JD’s tracks sound great and they are all performed by the actors themselves. Bowie, Iggy Pop, Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground, Buzzcocks, Roxy Muxic & John Cooper Clarke all make appearances and New Order (the 3 remaining members of JD) provides original scoring pieces as well.

A tragic story but a great film.

A/A-

___________________________________________________________________

Check out the cast doing "Transmission" live from the soundtrack. (MP3)

No Country for Old Men (Review)

2007-11-08T01:17:00.000-05:00

Everyone has said it but...The Coens are back.

After two attempts to the mainstream the Coen brothers go back to their roots and ironically will likely get the BO success they so desired. But don't expect to be blown away by this film. It's been hyped way to much for that. This is a solid cat & mouse, western set in 1980 but it lacks the jaw-dropping moments of flash shown some of their earlier work. The Coen signatures are present again including a blacker than pitch vilian stunningly pulled off by Javier Bardem. He is after Josh Brolin who has stumbled upon a satchel of cash lost in a literal mexican stand-off. Brolin is also in top form as is the old cop on the case played by Tommy Lee. Aside from a fairly tired turn from Woody Harrelson the acting is top notch.

Of course much of that is due to the lines the are given. The script is vintage Coens. Though I don't know how much was in the source material, the dialogue is like west Texas's wet dream of it's quirky self... and the black humor that comes from much of it is priceless. Of course there is that ending, or lack there of. Much will be made of this - indeed the screening was closed with quite a few whiskey, tango, foxtrots - but I found it satisfying in a way that the sentimentality of 3:10 to Yuma was not.

Like Fargo reinvents the Noir (Film Blanc anyone?) this film takes a western and dresses it up in 80's K-Mart threads and Ford Broncos and it works just fine. They make the case that the west of the 1980 was bloodier and more frightening than that which had come before... echoing the times that we live in, especially here in Philly.

A+
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The Electric Soft Parade - Appropriate Ending

No Country for Old Men - Free Advanced Screening

2007-11-06T15:58:00.000-05:00

11/7/07 in Philly. Click for details.

Free DFA EP

2007-10-29T01:08:00.000-04:00

Click on the banner above for a 3 track digital EP from DFA Records featuring an 8 minute video of LCD Soundsystem doing Us v Them live in Manchester (Vermont?) along side tracks from Prinzhorn Dance School & Shocking Pinks.

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Quick Shots

2007-10-28T02:23:00.000-04:00

A+
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [A visually stunning and emotionally moving piece of filmmaking]
I’m Not There [Poetic and experimental with a Stunning turn from Blanchette]

A
The Band’s Visit [Pitch perfect direction in this fish out of water comedy]
Into the Wild [An vibrant & romantic joy to watch with a stunning climax]
Spider (Short) [Its on the web - watch it now, thank us later]

A-
The Counterfeiters [The whole package]
Encounters at the End of the World [Fun and irreverent doc about the eccentric people, animals and landscapes that inhabit the great white south]
Salim Baba (Short) [Didn't mention this in the write up but it was a very remarkable short doc - Ralph did mention it though]
Wind Man [Magical realism, colorful characters, and contrasts galore - may not be your cuppa but i very much enjoyed it]

B+
Jar City [Even the most modern of crimes can be tackled by good old school detective work but the pacing may put some off]
Juno [Should be an indie crossover hit, a laugh riot with a very solid story]
The Pearce Sisters (Short) [Macabre but in a humorous way]
Persepolis [An astounding story hindered somewhat by the uninteresting animation]

B
Fission (Short) [Little story but great animation]
My Enemy’s Enemy [Straight forward doc about using bad people to fight those who may be worse]

B-
Brick Lane [Good but VERY familiar story, the 9/11 scenes elevate it above mediocrity]
Help! [Felt stale and dated, but hey We Can Work It Out]
L’Amerique Lunaire (short) [60's western landscapes over a solid score and a eco-story]

C-
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [What was Cannes thinking?, tight for 45 minutes the it all falls apart]
Margot at the Wedding [Baumbach's latest is disappointing but Black is once again great]

D+
Cargo 200 [Torture to watch but competent filmmaking]
A Journey with Peter Sellars [A boring doc, even if you like lavish opera]

D
Secret Sunshine [Truly painfully terrible melodrama]

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 4

2007-10-28T00:19:00.002-04:00

Sometimes Mick Jagger Is Wrong

Monday was easily the cleanest day for my program. A slew of circles and Xs paraded about the films on the list for Sat & Sun due to turn downs and timing problems. But Monday has but 1 X as I had previously seen my initial choice for the morning. The rest of the day’s schedule turned out perfectly. Everything I still wanted to see was playing had gotten carried over and none of them were playing opposite each other. So at the relatively reasonable time of 9:15 I was at my first film of the morning with R & V.

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Persepolis is based on an autobio-graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi. It details her life growing up in an upper-class Iranian family and having her world shattered by the revolution in 1979. Being an outspoken girl she bristles under the laws of the Islamic regime and her parents send her to Europe to save her. Culture shock ensues and she grows up pretty quick. She returns to Iran but as the old saying goes, “you can never go home again.” The country has gotten even more conservative and she has grown more distant from her parents. She attends university but again bristles over the endemic masochism and close calls with the law. She once again leaves her country and family to return to Europe older and wiser. The story itself is very intriguing. The modern cosmopolitan family depicted in the pre revolutionary era was startlingly familiar, like a tale of the Kennedy clan. The animation is stark, simple and not really complimentary to the story which bursts with life, but this is definitely a must see for this life that has been lived.

Next up is food, good food. I stopped by the gondola to pick up a pass to my next film up at the Chuck Jones and headed to the town park for the Labor Day picnic. Part of the pass fee included this Monday lunch with Omaha Steaks, Haag & Daas sundae stations, and other assorted “sustenance.” Jana, Ian and I took over a piece of grass in the sun and ate and chatted for a bit before I had to run off early to take the gondola ride to see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I met up with Ralph and Vanessa again in the theater and we settled into what was for me the best film of the festival.

The gripping story of M. Bauby, the former editor of ELLE France who suffered a stroke at a high point in his life paralyzing most of his body, the film is shot mostly in first person but after the first few minutes you never really notice it. Janusz Kaminski lenses this visually stunning film in the first non-Spielberg film I’ve seen from him since Jerry Maguire. The first person shots float beautifully and bring you into the world Bauby must be experiencing. While convalescing he learns to communicate by blinking his remaining good eye while the nurse cycles through the alphabet to the letter he wished to use. Bauby then write a memoir this way and that is what the script for this film is based on. He also does not glorify himself in anyway. Through flashbacks we learn that he was not the nicest person before the stroke and he doesn’t change even after at one point he allows his ex-wife to interpret a phone call from his lover that caused the end of their marriage. This is a very powerful film and I can’t believe anyone will turn in a better performance this year than Mathieu Amalric as Bauby – though I doubt the academy will award him a trophy.

Next, I finally was able to check out Margot at the Wedding, the third film from writer/director Noah Baumbach, a film that is decidedly less charming than his first 2 efforts. The film about a New York writer returning to her childhood home for the wedding of her estranged sister is laden with big actors. Nicole Kidman plays Margot the writer, Jennifer Jason Leigh is her sister who is engaged to Jack Black. Black is the surprising highlight of this film as his performance goes well beyond what we’re used to seeing from him. Kidman and Leigh however are uninteresting and at times unwatchable in their morose tone and passive aggressive attitude. Baumbach’s head is firmly up his ass on this one as the film oozes self importance and produces nothing of insight or, as was the case in his previous films, charm. He needs to stop writing about wealthy writers and their family problems and take on something new.

I followed this with a film I liked even less – 2007’s Palm D’or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The film is set in the late 80’s in Romania just before the end of communist rule. A young co-ed goes with her friend to get a back room abortion but she wasn’t aware of what the cost was. Not sure what the jury at Cannes was thinking but this couldn’t have been the best film at the festival. The build-up to the actual operation is extremely tense – and it takes only the first 30 minutes of the film. It is followed by nothing at all. There is a 20 minute scene at a dinner table where the subject was Easter eggs. They talked about Easter eggs for 20 minutes! I find nothing interesting about this mundanity and similarities to Day Night, Day Night were also excruciating. It’s a whole lot of footage with out any plot or motive – but shot in a very Cannes winning way. Oh and there’s a completely unnecessary shock scene right in the middle that makes the film even less valuable.

