Category: reviews

“Persepolis” “Michael Clayton”

Movies

I want to write a longer post about each of them, but just so I can make a note, I saw two movies the past two days.

Last night I saw “Persepolis”, the movie belonging to the trailer I posted earlier in the week. I recommend it highly. Made me think very much about politics and how it impacts everyday lives.

Tonight I saw “Michael Clayton”, the Oscar-nominated film with George Clooney’s Oscar-nominated acting, and possibly many other Oscar-nomination-festooned besides. Saw it with Tracy and Gina. Very much worth it. Intricately plotted, sensitively acted.

Cloverfield

Movies

Saw the monster movie home video “Cloverfield” last night. I followed most everyone’s advice and didn’t read any reviews before I saw it.

And so should you.

Demon Barber

Movies

Saw “Sweeney Todd” today with Athena, who awesomely showed up even though she’s still obviously under the weather. Take care of yourself! Rest up ‘n’ stuff.

I loved the movie, but I’m an uncritical fanboy when it comes to Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. I’ve said I would watch Depp read a software EULA for two hours. “Sweeney Todd” was far more entertaining than that. It’s a closely constructed tale swiftly told, and Burton’s direction and visual style is a perfect fit. The story has what Kevin calls a “button” ending. I’m not giving anything away, am I?

Yes, there’s blood. Bright red cartoon blood. Be warned.

Movies

Movies

I see a lot of movies. I can’t, now, go back and list what movies I saw in 2007 due to a hard drive failure (dammit – make sure your backups are working) but I’m going to attempt to post about every theatrical movie I see in 2008.

This past weekend I saw the Sing-Along “Grease” with Tracy and her friend Gina. It was fun and cheesy… and the costume contest beforehand had some very sexy “Slutty Sandys” which almost made the entire thing worth it. As a movie… “Grease” is not among my favorites. But as audience participation, it was a blast. I’m completely comfortable in my heterosexuality to admit that.

I also saw “Charlie Wilson’s War” which was a delight. Entertaining political comedy. Rep. Wilson sounds like the kind of politician I’d like to be: liberal, single, boozehound, womanizer. His press agent’s response to a reporter asking if he’d ever been to rehab was, “Rep. Wilson will not go to rehab because they do not serve alcohol there.” But, seriously, he was trying to do a good thing after touring the refugee camps in Pakistan. Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman both are amazing to watch, though I give the edge to Hoffman.

The Notorious Bettie Page

Movies, reviews

Possible spoilers on this post for the movie referenced above. You’ve been warned.

I love Cinema 21. Such a cool old independent movie house. Union shop, even. And I think they’ve done a little renovation since last I was there – looked cleaner, and the heating and air-conditioning seemed to be actually working. I love sitting in the balcony. Multiplexes don’t have balconies. Stadium seating is nice for the view, but it’s still a distant second to sitting in the balcony.

I was at C21 to see “The Notorious Bettie Page”, a biopic of the 1950s-era pinup model. I wasn’t sure what to expect – serious story or cheese? Frankly, I didn’t know much about Bettie Page beyond the fact that she was a busty brunette that seemed to become an icon.

But seeing the first scene with Gretchen Mol as Bettie, waiting outside a Senate hearing room, reading a letter from her sister back home in Nashville… Mol played the part with an amazing innocence and flirtatious charm. She seemed to be a girl who wanted to just have fun, found it hard to say no, and rarely saw any downside to accepting an invitation or request of any kind.

Of course, that led her into trouble, as she sometimes said “yes” to the wrong kind of guy. But the message of the film, at least what I took from it, was that trouble wasn’t a reason to mope.

The movie was light and campy, and fun, even with the heavier scenes at the beginning, they don’t weigh the film down with a lot of introspection. On reflection, I find this a bit surprising, but during the movie I just laughed along and enjoyed the naive way Bettie approached her modeling – even when she was tightly bound in a black corset and wielding a riding crop, Mol had this goofy, “Ain’t this fun?” grin on her face and a playful spark in her eyes.

Most of the movie is shot in black-and-white, which matched the feel of New York City where most of the action took place. When Bettie runs off to Miami for a vacation and a romp with a tanned beach boy, the movie bursts into bright primary colors, like Dorothy in the Land of Oz. That color shift also prompted an appreciative chuckle from me and the audience.

Don’t look to the movie for any deep thoughts on pornography or women’s issues. The Senate investigation is played for laughs, as Senator Kefauver (played by David Straithairn as exactly the kind of stuffed shirt that Edward R. Murrow, played by Straithairn brilliantly in “Good Night And Good Luck”, would enjoy taking down) leans in and with a subtle leer demands more information from his witnesses about bondage.

If it’s this fun, who could restrain themselves?

Travis

Music, reviews

This is my public apology to Christi. Back in February, she posted about running into some skanky (but in a good way) boys in her apartment complex who were playing and singing songs by a band called Travis.

