Anamorphic Analysis

David Cross "Nose" Comedy-- Nyuk Nyuk Ny-Oh screw it, this title is terrible

2009-10-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

I know that this thing is dead and that nobody's written here in months, but I just read about something that got the comedy nerd inside me all fired up and desperately needed somewhere to vent.

David Cross, co-creator of Mr. Show with Bob and David, star of Arrested Development and creator of Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, quite possibly the greatest comedy album in the past ten years, recently boasted about snorting coke while sitting about 40 feet away from Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. To top it off, he did so in honor of Vice creator Gavin McInnes, who apparently snorted coke at the now-defunct DEA Museum some years ago, sparking an insanely childish game of one-upmanship between the two (no hyperlink to prove the McInnes connection, but take my word for it that McInnes claimed responsibility for starting the game and even posted a copy of Cross' "tag! you're it! tee hee hee" text on his blog, though he's apparently come to his senses and removed the post).

Is it just me, or is this just a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to brag about, especially given the administration that's currently in power? Say what you will about Obama (and I've certainly been critical of the media's obsession with a man who has yet to back his talk with any significant walk), but he's undoubtedly a better alternative to Bush, of whom Cross was just a tad disapproving. To then, in turn, boast about what's essentially a middle finger to Obama's authority as President of the United States confuses Cross' message entirely. Is he unhappy that Obama's in power, or does he simply refuse to respect the office of President? If it's the latter, as I suspect it is, he's nothing more than that grade school classmate who constantly lobbed spitballs and sarcastic remarks towards the person at the front of the room, regardless of whether that person was credible or not.

As a comedian whose socially-minded material might be better suited for a pulpit than your local Yuk Stop, Cross has nothing to hang his hat on other than his perspective on life. It is his view on the world that he essentially sells night in and night out-- to so obviously advertise that his stance is essentially “fuck the man, no matter who that might be” is, dare I say, downright retarded. I'm all for subversion and “fighting the power,” but when you start to do so without any thought as to the target of your actions, you instantly lose credibility and become about as cliché as a god damn Che t-shirt.

Irreverence for irreverence's sake isn't subversive, it's just immature.

"I Love You Man, Review"

2009-08-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

"I Love You, Man" is a film that succeeds despite itself. The film's premise seems to have been originated, developed and polished off during a particularly brief and uninspiring elevator pitch. The promotional posters brings to mind the title of Lewis Carroll's poem, "The Walrus and the Carpenter," or in the case of this film's entirely disposable narrative "The Walrus and the Relatively Successful Real Estate Agent." The film is indifferently shot (though not outright visually vulgar like "Superbad" or "Pineapple Express") and is littered with music cues that could benevolently be called "non-subversive." But the film's greatest detriment lies beyond in the screen, in the introduction of the bilious phrase "bromantic comedy" into mainstream culture (or at least the large swaths of that culture which check Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic on a regular basis).

But despite all of this, and let me emphasis that this is a distinct "despite" not a "because of" or any other sort of fortuitous creative frictions, this is a film worth seeing and even a film worth discussing. The film boasts a solid supporting cast with J.K. Simmons, Thomas Lennon, Andy Samburg, Jane Curtin, a particularly good Jaime Pressly and a particularly bad Jon Favreau (he can't act, he can't write, he can't direct - he can't do it all!) Rising above this ensemble, however, is Paul Rudd.

The character he plays is not particularly complex nor sympathetic nor dynamic nor even that fucking interesting, but I would pay good money to see unedited dailies - timecode and all - of Paul Rudd acting his way into and back out of many a paper bag. It's unfair to call this the performance of a lifetime because Rudd is still relatively early in his career and I haven't seen Role Models (David Wain, 2008), among other Rudd vehicles.* There is also the aforementioned fact that he's playing the straight man in a recurring series of standard-issue comedy scenarios. As a character he is unwritten and paralyzed by romcom tropes, but as a performer he explores these very limits and lounges in their margins. Indeed the writing and directing privilege Rudd to a degree rarely seen in contemporary comedies, allowing him to create comedic beats and anti-wordplay that border on the surreal. There is a wonderfully vertiginous feeling to watching Rudd ramble and stumble far beyond the customary edit point, chasing tangents in ways both emotional and bizarre. In contrast to the increasingly stale (and prevalent) stylings of Michael Cera, you often have no idea how Rudd is going to finish a sentence or if he is even going to attempt such a thing. All of this is in truly surprising contrast to the heinous, fascistic and catchphrase-enforcing posters smothering Los Angeles over the last few months, or as I like to call them "The Four Horseman":

None of these lines are delivered in a particularly noteworthy way (one imagines the promo people skimming an unused draft of the script for brotastic quips), but Rudd manages to both wring out the full awkwardness of "sweet, sweet hanging" and to capture the spontaneous vulnerability of uttering a neologism like "totes magotes." And although Segel never threatens to confront Rudd as a comedic equal, he provides key support for two of the film's best, most deapan jokes. The first involves Paul Rudd's inexplicably exclusive familiarity with the Timothy Dalton (or "T-Dalt") era of the James Bond series. The other, thankfully recurring, gag involves Rudd recounting his days of "slappin tha bass" in a bit of vocal mispronunciation far removed from something like the foreign-man shenanigans of Borat. Lubitsch this is not. But at its best, this is modern studio comedy at its (nearly) best.

*Since beginning this review many months ago I have, in fact, seen Role Models. Rudd is good in it, but not this good.

WELCOME TO EARTH

2009-07-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

And happy Independence Day.

Dio For Free

2009-07-01T08:02:00.000-07:00

Want a mixtape?

Yeah you do.

While nothing on it quite reaches the blissful heights of his youtube sensation in the making Aye, the mixtape still has a pretty fresh sound, and although I can't understand shit, reminds me of why I like hip hop. The flow is simply that. Flow. Beautiful nonsense to my ears.

The only real problem with the tape is that it is cut up with some kind of radio interview, which of course makes no sense to English speakers.

That and it is a mix tape. The most retarded and obnoxious form of music release ever conceived by man.
lonk

Back For the First Time

2009-06-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

Soup, true believers!

So we've been on a bit of an extended hiatus for the past couple months. Please excuse our absence -- all but one of our contributors just graduated college. The one straggler happens to be Yours Truly.

SO WHY WEREN'T YOU POSTING?! you may ask. Welp, like any good coattail hanger, I've been basking in my friends' collective glory... and not doing a damn thing.

Now now, sonny, don't you worry. All good things must come to an end (or so they say). I've grown tired of being lackadaisical... at least for the next week or so.

So, what do you, faithful reader (singular because there's surely only one) have to look forward to in the coming days?

A review and retrospective on the life and times and works of Daniel Dumile aka MF DOOM aka DOOM aka The Supervillain.
A defense of Girly Music (Jewel notwithstanding).
A discussion on 90s British music and its influences (and if anyone should even care).
And much, much more (assuming I can wrangle my cohorts from their post-graduation malaise).

See you in a couple days!

A Brief Roundup of Music I've Heard Recently

2009-06-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

Jason Lytle: Yours Truly, The Commuter

It's pretty good. B+

Sunn O))): Monoliths and Dimensions

Doom metal + horns and strings. A

Geoff Mullen: thrtysxtrllnmnfstns

Nice little drones and blips. A

That's all for now. Stuff is pretty good.

Nobody Writin' Me on the Blog

2009-05-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

You bastards need to update this space more often. It doesn't have to be meaningful, well-thought out or even that interesting. Just please, for the love of God, keep writing.

That being said, I have it on good authority that the following, from one Cory McIntyre, is the greatest written work ever crafted. So I guess you can all put your pens away and quit trying.

Star Trek: 2009 Biatchez!

2009-05-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

May 7th, 2009
...a day long awaited. The IMAX screen went dark. A trailer for Night @ The Museum 2 played to the mocking snickers of all. The trailers ended. A Paramount logo appeared with an unfamiliar Lost-esque musical score humming. Blurry lights, submarine squawks and a giant wall of metal soared past the screen. The wall of metal drifted away... it was a Federation starship! My mouth dropped open in awe of how detailed and real it felt - this was what Starfleet looked like with actual cinematic vision thrown at it. There were some 'splosions, some drama and sturm-und-drang, the prologue ended and a familiar arrowhead twirled in slowly with a certain special pair of words silhouetted in the foreground:

STAR TREK

This was it. After all the long years of shite B-grade TV and movies, after all the teasing and ridicule, after two release date push backs, after endless doubt & worry, a dream had come true. Our beloved space opera was finally being given the treatment & recognition it deserved. This is easily, as 95% or whatever of the nation's critics have already said, one of the greatest summer thrill rides to come out in a decade. Even more importantly the movie achieves this without selling its proverbial soul: hip and stylish as it might be, this is still very much the same good ole Star Trek we know and love. It's like an old friend who leaves town for a year or five and returns slightly changed... some catching-up is needed but deep down they're still the same person.

Sure there are problems and minor missteps (Nokia??) but the broad strokes, what really matters, are absolutely utterly nailed: the sense of adventure, the cheer & optimism, the grungy camp tone (something lost after TOS)... Best of all is the handling of character, each one given at least one moment in the spotlight to highlight their contribution. Quinto & Urban's portrayals of Spock & Bones are nicely layered while Pine in particular manages to make Kirk his own without resorting to impersonation. For characters so completely defined by the original actors portraying them, all three of these performances are feats if not miraculous. Bruce Greenwood (Cpt. Pike) and Eric Bana (teh evilz villain) are noteworthy as well, the former for the authority he brings to a character not well established in TOS, the latter for complexity he brings to an otherwise 2D underwritten character.

It's no masterpiece though, no matter how much some including me might wish it was. It's in the A-tier but the RT rank is an overrating. Main reason, perhaps a necessary evil: it's a bit rushed - see poorly handled mid-movie 5min exposition monologue in the snow cave. There were a number of key moments where I knew I was supposed to feel emotion but for whatever reason it just wasn't coming through. An extra story beat or two would have solved this problem, but would've also detracted from the film's breakneck pace. Considering Star Trek's goal was to court a new generation of young fans this was probably a worthwhile sacrifice, perhaps Star Trek 12 whenever it comes out will have the breathing room to tell a deeper fleshed out story. For now, weesa happee.

Best Scene:
The Kobayashi Maru test

Assorted Good Lines:
"Why don't you get five more and we'll be even." - Kirk
(re: Uhura) "I would rather not discuss it." - Spock
"You have been and always shall be my friend." - Spock
"...green blooded hobgoblin." - Bones
"I may throw up on you." - Bones
"I can do this, I can do this!" - Chekov
"I'ma given her all she's gote!" - Scotty

How it ends:
A famous voice-over.

2009-05-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Star Trek Retrospective IV: 2001-2008

2009-05-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

Prequel Fail
With Voyager's run ending on a ratings down note, merchandise sales nosediving, the most recent movie (Insurrection) a box office fizzle and Trek's reputation rightfully ruined, the producers were keenly aware that whatever followed Voyager's finale in mid-2001 had to be something hip and awesome... something that gave Trek a fresh start and would court a new generation of fans with its cool factor (sound familiar?) Thus UPN replaced the dorky, ill-received Voyager with Enterprise (later awkwardly retitled Star Trek: Enterprise), a prequel series set a hundred years before TOS with the goal of accomplishing what JJ Abrams eventually did: reboot Trek for the young generation. As the mere existence of JJ Abrams' movie proves, this first try was not so hot.

For all its superficial attempts at being different (a soft-rock opening theme instead of Jerry Goldsmith, "hull plating" instead of shields, etc), the early two seasons of Enterprise were *exactly* the same as Voyager. Same production staff, same writing staff, same dated "early 90's filmed with 00's cameras" look and feel, same tired formulaic plots, and nary a cool factor in sight. It tried so hard at first, the first handful of episodes aren't too shabby, but by the time season 2 rolls around you can just feel the energy zap from the screen with what is probably the single worst, lamest clump of 20-odd episodes Trek has ever produced. This same creative team had been working on TNG, Voyager, two of the movies and now this for almost two decades. It was time to give up. Or was it?

One Last Chance
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) - They certainly pulled out all the stops here. A longer-than-usual gap between movies, an A-list celebrity screenwriter (John Logan, writer of Gladiator & Sweeney Todd), an Oscar-winning action editor for a director, a bigger budget... with the television arm of the franchise seemingly crippled, this movie was the last real chance to make Star Trek cool again, at least in the immediate future. And that's where the trouble begins. The creative team in charge had (past five years of Trek case in point) no friggin clue what "cool" meant anymore.

If Nemesis's deep problems could be boiled down to any one cause, it's that the filmmakers were making the movie they thought fans wanted to see, as opposed to you know, actually making a good movie, which is ironically what the fans actually wanted. At an almost regular interval, a moment or shot in Nemesis comes along where you can just feel the director/writer/whoever going "ooh, they'll love this!" But it's always just so, SO painfully lame. Any time they're presented with a good or bad cinematic choice, they make the bad one, thinking its what we want to see, but it isn't! We just want a good story that sends the TNG cast out with style, dangit. At one point during the climactic battle, Picard rams the Enterprise into the enemy ship with very little explanation or result. Why does he do this? Where's the strategy? Contrast this with any of the like three similar rammings in Battlestar Galactica, the difference in quality is obvious. Earlier in the film, Picard & his team explore a planet using a dune buggy. The reason: "ooh they'll love a car chase!" But no, all this does is make the non-fans snicker mockingly during the trailer at their lame attempt to be cool, and all the fans roll their eyes because they're aware of any of a dozen reasons why this scene shouldn't be happening.