Finally it was time for the last film of the festival, and finally I was able to check out Into the Wild (I’ve only mentioned it 10 times or so without ever seeing it). I said Diving Bell was the best film of the festival, but this one was my favorite. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name this is the story of one Christopher McCandless who abandons his upper-class suburban life assumes the name Alexander Supertramp and hitchhikes his way across the USA in search of experience and communion with nature. Finally making his way to the foothills of a mountain range in Alaska and spends several months living off the land with nothing but a sack of rice and a shotgun. Alex is played by Emile Hirsch in his finest role to date. Hirsh creates a brash, confident, mischievous, affable yet troubled young man who carries the film on his back and makes it look effortless. Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys costar Jenna Malone plays his sister, William Hurt his father and Marcia Gay Harden his mother. Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Kristen Stewart and Hal Hollbrook round out the cast as people Alex meets and touches on his travels. I haven’t seen a film this alive in a while and it is extremely infectious. Nightline recently did a story on people who have seen the film or read the book and despite the cautionary tone they feel the need to make the same pilgrimage north to an abandoned 1920’s era public transport bus that was Alex’s home for the summer of 1993, so many in fact that the park service is thinking of moving that bus. Alex boils over with hobo ideology and anger over the facts of his parents’ marriage and his father’s former life. These details are fleshed out in the many narrative devices in the film including latter writing by Alex, diary entries from his sister and voice over from Alex himself. But I never found these exposition points burdensome in fact they are essential to the telling of this story in which Alex keeps his motivations from everyone he meets. One gets the sense though that his family issues are only part of it and that the need for adolescent and post-adolescent males to find themselves in this perfectly regimented society and break with norms to find out what else it out there is also a huge factor. The stunning climax of the film left many speechless and other with watery eyes and it was also the perfect way to end the festival for me.

I have since read the book and while also very good it is a whole different animal than the film. It tries to detail the life and history of McCandless and his family to provide motive and understand the person and it also tries to place him in a lineage of outdoor eccentrics who have over the years shunned society to live off the land and test themselves against something greater. I would say to watch the film first and absorb the emotional punch of it before getting into the details of the book – but definitely pick up the book as well because it answers many questions you may have after watching the film.

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So finally after a weekend cooped inside the makeshift (boutiquely so) theaters of Telluride and Mountain Village and a day where I was finally able to see everything I wanted, we all gathered for the first time since Friday morning’s breakfast to have a drink and talk about everything. I said that I was planning on waking up early the next morning to take some pictures of the beautiful landscape before setting off on the 3 hr drive north to Grand Junction (McCandless actually spent some time here I found out in the book) for my noon flight but then said I knew that would never happen and I would be rushing because I’d wake up late. So I left at 8:45 just in time to get stuck in 45 minutes of traffic just getting down Telluride’s main access road as they were expanding it. I flew back over the rolling Rockies noting Ralph Lauren’s “Double RL” ranch and found that the Pontiac G6 is governed at 106. I did however make it with 15 minutes to spare – luckily the plane was late…good ol’ US Air. And now the recap is done. I will do a graded highlight post though.

Thank You to Jana for the invitation and the hospitality and the directions on how to do the festival right. And thanks to Ian, Ralph & Vanessa for being there as well...couldn't have done it without ya (well I could've but it wouldn't have been as much fun or cheap )

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 3

2007-10-27T00:15:00.000-04:00

Honestly, I Don't Snore

The plan for the next day was to immerse myself in the biggest named film of the festival Into the Wild. There was a screening at the Chuck Jones early in the morning followed by a Q&A and later in the day was a discussion on the film and the novel and story and whatever other condescending questions discussion moderator Werner Herzog wished to discuss. Given its marquee status though, the Chuck was all sold out. We were tagging along with a couple people on the Gondola up when one got a phone call from a friend who had gotten in line and hour earlier and said that he was going to be turned away. So we got to the Mountain Village and hoped right on the down going gondola.

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The only viable option (viable = timely and interesting) was My Enemy’s Enemy. This is a doc by Kevin MacDonald who previously directed acclaimed and controversial doc Touching the Void and my #1 film of ’06 The Last King of Scotland. The film tells the story of Klaus Barbie, noted Nazi was criminal and famed “Butcher of Lyon,” who weeded out dozens of members of the French Resistance, detailing both his rise to power in the within the fascist regime but focuses more on his post war exploits. Using found footage, talking heads, first hand accounts and a document trail a mile long the doc shows how Barbie became a CIA informant and later schooled the then fledgling agency on the arts of torture and sedition in order to combat the Soviet threat. He was called as a witness in a trial of Vichy treasonists despite his place in French history he was never tried himself due to US pressure. When the French eventually did demand his arrest he escaped to South America with the help of a Vatican group who smuggled Christian Nazi war criminals out of Europe. From there he became a power broker in Bolivia with a close knit cabal who helped the CIA to overthrow the socialist but democratically elected government and train the new Military regime in his form of expertise. The film paints a picture of the Cold War era in which anyone who was your enemy’s enemy was indeed your friend. It shows how Barbie was indeed a monster and how he could sometimes be an affable guy and how he was used by our government to further their ends and because of his past crimes was easily deniable. The parallels to our current extended war are unmistakable. Pakistani President Musharaf is definitely our enemy’s enemy and even more eerie is the connection (not made in the film) that many of the torture tactics being used in Gitmo and other less publicized prisons are just hands me down techniques from the Nazi era.

MacDonald was on had for a Q&A after the film and talked about his desire to make a small, back to basics, anti-style documentary. He was actually editing the film on his laptop the previous year when he brought Last King to Telluride. Unlike Touching the Void which was praised and scorned for its reenactment of almost the entire episode, this film was totally undramatized.

Following the film I went to the poster signing of the official 34th Festival poster – the artist typically paints in this 40’s 1-sheet style and did the poster in that way. Deciding that since I had neither seen the film nor read the book I was going to skip the Into the Wild discussion and use the time that so many were there to add in another film to replace the one I missed the day before. So I went down to the Masons Hall Cinema (a theater set up in a room of a Masonic hall) to catch Wind Man. To my surprise Ralph and Vanessa were in line already and I hadn’t had a chance to see something with them yet.

Wind Man was described as “magical realism” in the program guide. I had seen a film at the Philadelphia Film Festival earlier this year with the same label and was very much bored by the proceedings so I was a little wary of this film. All that changed seconds into the film. The setting is drab; a small village in Kazakhstan (jagshemash) at the start of the post-Soviet era, but this just serves to contrast the colorful characters that inhabit the village. It opens on a grim reaper like figure wandering through the scrub and desert of central Asia. A young boy stumbles upon him and lifts up his hood to have a look and promptly runs screaming back to his village. Later that night the child becomes deathly ill…and a decrepit old angel falls from the sky into the boy’s family’s barn. The child is healed but the demon still roams and the townspeople are left to figure out what to do with this angel and how to stop the demon. The film is pretty visually sedate except during the lightning storm that brings the angel when the director conjures up a most ferocious thunderstorm with incredible sound to boot. The film features plenty of mysticism from the Islam of the people to the pre-Muslim myths that talk about the death demon to the Christian myths of angels. All of this took place in an era when Soviet suppression on these kinds of ideas had finally ended – though the other traditions provided their own brand of suppression…and suppress they do. The father sees his barn burned down by people trying to kill the angel and is tossed in jail for it. He eventually is forced to sell the thing but gets nothing due to its condition. Meanwhile more tragedy happens at home which is both caused and cured by this enigmatic angel. The cast plays these quirky townsfolk perfectly and in the end life just goes on – as is to be expected.