I’d never heard of Travis before and asked her about them, and she recommended a bunch of songs, including (and I am not making this up) their cover of Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)” which, Christi insisted to me, was hawesome (although she might not have used that word). She also compared them to Radiohead, for which statement I berated her because there is no other band like Radiohead, past, present or into the future.

I made a trip to my favorite used music store and found two Travis albums in the used bin (I’m a cheap motherfucker), ripped them to my iPod and listened to them once through.

I bought “The Invisible Band” and “The Man Who”.

I liked them – melodic and synth-heavy and definitely BritPop.

Lately I’ve been shuffling through my library, but once every couple of days I still like to pick out a CD and listen straight through. And in the last couple of weeks, more often than not, I picked one of the two Travis CDs. They have been growing on me. I haven’t really added any new music to my collection in a while, mostly just picking up new releases from bands I already like, and I think my lack of newness has been affecting me – might explain why I’m letting the iPod do all the work of choosing my tunes lately. But Travis satisfies the need for new.

…to be perfectly honest, they’re still not as good as Radiohead. However, they do come close. All they’d need is lyrics that are far more angsty, and to try once in a while for a completely different sound, to stretch out musically. But they’re still good, and better than some of the other BritPop bands I’d tried.

(Like Manic Street Preachers. What the hell was I thinking? Blech.)

At any rate, this post is a public apology to Christi for doubting her and for dismissing the idea that Travis could have any comparison to Radiohead without, y’know, listening to the band first. I should know better.

I still haven’t heard their cover of Britney, however… dammit, iTunes Music Store! Why don’t you have that song? I’ve got all these free credits available for download…

Ultraviolet (2006)

Movies

I saw “Ultraviolet” over the weekend.

One word review: dumb.

Longer rant-y review:

Take it from me, I’m a guy who loves all kinds of movies. No matter how bad, I can always find something good to say about it. Like, say “Howard the Duck” – oh, wait, I was out of town the week that was actually in the theaters. I never actually saw it. I swear.

And then there are movies that are so bad, they become fun again. An example would be, oh, just about any movie that Joel and the ‘bots were forced to watch on “Mystery Science Theater 3000”. Man, I miss those guys. (Sure, Mike was OK – but Joel was the bestest).

So where does that leave the vampire – oh, excuse me, “hemophage” – story of “Ultraviolet”?

Well… it had Mila Jovovich in it. And she was naked, once, briefly.

Unfortunately, even if Ms. Jovovich were naked for the entire running length of the movie it would not redeem this stupid movie.

Get this for stupid: The opening scene has Ms. Jovovich’s character posing as a courier picking up a very special package. The guards and defenses give her every test imaginiable to check if she is human or “hemophage” – ID and papers checked, DNA scans, blood scans, retinal scans, chemical baths, everything, all 100% unadulterated techno-babble-filled dialogue showing that these guys mean business and do not take their duties lightly. She passes test after test after test… when it’s obvious to everyone in the theater that she is, in fact, a “hemophage”.

But, uh, do they ever look at her teeth? You know.. the fangs in her mouth? Wouldn’t that be a big tip-off? Apparently not.

And, of course, they have to come up with some techno-babble reason for just why she then turns out to be, to the surprise of no one in the theater, one ‘a them there “hemophages”. Argh. Much better to have simply had her blast her way inside.

There’s so much to pick apart in this movie that it might, actually, be fun with the right group of ‘bots – er, I mean, people. Booze might help, too. But don’t waste your money on it in the theater, it’ll be in the DVD bargain bins soon enough.

LOST as long-form TV

reviews

Note: This post contains no spoilers for “Lost”.

My friend Ken * has been a fan of “Lost” since the beginning. Every Thursday morning after a new episode, he would come to work, sit down, and start out to tell me about the cool things on the show, and then realize that I don’t watch teevee. He would then proceed to pity me and belittle me, because “Lost” was not just some dumb sitcom. It was special.

I resisted watching the show for several reasons. First, probably just because of my contrarian nature – if it was popular, how could the show be any good? I did relent once during the first season, figuring if someone cool like Ken liked it, maybe it had some redeeming qualities. However, the show I ended up watching, while interesting character-heavy drama, didn’t have enough of the “Lost” mythology to project its appeal to me, and I stopped watching. I remember Ken’s disappointment the next day. “Yeah,” he admitted, “that wasn’t the best first episode to watch.”

Then, as Season Two approached, Ken began obsessing even more, joining online forums and discussing the show. I was a bit more intrigued, and when Ken bought the Season One DVD set and offerred to let me borrow it, I relented once again.