Anyways, enough with my Trekkie rant. The verdict: I have seen all of the previous 9 movies, even the worst ones, at least a dozen times. The first time I saw Nemesis in the theater was the only time I have seen it from beginning to end. It is so painfully unwatchable, it's the only Star Trek film I've never been inspired to revisit and I don't think six years will change my or anyone else's view of it. Making a paltry $40-odd million at the box office, this would be the last in the series of films that began over twenty years prior with TMP.

Best Line: (it's hard to find one, but)
"You have the bridge, Mr. Troi." - Picard, mocking Riker for recently marrying Troi.

How it ends:
New lines of work or retirement for all involved.

Too Little Too Late: Enterprise Season 4
The TV franchise adrift, the movies tanked... solution = try salvaging what was left of Enterprise. Midway through it's third season, the executive producers and writers who'd been on staff since at least Voyager "voluntarily" took a back seat to fresh blood, and wow what a difference it made. Starting with the episode "Azati Prime," the hapless show that made even Voyager seem nifty was suddenly sort of, but only sort of awesome. The characters became more rounded, the dialogue sharper and the plotlines less predictable. By the start of Season 4 when the new producers took over entirely, the entire feel of the show had changed. It was suddenly competent. By the time season 4 had ended, it was clear this was Trek's best (and only legitimately good) season since the end of DS9. There are some great stories here that actually do the origins-job a prequel is supposed to do, in particular a Vulcan-centric 3 parter, an episode about Khan's genetically engineerede relatives and a Mirror Universe tale.

Unfortunately, as good as this season was, saving the show required more than "good," if it was possible at all by this point. The ratings never recovered and Enterprise became the only Trek series since the original to be cancelled prematurely. At least it went out with dignity though, actual series finale episode aside.

Random Tidbit: In the new movie, when Scotty says he killed "Admiral Archer's poor beagle", that's a reference/making fun of this show. Enterprise's captain is a Cpt. Archer, and he has a pet beagle named Porthos. So Scotty killed Porthos! (tear)

Best Episodes (all from the last season & a half):
- "Similitude" (Tucker is mortally wounded, but Dr Phlox gets the idea to clone him via stem cell and harvest the clone's organs. naturally the clone objects. a relevant, well written and classic Star Trek story)
- "Cold Station 12" (Khan's cousins wreck havoc, plot is nothing special, it's just surprisingly well made)
- "In a Mirror, Darkly" (the origins of the Evil Mirror Universe from TOS)
- "Damage" (while the Enterprise is dead in the water from the prior episode, T'Pol confronts a drug addiction)

How it ends:
Really stupidly. But the second-to-last episode - the finale-in-spirit, is terrific.

The Great Trek Drought of the Late 2000's
For the first time since the 70's there was no new Star Trek in regular production. Rumors flew around about a new movie in the works but coming so soon after Nemesis's failure, this seemed unlikely. Rick Berman, Trek exec producer since 1990, said Paramount had approached him about a new prequel film centering around the Romulan Wars, or something, and indeed a full script had been written by the author of Band of Brothers. Nothing ever came of it and the rumor mills grew ever more silent. Us Trekkies, as exhausted as the general public was after so much usually crappy oversaturation, felt that perhaps, after 40 years, the end had finally come. Star Trek had run its course, and it was time to let a new love take its place. Farscape, Stargate, Firefly, BSG... they all tried, but none could really capture lightning in a bottle quite the same way.

Then we woke up one morning, and saw something like this headline on CNN:
"JJ ABRAMS, "LOST" TEAM TO HELM NEW STAR TREK MOVIE, MATT DAMON TO PLAY KIRK?"

Whaaaaaatttttt???????

Star Trek Retrospective III: 1992-2001

2009-05-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

And Now, Something Completely Different
As The Next Generation began winding down, Paramount got to work on its replacement. A fresh approach was called for; something darker, something edgier. We'd seen two series of a crew exploring new places weekly in not-much-depth, what if there was a series that stayed in one place and explored its sole setting in very-much-depth? If Star Trek & TNG were a "Wagon Train to the Stars," Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1992-1999) would be a "Gunsmoke in Space." Set on a far flung wild west space station (town) at the gateway of a crucial trade route, DS9 explored politics, war and character to a much deeper extent than its predecessors could and featured a more heavily serialized story line. For a variety of reasons, the show was a harder sell and lost much of TNG's massive audience but the quality never suffered. Like fine wine it just got better with each passing season as the arcs grew in complexity.

With the best cast, the most complex characters, the best drama and an a certain someone named Garak, this is easily my favorite of the Trek shows. It is not necessarily better than TOS or TNG, merely a particularly good orange to their perfectly ripe apples. Where TNG established the utopian ideals of humanity's future, DS9 threw them all against a wall and saw what stuck. It's different, it's risky and it's rich.

Best Episodes:

- "The Visitor" (Sisko is apparently killed in an accident but keeps reappearing to son Jake every ten years or so, who can't bring himself to let go. a father/son story that would have even frat-doucheys in tears)

- "The Die Is Cast" (exiled Garak is offered a return trip home if he assists in a Romulan & Cardassian assault on the Changeling homeworld. The changelings pwn them anyway)

- "Duet" (Kira confronts her hatred of Cardassians when a Cardassian war criminal/concentration camp manager turns up on the station)

- "Rocks & Shoals" (the crew is marooned on a planet with an also-marooned platoon of enemy soldiers, who hate their leader and who the crew try to win over)

- "In the Pale Moonlight" (with the war going very badly, Sisko decides it's time to convince the stubborn Romulans to join. He sells his soul & enlists Garak's help, darkness ensues. This is one of my favorite TV episodes of all time.)

- "Taking Into the Wind" (when Klingon leader Gowron starts mismanaging the troops & endangering the galaxy over a petty vendetta, Worf is ordered to do 'whatever it takes' to stop him, including treason)

How it ends:

"It's like they always say: the more things change, the more they stay the same."

The Zenith

TNG was ending on a (ratings) high note, early-DS9 was still holding it's audience, and Kirk & Picard made it into the cover of Time Magazine. The next movie was rickety, but only because the producers had so much other success to manage...

Star Trek Generations (1994) - Passing the torch to the TNG crew, Kirk & Picard unite in a space-time-fiddly-doodly to stop a crazed scientist from destroying a star for this and that reason. Some good ideas and themes regarding aging, time and life regrets, all beautifully filmed, but it lacks drive. A boring & muddled affair.

Best Line:

"It was fun. Oh my..." - Kirk

How it ends:

"Think they'll build another one?"

------

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - aka the one with the Borg. Learning from the mistakes of the previous movie, First Contact is a terse, efficient thrill ride that starts with a bang and... lets go at some points, but most of the time holds. There are a ton of great moments, every character gets something to do, and James Cromwell stumbles around drunk. Like The Wrath of Khan, this is a B-movie cheesefest, but holy crap what an awesome one.

Best Line:

"Assimilate this." - Worf

How it ends:

The Vulcans make first contact with human society: tequila shots and Steppenwolf.

Things Start Going South

Only two years into Deep Space Nine's run Paramount decided it was time for yet another spinoff TV series. Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001), the story of a ship flung into deep space a hundred years from home, ala Lost in Space, was born. Serve it would as the flagship series for then-new network-upstart UPN. Voyager has its fans (usually mutually exclusive from DS9 fans), I am not one of them. Distancing itself from the oft-hard drama and political intrigue of its cousin, Voyager went the summer blockbuster route and embraced stand alone action/adventure stories with little attention paid to character. This would be fine if it wasn't so damned dorky; Voyager is the epitome of every negative stereotype about Trek one could think of. It did do one good thing however: it drew the attention of the meddling execs away from DS9, which from the moment of Voyager's launch was pretty much allowed to do whatever it wanted storywise. Yay.

Best Episodes:

- "Timeless" (Kim & Chakotay's experimental warp drive thing gets Voyager home but rips it apart in the process, they try to change history and reverse the mistake)

- "Scorpion" (Janeway forges an alliance with the Borg so that they can both survive the onslaught of A SPEESEE!Z MOAR POWRFUL THEN TEH BORGZ! OMGZ)

- "Message in a Bottle" (using alien technology, the crew is able to transmit the Doctor's hologram to home and finally let Earth know they're alive)

- "Equinox" (the crew finds another stranded Federation ship, this one using the bodies of some alien animal to propel itself home, making the animals really angry. it's actually pretty badarse)

How it ends:

Really stupidly.

Yet Another Movie

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) - Picard & crew must tamely rebel against an Admiral looking to steal a fountain-of-youth planet from its 600 inhabitants, for the good of the many. A light & sadly forgettable film with some cute moments. Would make for a good drinking game.

Best Line:

"Saddle up, lock and load." - Data

How it ends:

Everyone lives happily ever after.

Coming soon: Parts 4 & 5, 5 being the movie we're seeing tonight...

Star Trek Retrospective II: 1987-1992

2009-05-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

New Kids in Town
Paramount had been toying with the idea of bringing Trek back to the small screen for several years at this point, always ending in awry, but in the Year of Charles's Birth this second series finally came to fruition. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) was unveiled to audiences deeply skeptical of any attempt at filling the original crew's shoes, skepticism not unlike that faced by Connery's two replacements upon exiting the Bond role. Were Shatner & Nimoy Star Trek or was the tale bigger than them? Thanks mainly to resident God Among Men Patrick Stewart, the latter was true.

Skepticism aside, TNG was a ratings - albeit not critical - success right out of the gate and in fact pioneered a whole generation of syndication-only TV shows of dubious quality such as Hercules, Xena, the allegedly decent Babylon 5, et al which followed. Differences from the original series included a more "enlightened" crew with less in-drama (aka less characterization), an updated ship and a Shakespearean-trained Captain. The early years are laughably cheesy, like TOS but without the charm and the final two seasons derail again, but there's a stretch in the middle there of truly great television. TNG could be a bit sterile at times and certainly hasn't aged well, but its reputation and popularity are well deserved.

Best Episodes:
- "The Inner Light" (Picard is zapped by an alien probe from a long-dead civilization and given a lifetime of one of its scientist's memories)
- "Tapestry" (Picard "dies", goes to heaven, finds out the Almighty is actually pesky omnipotent Q. Q offers Picard a chance to relive his life without regrets, Picard regrets the decision to do so)
- "Cause & Effect" (the Enterprise is caught in a timeloop that keeps ending in its destruction, the crew must figure out how to plant clues for their next 'round' to escape the space-time-whatsit-loopy-doopy)
- "Chain of Command Pt. 2" (Picard is captured by the Cardassians and tortured. features Stewart's classic "THEH AH FOUR LIGHTS!" line)
- "Measure of a Man" (a douchey scientist wants to disect Data against his will, arguing that Data is a robot & has no rights. Data is put on trial to prove that he is in fact alive and deserves the same rights as everyone else)
- "Darmok" (An alien captain w/severe language barrier strands himself & Picard on a planet with a nasty monster, hoping that the male-bonding experience will help their civilizations figure out how to communicate)
- "All Good Things..." (the pitch-perfect series finale, Q puts humanity on trial for being a "dangerous, savage child race," Picard must prove him wrong)

How it ends:
"Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky's the limit."

Shatner Gets to Direct, Fail Ensues
Meanwhile over on the movie lot, a fifth Trek film is put in the works:

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1988) - After Nimoy got to direct films 3 & 4, Shatner demanded the same chance. Armed with an ambitious story about a renegade Vulcan on a quest to literally find the Almighty, who apparently lives in a part of the Mohave Desert at the center of the galaxy, Shatner set to work. All manner of production problems ranging from budget cuts to a visual fx company that had quite noticeably no idea what they were doing fell upon him, resulting in a so-bad-it's-brilliant monstrosity. The plot is thin and riddled with holes, the look cheap, the dialogue bad... Scotty bonks his head & we're supposed to laugh... this is one of the stupidest, worst movies in the series. Still though, that character driven charm that makes the original gang so special is very much present. It's a fun train wreck to watch.

Best Line:
"K'pagh pagh pagh, KEGH GINAB!" - Klingon Captain

How it ends:
"Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream."

Gorbachev to the Rescue

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) - An aging Enterprise is dispatched on a not-so-subtle Cold War allegory mission to escort the Klingon Chancellor to Earth for peace negotiations. Thanks to a recent catalismic disaster (Chernobyl?), among other problems, the Klingon Empire has decided it can no longer afford hostility with the Federation and wants to make ammends. Kirk hates the Klingons and the Klingons hate him, but he accepts the mission anyway. Chaos on an epic scale ensues when the Chancellor is assassinated, seemingly by Kirk.

With its dark, intelligent edge and relevant story, this could have been greater than Khan. Unfortunately some wild mischaracterizations from a suddenly alcoholic Chekov, an annoyingly angry Scotty (how do you make Scotty annoying?) and a racist Uhura (borderline heresy considering the significance her character has to the African American acting community) drag things down a notch or two or three. Still, the ideas & commentary are great and it's certainly the most far-reaching cinematic story Trek had tackled to this point. I respect it more than I enjoy it.

Best Line:
"LET THEM DIE" - Kirk, in full Shatner glory

How it ends:
A well-earned ride into the sunset. This is the last time we see the original crew together.

Star Trek Retrospective I: 1966-1986

2009-05-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

Dude at Rotten Tomatoes is doing this retrospective thing where he spends each day leading up to May 8th watching the 10 Trek films for the first time and reviewing them, from a non-fan perspective. Thus, I copy him, albeit from a mucho-fan perspective & including the five TV series.