There was a Q&A after the film but I couldn’t stay as I was trying to run the length of the town to make it to yet another screening of Into the Wild. Of course this was not to be. So instead I went next door to catch the Le Pierre to catch the only film that would be out in time for the next film on my schedule. I probably should have just taken a nap. The film was A Journey with Peter Sellars. It’s a documentary about the titular man who is a dramatic prodigy. He was working at a puppet theater in Pittsburgh as a kid, modernizing Shakespeare at Harvard, ran the National Theater Company in DC and now teaches at UCLA and creates several different productions a year. The largest part of the film is watching extended clips of these productions. I fell a sleep at one point and was nudged to stop snoring…must’ve been the angle I was sitting at as I don’t snore.

After the film blessedly ended I got out ASAP to get in line for The Band’s Visit. Easily the best film of the day, this subtle, fish-out-of-water comedy was a riot. The fish are a band Alexandrian of police men (band is literal) who are sent to play at the opening of a new Egyptian cultural center in Israel. The headstrong captain gets them all lost and they end up at a bus stop a small, nearly deserted town in an arid corner of Israel in their bright blue concert uniforms. The out of water is this town and its people who take the band in and provide places for them to stay for the night. The framing of this film was impeccable. Very similar to Wes Anderson, the story is told in the straight on shots and the action of the film takes place all in the frames – even when it starts outside of them. There were very few insert shots or camera moves. The timing on the jokes was pitch perfect both on the part of the characters and on the part of the filmmaker. The story skirts a fine line between comedy and sadness, often on both sides of the fence at the same time. This is just one aspect of the numerous contrasts that make this film up. The choice that is made to spend the film away from the “canned” Arab/Israeli conflict allows the audience to see the characters to interact as people and believe their interactions to be more real. In the Q&A after the film the Israeli writer and director said they were very influenced by Arab/Egyptian films and actors and kids and that is actually voiced by the characters on screen and shows that the 2 sides aren’t as monolithic on a cultural level as we may think despite the political situation.

The final film of the night was the first I was able to see with Jana (well she was at Juno but I didn’t see her at all). The buzz for The Counterfeiters was huge by Sunday night – despite the fact that no one I had talked to had seen it. It was sold out Friday night and Ralph & Vanessa got turned away and the same happened to all 3 of us on Saturday night. But despite the fact that it was playing at one of the smaller theaters I decided to see if I could get in. I get there and Jana is already in line – yeah! Unfortunately we were later informed that it was the wrong line but we got in anyway – likely due to the rain and the fact that Margot at the Wedding, another perennial sell-out was once again playing at the same time.

The Counterfeiters tells the tale of the Nazi attempt to destroy Britain’s economy during WWII by flooding the country with fake pound notes. To this end they used the forced labor of a large group of Jews in a concentration camp. Due to the importance of this project this group was not only kept separate from the rest of the camp, they were treated with a much kinder hand than those outside their walls. Naturally this causes psychological strain on these trained craftsmen. The leader of the group, a world renown forger who was arrested whist working on this very same project, is torn between his need to accomplish the task, his own survival and that of his group of comrades. The voice of dissent in their band is a communist who is trying to sabotage the project so that they can help win the war against the Third Reich. There is never a dull moment in this film. The story and editing are solid and briskly paced and the acting is top notch. There are moments that evoke Schindler’s List though the film never veers to the emotionally manipulative level of that film. This film was actually opened in Prague a month later as I saw poster’s for it’s opening in a theater up the street from my hotel.

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Frankly I can’t remember what happened that night anymore. I believe there was a good bit of planning as most of the next day was TBAs and so we poured over the page announcing what they would be and witch ones were worth seeing. I also think we were trying to come up with the themes of the festival and WWII & life under totalitarian regimes seemed to be the big ones so far. In fact the doc at the begining of the day mentions the episode of the war that was dramatized in the final film of the day...and the trial that closed out that doc was covered in another doc at the festival about Barbie's lawer.

In the next chapter we get what we want.

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 2

2007-10-26T23:57:00.000-04:00

Running, Jumping, Standing Still

I don’t get up this early for work but I sacrificed this holiday weekend in the name of great Film (well a few great films and frankly a few duds). The atmosphere gelled the previous night where in we would mostly all wait up for each other back at the house in order to discuss the days views and make recommendations and cautions and see what the TBAs for the next day might be and plan a schedule – all for only about 30 min before we passed out. So the big thing the Friday night was that one of the 4 TBAs on Saturday would be filled with Juno – the second film from Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) I considered this a must see as did several others so the reshuffling and the dread at how much time to make it up to the Chuck Jones theater - a 15 minute gondola ride up and down a mountain - from the Palm theater – in the town highschool and the furthest from the gondola base. Luckily, for this theater only you get W2 (Wabbit Weservations – an ode to the creator of Bugs Bunny) either 90 minutes before the start of the film in Telluride or 5 hrs before the start of the film up in the next town of Mountain Village where the theater is actually located. Ralph and Vanessa were seeing 2 films up there early in the morning but not that one. So they agreed to snag me a W2 so I could get into the screening.

Another interesting thing is that each pass comes with 40 small boxes on either side of the badge, two of which are colored green. This means you have a guaranteed seat in the Sheridan Opera House – a small but high profile theater that provided the start of the festival 34 years ago – for those two films. Each of these boxes is punched when you see a film so that you don’t go to the same film twice. By day 3 you could start playing badge poker – my 3 in a row beats your two pair.

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My first film of the day was my first green spot. So I didn’t have to jump out of bead as early is I may have had otherwise (good thing with no Starbucks in town). I made my way down to the SOH and waited in the usual line for Secret Sunshine… as my badge was being punched I was told that there was another line for the greenies and that I could’ve been in much earlier and gotten a better seat than I had. Sign anyone?

A Korean film, Sunshine involved a widow who moves back to her husband’s small village from Seoul. The film had a plot twist every 30 min or so that sends it off in a new direction. This is interesting in theory but it becomes apparent after the first twist that they just keep going down hill – tragedy after tragedy, from a kidnapping to being born again and she just can’t seem to deal with anything…and screams and cries a lot. If things were handle differently this might be a very different review but it seemed very Korean TV in execution. The melodrama was allowed to go unchecked and there were extended scenes of singing and crying at prayer services. This does not make for riveting viewing. Perhaps it’s just a case of cultural viewing habits but I didn’t find anyone recommending this film and at 2.25 hrs it becomes an endurance test for even the most masochistic of filmgoers. (That’s 2 films with born again themes).

Flick 2 was the new Werner Hetzog documentary Encounters at the End of the World. My only previous experience with Herzog was Grizzly Man so I was not expecting this highly comical look at the people who choose to reside in Antarctica. Herzog narrates this blend of travel doc, scientific inquiry, anthropological examination, historical context piece and nature film in a dead pan manner that does little to belie the mocking condescension he seems to have for these colorful characters and creatures that live at the bottom of the world. He starts by giving the circumstances for the trip to the Antarctic (much like I did in an earlier post on the weekend!) that involved something about a monkey riding on a horse out in the desert…with animation. He proceeds to detail his disgust at the base camp/city that serves as the residence for most of the continents inhabitants and then interviews many of them occasionally asking pointed questions or providing commentary that undercut their scientific beliefs or play up their personal foibles. He spends some time with demented penguins watching one wander off into the deepest wastes to die. However one of his main inspirations for the trip was footage shot by the man who scored Grizzly Man. When he goes to the same area to experience some of this it is a truly remarkable sight. Some of the footage he used for a sci-fi film he had made previously. Even more surprising were the sounds that carry under the arctic ice shelf from the creatures that live down there – as Herzog said it sounded more like a Pink Floyd album than any natural sound you’ve ever heard. Equal parts fascinating and entertaining I’d highly recommend this doc.

Now with 25 minutes to spare and a 15 minute gondola ride ahead of us Ian and I started to run all the way from the Palm to the gondola… well I ran a bit of the time. Ian being 5 years younger and in much better shape apparently sprinted the ½ mile or so. Fortunately, I made it to the top, ran by Ralph and grabbed the W2 he had been holding (thank you) and got there just in time to be the last pass holder let into the theater. Of course I had to sit in row 1 but since those seats were angled backward and wend almost flat viewing the film wasn’t all that bad.

