Movie Reviews! - Mayans Are Dicks Edition

I recently joined NetFlix. This shit is on!

Gates of Heaven and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control – Errol Morris is one of my favorite directors. I have seen and loved almost all of his movies, although I refuse to watch his only non-documentary, Dark Wind, because it stars Lou Diamond Phillips (LDP!) and because it’s called Dark Wind. I’d sooner watch a Dogma 95 film called Dutch Oven. But I’d somehow never seen Gates of Heaven or Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control until a few days ago. His storytelling is so unfuckwithable. He finds great characters with fascinating stories, he never makes fun of them or appears to judge them, and his style of having the people look directly at the camera is so affecting. He’s great and these movies are funny, touching, and amazing.

LDP tangent: I have a friend who’s a doctor; let’s call him Schmarvin. A few years back, Schmarvin’s younger brother went through some difficult times and moved briefly away (I believe to Houston). So, to try to get Lil’ Bro to come back to the family, Schmarvin flew to Houston (?) to find Lil’ Bro and have a serious showcase bro-down. Before going to find his brother, I hung out with Schmarvin and joked that his situation was not unlike the plot of some shitty movie. When Schmarvin asked what actor would play his part, I answered immediately: Lou Diamond Phillips! For that reason, LDP will always have a place in my heart. That, and I loved Young Guns II.

Star Trek – When’s J.J. Abrams going to be able to make a movie of his own? His first was Mission: Impossible III, which was fine, and now this one, which is also fine, but is he ever going to get to make a movie that isn’t trying to invigorate a dying franchise? I’ve never been a big Trek fan, aside from the years in high school when I watched "The Next Generation" every Saturday night (I’ve always been a magnet for pussy), but this was a pretty good space action-y thing with a bunch young, pretty people. I call bullshit on the time travel stuff, though. You can suspend disbelief for most of it, but when they start explaining that future Spock opened a black hole after accidently destroying a whole planet, you start thinking, “I think this whole thing is bullshit,” and you just wait for the next space battle. Also, when will wormholes stopped being used in sci-fi stories as the go-to explanation for everything? Answer: Never!

Milk – Sean Penn acts his dick off in this movie. And speaking of dicks, why will you see more cock in the films of Judd Apatow than in a movie about gay dudes that have gay sex with lots of dicks? I'm not advocating more dicks on screen, but it's weird that it's okay to show dicks as jokes but not as sex-making objects, right? Anyway, really good story, awesome actors all around, and Gus Van Sant doing his nice-guy, mainstream, Finding Forrester shtick. Good times.

Gangs of New York – I'm in the bag for Marty Scorsese, but I had avoided this movie when it came out seven years ago for several reasons. First, when a director describes a movie as his "passion project," run the fuck the other way, fast. Passion projects mean that it’s something the filmmaker wants so badly to make, they lose all subjectivity and self-analysis, and end up making unwatchable, overly long, and very personal pieces of shit. Second, I was still mad at DiCaprio for Titanic. I’ve since gotten over it. Thirdly, a year before the movie came out, I read a huge feature story in GQ or Vanity Fair or some other upscale, bullshit magazine that went behind-the-scenes of this production. The article detailed Scorsese going over budget and filming in Italy to get that mid-19th century look, how Harvey Weinstein was up his ass to get the movie in on time and on budget and how that never happened, and other problems of the production. The descriptions from the article made the movie sound awful.

But I knew I'd come back to it someday, and I'm glad I did. Aside from some terrible CGI and some awful wigs, it’s a really good movie. It stumbles a bit as it tries to introduce everyone and get the story rolling, but when it does get going, it moves well. DiCaprio is good, Cameron Diaz is surprisingly good, Daniel Day-Lewis is great, and Brendan Gleeson is fucking awesome. Scorsese does this odd perspective thing a few times where characters look directly into the camera as if they’re looking at another character. But then their eye line moves to the right, and the person they were supposed to be looking at enters the frame. It’s beautiful and disconcerting at the same time. I also liked the Civil War subplot and the gang war finale being interrupted by the larger city riots and military quash of those riots. Marty’s the man. I'll never doubt him again, but I still won't watch Bringing Out the Dead. Fuck Nic Cage, man. Just fuuuuck Nic Cage.

Sex Drive – I watched this because it had Clark from “Clark and Michael.” It also had boobs and an Amish Seth Green. Hilarious, right? It also had one of my top 5, all-time teens gain access to a car then cut to montage of them driving while a catchy rock song blasts moments (in this case, the song was MGMT’s “Time to Pretend”). Great driving montages, but if it took more than $65 to make this movie, they got robbed.