The Dawn of Greatness
We begin with Star Trek (The Original Series), airing on NBC from 1966-1969. Earnest and honest even at it's cheesiest, this is one of the more watchable, enjoyable TV dramas ever created. In the midst of a tumultuous decade, just as Science Fiction was taking a turn for the apocalyptic with Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, et al, Star Trek presented denizens with hope. It envisioned a future where mankind has outgrown its petty differences and set out across the galaxy on a mission of peaceful exploration. Poverty, disease, and (human-vs-human) war have gone the way of Bubonic Plague. We're not saints, we're still driven by emotion and greed, but to a more controlled extent.

At the end of the day though it was the characters that made this series the classic it became. Spock, Bones and Kirk, the logic, the emotion and the mediator respecitvely were all instantly-relatable badasses who we loved to watch kick Klingon butt week after week. They were the original Bromance. If there was one reason Trek went off the rails in the past decade, it could be pinned on losing sight of that important fact: it's the characters, stupid.

All in all, a flawed but rightfully beloved masterwork that was ahead of its time and relevant still today.

Best Episodes:
- "City on the Edge of Forever" (giant glowing donut sends a drugged Bones back in time, Spock & Kirk travel back to the 1930's to stop him)
- "Balance of Terror" (the Enterprise must hunt down a rogue Romulan ship, gets pummeled)
- "Errand of Mercy" (Kirk must convince a planet of pacifist hippies to resist a Klingon occupation, the hippies end up pwning both Kirk and the awesome Klingon captain)
- "The Trouble with Tribbles" (revenge of the furballs)

How it ends:
Cancelled abruptly after its 3rd season due to "low" ratings despite an Emmy nom for Best Dramatic Series. Neilsen calculated its ratings differently back then with less weight placed on demographics; it is said that had they calculated the way they started calculating just a year later, Star Trek would've regularly cracked the top 10.

"Cancelling that show was the worst mistake we ever made."
Almost imediately following its seeming-death, Star Trek reruns rapidly found a massive audience in the "right as kids get home from school" syndication timeslot. Throughout the 70's it amassed more and more popularity to eventually absurd magnitudes. Paramount's eyes lit up. In Trek, they saw an opportunity to replicate Fox's then-recent success with Star Wars, thus was born:

The First Four Movies
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) - Cobbled together from remnants of an abandoned Trek spinoff pilot, this ambitious monster was a respectable failure. It tried to be a Grand Cerebral SciFi Masterpiece (tm) in the vein of 2001, with a record-breaking budget to match, but Star Trek isn't 2001. "It's the characters, stupid," which is where TMP goes awry. High-concept ideas about machines and humanity and pretty-looking spaceship models take precedence over emotion and leave us with little to do except watch the crew stand around the bridge looking really worried about the admittedly impressive visuals flashing by on the screen. The result isn't terrible persay, merely very boring and stilted. A robotic affair worth one viewing but not another.

Best Line:
"V'ger!" - Ilia

How it ends:
"The Human Adventure is Just Beginning" (with a box office tally clearly warranting a sequel)

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) - That's more like it. Until allegedly now, this was Trek's one *great* classic movie. It's an old, simple tale of revenge, death, love and life... all character-oriented stuff that gets us back to what made the Original Series so great in the first place. The cast is back on their game, Shatner's voice echoes through eternity and our tears are undeniably jerked. It's clearly more of a campy B-movie than an Oscar vehicle, but there's no shame in that.

One of Countless Best Lines:
"Of all the souls I've encountered in my travels, his was the most... (with difficulty) ...human..." - Kirk

How it ends:
One of cinema's singularly great death/funeral scenes.

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Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) - Okay, a little bit bumpier of a ride here, but not terrible. Clearly struggling to fill Khan's big shoes, this film of mostly middling-quality salavages itself with one of the greatest 3rd acts in the series. Most of the time it's slow, cheap-looking and not all that interesting if you're unfamiliar with the mythology. When it finally takes off about 50min from the end it becomes suddenly unexpectedly AWESOME, like a switch was flipped, but never enough to redeem the hobbled beggining. Merits include a terrific, at times heart-wrenching performance from Shatner, some terrific one-liners and an intriguing mystical tone to the whole thing. Cons include the distracting Genesis Planet set and the aforementioned snooze-inducing first two-acts. A very mixed but lovable bag.

Best Line:
(in the aftermath of a kick-ass action piece)
Kirk: "My God Bones, what have I done?"

Bones: "What you had to do, what you always do, turn death into a fighting chance to live."

How it ends:
A "series finale" type ending + box office take warranting a further sequel:

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) - aka "the one with the whales", as sleak as it is silly. After three sobering, bittersweet stories, in particular the 3rd one, it was time to lighten the mood. This is a straight "fish out of water" comedy with a lightweight save the Earth moral, chronicling the crew's hijincks in 1980's San Fran. It's also probably the best looking of the bunch with Oscar-garnering cinematography. My verdict: I'm more a fan of the sobering drama character stuff, so while I recognize that this is a clever, well made and funny film, I don't really love it. But other peeps might & do.

Best Line:
"Is this a time for another 'colorful metaphor'?" - Spock

How it ends:
"Let's see what she's got..."

Further reviews in due time.

Batman / Robin: Overthinking the "Worst Superhero Movie of All Time"

2009-05-02T13:40:00.001-07:00

Joel Schumacher’s 1997 film Batman & Robin is generally considered one of the worst films, or at least one of the worst superhero films, of all time. It currently suffers a measly 12% rating on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes and a 28% on Metacritic. Usually, such poor reception might be the result of the ineptitude on the part of the filmmaker to hone the formal elements of film to express anything of value. Upon closer inspection, however, Batman & Robin actually reveals a consistent, singular vision. Given the fact that Schumacher is an openly gay filmmaker, one can assume that the film’s homosexual overtones are the product of the director’s own life experiences and worldview. In particular, the film acts as a commentary on gender and sexuality. Batman & Robin serves as a utopian text favoring homosexuality, in which the characters that conform to the “normal” gender and sexual roles of mainstream society are depicted as deviant criminals incapable of meaningful relationships, while the heroes of the film subtextually exhibit gay tendencies and are ultimately able to form the strongest bonds of all.

Each of the three villains in the film represents and satirizes a different aspect of heterosexuality whose gender and/or sexual roles can often be problematic. The primary villain, Mr. Freeze, exemplifies an individual in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, the standard in mainstream society. He rejects sexual advances by one of his henchwomen and is immune to Poison Ivy’s love pheromones. Freeze and his fidelity to his wife are twisted, however, as he is a criminal whose misdeeds are motivated by his unwavering obsession with curing her of a rare disease. Meanwhile, a scientific accident has rendered him unable to survive in anything but sub-zero temperatures, symbolizing his loss of emotion in a stagnant marriage. This is magnified by the fact that he must constantly steal diamonds in order to power his cryogenic suit and the machine that will presumably cure his wife, essentially showering her with an endless supply of jewelry. In other words, the character serves as a satire of conventional heterosexual relationships and the materialistic obligations that they often entail.

Moreover, Freeze embodies the quintessence of traditional masculinity. The casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger is key in realizing this representation, as his canon of work consists mainly of high-adrenaline action films, a notoriously “male” genre. The actor boasts a considerably large muscular physique as the result of his former weightlifting career. Even Freeze’s former alias, Victor Fries, is mentioned as being a two-time Olympic decathlete. Both Schwarzenegger and his character are at the height of their physical form, often interpreted as a sign of manliness. In addition, Freeze’s henchmen resemble hockey players, skates and sticks included, associating the villain with the typically male-dominated realm of physical sports. Freeze’s masculinity is perfectly illustrated when he offers a particularly chauvinist word of advice to a fellow villain, “No matter what they tell you, Mr. Bane, it is the size of your gun that counts.”

If Freeze exemplifies the height of masculinity, Bane represents the dangers of masculinity gone awry. Perhaps a commentary on the use of performance-enhancing substances in athletic culture, the steroid-like “Venom” serum augments Bane’s strength to a ridiculous degree, transforming him into a mindless, obedient super-soldier. He works as a minion for the lustful seductress Poison Ivy and wears a mask that resembles the type of bondage suit associated with acts of sexual sadomasochism. Bane signifies a harmful side of sexuality, and his affiliation with Ivy resembles the problematic type of relationship based solely on physicality, as she only uses him for his muscle.

Poison Ivy characterizes heterosexual promiscuity and lust. She is essentially a prostitute, even at one point auctioning off her own body at a charity ball. She and Bane both arrive at the rainforest-themed event in the guise of apes, symbolizing the primitive element of carnal desires. She is at one with the true nature of human beings, often declaring herself Mother Nature. With her seductive dance and hypnotic pheromone dust, Ivy is able to charm every male at the ball. She uses her concoctions to force men to do her bidding and kills them with her poisonous kiss. She effectively uses her body as a weapon, a fact impeccably represented when Ivy fixes her hair in the reflection of a knife in the middle of a fight scene. Ivy embodies the way in which sexuality can be misused for personal gain.

Poison Ivy is also consistently associated with Christian imagery and diction throughout the film. This is significant in that Christianity has often been a factor in the argument against gay rights in American culture, in which homosexuality is often declared “unnatural” and in direct contradiction with the teachings of the Bible. As Ruth Hubbard explains in “The Social Construction of Sexuality,” “To fulfill the Christian mandate, sexuality must be intended for procreation, and thus all forms of sexual expression and enjoyment other than heterosexuality are invalidated” (52). As Ivy even warns one of her victims before killing him, “It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.” In terms of appearance, she resembles the traditional image of Eve from the book of Genesis, a nude woman with her private parts covered in leaves. Her lustful nature also recalls the notion of original sin, the eating of the forbidden fruit. Freeze even refers to himself and Ivy as “Adam and Evil” after she explains her plan to allow plants to reclaim the earth from humanity, to create a contemporary Eden and start anew. Ivy decries the corrupt state of the world as she ponders, “Why should only Batman and Robin die while the society that created them goes unpunished?” Assuming the two heroes are to represent homosexuality, it is as if Ivy is condemning the immorality of mankind as interpreted by the Bible. She contradicts herself, however, in that her sexual promiscuity also defies Christian values. It is this contradiction that delineates Ivy as a satire of the incongruities in the system of Christian beliefs.

Ivy’s complex relationships with the men of the film are of particular interest. Her partnership with Mr. Freeze functions as another failed heterosexual relationship of sorts. Though they share a hatred for Batman and Robin and plot to essentially conquer Gotham City, their super-abilities are in complete contradiction to one another. Freeze represents harsh winter conditions while Ivy symbolizes the thriving of plant life. Usually the two cannot coexist. The failure of their “marriage” is solidified in one of the final scenes, in which Ivy is sentenced to share a cell in prison with Freeze, doomed to a life of conjugal hell. Ivy’s relationships with Batman and Robin are also noteworthy, as they reveal the latent homosexuality and bisexuality of the characters, respectively. As she puts it, “Batface and Birdbrain turned out to be much more resistant to my love dust than expected.” If the two characters were to be interpreted as homosexual, such an aversion would make sense. This also problematically implies that sexual orientation and romantic attraction is merely biological and not acquired by experience or from external sources, a hypothesis that is difficult to verify. When Ivy increases the dosage of love dust, Batman and Robin begin to fight for her affections. Robin becomes irrationally jealous when Batman questions his attraction to her. “She has us fighting over her somehow,” Batman says, as if the fact that he is sexually attracted to a woman is unthinkable.

The evidence that Batman is a closet homosexual is plentiful. Even George Clooney openly admits to playing the character as a gay man. Though Bruce does have a girlfriend, Julie Madison, her only role is to conceal his true sexual orientation as his "beard." On several occasions, Bruce dodges questions about the issue of marriage with Julie, not only revealing his discomfort with the relationship, but also effectively making him a foil to the marriage-obsessed Mr. Freeze. Bruce struggles with his relationship with Julie because of his secretive lifestyle, the fact that he is a costumed crime-fighter and, likely, gay. “I know you’ve had your wild nights,” she excuses. “Wild doesn’t quite cover it,” Bruce says. The innuendo is clear.

If fighting crime and homosexuality are to be associated with one another, one can assume that Batman harbors a romantic infatuation with Robin. From the first exchange of dialogue, Batman establishes his disapproval, perhaps jealousy, of the fact that Robin expresses an interest in women. “I want a car. Chicks dig the car,” Robin says. “This is why Superman works alone,” Batman jokes in reply. He playfully chastises his young sidekick, or perhaps more appropriately, his “partner,” a somewhat loaded term mentioned multiple times to refer to their alliance. The two also argue constantly over the issue of trust, a common issue in romantic relationships, specifically when it comes to dealing with the threat of sexual infidelity. In this case, the threat is Poison Ivy, who remains the point of contention until Robin finally trusts Batman and tricks her with a pair of rubber lips to withstand her poisonous kiss.

Comic book critic Frederic Wertham suggests in his book Seduction of the Innocent that the original comic book characters of Batman and Robin are inherently homosexual. He writes, “Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures of the mature ‘Batman’ and his young friend ‘Robin.’" He then comments on the fact that at home, the two characters “lead an idyllic life. They are Bruce Wayne and ‘Dick’ Gray- son. Bruce Wayne is described as a ‘socialite’ and the official relationship is that Dick is Bruce's ward. They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. […] It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.” Wertham would surely criticize the questionable nature of Bruce and Dick’s living situation in Schumacher’s films. In Batman Forever, Bruce takes Dick in, despite the fact that he appears to be in his mid-twenties, clearly not a child as in the comics, and therefore does not require a legal guardian. In Batman & Robin, Dick still lives with Bruce. To the outsider, their relationship might more closely resemble a homosexual one rather than a mere friendship or father-son bond.