The director and writer of Juno were there to introduce their film. Jason Reitman said that he finished the final cut 3 days ago, screened it and it was put on a plane to telluride so this is the first time in front of an audience. Obviously the most mainstream film of the weekend this is a comedy about a high school girl (Ellen Page) who is knocked up by her longtime friend (Michael Cera – yes that kinda makes it funny to begin with). After running from the Planned Parenthood clinic terrified by the people she decided to give the child up for adoption. The chosen parents are played by a very proper and very eager to give of her motherly love Jennifer Garner and an indifferent and pan-laden Jason Bateman. Though this may sound mawkish, the film is far from it. Page delivers the acerbic wit penned by writer Diablo Cody (yes that is a pseudonym and yes she was a stripper) without any girly pretensions. I would call this film New Quirk (no I have no what the old version would be…Tina Fey?), from the opening credits that dissolve into animation from the cold open to the indie rock to the cute seasonal inter-titles the artifice of the film has a peculiar personality all on its own. I’m sure this will be a platforming indie hit in much the same way Reitman’s first film was.

From there everything went down hill. Literally at first! I went down the mountain on the gondola to get inline for Margot at the Wedding that had a Q&A with writer/director Noah Baumbach and low and behold the few people behind me were Reitman, Cody and their entourage. Those of us around asked a few questions and Reitman was a very congenial person, Cody was on the phone for most of the wait. They were ecstatic with the very positive reaction and were calling some other industry people to deliver good news. But the topic quickly turned to the fact that despite showing up more than an hour before the start of the film and being 110 or so people from the door of a 200 seat theater we were warned that we may not get in. There are certain levels of pass holders – Festival Passes are the standard all inclusive pass that gives you admission to all films and 2 dinners. Above those are Partron Passes which include priority seating then Sponsor Passes with even more priority and Show Ring passes for the ultra supporters (think there may have been another level I missed). But since they were all well above the rest of us (including the filmmakers) the line was cut around 95 and we were all turned away. At one point I said I would tackle the next patron who walked by…then that patron happened to be Laura Linney. As she gets applause in the middle of the street in town I thought that would be a bad idea. So I walked over to try and get into The Counterfeiters which was also turning people away the night before, including Ralph & Vanessa. Naturally the line for this is massive and even in a 500 seat theater I again get turned away. So I headed back to the condo pass in hand as all showings for that time block had started.

After kicking there a bit and chatting with Ralph and Ian at different times on how to rearrange my schedule to accommodate those that I had missed. I had rightly assumed that the massive turnaways would be added to the TBAs the next two days. Deciding to hit up the one film I was guaranteed to see I made my way to the small park in the center of town for the free open air showing of The Beatles in HELP! I’d never seen this and was a little taken aback by the sheer absurdity of the whole thing. Obviously influential on Austin Powers this spy spoof and Beatles spoof was actually too ridiculous to really like. Hmmm… maybe you have to know more about the life and times of the Beatles to really appreciate it. In order to get a W2 for my last show of the day (a paltry 5 instead of the desired 6), I left a little early when the 90 minute window opened and walked back for the close as the 2 locations were 2 blocks apart. It was so plotless I didn’t think I missed much.

I returned to the Chuck Jones for Saturdays final screening, Brick Lane, based on Ralph’s recommendation. The plot felt very well worn to me. A Bangladeshi girl is sent to England in an arranged marriage to an overweight, stubborn and chauvinistic older man. She feels trapped longing for her carefree life with her sister back home and starts a flirtatious relationship with a strapping young rogue which blossoms into more. Meanwhile their daughters can’t stand their father’s views and his inability to adapt to the English way of life. If you have seen East Is East, Bend It Beckham, (I was told) The Namesake or any number of Subcontinental woman cum UK wife films in the last few year you know the plot and the themes of culture clash, generation gap, unfaithful woman with marriage problems very well. The one new aspect of this film is that right in the middle 9/11 happens. I read that in the description and was still totally caught off guard to and moved at the scene when everyone runs to a TV to see what is going on. This event turns the plot and the rogue becomes more militant while it’s the father that pragmatically lectures the youth on their history and that their new found unity is unlikely to last. The film is superbly acted and directed well, but there is a twinge too much melodrama for me.

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The ride back down the mountain in the gondola was one of my favorite moments of the weekend. It was 1am and I was the only person on my gondola in the pitch black of ten thousand feet up in the Rockies…and the gondola stopped running. It wasn’t unexpected as it was doing this earlier nor was it long 1-2 minutes but it felt like much longer. There was a surprising lack of wind and it was both thrilling and a little scary. The stars look amazing from that height and with so little light pollution tingeing the pitch it was a dazzling sight. Soon the ride belts started up again and the silence was interrupted at intervals by the Doppler effect of the towers.

On the walk back to the condo I overheard some interesting and like HELP! absurdist conversational snippets I assumed were related to the days viewing but I didn’t know which films or the context of the larger conversation – things are often funnier that way. The first at the base of the gondola someone said, “But it wasn’t a Deus Ex Machina. It was, like a Nothing Ex Machina.” Further up the street was heard, “I’m not an American anti-Semite, I’m an Israeli anti-Semite.” I was silently bewildered and amused by these new pieces of knowledge but decided to continue my traipsing through the night instead of perusing a further inquiry. Upon returning to the condo no one was stirring so I turned a light on and realized Jana was already down for the count upstairs and no one else was yet back. So I turned the lights back off and I hopped on the computer for a bit (there is wifi everywhere) from bed. There were some brief discussions when Ian and Ralph made it back – mostly concerning the new TBAs and the Juno adventure – but as we were all pretty sleepy and most also had an early call time for our respective choices we retired rather swiftly.

In the next chapter we catch a few zzz's.

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Chapter 1

2007-10-25T23:34:00.003-04:00

Best Laid Plans

After a night’s sleep in the altitude it was tour and breakfast time. Jana led us on a stroll of the picaresque former mining town and from Smuggler Road to Brigadoon, the festival’s central tent, pointing out the venues and other places of interest. We walked through the town park (the plaque at the front says that this was the former working class area of the town in mining times – I found it funny that they made the ghetto a huge park with skate ramps.) We had breakfast at a nice little kitchen and collected the swag that was due us as a festival goers (3 cds that I have yet to listen to, a copy of Variety, coupons for Omaha Steaks, gum, mints, spice packets, info on whatever) and waited for high noon when the official program and schedule was released. We tried sitting on a bench/wall thing just outside the tent but that became difficult and it was right in the sun. We decided to go to the park – though Jana meant a different (and closer) park than the large one at the end of town. Oh well. So we had our schedules complete and got back together to discuss. I had an ambitious slate of 18 films, a discussion, and a poster signing set for the weekend – some of these I actually got to. Upon comparison Jana was nuts…but I will let her explain her opening night feat.

Almost forgot to mention that in there somewhere we strolled through the open air market and were completely enamored with a booth called Telluride Truffles. This woman makes what I can only call a ganache made from blends of chocolate and liquor. Some of the flavors were stunningly good: White Chocolate + Meyer’s Rum, Dark Chocolate + Chambord. Others were interesting but not in an awful way: Dark Chocolate + Jack Daniels, Dark Chocolate + Tequila…with rock salt. These are available in jars of as the fillings in said truffles. And of course the pieces of chocolate are shaped like mountain peaks with snow caps or ski trails…sweet…literally.

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I slated 3 for Friday night and made all of them easily – lulling me into a false sense of security. Ian and & both selected to start with Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, so I had a chance to ask him more about the festival whilst waiting in line.