2012 – Mayans are assholes. Does anyone else think that their calendar ends in 2012 because that’s as high as these small, dickheaded people could count? Also, John Cusack and Amanda Peet outrun earthquakes. I won’t see this movie.

If You Only Hear One 40 Minute Clip of Stage Banter This Year...

...make it Fugazi (click here, clip is at the bottom). Oh man. I love how they unabashedly took on pretty much every type of asshole there ever was.

Some choice quotes:

"Why 'Fuck me'?"

"What's wrong? Why are you giving me the finger? Well..let's talk about it."

"Did anyone read Scientific American last month?"

"To the person that will go turn the air conditioning off, we will give you $10."

"Sir, did you spit? 'Cause you look like the guy who might've spit."

"We don't provide a soundtrack for violence."

"I'm 40 years old and yet I still have to treat 27 year olds like little fucking children. Start acting your ages, you little babies."

ZUT ALORS!!! ZUT ZUT ET ZUT!!!!

(Yes, this is a futbol post, and yes, a futbol match has stirred up some emotion in me)



Ummmmm...yeahhhhhhh...soooooo...just like an untoward game of balltap (as opposed to consensual balltap), Thierry Henry goes and sticks his hands where they don't belong... and he gets away with it.

So, instead of Ireland potentially going to the World Cup for only the 4th time in history, Henry displays his 'hand of God' and passes to the douchebag with the chrome car for the winning goal.

Il n'y a pas de justice!!

Colorful Words To Click On...

--Has Sammy Sosa seen a ghost, or become a ghost? I really do applaud Sammy's total commitment to becoming white. Notice his first quote to ESPN Deportes: "I'm not a racist." Well played, sir.

--Legos are a gateway drug. And because you clicked that link, the cops, feds, KGB, Yakuza, and a Danish toy company are now after you. Congrats.

And, let's see now, hmmm... {desperately struggling to find another entertaining link}..this at least seems to have potential (Mike, you'll have to watch on Hulu)...

--"The Prisoner" update premieres this Sunday on AMC; I'll give anything with Sir Ian McKellen a shot, and I guess Jesus could use a second chance (also of note, Christopher Nolan is thinking about a movie version).

Movie Reviews! *

In an effort to keep up with SHP's recent color redesign (I love the green of the post headings; not so much with the red of the contributor names. And can we finally get rid of the names of the non-contributing contributors? I mean, I know one of them is related to you by marriage, but you should at least have to write something to get on the masthead, right? I think I just misused the word "masthead"), I thought I'd add a regular feature to discuss recent movies I've seen. These won't just be new releases in the theatre, but things I saw on TV, or rented on iTunes, or whatever.

This is really just an excuse to regularly write about something. If you haven't seen these movies and you care about things being spoilered, then this isn't so much a warning as it is a big middle finger to you. Rosebud was his childhood sled. And off we go...

Where the Wild Things Are - Walking out of the theatre, I loved this movie enthusiastically. The more I think about it, I'm not so much in love with all of it. The first 10 minutes make the main character seem like a pretty big dick, then he runs away from home. Then the monsters are awesome and all the time they're on screen, it's the best movie maybe ever. Then the kid goes back home and his mom is so relieved he's not dead or something that she forgets that he bit her because she had a date. He should've at least gotten his arm ripped off and replaced with a tree branch for that shit.

Big Fan - Patton Oswalt being scary instead of funny, and it works. Really good movie with lots of tasteful Scorsese nods. Directed by Robert Siegel, who wrote The Wrestler, which I also recently saw, and which is also really good. I'd pretty much given up on the films of Darren Aronofsky because they're uniformly terrible (Pi would've been great as a 10-minute short, but it was an hour and a half; Requiem For a Dream was a clusterfuck of anti-drug clichés; and fuck you, Darren Aronofsky, for making The Fountain; just fuuuck you), but with The Wrestler, he stays mostly out of the way and lets Mickey Rourke own it.

24 Hour Party People - I saw this for the first time maybe six months ago, and I've watched it 10 times since then. Steve Coogan is the best in this movie. I love the breaking-the-fourth-wall shit and all the times his character gets all meta-story. And when a reporter dogs him about the Nazi connection to the band name Joy Division, and he goes into his "Have you never heard of situationalism or post-modernism? Have you no idea of the free play of signs and signifiers?" bit, I get half a boner. Then when he talks to God and God looks just like him, I get a full boner. It's fucking great.

The Invention of Lying - As I walked into the theatre for this movie, I joked to a friend, "This could be amazing; I just hope it doesn't turn into a romantic comedy." Then it turned into a romantic comedy. It's still super funny and it's fun to see all the big stars doing cameos, but it's basically about winning the heart of Jennifer Garner. Awesome, especially the invention of heaven part, but coulda been awesomer.