While Batman exhibits latent gay tendencies, the depiction of Robin expresses much more confusion in terms of sexual orientation, aligning more with bisexuality than homosexuality. As Robert Lang argues in Masculine Interests: Homoerotics in Hollywood Film, it is Robin, “more than Batman—in keeping with biology’s imperative that younger men be more driven by sexual desire than older men—who finds himself responding helplessly to [Poison Ivy’s] toxic allure” (238). His sexual confusion allows him to explore the possibility of romance with a woman rather than continue his homoerotic relationship with Batman. Ivy urges Robin to “’forget the geriatric bat! Come join me—my garden needs tending’—as if the sexual interest she is inviting Robin to take in her were simply the flip side of his interest in Batman” (238). His affections are torn throughout the film by several characters.

Batgirl, also known as Barbara Wilson, serves as another potential romantic possibility for Robin. He marvels at her beauty when she first arrives at Wayne Manor, and curiously follows her when she sneaks out at night. It is worth noting that the filmmakers alter the character’s background from the original comics. The character is normally Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Batman’s ally, police commissioner James Gordon, but in the film her name is changed so that she is the niece of Bruce’s butler Alfred, the surrogate father of Bruce, and by default, Dick. Because of this familial connection, Barbara is off limits to Dick. Indeed, she is treated as more of a sibling in the dynamic of the Bat-family rather than a romantic interest, especially since Dick and Barbara never share an onscreen kiss.

Another reason Barbara may be romantically unavailable to Dick is that she could be interpreted as a lesbian, offering a female homosexual perspective to the heroes of the film. Barbara never shows any interest in Dick, despite his curiosity in her. Moreover, she is interested in traditionally “male” activities like motorcycle-racing and fighting crime. In the climactic final battle, conventional gender roles are reversed when a falling Robin plays the “damsel in distress” and Batgirl saves him with her grappling hook. She also one-ups her fellow crime-fighter when she succeeds in figuring out how to redirect a series of satellites to unfreeze the city. “You’re pretty good at this, little girl,” Robin quips. “Watch and learn, little boy,” she replies. She is essentially a better superhero than Robin, which is significant given the fact that comic books and comic book movies are dominated by male heroes.

The fact that Batman & Robin serves as a homosexual allegory within the superhero genre is noteworthy, as it represents a “subversion and appropriation of mainstream media.” Schumacher takes an extremely popular character from an increasingly prevalent genre, and transforms them both to fit his own personal vision. Given the reins of the Batman franchise after Tim Burton’s two comparatively darker installments, Schumacher chose to take the series in a decidedly campier direction (much like the 60s Adam West series), first with Batman Forever and even more so with Batman & Robin. The dialogue consists almost entirely of clichéd one-liners and bad jokes, such as Batman’s “You break it, you buy it,” or Mr. Freeze’s “Let’s kick some ice!” As Larry Gross outlines in his essay, “Out of the Mainstream,” “the classic gay (male) strategy of subversion is camp,” an attempt to undermine mainstream media’s often negative representations of homosexuals, among other minorities. “The sting can be taken out of oppressive characterizations and the hot air balloons of official morality can be burst with the ironic weapon of camp humour” (68).

This film also uses the convention of good versus evil inherent in comic books as a weapon against mainstream representations of gender and sexuality. Simply put, the good characters are homosexual while the evil characters are heterosexual. As such, the film serves as a utopian vision of a world in which homosexuals emerge victorious, pointing out the contradictions of heterosexual tradition. Schumacher utilizes the formal techniques of cinema to establish this gay utopia, specifically through the emphasis on and idealization of the male body. His Gotham City consists of godlike, skyscraper-sized nude statues over which the heroes and villains chase each other. Such figures also adorn Bruce Wayne’s mansion as well as the museum at the beginning of the film, cementing the motif. The influence of nude figures even finds its way into the costume design of the film. In the documentary Shadows of the Bat: The Cinematic Saga of the Dark Knight Part 6: Batman Unbound, Schumacher explains that the nipples, robust rear ends, and large codpieces on Batman and Robin’s costumes are inspired by “Greek statues that have perfect bodies” and are “anatomically erotic.” Close-ups accentuate these features during montage sequences in which the heroes suit up to go battle evil. The male body is literally in the face of the viewer.

Perhaps it is this utopian vision of homosexuality that turned mainstream viewers off of Batman & Robin, causing the bombardment of harsh criticism. The traditional language of film is often constructed for heterosexual understanding, so any alternative would naturally alienate viewers. The film ultimately undermines the conventions of the heterosexual mainstream, which is likely the reason for its embarrassing legacy. It is misunderstood. Perhaps the relatively homophobic majority is simply not ready for films like Batman & Robin that challenge the standard in terms of gender and sexuality.

Norm MacDonald: Talk Show Guest (Volume One, Issue Two)

2009-04-30T17:12:00.000-07:00

With Conan O’Brien’s departure from the Late Night spot and ascension to the coveted seat at the Tonight Show desk, late night television would seem to be at a crossroads of sorts. Jimmy Fallon, Conan’s replacement, doesn’t seem to be much of a host (I won’t turn this into a rant against Fallon, but I simply can’t understand why someone whose major contribution to comedy is breaking character in more sketches than any other SNL cast member would earn the Late Night spot, but I digress) and, frankly, the rest of the late night lineup looks rather bleak: Craig Ferguson is decent at best, Jimmy Kimmel is marginally funny yet somewhat lacking in monologue and interview skills, Letterman and Leno are on auto-pilot, and Carson Daly is Carson Daly.

The remaining late night shows, O’Brien’s program and the Stewart/Colbert combo on Comedy Central, are certainly funny, but aren’t without their problems. As much as I like them, these shows are firmly entrenched in their ways, all following their respective formats to the bitter end: O’Brien is straight-forward late night with a self-deprecating twist, Stewart is a half-hour of SNL’s “Weekend Update” and Colbert is more of the same, except with a satirical character at the helm. Is it too much to ask to demand something entirely new out of late night television?

While the talk show isn’t known as being the most innovative of television forms, it has certainly seen its fair share of creative innovations over the years. Letterman added a sarcastic edge to the interview portion and incorporated surreal humor into his sketches, Conan further developed the surrealism that Letterman introduced while adding a bit of self-deprecation, and Colbert, in perhaps the most drastic innovation to date, injected the concept of character-based, satirical humor into what had previously been a straight-forward format. These developments are all well and good, but two of these three shifts occurred at least 15 years ago, and even Colbert’s more recent manipulations of the form are starting to wear thin, especially in an America that is shifting further and further towards the political left with each passing day (in turn, pushing Colbert’s satire of the right further and further away from cultural relevancy).

On top of all of this, late night TV simply doesn’t draw the audience that it once did. With Cartoon Network’s foray into the realm of late night programming with their Adult Swim programming block, much of the young, sleep-deprived audience that was once the bread and butter of major network talk shows are now watching cable, while the rest of that audience seem to simply turn their sets off at the end of The Colbert Report. As a lifelong fan, it pains me to say this, but late night television, like its primary viewer base, is rapidly growing old and out of touch.

Who, then, will save us from this tedious death march of late night programming? Will Jimmy Fallon shed his cloying, oh-so-cute-and-bumbling persona in favor of a legitimately funny comedic voice? Will Jimmy Kimmel stop trying so hard to get laughs? Will Carson Daly develop a personality?

No, I would argue that the savior of late night is not any of the aforementioned hosts, or even a host at all, but is instead a man who has salvaged many a doomed talk show segment. Ladies and gentleman, without further adieu, I give you Norm MacDonald: Talk Show Guest.

To some, MacDonald might seem a strange choice to breathe new life into the ailing format, especially given his resume to date. Norm’s greatest career accomplishment is undoubtedly his tenure as host of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” a job from which he was unceremoniously fired by then-head of NBC Don Ohlmeyer for being “unfunny.” Since that time, Norm’s output has been limited to one entertaining box-office flop, a rash of mediocre sitcoms and films, and a massive mound of gambling debt.

But it isn’t so much Norm’s body of work that interests me, as much as it’s his promotional appearances in support of that work. Take this clip from Conan, for example:

Shown here saving a struggling young Conan from himself, Norm demonstrates his uncanny ability to step in and deliver comedic gems with precise timing and a sort of nonchalant delivery that disguises the formidable genius at work behind the scenes. I would argue that the reason Norm’s career went the way that it did wasn’t due to a lack of a sense of humor or creativity, but a lack of material to spontaneously riff on. Norm is at his funniest when he’s making a mockery of absolutely anything. Whether it’s Carrot Top, the tacky, self-promotional world of late night television or the decline of comedy roasts, he needs something to wage war on (so to speak).

I could say more about this, but I’d rather show you:

Rife with awkward pauses and hackneyed punch lines, Norm’s appearance on The Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget was an attack on the entire institution of the modern roast. Where Friars Club roasts were once legitimate events that naturally emerged out of the industry’s desire to pay respect to its elder statesmen, the modern version feels like an advertisement for the newest episode of Comedy Central Presents and features such A-list comedians as Greg Giraldo lampooning showbiz legends like Flavor-Flav. Without saying so much as a word to challenge the roast itself, Norm manages to highlight just what a farce the entire show has become, mocking the institution with a straight face and a list of jokes that could easily have been written by Jack Benny in 1950.

Through this irreverent sensibility, Norm has become the voice of viewers who grew up watching televised comedy and, frankly, want to point out just how ridiculous it can be. A relatively simple concept, yet his bumbling, unassuming delivery lends it a certain genuine quality. It’s almost as though we, as the viewers, aren’t quite sure whether Norm is conscious of just how brilliant his delivery really is or not. He could be a genius, or he might be like an innocent child wandering through the mall commenting on the many physical deformities of the passers-by, all the while inadvertently delivering a brilliant comedic set right in front of the Cinnabon (premise for that comparison blatantly stolen from Norm’s appearance on Dennis Miller Live… sorry, Norm).

Best served by absolute freedom and spontaneity, Norm could shine amidst a late night lineup that, frankly, lacks much of an audience. Rigid structure and stuffy formats do nothing but hinder Norm’s considerable talent, so where better to experiment than on a late night show that nobody would watch? As late comedian Mitch Hedberg observed when told he could swear on satellite radio during the early days of the format, “No shit…You can swear in the woods, too.” Without a stable audience, late night is the perfect testing ground for experimental comedy. Rather than rehashing the same, tired formats with different hosts, why not test out something a little different?

Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not suggesting that Norm should simply take a seat at a desk and ask people like Pete Wentz fascinating questions about their various pets— if Norm were to ever enter into the late night game, he’d have to do so in a characteristically irreverent fashion. Given his abilities as a talk show guest, why not toy with the format and play to Norm’s strengths? Rather than Norm hosting the show, why not bring guest hosts in to lead the program, with Norm as the perennial guest and interviewee, allowing him to simply take a seat and essentially riff and do what he does best? The somewhat creative manipulation of the relatively strict and uptight talk show format would be sure to draw attention, not only from traditional media outlets, but from blogs, forums and anywhere else that young media nerds tend to congregate (Cough). And lord knows Norm has more than enough in the way of famous comedian friends, making the entire concept surprisingly plausible.

Obviously, this is a bit of a far-fetched pipe dream and wouldn’t be without its obstacles. The first and most glaring issue with this idea is simply the possibility that the show would quickly grow tired and repetitive with only Norm as a guest. While I do have faith in his ability to innovate, especially given the sort of freedom afforded to post-Letterman and Leno programs, I can’t deny that this is a reasonable concern. My only answer to that might be to make it a weekly program (so as to give the producers more time to prepare for each individual show) , but I still have to concede that this idea is A. likely to be short-lived at best and B. a hilariously unrealistic fantasy concocted by me, a rabid Norm MacDonald fan.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to this idea, aside from its lack of any grounding in reality, is an age gap that I suspect has already burned Norm once. More on that after a couple clips:

Aside from being hilarious, these clips illustrate what I think has been Norm’s repeated downfall up to this point: his lack of resonance as funny with anyone above a certain age. Both Barbara Walter’s befuddlement at Norm’s unique comic timing and delivery and his anecdote about the Friars Club card game seem to reiterate the fact that older people like Don Ohlmeyer just don’t “get” Norm. While they may recognize that others find him hilarious, something about his lack of respect for established norms (Hah) of comedy, whether it’s an embrace of anti-humor or a sarcastic, dry delivery, just doesn’t seem to land with the older generation. And ultimately, that’s likely a major factor in Norm’s somewhat lackluster career following his firing from SNL. As long as studio executives have gray hair and remember Abbott and Costello, it’s going to be hard for Norm to find work, especially if he’s presented with half-baked ideas for inverted talk shows concocted by an unemployed college student.

The fact is that studios like to know their money is safe, and to a corporate structure what’s worked in the past is what works; Norm, unfortunately, hasn’t worked and as a (horrible) result, is absent from the airwaves. As great as it would be to see Norm shake up late night, it likely isn’t in the cards, despite my arbitrary efforts to write a bunch of words urging that very thing. That being said, if Norm CAN find some way to overcome this age gap and convince executives that he is one of the most unique comedic voices of the past ten to fifteen years, I strongly believe he is poised to become the new king of late night television. Or, at the very least, the new court jester. And in a court occupied by the likes of Conan and Letterman, jester isn’t a bad role at all.

Potent Quotables #3 (Volume One, Issue Two)

2009-04-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

(An erratically maintained feature in which we share resonant quotations and pay homage to the most durable of all SNL-Jeopardy categories)

Hopefully this quadruple-header speaks for itself. Theory and practice:

Interviewer: What is the most important thing in rock n roll?

John Lennon: The most important thing is to just to be here now.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah!! C'mon!! C'mon!! C'mon!!"