The program description really does it justice as it is “like nothing else you’ve ever seen”. Haynes takes the biopic and shakes off the cobwebs while also infusing it with an experimental auteur’s singular vision. The title can be taken literally – it is a film about Dylan in which Dylan is not. Instead he is played both as person and persona by a series of avatars which represent the different periods of his life. Totally non-linear, the bits jump around like firecrackers while the film itself maintains a consistent emotional arc. A young boy named Marcus Carl Franklin is a find in his first film roll as the early Dylan’s Woody Guthrie persona. In his story he travels round the country on the rails as a vagabond singing about the working man and living off the kindness of strangers. He also sings a few tracks of his own and they sound great. Other pieces of the life and times of Bob Dylan include Heath Ledger as film star and estranged husband who is charged with handling the emotional relationship issues and does amicably but doesn’t stand out. Christian Bale plays the early folk Dylan and the later born again Dylan and is one of the stronger avatars. Ben Whishaw (who has also played Keith Richards and most recently stared as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume) as Arthur Rimbaud who always appeared in a static shot talking to camera in front of a white background – this and Blanchtte’s bits were mostly in black and white while the other segments are in color. Which brings me to Cate, wow, one of the best performances of the festival. You even forget that it is a woman playing a man and that she is 15 years older than the Dylan she is playing. It’s the attitude that makes this performance. She takes over from the infamous Newport Jazz & Folk Festival gig through Dylan’s tour of England as documented in D.A. Pennebacker’s Don’t Look Back. Granted this is the showiest portion of the story but she is simply electric in her time on screen. Finally if Richard Gere in the segment I found the most confusing – he plays the Billy the Kid of legend who was left to live by Pat Garrett and is just trying to live in solitude in what amounts to a land of circus folk. If you have seen what Haynes did with Velvet Goldmine and the story of Iggy Pop and David Bowie you can get a sense of what is happening here, even so, this is on a whole other level.

Slideshow of actors as Dylan

This was easily the most polarizing film of the festival and thus the most talked about. It seemed that people who did know more about Dylan were less into the film than I and others who knew very little of his life were. Odd that.

Unfortunately I followed this up with my least favorite film of the Festival. Cargo 200 is a Russian film set in 1984 the period before Glasnost and one of the darkest times for the Soviet people. It attempts to cinematically reproduce the decay of the empire and show the systemic corruption through the story of a Police Captain who moonlights as a vodka bootlegger and kidnaps a girl who he calls his wife, keeping her chained to a bed in the block he shares with his mother. What he does to her is depraved and shocking and the ignorance the mother shows not only to the girl but later to the death of her son is evidence of a crumbling soulless state. There are debates between a state Atheist teacher and another poor vodka bootlegger about this very subject – the fact that no god = no soul. Frankly I get what the film was saying and I still hated watching it. It was like watching death, drug out. There was a short before this film though that I really liked. The Pearce Sisters is a cartoon from the same studio and producers that created the Wallace & Gromit series. It is also depraved – but comedic-ly so and such was an amusing look at the live of two weathered and companionship-starved spinsters who live on an Island off the coast of Scotland and how they treat the occasion shipwrecked man who stumbles upon their stretch of the world.

The late film of the first night was the Icelandic thriller Jar City. The drab atmosphere really sets off this old school thriller with a futurist bent. With the help of a newly created private DNA database (based on an actual company in Iceland) a hardened detective with personal problems of his own tracks down a series of events spanning 30 years to solve the case… and there’s a young roguish sidekick to boot!! If you have seen Red Road (David I think you’re the only one) this film seems to be in a very similar vein minus the full frontal male nudity. Its deliberate, suspenseful and totally engrossing.

Preceding this film was a short that continued to get raves the whole weekend and a producer who was in attendance was claimed to have demanded the info on the director right away in order to sign him onto some project. It was called Spider and you can actually see it here.
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So finally we all made it back to homestead and I found out that my Saturday schedule would already need to be changed to accommodate a surprise sneak. This was a sign of things to come as the hours of though put into the original schedule were disrupted time and time again. Good thing I’m cool under pressure.

In the next chapter we move...occasionally

Telluride Film Festival 2007: Prologue

2007-10-24T06:07:00.000-04:00

The Road to the Rockies

So Jana (a net friend met through the EZ1 Movie Games) had sent me some fest materials a few years ago in hopes of enticing me to come out to this, being the avid festivalgoer I am. Low and behold a few years later the opportunity to head up to the mountains and ignore this very scenic experience to watch movies for 4 days presents itself and not only would Jana be there with Ian (her son) in tow but Ralph (another netizen of the EZ boards) and his wife were going as well! (David - a third - was thinking of coming but circumstances didn’t permit, I feel for you as this was a great time.)

So of course there was some fun in getting there. This remote mountain village has seasonal service to its airport which is sketchy at the best of times and this isn’t even the right season. In addition I was limited to 3 airports in a 3 hr radius as I was using frequent flier miles and USAir only flies to these destinations. I settled on Grand Junction, CO which googles out to just under a 3 hrs drive. Flight 1 to Phoenix was fine but things got interesting on flight 2.

The gate person comes on and says that we will be delayed because there is a mechanical problem…never a good sign. So we start to board and I am last in line so I can snag an open row if there happens to be any. But when I get down the gangway and onto the tarmac to put my bag in the planeside check (it was a small turboprop) I was told that there was no room and that I’d have to take it aboard with me – even though there is no way for it to fit in the overhead bins. Luckily there are several open seats so stuff it in an open row and walk back to my seat. I sit down and low and behold a few stragglers arrive so the stow is no go. I carried it back to the front where a nice couple who were separated agreed to sit together so I would have an open seat next to me for my luggage. After a few minutes it turned out I wasn’t the only one this would happen to. The thrower gets on and talks to the attendant and the pilot informing them that a) there is no more room in the cargo hold and b) that the plane is too heavy. The FA tries to make an announcement when we find out what the mechanical difficulty was – the PA system doesn’t work!! So this nice British lady screams the announcement as several people’s uncarry-on-able carry-ons are carried on. All the while we are sitting in a metal tube in Phoenix, in August, at midday. So that situation gets resolved and the FA starts franticly handing out water to assuage the encroaching heat. One man head up to the rest room and surprise the flush doesn’t work!! So he go (quickly than god) and the FA takes some of the bottled water and spins it round the basin. Finally we are set to depart so the FA packs up the items and locks the door latches but one bugger slips back open dispensing plastic cups rapid fire into the isle. Finally we take off, a good thing as the AC comes on!

So after shouting the safety announcements over the propeller noise and a few more incidents of flush support we arrive in Grand Junction. I get the car and get lost. Quirky streets those small mountain towns have. I get back on track and find an Office Depot to finalize the gifts for my co-festival goers (M. Night’s first draft of the script for his new film The Happening w/ a few shooting notes) and get lost again – luckily I have a keen sense of direction as street signs were less than helpful (“B ½ Road” really?). Finally I set off for Telluride just in time to miss the open air showing of the Thursday night film – the 1967 version of The Thomas Crown Affair. And I wandered around several streets in this town as well and walked into (what I later found out to be) the wrong house looking for the right one! Fortunately Jana had returned from said film and called me to see where the hell I was. We were also both wondering where Ralph & Vanessa were as his phone was off and no one had heard a word. We talked, they arrived, and Jana gave us a quick lesson on the festival and I was off to sleep to get ready for day 1.

In the next chapter, we plan and enjoy.

The 2 Year Old Virgin (Festival)

2007-09-13T01:25:00.000-04:00

Made it down to Baltimore for the second East Coast incarnation of the V-Fest over the Weekend of August 4th & 5th. Being to Coachella earlier this year and Bonnaroo last year I think I'm pretty qualified to judge destination festivals by now. This one was pretty good.
It was set up on smallest venue of the 3 which limited the activities and stages but i think what was there was solid and you really could get to everything available unlike the other 2. With no camping at the site we had to stay at a hotel but since I travel for work I was able to get that for free but with everything you need to actually camp I think the cost comes fairly even. The next issue was parking - there is none of it if you didn't buy a VIP parking pass which I didn't. People were selling places on their lawns around the venue for $20+. We parked in a middle school yard that was an "official" place and it took an hour to get out of there after the show, more on that nightmare later.