Panic Room - Saw this again on iTunes because it was a 99-cent Movie of the Week, and it's still my least favorite Fincher movie, but it's totally watchable. A lot of weird choices to this movie. Jared Leto in cornrows? The whole blue-flame gas explosion, which looks incredible, but still, huh? There's also some race/class thing happening, because it's set in the super-rich and white Upper West Side, and the only black character (Forest Whitaker) is a bad guy, but also a bad guy with a heart, ya know? Then he helps a super-young Kristen Stewart, saves the family, and goes to jail anyway. Subtle commentary on race and class in the post-Guiliani New York? Probably not.

Twilight: New Moon - I'm not going to make some lame, worn-out joke about this being a movie for tween girls, even though it is, but there's nothing really wrong with that, so whatever. I just want to say that I could not be more bored with vampire shit. Whether it's Twilight, "True Blood", or that other hunk of shit I'm thinking about, I don't care. Couldn't care any less. I'd rather watch a movie about an old lady making a pot of tea. You're immortal, but sexy, I get it. You're a sexual and existential metaphor, here's a cookie. Also, your house is located on Yawnsville Lane in Nappytime, B'Oregon. Make vampires stop!

ASSSSCAT! Renegade Improv Comedy - The funniest thing that was ever created by man is filmed and released on DVD. Watch this repeatedly. Words can't convey. Good. Laugh. Lots.

Saw VI - Have you ever wondered why they keep making this stupid movie? Let's do the math: the first Saw cost $1.2 million to make and earned about $100 million in worldwide box office; Saw II cost $4 million and made $150 million; Saw III cost 10 and made 130; IV and V each cost around 10 and each made more than 100; and Saw VI has already recouped its investment after a week in theatres. I'm no mathemaperson, but I think all that adds up to the Saw producers swimming in gold pools filled with caviar water on the deck of their massive rocket-yachts. It also means that even if they never make another penny for the rest of their lives, they can still afford to make about 200 more Saw movies. So as we like to say in the biz, "Get used to it, Hitler!"

So, until next time, get your hand out of my popcorn and get it into my pants! **


* Doesn't actually mean I'll watch all the movies written about. I reserve the right to write about any movie I can think of good jokes for.

** Terrible attempt at a Siskel & Ebert-style sign-off line. I'll do better next time, America.

Musical Heredity?

A few days ago, in the midst of top-priority work at the office, I came across a NYT article regarding the internet music service Pandora, and their sponsored Music Genome Project. Basically, Pandora (see also: Musicovery) tries to customize a 'radio station' based upon listener input (i.e. your favorite song or favorite band). With this input, the service tries to find similar songs and artists. They have actually hired a team of scientific musicians (or is it musical scientists?) who rate songs based upon 400 or so attributes on a scale of 1 to 5 in half-integer increments.

My initial thought was, "Cool! They're combining two things that I really love: music and exploration that uses a systematic methodology." But as I started sifting through the so-called "genes" (find a complete list here,and here are some choice examples: radio friendly stylings, dirty organ solos, defiant lyrics, mystical qualities, interesting song structure, busy bass line, and--oh God no--"chill rhymin'"?!?), I decided that something was definitely not right.

Even though attributes based on instrumentation are fairly straight-forward (is the music fast or slow, does it have dual vocal harmonies, is there an acoustic or electric guitar, etc.), determining the interesting-level of so-and-so's song structure seems to be a pretty murky area and they don't really explain the categories. Further, Pandora specifically said that they were trying to eliminate some of the more cultural and/or environmental aversions that we may have to some kinds of music. For some reason, I particularly despised the swing revival during the mid to late 90s--but on the other hand, as a child of the 80s, I tend to gravitate towards music that has electronic or synthy elements (no disrespect to acoustic music).

So the question becomes, do you really hate Maroon 5's music? Or is there something else that rubs you the wrong way?

Well, the rating system is purported to take this "je ne sais quoi" quality out of our musical tastes and distastes. So if James Blunt winds up playing on your tailored radio station, Pandora supposedly has the empirical data to counter your indignation and shouts of blasphemy.

While I think it would be really interesting to see if songs that rated high on "mystical qualities" seemed to correlate with certain instruments or genres of music, can we really accurately measure the amount of mysticism in a song without relying on our own personal, cultural, or societal experiences? Even though I don't think we can divorce our musical preferences from these complex factors, I do think that these influences/patterns are important and worth looking at.

Damn, all those hours behind the cash register at Tower, with the 'greatest sociological experiment ever' right in front of me, thousands upon thousands of subjects customers, and I don't take any notes. Sigh.