-Oasis, "Be Here Now," Be Here Now LP

"That was a record meant to be listened to on that day. That's all it was."

-Noel Gallagher, 2009 (responding to suggestions of pulling a Let It Be...Naked on his polarizing third album, Be Here Now)

"It was Alice in Wonderland meets Apocalypse, Now"

-Michael Spencer Johns, Oasis' primary photographer through 1997, commenting on the photo shoot for Be Here Now

Note the giant calendar marking the album's release date of August 21, 1997 in the foreground

Shove This Blender Up Your Ass You Hipster Scum (Volume One, Issue Two)

2009-04-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

It's 6:44 in the morning, and I'm writing this, my virgin post, from a Starbucks. If I had known that Starbucks opened at 5am, I would have been here sooner. But alas, at 5am when I tried calling them using IP-Relay the operator refused to sit through the eighth ring. If they hadn't been such an impatient cunt I would have gotten through. Oh well.

If you're wondering why I was using a public service for the deaf to try to call Starbucks in the early hours of the morning rather than using an actual phone, stop it. I'm way past the point where I would normally explain myself. My back hurts, I haven't slept in over 24 hours, and the prick at this place told me that soy milk tastes better than actual milk in lattés. It doesn't.

So here I am, drinking this inferior coffee product, while I look around at the typical early morning Starbucks crowd. Aside from the girl with the huge eye sitting across from me, I assume that all of these people are boring paper pushers desperately hoping the line for recently thawed fusion pastries and inferior coffee product never ends. When it does I'm sure they'll be compelled to schlep off to some eternal hell on the fifth floor where they spend the day wondering what life could have been if only they had gotten the orange-mango-danish-breakfast sandwich with sausage instead of the blueberries and shit coffeecake. There's always tomorrow, they'll say. But I know they'll stick with blueberries and shit. If anyone in here had it in them to order what they wanted, then at least one person would be smiling.

Fuckers.

Luckily, I Heard It Through the Grape Vine just came on, and if I close my eyes I can pretend I'm in my damp car listening to the oldies station. No not the CCR cover you ignorant normie redneck. This is the thick, juicy, slathered in fat ass soul, cut from Gladys Knight and the Pips. No it isn't as good as the Marvin Gaye version, but do you think the slobs that buy their music at Starbucks know that?

I must be one lucky jerk, because Fleet Foxes just came on. It reminds me of something, but in this state of sleep deprivation I can't recall what exactly. Something important, or at least relevant.

Oh right. Some time ago my hard drive up and committed The Big S. There wasn't any warning. Maybe I didn't treat it well enough. I don't know what the protocol for laptop care and maintenance is. I assumed that the things were supposed to be bulletproof so that journalists could have online dick measuring contests while reporting from the front lines of wherever. Or at some concert. I don't know, journalists go through some tough shit.

In a misguided attempt to right the wrong I paid some mac shop a hundred bucks to tell me that all of my music, scripts, pictures of cats, etc. was gone forever. Then like the novice consumer I am, I bought another aluminum monstrosity, and this time bought a fifty dollar plastic cover to protect it. This handy plastic cover will surely make my computer happier. This happened about a year ago, and because I'm a lazy consumer n00b I haven't put any music on this thing.

I got tired of manually adding stuff to my Songza play list pretty early on, and was glad to see that Pitchfork had made a top 100 list on Songza. Just click it, and listen to 100 songs chosen by the premier taste makers for un-athletic, bourgeois offspring of the people who were too lame to take drugs in the 60's. Sounds great right? Well it isn't bad. True to their persona, Pitchfork made sure to include a little of everything, and two of Kanye West. It's going to be a nice day in hell when you all realize that he's a crack baby.

Okay that isn't fair, because for some reason they also included two Vampire Weekend tracks and two Crystal Castles tracks. So you like Vampire Weekend and Crystal Castles. Whatever. I don't care. That isn't even the point I was trying to make. Those acts are both good, just like everyone one here.

Oh damn it. The girl with the big eye left, and she didn't throw out the napkin she's been scribbling all over. I don't know why, but I really wanted to see that napkin. I would have posted a pic of it here and then this wouldn't have been a complete waste of your time. As a consolation prize, I will now Google image search for, "big eye girl napkin," and post the first pic.

Well what do you know? It sucks. Better luck next time.

Right so back to the inferior Motown version of Heard it Through the Grape Vine and how it was a welcome rest to my demoralized ears. The pitchfork top 100 list isn't bad, but I continually felt myself wondering just what the Illinois jerk offs were basing their rankings on, so I went to the site to check out their reviews.

Why did I do this? Didn't I know I would get lost in a sea of misplaced nostalgia, and flagrant misuse of the word irony? You would think that, but somehow I always manage to forget how terrible the writing is, and how obnoxious the fairly thorough reporting still manages to be. Much like this fat sucker who has now had four apple something or others and a huge plastic cup full of what looks like whipped cream and muddy water, I keep going back to stuff my eye holes with shit that will probably make me retarded.

I trudged through the reviews. Skimmed a few. I got what I came for, and no not punishment from hipsters. All this music on this list. Every last fucking song on this 100 song list is blended bullshit. "_______'s new album is a fresh blend of ______ and ______."

Oh good. Just what I need to get some excitement into my life, a refreshing blend of old stale music. You know what this new Assfuckers album needs? A hint of summer. Has the music industry become a fucking juice bar? A juice bar run by a counterculture that defines it's self through meaninglessness? No none of the stuff on the Pitchfork top 100 play list is bad, but none of it is anything new either. There are only so many ways that you can mix beach boys harmonies with dance beats!

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I had to say something. The realization that making music has come down to picking two pre-existing genres and throwing them into a mental blender made me want to throw up. I looked at about 15 pitchfork reviews and counted 8 uses of this blending definition. "So basically, if you're looking for a mix between two different things, you're in luck." Fuck that.

And fuck this.

Some Asian dude in swim trunks just gave his girl a mango-raisin sandwich with a love note hidden inside. She went nuts. I have to take a shit, and there is a line for the bathroom.

Underappreciated Appreciations #1 - Oasis (Volume One, Issue Two)

2009-04-13T20:04:00.001-07:00

As per the suggestion of Daren Urban "Urbane" Sprawls, I have decided to publish the liner notes I recently wrote for an Oasis mix comprised exclusively of post-Morning Glory tracks. Although I do cheat somewhat by including a handful of songs from The Masterplan, an album that came out in 1998 but is comprised of songs from 1994 to 1997. I also break my own rules right off the bat with the inclusion of the "Wibbling Rivalry" excerpt which was recorded before the Morning Glory album, but released soon afterwards. I must confess that my desire to make the best possible compilation of less-heralded Oasis songs overwhelmed my desire to follow my own arbitrary rules. My real goal here was to illuminate the ever-expanding back catalogue of what I think is the greatest contemporary rock band (Radiohead being an "alternative" or "experimental" rock band, Animal Collective being whatever it is they are, Arcade Fire not being particularly good, etc.) The idea is that you listen to these selections and then you go back and you listen to "Rock N Roll Star" or "Some Might Say" or "Wonderwall" or "Slide Away" or "Live Forever" or "Champagne Supernova" or "Don't Look Back in Anger' or"Cigarettes and Alcohol" or "Morning Glory" or "Cast No Shadow" or "Supersonic." The very thought is staggering.

No, Oasis are not risk-taking, genre-busting explorers of the sonic avant-garde nor have they always made the best decisions as to album track listings (the story of Oasis b-sides is the story of a pop music kingdom deferred). But what Oasis have done is assembled the strongest and deepest catalogue of good or even great pop/rock songs of the last fourteen years (as well as two nearly perfect albums in Don't Believe the Truth and Dig Out Your Soul). And as Charles Mingus once said, "Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

Oasis represent an ideal that has never actually existed: a blending of T-Rex and Burt Bacharach or the Sex Pistols and the Kinks or the Smiths and Slade. They've been called everything from "the greatest melodist of his generation" (Noel) to "the greatest singer in rock n roll" (Liam) to monobrowed morons (both). Depending on your point of view they're either gifted classicists or fame-hungry plagiarists. I only hope that you can get beyond these associations, both positive and negative, and simply listen with fresh ears. And I hope you're still enjoying the mix, Urban.

The Whole 'Story' - Pt. 1

1) Wibbling Rivalry - "Noel's Track" (excerpt - 4:07 to 5:03)

Although recorded well before the Morning Glory sessions (in April, 1994, to be exact), this “spoken word” EP was not released until late 1995, in the warm afterglow of “Wonderwall.” It is a testament to just how fucking gigantic the band were at this point that a CD containing 14 minutes of oft-unintelligible rants reached number 52 on the singles chart in Great Britain. While this meager minute offers ample evidence of why the Gallaghers are so loathed by many (Noel’s whiny insistence, Liam’s non-musical enthusiasms), it also gives a glimpse as to why they are adored by equally as many. Noel’s witty rebuttal to Liam’s assertion that the Sex Pistols are the greatest band of all time (“they made one album”) and his idealistic view of rock n roll is as endearing as Liam’s unbridled enthusiasm for whatever he happens to be doing at the moment, whether it’s crooning or being thrown off a ferry. If the best art is a result of a perpetual conflict then perhaps this excerpt will provide context to the work of a band which is consistently at war with itself. Whether it’s Liam roaring and sneering over a standard-issue chord progression, Noel stealing the vocal spotlight (at which point Liam literally exits the stage during live performances) or Liam mutating Noel’s words into a language all it’s own (“shine” becoming a 4-syllable word), it’s an unyielding rivalry.

2) Standing on the Shoulder of Giants - "Go Let It Out"

Recorded in France as the band was trying to ditch the drugs (and being ditched by two founding band members), this #1 single ironically stands out as one of the most euphoric of all Oasis recordings. Compared to earlier tunes like “Supersonic” or “Shakermaker,” this is an exquisitely structured rocker, offering up 3 or 4 melodies most choruses would kill for, until a sugar-rush finale reveals them as cleverly interlocking parts of a greater whole. One of an unfortunately few number of singles that can be counted as a sonic journey, including that mysterious guitar coda. The most affecting moment in the song occurs near the end when Liam, mangling the chorus’ words to reveal a deeper meaning, appears to be pleading: “Go let it out, don’t let it in, don’t let it end, don’t let it end.” For a group who were briefly the biggest band in the world (for roughly six weeks at the end of 1996, according to Noel), it’s a heartfelt plea, only three years later, to simply survive.

3) Don't Believe the Truth - "Guess God Thinks I'm Abel"

That’s “Abel” as in “Cain and…” not “able-bodied man.” The brotherly connotations should be obvious, although Liam subverts his “hard-man” image by casting himself as the murdered brethren. This was written during a period at which Liam claimed to be a church-going sinner (although he rejected the Bible due to its lack of aliens). He has since claimed he never set foot in a church, but no matter, Liam’s lyrical offers of friendship, reconciliation and love still resonate. The strongest components of this song are its melody (a Gallagher specialty), textured percussion, yearning backing vocals and thundering coda.

Keep in mind this is a live, and not particularly great, version of the song which is therefore lacking most of the instrumentation I mention in the write-up. But something is better than nothing. The YouTube giveth and the YouTube taketh away.

4) "Lyla" single b-side - "Eyeball Tickler"

A terrific example of Liam’s late-period throat-shredding. Legitimately badass riffs buttress nonsense lyrics, pummeling drums and Liam’s voice at its most fearsome. In short, classic Oasis. And the only song on this anthology which wasn’t written by a Gallagher. It comes from the pen of Gem Archer, guitarist, songwriter and Noel’s lieutenant since joining the group just after the release of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants in 2000. He claims to write specifically for Liam’s inimitable voice and when Gallagher Jr. screams those ‘ahhh’s you believe. In everything. You can almost see Liam slap the microphone to the ground as the song fades out (something he used to do all the fucking time).

5) The Masterplan (b-sides compilation) - "Half the World Away"

Jesus fucking Christ. Where to begin with a song so choked in emotion, thought, resonance and longing. I can only tell you what remains with me since I first heard it: “I would like to leave this city;” Noel’s plaintive vocals; “I can feel the warning signs running around my mind;” the sympathetic purr of a Fender Rhodes piano; “my body feels young but my mind is very old;” “you can’t give me the dreams that are mine anyway;” brushes on a snare drum, “(you’re) half the world away;” that chord progression during the chorus; “I’m still scratching around in the same old hole;” when the person you love the most seems as far away as possible; “I don’t feel down,” making the journey, guitar chimming into the twilight; the Fender Rhodes purring to sleep; (It should also be noted that this song was recorded by Noel in Texas while he was AWOL from Oasis’ first U.S. tour)

6) The Masterplan - "Headshrinker"

Whiplash. “The Sex Pistols are the greatest band ever, mate” Liam declared. This is the sound of his John Lennon/John Lydon vocal stylings reaching an early apex. Dig those elongated vowels. Dig that chunky guitar solo. Dig the Stevie Wonder reference about bowing down “to the tears of a clown.” Dig out your soul, a little later.

7) "The Hindu Times" single b-side - "Idler's Dream"

Gentle whiplash. Noel’s balladry at its least meat-and-potatoes. Those amateurish piano arpeggios prepare one for the worst, but that is before the melody (the constant Oasis saving grace), the last-second harmonies, horizontal synth and those magnificent words. Simultaneously Noel’s most emotionally vulnerable and most cryptically poetic set of lyrics he sings about his heart skipping a beat when he catches his lover’s eyes, as well as his desire to meet this person “on a day that never ends.” He describes lying down carnally in leaves and then being buried under them in his sleep. He recognizes his love as an idler’s dream, but doesn’t want to wake up alone. Noel was once asked if he was secretly a romantic. “That’s a good question,” he mused. It may be a good question, but it’s an easy answer.