We settled into the North Stage first to see Amy Winehouse (iTunes) and Incubus (iTunes). Both good sets but not paired together well. Winehouse's sultry torch songs were soothed out some of the older folks in the crowd but the kids were fairly impatient for Incubus. Amy for her part was fun - and likely drunk...or worse, she did drop the mic and laughed it off. The set was a bit languid but that's not a bad thing early in the day on Sat. Plus not many of her tunes could be considered uptempo.

Incubus put on a solid set - only seen them mid days at festivals for some reason. Not a fan of the new set save the 2 singles to date and the live performances of other tracks didn't win me over. The rest of the set was very fest like and hit heavy - I wasn't complaining. Here is one of those hits:

So far I had missed The Fratellis (iTunes) due to parking and Paolo Nutini (iTunes) and Felix Da Housecat (iTunes) because I didn't wanna leave my cush spot on the north stage. So we explored a bit in the area of the south stage while PB&J (iTunes) were playing but never actually went up to the stage and we also went over to the grand stand area and snuck into the VIP section. It was uninteresting and not worth what they were charging - though they did get a gift bag so perhaps there is something in there that added value but I doubt it. Food wasn't better and there was still a massive drink line. Bad form V-Fest.
Next up was LCD Soundsystem (iTunes) on the south stage. Easily the best show of the day and it was completely hindered by mic problems. It was like a fat guy in a t-shirt doing all the singing. And he was freakin' out firstly in the good, lead singer way and secondly in the singer pissed that he can't hear his mic volume in the monitors and getting feedback for 1/2 the set kinda way. He actually went over and talked to the audio tech twice. In spite of that, the energy was 4 lengths ahead of anyone else playing the first day of the fest. The drummer (Jeff Daniels?) was rockin' out in flesh colored boy shorts - haha - and Nancy Wang was all sultry on keyboards. Though the day was in no more need of heat - I was a sponge in a lake by time the flailing ended. The single best song of the whole weekend was their closing track "Yeah" it's never been one of my favorites from the album but the crazy extended live version was blistering.

I was dead after this so I mossied over to the SoCo hurricane station and sat down to catch some of the Beasties (iTunes) set. Love the boys but was really not in much hurry to see 'em. Glad I saw some old school stuff - "Don't Sleep Till" & "Brass Monkey". They dropped "So What'cha Want" and I was satisfied and went off to the dance tent to take in Sasha (podcast) & Digweed (podcast). On the way I happened on the Incredibly Strange Wrestling ring. This is some kind of satirical send up of the WWE and it was superfantastic. There was a guy in a bad Chewbaca outfit named Macho Sasquatcho teamed up with a partner named El Pollo Diablo - he was dressed as a chicken. Another wrestler was named Oh My Goth...but more on ISW tomorrow. It was still ridiculously hot so I wasn't dancing yet and chilled in the back of the dance tent sitting for a while more before going in and shakin it for the rest of the set. The set wasn't as good as last years Sasha solo at Roo but it also wasn't 4am and the place was pretty skint on candy-paint ravers who tend to spruce up the tent nicely.

The rest of the night was spent between Modest Mouse (iTunes) & The Police (iTunes). The Popo show had none of the energy of the previous weeks show in Philly so I'm happy I was able to catch that - similar set list as well. MM were solid though I realized that I know way fewer tracks from them than I thought. "Dashboard" has been one of my favorite tracks of the year and it was a good performance but only getting into MM since their debut on alt rock radio I wasn't into as much as I had thought. Went back for the end of the cops and then back for the rodent encore then filed out to try and get to the car.

After the walk back we found the car after 20 min or so and then drove forward 15 feet or so to the exit line then proceeded to stand still for an hour. Finally we noticed someone had opened up some kinda back gate, or more likely clipped a fence as the transition from parking lot to street was a curb. But the Jetta handled that well and we were back to the hotel. I would suggest staying in Inner Harbor instead of Johns Hopkins despite being closer as there is nothing around there and the hotel bar closed at 12. Still the suite with a balcony was a quality set up.

Day 2 and my thoughts on the Telluride Film Festival on the way.

65 Cent Gas!!

2007-08-15T04:03:00.000-04:00

I hope they have cops directing traffic:

In honor of Dinosaurs returning to Philadelphia after 65 million years of extinction, Lukoil will be offering Prehistoric Pricing on their gas - 65 cents per gallon - for one hour, on Wednesday, August 15th from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. This special event will take place at the DELAWARE & SPRING GARDEN St. (Philadelphia) location.
Patrons attending this Prehistoric Pricing event will also receive a coupon for the Walking With Dinosaurs Lukoil Discount, which offers a $5.00 discount on $40 & $50 seats for Fri. Aug. 17 at 7:00 p.m. and Sun. Aug. 19 at 11:00 a.m. performances.

Almost makes me want to drive into the city over lunch tomorrow...from West Chester.

Die Poletzei (hope thats spelled right)

2007-08-01T03:37:00.000-04:00

My boy Joe is a supervisor and one of the people under him wanted to make sure he wouldn't be expected to do any overtime 2 thursdays ago. Why? Because he also works security at Citizens Bank Park where the Police were playing that night. Joe assured him that he wouldn't and the guy asked if he needed any tickets...he took 2, bailed on picking out china patterns for his wedding next year, called me up and we were off to the show.

Due to massive traffic we missed the openers but picked up the tickets at will call (cheap side view) and got in just as Sting and the boys were going on. We quickly found Joe's friend and he slipped us wristbands and tickets for the field, 30 or so rows back from the stage...sweet!

Twas a fantastic show. They definitely still got "it." Copeland was possessed, Summers shredded it up and Sting... well he's Sting what else can you say. They did all the hits over 2.5 hrs save "Canary in a Coalmine" and played 2 encores closing with "Next to You"

Check the vids:

"Walking in Your Footsteps"

"Next To You"

___________________________________________________________________

A track now from the new Robbers on High Street set that came out last month. The title is that stern old ride that looks more like a police car than a police car - why did the cops never realize this when sitting by the side of the road in their unmarked?

Robbers on High Street - Crown Victoria

Party at the (Moon) Tower

2007-07-02T02:12:00.000-04:00

Well so much for the pundits... but the Sopranos ending was great - fuck the haters. (Sorry, this post shoulda been up weeks ago.)

Caught 2 great shows earlier this month. First was Bloc Party at the Tower.

Kele & co put on an energetic show last Tuesday in Upper Darby. The Tower is definitely my favorite venue in the city.

The first opening act was a band called The Maccabees from (as all their press says) Brighton - via South London. Despite that affectation they sounded pretty good. Really good in fact. They looked as though none was old enough to drink in this country and this was their first night joining the tour due to some visa issues yet the sound was confident. The lead singer's voice has a peculiar quality to it, very British but it also contains a kind of haunting vocal tremolo. Add to that catchy riffs (Hot Hot Heat, Futureheads, other Brit post-punk style) and solid harmonies and I think these guys could really take off sometime soon. Check their website which is really good lookin'. It's a middle class art school thing. Click for a listen or dl below. Then pick up full length as it is "off the hissey."

The Maccabees - Latchmere (Buy)

Next up was The Noisettes another band from London town (no via on their bio) but this one was pretty crap. Actually check that, next up was a 30 minutes mic check that required the help of the entirety of roadie nation. Seriously it was comical - and they still didn't get it right. Maybe this was the reason The Noisettes sucked. Maybe it was just that their songs were bad and the singer chick was all over the map - in a bad way. Bits of blues, jazz, garage, punk, indie, and others all boiled and mashed and stuck in a stew. Didn't taste too good but the presentation was decent.

Finally, the headlining Londoners (East for the record) made their appearance - and with much less down time than The Noisettes.

Energy through the roof on these chaps and the crowd (at least the ones around me) responded in kind. Blistering set, 2 encores and a lotta Kele's big smile. At one point he took off up the isle of - this is the second show here where this happened, gotta get a center isle seat next time. Here are 2 vids that I took during the show:

The main set was closed with "Like Eating Glass" - in crispy black and white!

and wrap the first encore with "Helicopter" - I think I like the B&W better though.