So for a couple of weeks I made my way through the DVDs, and I got a little more hooked. The mythology of the show was interesting, but more interesting to me was the characters. Seeing their backgrounds in flashbacks, compared with their current actions on the island, and watching as they developed the characters over the course of a season made me glad to have been there when all this long-form television got started. “Babylon 5”, “The X-Files”, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”… I’ve done this before. I like the greater depth one gets for characters and situations when they’re not resolved and wrapped up neatly in 60 minutes (42 if you subtract commercials). Ken hadn’t ever gotten into those previous shows (he was off serving his country in the Air Force during most of the 90s) so I saw why “Lost” would feel so new and fresh to him.

And, honestly, the writing on the show was very good. I liked it.

So much so that, weekend after last, when I was done with the Season One DVDs, with the prospect of new episodes being aired, I did something that, until this point, I had never done before: I spent money at the iTunes Music Store. I bought the first two episodes of Season Two for “Lost”. It was the weekend, and I knew that several others I worked with were sufficiently geeky to both watch “Lost” and save it in some digital form, so I could probably find the other episodes for free… but, what the hell, I have a 5th Generation iPod capable of playing video **, so why not?

I bought and watched those two episodes, asked around at work the next Monday, waited another day, didn’t hear back, and that night splurged and bought the rest of the season. Total of 12 episodes so far.

It worked pretty well, although they take up quite a bit of space and I’ll be sure to remove them when I’m done. The screen on my iPod is actually slightly larger than my actual teevee set when I hold it at a comfortable viewing distance. Y’know… visually. So I’m not losing much by watching “Lost” on my device. Plus, it’s good to know that one more capability of my gadget is being actually used.

And using the iTMS is also good. But there was one episode that wouldn’t download. The 7th episode of the season. I kept getting my favorite ironical computer-type-error, the “unknown error”, after the little progress bar crept its way across the screen the entire way. Argh.

And I couldn’t watch these episodes out of order. That’s just not right.

I figured that in this instance, since I’ve been all legal ‘n’ stuff and paid for the privelege of viewing it, that I could justify finding a quasi-legal copy on the internets. And I did, eventually, find one, even one that had already been pre-formatted for my iPod. And it took fourteen hours to download via BitTorrent. Glacially slow. I started it at night, and by the time I had to leave for work in the morning, it hadn’t finished.

While waiting for the quasi-legal copy to download, though, I fired off an angry email to Apple about their failure to satisfy my need for instant gratification. I outlined all the things I’d tried and carefully provided the text of their irritatingly-vague error message and asked them to fix it.

I was losing valuable time – a new episode was coming soon, and I had to catch up. I still had 6 episodes to watch and less and less time to do it. The following day after work, I got home and found that both the legal download worked, and the quasi-legal download had (finally!) finished. Argh. More frustration, but no time for that. I had “Lost” to watch.

Yeah. I’ll admit it. I’ve become hooked on the show. Ken was right. It is the coolest. Ken also likes being the superior one who has already hashed out much speculation and observations about the island and the people on it… but that’s OK.

In the meantime, I got an email from Apple, apologizing for my inconvenience, and explaining that they are crediting me the cost of that download and giving me 5 free downloads at the iTMS. Yay! Now I can enter their “Billionth Song Download” contest without spending any money!

When I win, all my friends get iPods. Just sayin’.

* Yes, I’m linking to his site even though he hasn’t updated since September just because I can and because I’m trying to shame him into updating again.

** I know I haven’t blobbed about upgrading my older one but it’s an embarassing story involving me dropping my old one, the one with the Radiohead lyric on the back, into the toilet so you can understand my reticence. Just go with me, here.

The year of hot vampires

Movies

This just in: 2006 is now officially the year of the hot vampires.

I know I’ve already posted about “Underworld: Evolution”, due to be released January 20th. I got all drool-y over the thought of Kate Beckinsale once again wearing leather bodysuits and being vampirish.

Imagine my shock at finding out this morning about “Ultraviolet”, a vampire movie featuring Milla Jovovich in leather bodysuits. G’head. Imagine it. Oh, here, I’ll help you:

Do you think the producers of “Ultraviolet” chose a movie title that will deliberately confuse viewers looking for the “Underworld” sequel? Duh.

Now imagine a Kate Beckinsale / Milla Jovovich vampire-gun-kata cage match. I know, I know… you can’t. Because your head exploded like 3 minutes ago, already. Poor thing.

Coldplay’s got RULES

Music

Coldplay’s new CD has rules.

Can’t play it in the car, can’t play it in a Mac, can’t make MP3s out of it, it may or may not hose your Windows PC if you try to play it in there… And you can’t read the rules until you’ve bought the CD and, well, they’re not offering refunds, sorry. You bought into a contract blind, and now you’re stuck.

At least that’s the theory they’re operating under.

Now, is this Coldplay’s fault? Or is this the fault of the corporation that has bought their human “talent” and is selling them for the corporate good?

Either way, it’s just another reason I’m not going to buy any Coldplay music. The first reason being, I think their music sucks. Heh. Like I needed extra reasons beyond that, huh?