8) The Masterplan - "Stay Young"

“It’s about growing up, but not growing old,” Noel once said about early b-side “Fade Away.” “Stay Young” is a song in a similar vein and one that grows in poignancy as the furrows deepen on the brow of its writer (Noel) and time slowly ravages the throat that once thundered its words (Liam). Noel’s endlessly sunny guitar riffs ride atop one of his most stridently positive chord progressions and alongside one of Alan White’s most irresistible drum tracks. A tune that defines the pleasures of what people used to call “AM pop” (even down to its fuzzy texture and minimal bass), the damn thing just shimmers. But for all the song’s musical assurance it’s rather lyrically ambivalent, from the impossibility of the title phrase to the simultaneous boast and apology of its self-conscious refrain: “We know just what we are.”

9) The Masterplan - "Listen Up"

Yet another embarrassment of melodic riches. A pre-chorus, chorus and post-chorus more dynamic than most bands’ entire album, as well as one of Noel’s best-structured guitar solos. The segments of the song stretching from the moment Liam elongates “one fine daaaaay” over that unusual chord to his declaration of independence (“I don’t mind being on my own”) summarize, for me, the transcendent potential of modern pop music. A song to get lost in and a song to find yourself in, even if you never do find your way home.

10) Be Here Now - "Don't Go Away"

Written by Noel during a time when his mother feared she was dying from cancer, this is unquestionably the best sounding song from Be Here Now. A thoughtful melody is bolstered by a string-and-horn arrangement inspired by Marc Bolan and the orchestral counter-melodies of Burt Bacharach. Despite an uninspired bridge (which was never played live anyway), the song features what is arguably Liam’s finest ever performance. Emanating a vocal strength and cleanness lacking in both earlier and later recordings, Liam slips just the right amount of grain into his most conventionally accomplished singing.

Noel’s lyric, “damn my education, I can’t find the words to say” is also a key line to appreciating much of the group’s lyrical content. Like the way Robert De Niro finds the poetry in his characters’ inarticulateness, Liam often found an emotional undercurrent in Noel’s mishmash of nonsense, cliché and occasional poetry. Or as Terrence Malick once put it, “When people express what is most important to them, it often comes out in clichés. That doesn’t make it laughable; it’s something tender about them. As though in struggling to reach what’s most personal about them they could only come up with what’s most public.” Shockingly, this was a single only in Oasis-crazed Japan.

11) Be Here Now - "My Big Mouth"

Too long, too loud, too stupid, yet somehow just fucking right. Only the Brothers Gallagher would publicly apologize for their loose lips with a song featuring dozens of squalling guitar tracks. First unveiled to the lucky 200,000-strong crowd at Knebworth, at Oasis’ commercial zenith, it is one of only three songs from Be Here Now that Noel still enjoys (the other two being lead single “D’You Know What I Mean?” and the aforementioned “Don’t Go Away.”)

12) Heathen Chemistry - "Songbird"

A lilting, country-rock gem as intimate and dewy as the feelings it suggests, this is one of the most accomplished Oasis songs. It was also Liam’s first single, hitting #3 in the charts, and his first composition heard by the public since the “Little James” debacle of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (a song so detested that it’s lyrics were regularly printed in the tabloids as mockery). As the NME wrote of a later Liam song (Dig Out Your Soul’s “I’m Outta Time”), “Liam is at his best when he’s at his sweetest.” And he is never better, or sweeter, than he is here. A tune full of trilling vocal inflections and bubbling synth lines, this song conveys the joy and fear that new love brings. “Whispered in my ear the things I’d like/ Then she flew away into the night” has always struck me as a beautiful approximation of the limbo of the heart, stuck between flirtation and commitment. Although the chorus sounds shrugged-off on paper (“She’s not anyone”), it gains its emotional content through Liam’s compassionate melody and defiant vocal reading. A minor masterpiece only in scale.

13) Don't Believe the Truth - "Part of the Queue"

One of the most recent entries in the long line of British pop songs to mine the rhythms of The Stranglers’ “Golden Brown,” this tune features a desperate, passionate vocal from Noel and a late-night tempest of percussion, piano and acoustic guitar all swirling together in a sledgehammer waltz. Also one of the highlights of Noel’s lyrical renaissance on Don’t Believe the Truth, the song both owns up to the band’s failures (“every beginning has broken its promise”) and promises fans a future worth believing in (“keep on/ trying”).

14) Don't Believe the Truth - "Let There Be Love"

In his review of 2005’s Don’t Believe the Truth, All Music Guide critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine declared that it was the album with which Liam Gallagher “reclaimed his crown as the best singer in rock.” No vocal performance makes that case as strongly as “Let There Be Love.” The melody/lyrics of the verses can be described as Lennon-esque in the most flattering sense of the word. Liam’s naked vocals ache on the high notes and soothe on the comedown. Only the chorus could be described as a (relative) disappointment. But this is more than made up for by a bridge of astonishing melodic invention and one of Noel’s finest vocals ever (before he disappears into the clouds on the Imagine cover).

Andy Bell, bassist and songwriter for the band, once compared them to tour-mates the Black Crowes saying: “The Black Crowes are all about riffs. We’re all about chords.” And it’s on a song like this, full of big, open, majestic chords that the ineffable magic of Oasis is felt at it fullest. The space between the chords and within the chords themselves “gives us room to dream,” as Jonathan Rosenbaum loves to say about films employing extended long-takes. Within these vast chords, Noel and Liam are able to evoke both time (“a world come undone at the seams” referencing the chaotic times of 2005) and timelessness (“Suspended clear in the sky are the words that we sing in our dreams”) in what Noel would rightfully call “a modern hymn.”

15) Don't Believe the Truth - "The Importance of Being Idle"

One of their greatest titles, as well as one of their best videos, as well as, fortunately, one of their best songs. I could just type up the complete lyrics and be done with it, but instead I’ll simply mention that Noel returns to the short-story format of “Married with Children” and “She’s Electric” with similarly spectacular results. And he fucking nails the falsetto. While not in the life-changing vein of “Don’t’ Look Back in Anger,” it won enough public favor to give Oasis their first back-to-back #1 singles in the UK (following “Lyla”) since 2000 (and those two singles that were separated by three years). This moment also signaled the definitive comeback for the group from the perceived doldrums of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants and Heathen Chemistry.

16) Dig Out Your Soul - "Bag It Up"

A tune that simply gets everything right from the glam rock stomp to the intertwining vocal melodies to the huge chorus to the howling coda to the cool-as-fuck vocal delivery to the whimsical-yet-menacing lyrics to the return of the “ecstatic harmonies” of “She’s Electric” and “Champagne Supernova.”

Oasis - Bag it up (full track)
by Rijsel92

17) Dig Out Your Soul - "Falling Down"

Noel’s second attempt to rewrite “Tomorrow Never Knows” is perhaps not as earth-shattering as his first (that is, his collaboration with the Chemical Brothers, “Setting Sun”) but it undoubtedly more thoughtful. Singing like a man lost in outer space (his own description), Noel sighs about the summer sun, kissing the world goodbye and other notions of psychic drift. It’s not all resignation though. Noel reveals his cosmic wit by informing God Almighty, “if you won’t save me, please don’t waste my time.” And when he declares “we live a dying dream/ if you know what I mean” Noel is both decrying Oasis status as a giant-sized cult band and winking at the true believers. If the psychedelic legacy of the 1960s must give way to the mundanities of “modern rock,” then “Falling Down” serves as an moving epitaph. Dig that piano reverb.

18) Standing on the Shoulder of Giants - "Gas Panic!"

“My family don’t seem so familiar.” A fortunate example of Noel producing a song as exquisitely as he wrote it. A creative zenith at the band’s absolute commercial bottom, Noel penned the tune in the post-traumatic afterglow of his decision to quit shoveling cocaine up his nostrils. Abandoned by founding members Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs and Paul McGuigan, scorned by critics, outsold by rivals, regarded as an instant nostalgia act by a formerly adoring public who only wanted to hear the old hits…panic wasn’t “on the way,” it was living with the band, under their skin, at every moment. This is their victory.

EPILOGUE

Bear in mind that this single CD was painfully whittled down from twice it’s current length, a process which resulted in the exclusion of absolutely essential Oasis songs (“The Masterplan”, “D’You Know What I Mean?,” “Acquiesce”), #1 UK singles (“All Around the World,” “Lyla,” “The Hindu Times”), recent triumphs (“Waiting for the Rapture,” “I’m Outta Time,” “Stop Crying Your Heart Out”) and songs that just happen to be among the greatest of the band’s career (“Who Feels Love?,” “Roll It Over,” “Thank You For The Good Times”). What I’m saying is: there’s more where this came from. A lot more.

It goes without saying that a physical copy of this mix is available upon request

Don't Look Back in Anger?

Potent Quotables #2 (Volume One, Issue Two)

2009-04-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

(An erratically maintained feature in which we share resonant quotations and pay homage to the most durable of all SNL-Jeopardy categories)

"Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself."

-Jean Cocteau

It's (Almost) Funny Because It's True: Early Impressions of "Observe and Report" (Volume One, Issue Two)

2009-04-07T00:20:00.000-07:00

My access to advance screenings of Hollywood films is likely to take a permanent hiatus come the end of this month, but I find it very appropriate to write about Observe and Report underneath this looming cloud of obsolescence. It is a film from a formerly obscure writer-director (Jody Hill of Foot Fist Way cult fame) about a formerly obscure subculture (the Paul Blart-ian world of mall security) that, judging from the advertising, bears more than a passing resemblance to the Police Academy series.

Seth Rogen, however, is the anti-Guttenberg as the movie's anti-hero Ronnie Barnhardt, a tinpot dictator who somehow manages to come across as a woefully incompetent and shockingly capable human being. Hill's script is as confounding as Rogen's character, advancing too many stray subplots and loose ends while Ronnie goes about his primary goal of apprehending a flasher terrorizing female patrons in the mall's parking lot. We travel with Ronnie as he attempts to join the police academy, romance a vapid shopgirl (Anna Faris), and foil a shoe-store robbery with the help of his lisping sidekick (Michael Pena)--there's fodder for two or three movies in here, just not a single, cohesive one.

What sustains Observe and Report is Hill's caustic brand of comedy, an approach that seems openly hostile to laughter with its de-emphasis of the typical raunch and randomness of a major studio product. As such, Hill relies on two types of jokes: the terribly annoying shenanigans of thinly-drawn weirdos like Pena (whose performance would be the film's most embarrassing were it not for Danny McBride's "brownface" cameo as a Latino gangsta) and the terrifyingly real aberrance of troubled people like Rogen. Audiences can detect the type of asshole that only exists on the page and the type of asshole that exists in their neighborhood, and the vast majority of the film's successful comedy is derived from the latter.

But where Hill truly clinched my attention was in the minor revelation/spoiler that Rogen's character suffers from bipolar disorder, which might help to explain the film's aimless plotline. It also provides a rationale for its aggressively bleak nature. Hill doesn't treat mental illness like a typical lowbrow point-and-laugh punchline but a taboo to be satirized. And while he's not the first to force us to laugh at a delusional, violent creep who's just trying to do right by equally fucked-up friends and family, knowing that Ronnie's behavior stems from more than circumstance adds an unexpected layer of pathos. You laugh immediately because you'd probably cry if you pondered it for too long.

Observe and Report will probably not make a lot of money, not because it's too uncomfortable but because it's not uncomfortable enough. There's a reason that the phrase "broad black comedy" doesn't exist outside of this sentence that I just wrote. Hill seems torn between playing to the mooks in the bleachers and the schadenfreude enthusiasts, taking stabs at trendiness that sometimes work (a soundtrack awash in semi-obscure Queen tracks) but mostly don't (thoroughly mining the comedic possibilities of male genitalia). In creating an Apatow pie mixed with battery acid, Hill has concocted something that will pique the interest of the many but satisfy the palates of the few.

Potent Quotables #1 (Volume One, Issue Two)

2009-04-06T15:23:00.000-07:00

(An erratically maintained feature in which we share resonant quotations and pay homage to the most durable of all SNL-Jeopardy categories)

Today we present you with a punk rock-themed triple threat. Behold:

"Second verse, same as the first"

-The Ramones, "Judy Is a Punk," Ramones LP

"Punk rock died when the first kid said, 'Punk's not dead, punk's not dead'."

-The Silver Jews, "Tennessee," Tennessee EP

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

-Johnny Rotten at the final Sex Pistols gig, San Francisco, 1978

A Big Welcome Back to Ourselves!

2009-04-06T15:00:00.001-07:00

Greetings, true believers.

As you may or may not have noticed, our weBLOG/online magazine has been laying dormant for a few weeks now (specifically the week before, during and after Spring Break). We also may or may not have noticed that. But fear not. We have been gathering strength in our hibernation, like a late-period DOOM or mid-90s Terrence Malick. We also hope that this (un)intentional break has given you time to become familiar with our format and to spread the word:

"Have you heard the good news?"

"He is Risen."

"No, Anamorphic Analysis is publishing regularly again!"

"Oh, blessed day."

Anyway, we've got a lot of good stuff coming your way including that long-in-the-works roundtable on 30 Rock, reviews of Adventureland, Dragonball Evolution and I Love You, Man. Yep. It's that time of year.

So with intermittent ado, welcome to Volume One, Issue Two of Anamorphic Analysis. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoy badgering people to write it.