Bloc Party does indeed rock.

www.flickr.com

And finally check out the YRock takeover BP did whilst they were in town.

Up Next...LCD Soundsystem's free show.

Its All Come Down to This

2007-06-10T21:04:00.000-04:00

What are you doing? Get to your (or someone else's) TV, turn on HBO and watch the end of an era.

So long Sopranos.

And the odds are Tony flips and rats out NY.

LCD Soundsystem Secret Show in Philly!

2007-06-04T21:46:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard about this yet peep the LCD myspace blog.

Friday, May 25, 2007

FREE SHOW: LCD Soundsystem, Philadelphia,
June 6th Category: Music

FREE SHOW
LCD Soundsystem
Philadelphia, June 6th
GET ON
THE LIST,its easy as…

1. Add LCD Soundsystem
and The List to
YOUR Top Friends.

2. Send a MESSAGE to The List with your
name/e-mail answering this question:

Q: What does DFA (James
Murphy's Record label) stand for?

3. Once you're on The List we'll
send an e-mail with venue info and instructions on how to pick up your
tickets for you and one guest.

Once that is done you'll get a message back from The List saying:

From:
The List

Look for an e-mail on June 5th for instructions on picking up
tickets.-Dan

So if you are anywhere in the NEast Corridor (or
perhaps have a private jet on standby and a vacation day) git your butt
registered and head to Philly round 8pm.

Heres a mix James Murphy and Tim Sweeny did for a radio show last year:
Beats in Space Radio Show Mix - Part 1
Beats in Space Radio Show Mix - Part 2

And tracklist:

Summer Burn is Back

2007-06-03T17:08:00.000-04:00

Just got an email from the funkjunkie crew announcing the return of the Summer Burn fun. If you didn't see the post last year (wow, has it been a year already?). It's basically a global, summer themed, mix-tape trading community. Unfortunately I never sent the post-card to register last year and didn't participate but Bigthoughts posted his thoughts on it. I have a postcard ready to go and it'll be in the mail tomorrow. Here are the steps and click the link above or on the right to register.

Signup with your address details using the form below (don't worry, we're not some nasty spamming site and we won't do anything other than use them for this)
Send us a postcard with both your username and confirmation code on it, clearly marked and legible please. To confirm your involvement you must send us a postcard including the confirmation code which we'll send to you when you first sign up. If we don't get a card from you before the 21st of June, you won't be taking part.
Burn 2 CDs of your favourite summer tunes.
On the first day of Summer you'll get an e-mail from us telling you who you should send 2 CDs to.
Post them off to the addresses you receive from us you have within a week of receiving the e-mail.
Sit back and relax, and wait for yours to come through the post from the people that have been selected to send you one!
... and thats it! You get 2 new CDs full of music to while away the summer heat to. Great innit?
We might even do a prize for the best postcard again, so try to make it a good one.

iTunes has beed giving Kanye's new vid away for free this week and I'm kinda let down (though not by a free video).

First of all Hype has fallen off. When Kanye mugs hard for the camera its just laughable. And as Steriogum pointed out a few days ago (and should be obvious to anyone who digs music videos) the imagery is a hip-hop rip on Chris Cunningham's piece for Madonna's "Frozen." Here's that one as well:

Aside from slagging Hype which is old hat by now, the track itself is really flat. Production is decent but Kanye's performance seems to lack any shred of energy, the Young Jeezy samples add some off putting and out of place hype in the background, and worst of all - the rhymes are lame. But hey, its Kanye so I'm not letting one uninspired track with an uninspired vid turn me off from all of Graduation Day.

Caught Silversun Pickups a couple weeks ago and was quite impressed with the opening act and Dangerbird label mate Sea Wolf (yes, another wolf band - this will make 4 on my iPod). They have the sound similar to Doves, Travis, Trashcan Sinatras, Bright Eyes Check it out:

Sea Wolf - "You're a Wolf" (Buy)

Sea Wolf - "The Garden That You Planted" (Buy)

Silversun review and hillarious video of when things go wrong forthcoming.

Posts will be even more infrequent...

2007-05-31T01:34:00.000-04:00

I got a Wii!

Coachella - A 1 Day Review (part the second)

2007-05-16T00:04:00.000-04:00

Blaasaa (not sure what I was typing there but I like they way it looks so the kid stays in the picture).

Anyway, so after the frisking and what not I ventured over to start my day/afternoon with a little Hot Chip.

Could get too close but they were kickin' serious booty out of the Mojave tent. It seemed there there were an awful lot of people on the barely visible stage. And despite the afternoon heat once "Over and Over" (Buy) started the indie dancing began.

After Chip i moved over to catch the first bit of MSTRKRFT's set. This was mostly a turntable & laptop set but since they were playing original tracks who cares. Again lots of dancing in the heat - much more than Roo last year (hippy swaying doesn't count ;).

Since I was only around for 1 day i wanted to catch as much as i could so after flailing about to 3 tracks i ventured back to the Mojave for a bit of Swedish trio Peter, Bjorn and John.

I wasn't blown away by the 6 or 7 tracks I was there for but I guess after 2 (mostly) upbeat dance acts their languid indie stuff wasn't a good fit for where i was at.

From there I moved onto the 2nd stage to get a good spot for The Decemberists - this unfortunately meant passing on Kings of Leon but such is festival life.

"I'm sure you'll all agree; seersucker is the perfect fabric for this type of weather." Its comments like that that make Colin Meloy and Co. so damned great live. Seriously great stage banter. Oh and the music also kicks ass. They opened with "The Crane Wife 3" (Buy), said hello to Kings of Leon, had a dance contest, and played several very long tracks (some written that way other modified so) in a very uncool 50 minute set. I'm not sure how Coachella came up with their set times but these guys need more.

Unlike Roo last year I remembered to bring my camera to this fest (obviously) and was able to take this video of the crew from the PNW doing "Perfect Crime #2" (Buy) along with the instigation of said dance contest.

As Colin shuffled off stage he said "Now for god's sake go see The Arcade Fire" Not having anything better to do, this sounded like solid advice. Since the main stage was running behind schedule (seriously, the hippies were more punctual) i was finally able to make some use of my VIP bracelet. So i made my way to a slightly less crowded area behind a fence that had a table I could stand on to see since it was so far away from the stage anyway. But VIP sections are not about seeing the acts clearly they are about feeling better than the rest of the peons that have to huddle together right in front of the stage...and you know, I kinda did!

The Arcade Fire set started off slow. Likely because it was heavy on Neon Bible (Buy) and light on Funeral (Buy). This is a band that knows the meaning of sophomore slump and it felt like they weren't comfortable with the new stuff in a live setting. Still things started to pick up as all 40 or so members of the band got into the set and more of the debut made its way into the show. The "Neighborhood's" were all crackling with excitement and the crowd was really into it.

After AF I moseyed around the VIP section for a bit. Cali does VIP right. A lounge tent with leather couches (would not want to be there during the daylight though), much better food than the general area (sushi, spicy pie pizza), bar with ridiculously expensive drinks (9.50 for well Vodka & Redbull, add 1$ for call and another for premium), misting areas, nicely manicured foliage and of course many opportunities for celebrity sightings. Being above all that (I'm here for the music, man) i drank, ate and rejoined the huddled masses as the Red Hot Chili Peppers made their way to the stage.

To see this most CA of bands on their home turf was an experience. They did every track from the Frusciante era that name-drops that golden state and I think some people around me had a religious experience during "Under the Bridge." (Buy) Seriously there were tears...from guys...who frequent gyms. I noticed also that the days heat seemed to sap a lot of peoples strength. They'd start into, say "Can't Stop" (Buy) and heads would be bangin' and people were po-going but about 1/2 way thru a song they'd be swaying statues as though endurance would only allow for 2 minutes of craziness before a rest was needed and this was every song. The band got into extended jams at the end of almost every one as well but their energy never waned and the sing-along with set closer "By the Way" (Buy) was transcendent.