And so that you don't go away totally empty-handed, here's a peek at how we spent those wild weeks around Spring Break. The answer, as usual, is "like a hurricane":

Watching the Watchmen Ten Years Too Late

2009-03-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

Zack Snyder's adaptation of the Watchmen, the "Citizen Kane of graphic novels," does not seem to be packing the punch it possibly should with critics or ticket-buying moviegoers. Why? I have my own theory, but more on that in a moment. I personally liked the film. I purposely chose not to reread the graphic novel before seeing it (it had been about five years since I read it the first time), so I could come at it with a fresh perspective. I decided to reread it after seeing the movie, and I very much approve of the changes Snyder made from the source material. The slight alterations in dialogue and the new ending all seem to be in favor of the characters. But enough about my opinion. I'm here to hypothesize why Watchmen isn't the the end all be all of comic book movies that the graphic novel is made out to be for comic books. After letting it simmer in my head over the past two weeks, I have come to the conclusion that Watchmen is in need of a time machine, or perhaps more appropriately, an alternate history.

Moore's Watchmen was a product of its time, a reaction to and pastiche of the comic books and politics of the 1980s. A "truly faithful" adaptation might have done the same for its own time period, yet Snyder's film seems to circumvent any real influence of the 2000s. Aside from the mostly stellar CGI, made possible only by the last decade of technological improvment, Watchmen more accurately reflects the aesthetics of the 1990s. The fight scenes, for instance, with their emphasis on physical, agile combat and slow motion visual effects, more accurately recall the action sequences of 90s movies like The Matrix (1999), Blade (1998), or anything by John Woo than the quick-cutting, handheld, "realistic" sensibilities of more recent films like The Bourne Identity (2002) or Batman Begins (2005). Heck, even the attempted rape scene resembles a bout between ninjas. Also, rather than sending up the countless superhero movies of the current decade, Watchmen seems more overtly fixated on parodying the Bat-films by Joel Schumacher. Ozymandias' costume is clearly a play on the outfits from Batman & Robin, complete with nipples. Thematically, perhaps this is appropriate, as Ozy the "mask killer" is nearly responsible for the death of costumed crimefighters, just as Batman & Robin almost killed the superhero genre. Furthermore, the song ironically used in the initial Watchmen trailer, "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning" by Smashing Pumpkins, comes straight from the Batman & Robin soundtrack. Where are all the Dark Knight references? How about an homage to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man or the X-Men films? Why so nostalgic?

Even the politics of Watchmen, with its alternate Cold War history and countdown to doomsday, only superficially connect with any sort of particularly relevant post-9/11 sentiment. Say Snyder's Watchmen was released in 1999 rather than 2009. The political aspects of the film, much more relegated to the background as compared to the graphic novel, would not necessarily be lost. The apocalyptic component could just as easily play to a potentially paranoid audience during the Y2K scare as a post-9/11 audience. There is also a level of cheesiness to the film that seems out of place in today's "lactose intolerant" culture of irony (please forgive the metaphor. I had to). The over-the-top fight scenes are more likely to inspire rolling eyes than oohs and ahhs. In terms of visual design, Ozymandias' Antarctic lair resembles the styrofoam pyramids of The Mummy (1999), not the impressive set pieces of Lord of the Rings (2001). Even lines like Silk Spectre's "You're such an asshole" didn't seem to play as well to my fellow audience as it might have a decade ago. It appears people were much more open to cheese in the 90s (see action-packed, one-liner-ridden, top-grossing blockbusters like Independence Day (1996), Men in Black (1997) or any of the movies from the previous Batman franchise).

Perhaps the ironic culture of today has moved to a position in which it is simply over the type of film that Snyder's Watchmen is, a fun action movie with a little cheese on top. Released in 1999, it might possibly have been the masterpiece an adaptation of the original Watchmen should be. Besides, it could have beaten Sin City (2005) and 300 (2007) to the punch with the whole direct translation of a graphic novel trend, and might have seemed more innovative and less tired. Instead, the film has opened to a lukewarm response by an unforgiving society with a low tolerance for camp. Watchmen's opening titles, without a doubt the best sequence of the film, suddenly take on new, extra-cinematic appropriateness. "The times they are a-changin'" indeed.

Contemplations on "Breaking Bad"

2009-03-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

Rapidly becoming the best show on television:

Breaking Bad started its second season last week. This show has received tremendous critical acclaim but little notice outside of Hollywood's insular community. Bryan Cranston won an Emmy last year for his portrayal of Walter White, Breaking Bad's antihero protagonist. I think it's currently The Best Thing On Television, though I am admittedly not a television-watcher. I generally only watch one show at a time (though I don't count 30 Rock or The Daily Show/Colbert Report). So really what I mean is I only have time for one one hour drama at a time. For the past four years or so, that's been Battlestar Galactica, but now that it's (finally) ending, Breaking Bad looks like the replacement.

Briefly, what I find so captivating about the show:

It has some of the best acting I've seen on television (nearly on par with The Sopranos).
It has a fantastically tragic protagonist, whose moral ambiguity is perfectly channeled by Cranston.
The series is Shakespearean in its tragedy (though not its scope). You know almost exactly where its going, but you're still rooting for the characters, nonetheless.
It's set and filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which gives the show a very realistic yet alien quality. We're all used to seeing television set in Los Angeles and New York (and more recently, Vancouver and Miami), but the desert geography of Breaking Bad feels altogether new.

I've posted the second-season premiere episode which I encourage any to watch. But a word of warning: if you haven't watched the first season the episode won't make much sense. If you like what you see, I encourage you to purchase/steal/borrow the first season (which is a mercifully-short seven episodes).

Coming up from Yours Truly: Reflections of Galactica (a very personal essay that I will write after the show's finale a week from tomorrow), my Watchmen review, and some musings on theatre and acting.

Stray Thoughts, Fringe Opinions #9: 20th Century Fox's Announcement That Their DVD Rentals Will No Longer Contain Special Features

2009-03-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Fuck you, you money-grubbing pieces of shit.

The full turd here.

Potent Quotables

2009-03-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

(An erratically maintained feature in which we share resonant quotations and pay homage to the most durable of all SNL-"Jeopardy" categories)

"This writer, he was going on about the lyrics to Champagne Supernova and he actually said to me: 'You know, the one thing that's stopping it being a classic is the ridiculous lyrics.' And I went: 'What do you mean by that?' And he said: 'Well, 'Slowly walking down the hall/ Faster than a cannonball' - what's that mean?' And I went: 'I don't fucking know. But are you telling me, when you've got 60,000 people singing it, they don't know what it means? It means something different to every one of them.' "

-Noel Gallagher, interview with Times Online, 2009

Eyes: '08 Edition (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-07T15:52:00.001-08:00

Personal favorites from the cinema of 2008. Kind of in a descending order though only slightly...

Paranoid Park (dir. by Gus Van Sant) "Best Film of the Year"

A cinematic poem to innocence and the loss of. A hyper-culmination of the style developed and explored in Van Sant's self-proclaimed "death trilogy" (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days), Paranoid is much more kinetic than his previous three films and benefits heavily from an emotive soundtrack and beautifully steady visuals. These images float onscreen and possess a lyricism sorely lacking in today's cinema of "realism."

Best in Realism

Rachel Getting Married (dir. by Jonathon Demme)
This film depicted life as both euphoric and tragic (as opposed to the one-sided Synecdoche, New York which seemed unfairly obsessed with the latter). Although Anne Hathaway recieved most of the attention for this film (deservingly), its Bill Irwin's performance as the eager yet helpless head of the family that I found the most heartbreaking. The scene in the kitchen, packing the dishwasher is simultaenously the emotional peak and nadir of the film. Witness the American family trying to be whole once more in the aftermath of divorce, family tragedy, drug addiction and general disfunction. With Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio!

Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. and written by Mike Leigh)
Another great realist film that follows the blissfully positive Poppy, an elementary school teacher in London, as she attempts to hold on to her self-prescribed naivete in the face of psychotic driving instructors, child-abuse and the homeless. Beautiful in its highs as well as lows.

Best in Vampires

Let the Right One In (dir. by Tomas Alfredson)
What a strange little film. A beautiful story of adolescence and young love accented with scenes of intense horror and violence. The ending is one of the most perversely satisfying endings of any film I've seen in a long while.

Best of Hollywood

Milk (dir. by Gus Van Sant)
Gus Van Sant returns to the populist cinema of Hollywood to make a movie about the political life and death of a gay politician in San Francisco. What a guy. Like Elephant and Last Days, most of the audience knows how Milk ends but Sean Penn and Josh Brolin's performances doubled with Van Sant's visual poetry elevates the script above its trappings as a standard biopic. A bar raid shot from outside with a gradual zooming single take not only captures the hysteria better than a handheld, choppily-edited sequence would but also shows the thought put in to even the smallest of details.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (dir. by David Fincher)
Forrest Gump makes me cry. I don't think its a coincidence that Button also wrecked me. I mean REALLY wrecked me. Good thing I saw this alone because it was embarrassing. I can't even remember the last I was this emotionally devastated by a picture. A subdued love story (no grand emotional peaks or valleys) was boring to many but I found it quietly beautiful.

Iron Man (dir. by Jon Favreau)
I saw this film on opening night in packed Paris theater and it was one of my proudest moment as an American abroad. No one does spectacle like Hollywood. And no one does snark and charm like Robert Downey Jr. U S A!!! U S A!!! U S A!!!

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (dir. by Nicolas Stoller)
The funniest movie I saw all year. Its taken me a while to warm up to Jason Segel (I found him annoyingly whiny and pathetic on Freaks and Geeks [perhaps it just hit a little too close to home?]) but he was great in this (though still pretty pathetic). I'm working my way through How I Met Your Mother currently and find him hilarious there, as well. Wheelz seems disgusted by the idea that Segel is a "star" but I'm happy see his average mug on billboards across town. Nice counterpoint to all the Clive Owen posters.

Best de l'Amour

Wall-E (dir. by Andrew Stanton)
A beautifully felt picture that glued a stunned smile to my face for the majority of its runtime. The Hello, Dolly touches were particularly affecting. And that ballet in space was quite magical. Though it deserved a better third act, the perfection of the take-off made forgivable the stilted landing.

Slumdog Millionaire (dir. by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan)
The "Its His Destiny" answer at the end made me scoff but it was a fun ride. Danny Boyle's cool.

Best in Joints

Pineapple Express (dir. by David Gordon Green)
Has gotten better with each repeat viewing. More Undertow than George Washington as far as Green goes but that's not a slight. Tim Orr's gorgeous cinematography floats through scenes of awkardly realistic violence until the end where Seth Rogen is fucking flying around the warehouse. Little touches like the young overweight Hispanic girl in a swimsuit staring at James Franco crying into a sandwich and the weightlifting neighbor of Rogen's girlfriend show that Green still has an eye for the beautiful oddities of life. The walking through the forest interlude stands as the most poetic sequence in the film.

Smiley Face (dir. by Greg Araki)
A strange and hilarious picture that would surely benefit from a good joint. While its still good sober the unspeakably bad cinematography tires the eyes and the mind. Anna Farris continues to impress, throwing herself into these silly roles with such reckless abandon.

Best in Comebacks

JCVD (dir. by Mabrouk El Mechri)
Jean-Claude is incredible in this movie and its a shame it didn't get as much attention as the other comeback role this year. But this isn't so much a comeback as a realization of the skills that Van Damme has. He's funny, sad and beaten by the end of the film and vulnerable in a way no other star was this year, except maybe ...

The Wrestler (dir. by Darren Aranofsky)
A nice piece of realist filmmaking that shows Aranofsky roping in his style in order to let Mickey Rourke dominate the screen. He goes out on top with the only family that stands by him - his fans. The last shot of this movie was one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking endings of any film this year (though JCVD's was pretty devastating also). We leave Rourke soaring through the air, knowing full well he's falling just as much as flying.

I need to work on being more concise. Next time.

Greatness Regained

2009-03-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Watch That Man: Zack Snyder, Pater Noster of Geek Cinema

2009-03-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

or, An Early Watchmen Review

Zack Snyder is very good at playing in someone else's sandbox, and he's even better when he's not behaving himself. His Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake had a wry sense of humor absent from the heavy-handed satire and genre slavishness of George Romero's own latter-day zombie efforts. On the other hand, his adaptation of 300 (2006), while a stylistic and technological triumph, hewed too closely to the truncated, juvenile Frank Miller source material to be interesting beyond all the spurting blood and slo-mo sex. It would be an immediate inductee into the Bland People's Favorite Movies Hall of Fame, if such a place existed (right alongside Wedding Crashers and Fight Club).

Approaching "Watchmen" (2009) might seem like "300" times ten, especially considering Synder's constant assertions that the film would look as much like the graphic novel as possible. Furthermore, Synder's demeanor at Comic-Con 2008 last July matched that of a man under an enormous amount of pressure, giving rambling non-answers to simple questions and being intimidated by a room of 6000 geeks who were nonetheless easily placated by a couple minutes of "exclusive" footage. But his deer-in-the-headlights performance also suggested a man completely consumed by making an enjoyable film out of a massively frustrating project with a two-decade turnaround.

My knee-jerk opinion is that Watchmen is quite good--very good, in fact, and better if you have read the graphic novel. But Synder's real coup is that he has made a film that will both intrigue and confuse Watchmen newbies, sending them to their nearest bookstore where Alan Moore's magnum opus is already flying off the shelves (Moore generally acts like a bridge troll whenever his material is adapted for film but I'm sure he enjoys the boost in his bank account). It is an odd movie in that the plot is nonexistent for nearly an hour. When that plot finally does creak into motion, it kind of pales in comparison to sixty straight minutes of character development. Like I said, this is an odd film--that is, odd for a purported action blockbuster--and I certainly didn't mind that the exposition upstaged the climax. The Watchmen are the only compelling reason to see this movie, which would otherwise resemble an expensive, R-rated Fantastic Four threequel.