Ok, so while RHCP were on stage i missed LCD Soundsystem & Girl Talk. I like that Roo didn't put anyone up against the headliners. But as every stage was now running behind I was able to catch almost all of The Rapture's set back in the space-disco, aka the Sahara Tent.They seemed drunk - which I found endearing, I'm an enabler. This way my favorite set of the day in all its deadpan, sneering, ironic, New York glory. They dedicated "Killing" (Buy) to LCD Soundsystem, though I'm not sure whether it was a tribute or a dis. James Murphy says there is no "weird beef" between them but the track is pretty harsh - peep the lyrics. Later in the set Luke Jenner made several jumps into the crowd and did some surfing, in the desert! At one point he almost came to blows with a security guy who was between the stage & the crowd. Damn rowdy kids.

Finally down to the last act of the night. I listened to Tiesto's dj set as I made my way back to the second stage for Damon Albarn's latest "side project" The Good, the Bad and the Queen. This was the sparsest crowd of the day due in various parts to the time, the style and Tiesto. I got there about 3-4 songs into the set but apparently they were playing the s/t album, in order. The set up included Albarn (mostly at a piano), the rest of the band (Paul Simonon, Simon Tong and Tony Allen) and a flanking of girls on strings. Like Albarn they were sporting posh outfits topped with Stove-pipe hats. It was quite a sight. The tracks were kinda slow and many shuffled out during the set but I think they were a good comedown act.

As I was heading back to the car I stumbled upon some sort of Vegas show with a Norse God's in praise of water theme - naturally I stopped to watch. The bikini and feather clad dancers had ho's'es hooked up thru their outfits which were spraying water in all directions and they writhed beneath the desert moon.

Finally another quick vid of the nighttime skyline of Coachella during the Arcade Fire set. Had a great time but it was too short. I hope to pull a full weekend here someday.

Coachella - A 1 Day Review (in two parts)

2007-05-07T21:21:00.000-04:00

Best laid plans... on to the pre-review story.

Finding myself in Southern California on Wednesday for work, imagine my shock when I turn on KROQ and realize that this is Coachella weekend. Luckily I was planning on staying with my friend Nick in San Diego for the weekend enabling me to head out to the desert on Saturday to finally catch the event I've wanted to see since Underworld was listed on the original 1999 line-up.

Unfortunately work obligations has me sidelined Friday and on a plane Sunday but though it was fleeting my first day at Coachella was awesome.

Of course nothing can ever go 100% (or even 75%) smoothly...

Issue #1 - Ticket:

Usual suspects were consulted and I quickly realized that people were rabidly snatching up eBay auctions at crazy high prices. Since this was never planed in the first place and I had a couple days to spare I just scanned the market. Most repytable auctions were hovering just over the $100 mark but I also wanted to see what Nick's price point was.

Issue #2 - Work:

Turns out on Friday that Nick couldn't go so I started earnestly trying to get 1 tix. Sent a dozen or so emails and a couple calls thanks top craigslist and came up with zilch.

Issue #3 - Alcohol:

Being done work and in San D, naturally I wasn't going to let a minor thing like a ticket to a huge desert music festival hinder of a solid night of drinking in Pacific Beach. So a swordfish dinner, a $20 margarita (tasted the same as a $5 one), the worst cover band ever and several rounds later we got back to Nick's place round 3AM. Naturally I wasn't going to let a minor inebriated state hinder the quest for a ticket to a huge desert music festival. So I hopped on every cali craigslist page from the bay to the border and sent out another dozen emails or so and set my alarm for 8:3f....something AM. Woke up to some responses and researched craigslist in a state of partial consciousness. I happened to stumble onto a guy selling a 1 day pass and a VIP wristband for $125 and it was posted 10 minutes or so before: SCORE! Emailed, called, made arrangements to pick up in Palm Springs and hit the road.

Issue #4 - The Tab & Footwear Situation:

Of course, my check card was still in Pac Beach with the tab I had forgotten to settle...D'oh! So back to PB to wait for the place to open to get the car to get back on the - wait... I need a pair of sandals as my feet will be dying in the heat otherwise. And what is right next to the bar but a Sketcher's store with a spring sale. So I get the card, get the shoes, make a sizable withdraw and get out of SD by 11:45 or so putting me way behind. CHiPs must be slaggin' cuz the road was filled with speedy kids headin' to the desert and I only spied 2 cops the whole ride.

So I get to Palm Springs, pick up the tix in 111 degree weather (seriously people live out here?), stop for hydrating and sun-blocking supplies and get onto the show...or at least the line of traffic to get into the show. After all that I'm in Coachella at 4pm and off to catch Hot Chip.

Actual fest review is on the way.

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Hot Hot Heat - "Haircut Economics" - An early track from boys which hints at the great things to come but this is punkier, more dark-wave.

The Desert Fathers - "Pitbulls" - This must be the sound of a bad trip in the Mojave - still has a catchy hook...huh. If you dug the Man Man stuff I posted last year this should also be right up your alley.

Philadelphia Film Festival 2007 - Day 6

2007-04-30T00:02:00.000-04:00

Sorry again for the delay. Been on the west coast this week and managed to spend Saturday at Coachella!!!! Will post that later in the week - but I want to get at least the first 7 days of the Philly fest up first before it all fades from memory as I wrote nothing down (yes that was dumb.)

Dipped into animation on day 6 at the festival. Princess is a Danish picture about a brother, August, who takes revenge on the porn industry that killed his sister (Christina, the titular princess) while trying to care for her daughter. The film also incorporates live action moments as well - via home video flashbacks shot in happier times by the brother. As is often the case the animation is used to show things that wouldn’t be allowed with real actors. The young girl (7 or 8 maybe) has been abused mentally, physically and sexually by those around her mother – in one scene she cries not wanting to take a bath however once she is finally in the tub we learn that its not normal child resistance but because “bath” means something totally different in the world she has lived in. This is the moment the brother snaps and begins his vengeful quest.

Horrific violence involving both uncle and niece ensue and the secrets of August and Christina’s past come out as the film careens to its tragic climax. This is a very impressive feature debut for director Anders Morgenthaler. I saw his student short film “Araki: The Killing of a Japanese Photographer” at the Chicago Film Festival in 2003 which had a very similar plot though the quality of the animation has greatly improved along with a deeper plot. He is currently working on a live action feature which I eagerly await.

Nothing follows ultra-violent Danish animation better than a 40’s screwball comedy! Given the 77 minute run-time of the previous film I was able to head over to catch The Philadelphia Story for the first time and on the big screen. Aside from several projection issues the film was enjoyable though I have to admit that don’t see it as quite the classic that others do. This may be because some of the jokes are cultural references to the time period in the film (1920s). The film was followed by a talk by U of the Arts professor Camille Paglia who could not possibly have fit more words into her 25 minute talk. It was more of a lecture than a Q&A (not unexpected) but she pointed out some of these references and also talked a bit about the films legacy and the elite pre-WW1 Main Line Society in which the film is set. Naturally she's a huge fan.

And that is all for day 6. Late-

RIP to a Russian Architect

2007-04-24T00:20:00.001-04:00

I was in college at the time of his downfall but i didn't realize that Yeltsin had been held in such low regard nearing his exit, thought Chechnya didn't develop till Putin's reign and i also didn't know he was held responsibe for the influence the Oligarch's yeilded at the time. But I think history will be on my side of this one - a visionary and a drunken bear.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Methane River (Bill Fray Cover - Live Radio Performance)

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Oregon Girl

Philadelphia Film Festival 2007 - Day 5.1

2007-04-24T00:20:00.000-04:00

Delay over ...

The final film I saw on the first Monday of the festival was The Unseeable (In Thai but you can see the trailer)…which really is its own review. A tired ghost story from Thailand, this film apes all recent “twist endings” that we have come to expect from Sixth Sense clones. Really not worth dwelling more on this one.

As I mentioned in the last post intrepid Metro reporter and sometimes poker buddy Josh Cornfield is blogging the 2007 Philadelphia Mayoral race (and council races) at FightforRoom215. I had no idea that that the Mayor’s office was actually in room 215 of city hall. Wonder if this happened before or after the area code was established? Link will also be over on the link list to the left.

Late-