I had the good fortune to be part of a screening that featured post-movie Q&A with the director, which I'm not sure the audience fully appreciated perhaps due to the length of the film and the general lack of geek cred. Though he doesn't reference it much anymore, Synder comes from the world of commercials. The best bits of Watchmen are, predictably, the ones that are most like mini-music videos (the opening credits are ingenious). We heard all about his storyboards and development process and other such pablum that one hears during these sessions. One fact Snyder mentioned, though, that probably doesn't make the junket circuit is that he is the father of six(!) ranging from 15 to 8 years old. He might be touted as a "visionary filmmaker" (front-runner for most misleading statement of 2009) but he is also a bona-fide, advanced-level Dad.

For some reason I find this crucial to understanding the movie. In Watchmen, way underneath all the sex and violence and depravity and darkness, beats the heart of a middle-aged parent with the keys to his comic book Corvette. Synder doesn't so much adapt the book as appreciate it from a distance. His touch may be too deft and fail to fully capture Moore's sense of paranoia and misanthropy, but in the best of all comic book movie worlds, the appeal of Watchmen's impossibly dark narrative to an amiable uber-father is a welcome development for moviegoers still struggling to get over the experience of being Schumacher'd.

My Year in Music - 2008 (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-06T01:17:00.000-08:00

It's March and I'm doing my year-end music roundup. Sue me.

1. TV on the Radio – Dear Science,
Dear Science, is so distant and disjointed that the raw sentiment underlying Tunde Adebimpe’s melodramatic vocals isn’t merely tolerable— it’s downright enjoyable. Everything fits on this album and nothing is out of place (though I’ll admit the second half is nowhere near as stellar as the first). Some people get it, some people don’t. What can I say, I’m one of the former.

2. Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer
THE overlooked album of this year’s “Best Of…” roundups. Re-branded from ‘Hottest New Band’ to ‘Yesterday’s News’ in a Pitchfork minute, Wolf Parade seem to have been dumped into the “Been There, Heard That” bin along with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and countless other once-hyped groups. Yet At Mount Zoomer is even stronger than Apologies to the Queen Mary; the songwriting’s as tight as ever, while the over-the-top Arcade Fire-esque histrionics that marred the group’s first record have been drastically toned down by both Boeckner and Krug.

Why, then, was At Mount Zoomer largely ignored by critics? Could it be that these supposedly rational arbiters of taste are just as susceptible to trends and fads as the rest of us? ‘No,’ they’d likely say, ‘that’s not it at all… on a different note, have you heard this band, Vampire Weekend?!?’

3. No Age – Nouns
Striking a perfect noise:melody ratio, Nouns is the sort of new take on old-fashioned rock and roll that would make Iggy Pop (or at least the ever-gyrating skeleton that now bears that name) proud. And they’re a two-piece! As someone who loved Death From Above 1979 enough to overlook the fact that You're a Woman, I'm a Machine was really one song rehashed eleven times, I’ve got to applaud another duo that can rock.

4. David Byrne and Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Great album from one of rock’s greatest musical pairings. Byrne’s voice is starting to go, however, which definitely isn’t a good thing—“The River” and “Strange Overtones” are perfect examples of the effects that age can have on vocal chords that were already stretching thin 30 years ago.

5. Randy Newman – Harps and Angels
Now 65 years old and resting comfortably in Pixar’s sizable pocket, Randy Newman still manages to be as snarky and satirical as ever. God bless him for that.

Advertisements for Ourselves

2009-03-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

Greetings Earthlings,

Just wanted to take a little server space to promote the various other weBLOGS contributed to and run by our talented, rotating and thoroughly unpaid staff.

McWriter aka McNasty aka Andrew McNally aka Big Baby Jesus contributes to Bring Back The Hindenburg which one might assume is an online petition. One would be wrong, but not entirely so.

RHK aka Ryan Kasmiskie aka Some Guy on the Internet runs and contributes to various, equally great blogs, including the scathing 'DT' Digest and the informally brilliant Copy of a Copy

Urbansprawls aka Daren Sprawls aka Pope Urban II aka the Holy Crusader runs and contributes to ONE worth-your-time site, the painfully personal Fake Pictures

The cryptically-named Daniel Borders-Ashe aka DBA aka Draconian Bad-Ass aka Heir to the Borders Fortune only contributes to Anamorphic Analysis but he's a double-major and a semester behind. He does, however, follow Ryan's Copy of a Copy as any fully sentient being in this God-forsaken hellscape should.

Charles B. aka C. Benimoff aka Palme D'Or Recipient The Wind that Shakes the Charlie runs and contributes to the nearly unpronounceable Snorple's Shpigglewog and its comparatively conventional sister site Snorple's Wagglewaggle

Cam Siemer aka Cam Siemer aka Cam Siemer aka The Unutterable runs and contributes to the truly tremendous Splash Page Cinema, a rare oasis of critical thinking in the endless swamp of comic-book movie weBLOGS.

and finally,

Flem aka Phlegm aka Charlie Fleming aka the all-new, fully automated Flembot 3000 only contributes to Anamorphic Analysis but the days of a hostile creative takeover are close at hand.

So if you have any spare time (and if you're reading this you must definitely do) be sure to check out one or all or none of those sites. Anamorphic Analysis strives to be merely the first among equals and a home base for various free thinkers as well as those who merely think they are free.

Thanks for your time and happy reading, true believers.

(And to all you Mailer fans tolerating this post's reference to the great man's 1959 tome Advertisements for Myself, look out for an upcoming post on the absolutely batshit and occasionally inspired cinema of Beyond the Law, Maidstone, Tough Guys Don't Dance, et. al.)

Waltz With Bashir (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

Overall Grade: A-

At once relentlessly depressing and strangely numb, director Ari Folman’s animated documentary (for lack of a better categorization – this movie defies it) about the first Lebanon War is a difficult experience to digest. Waltz With Bashir is the tale of Folman’s own investigation into the role he as a soldier in the war, particularly during the Falangist massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. For such an important event in his life, he remembers disturbingly little and sets out on a quest interviewing fellow ex-soldiers in hopes of resuscitating his repressed memories. To his chagrin they remember almost as little as he can, a testament to how effective our mental rose-colored sunglasses can be at blocking out “the bad.”

What Folman does find out comes in scattershot surreal stories that resemble nightmares more than they do actual events: soldiers firing nonstop from their tank for hours on end in the dead of night, a Falangist camp decorated with the preserved organs of Palestinians, a Lebanese child firing grenades in the middle of a serene orchard, etc. The creepy Richard Linklater-esque animation captures the nightmarish atmosphere better than any camera could. The fantastical imagery keeps us at an emotional distance, lulling us slowly into Folman’s world at an almost relaxed pace until the full scale of death and devastation becomes clear. Only at the very end does the animation give way to live footage, stunning Folman and us with the “realization” that none of these renderings were nightmares but in fact frighteningly real events.

When evaluating political documentaries like this, it is important to set aside the good intent of the filmmaker and look at the film objectively. Just because a documentary shedding light on Darfur is the only film of its type does not automatically make it a good documentary. Intent does not override quality, and making a legitimately effective and focused documentary about a complex humanitarian disaster such as this is no easy task. Folman has defied these odds, his work on Waltz is utterly impeccable. The visuals, particularly of Folman’s reoccurring beach nightmare, are exquisite and haunting. The unorthodox animation adds additional creepiness to the interviews, not less. Most importantly of all however, the story stays focused on Folman’s emotional journey. Many documentaries such as this get bogged down in peripheral detail and political intrigue, here we never lose sight of the human element. Every section is centered around that specific soldier’s tale and remains deeply personal throughout. A few make side-mentions of Ariel Sharon, the Lebanese Prime Minister, others, and leadership errors they made, but it never slips into tangent territory.

The deeply personal nature of the soldiers’ experiences and how sharply the film focuses on them has the side effect of eliminating much of the “bigger picture” and associated facts. We are never told why Israel is at war with Lebanon, who exactly they are fighting apart from generic “terrorists,” what the scope of the conflict is, etc. For this reason, Waltz can be easily misinterpreted as an anti-Israel work full of distortions (the hardly-subtle Holocaust analogy being the most provocative to people who would think this.) In other documentaries the dearth of information might be a fatal flaw. In Waltz however, it is a benefit. A deep and detailed objective analysis of the conflict is not the point here. This film is an examination of how individual people deal with trauma. It is a psychological piece more than it is a historical one and in that respect Folman succeeds resoundingly. Waltz With Bashir is at the very least a heartfelt mourning on the horrors of war. When it’s at its best, it is a disturbing tale of humanity’s worst natures executed in a way rarely if ever before seen in world cinema, certainly never before by Israeli cinema.

(repost from "70 Faces," USC Jewish student magazine, linky coming soon)

Don't Blame it On Jamie Foxx (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

Two new (and insane) music videos were released this week: Jamie Foxx's "Blame It" and Lil Wayne's "Prom Queen."

Hype Williams presents: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ron Howard, Forest Whitaker, and Samuel L. Jackson in "Blame It (featuring T-Pain)." Besides the "headliners," if you watch the video carefully, you'll be able to spot Clifton Powell, Ced the Entertainer, and Quincy Jones. And without further adieu, here's the video in all its glory(?):

My first reaction upon watching this was something along the lines of, "What the hell? And is this for real?" Well, obviously it's for real. It is the official video for the song. It was debuted on BET last week, and the two VJs hosting the show took it very seriously: "If you don't know who Ron Howard is, IMDB him, man... he's a big dawg!"

But what to think of the video? Directed by Hype Williams, one of the preeminent music video directors of the last two decades, "Blame It" was unquestionably very thought out. Hype's been responsible for many of the most famous hip-hop videos, period. Some of my personal favorites of his are M.O.P.'s "How About Some Hardcore," Wu-Tang Clan's "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing ta Fuck Wit/Shame on a Nigga," Tupac's "California Love," and Kanye West's "Heartless." I won't bore you with any more of his very extensive videography, but I encourage anyone unfamiliar with his considerable contributions to the music video as an art form to, you know, Google him.

So, this begs the question: is "Blame It" self aware? I am ashamed to admit that at first I was unsure. On my first couple viewings, I was struck by how harmless and goofy the video is. And yet everyone is taking themselves so seriously. Is this supposed to be taken seriously? Was I missing something? Well, yes, I was. This is Hype Williams we're talking about. He basically invented the hip hop video. And this video is rife with hip hop video cliches. Lots of eye candy, lots of celebrities just hanging out, nice cars, nice clothes, expensive alcohol... T-Pain and Jamie Foxx even get into a step line towards the end of the video. As soon as I realized this, I had my answer. Of course this video is self aware. Jamie Foxx and Ron Howard and everyone else know how ridiculous this video is, and so they sell it for all it's worth. Jamie Foxx even dances in a panda suit (which gives the entire video a very psychedelic quality, if you ask me).

There's no question that "Blame It" is a much better video than the song behind it. But that's okay. The video makes up for everything the song lacks. It's nice to see that some people in Hollywood still have a sense of humor about themselves.

Lil Wayne's latest video is a completely different story. "Prom Queen" is the first single off his upcoming rock album, Rebirth. In the video, Lil Wayne is spurned by his high school's prom queen. He goes on to become super famous, and then he gets the last laugh. I really don't have much to say about the video or the song itself. They're both awful. Apparently Lil Wayne has been taking guitar lessons from (of all people) Kid Rock. Apparently he collaborated with Fall Out Boy and Avril Lavigne for this upcoming album. Apparently Lil Wayne is whack as hell. But don't take my word for it:

I think this video, especially when set next to the comparatively brilliant "Blame It," represents a new low in Lil Wayne's career. Maybe some day he'll go back to what he's best at -- cutting underground mixtapes.

I welcome your thoughts on whether you think "Blame It" is self-aware or not. I also welcome your thoughts on Lil Wayne's sad downward spiral.

My Year in Film & Music: 2008 (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Films of 2008

1. The Dark Knight - Yeah, yeah.
2. The Good, the Bad, the Weird - A Korean gem I was fortunately able to catch at the 2008 Telluride Film Festival. It's a film that knows how to be silly without being stupid, which a lot of mainstream American comedies seem to be incapable of. Since you're all probably tired of seeing pictures of The Dark Knight, I chose the poster for this movie to headline my list.
3. The Wrestler - The ambiguity as to whether Rourke's pain is real or not during the wrestling scenes adds so much to the emotional weight of this movie. Heartbreaking and inspiring.
4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Probably the best film to come out of the Apatow factory, if you ask me.
5. WALL-E - While it does seem to get a little too caught up in its almost-heavy-handed environmental message near the end, it's hard not to completely fall in love with it.
6. Bolt - This movie is so unloved, and I don't get it. Sure, it borrows from The Truman Show and Toy Story, among other things, but it has heart and sincerity, something many CGI films lack these days. It also doesn't depend on pop culture references for laughs.
7. Pineapple Express - Another one that everyone seemed disappointed in. I laughed all the way through, and was impressed at how different of an action movie it was, clumsy, paranoid, infantile (in an entertaining way).
8. Happy-Go-Lucky - Despite being a comedy, this film is incredible at building tension and discomfort.
9. Speed Racer - It is simply misunderstood.
10. Slumdog Millionaire - I may not love it as much as others, but it warms the heart and Danny Boyle deserves the recognition he has received.

Unfortunately Unseen (in alphabetical order)
Doubt
Gran Torino
JCVD
Milk
Paranoid Park
Rachel Getting Married
Revolutionary Road

Male Performances of the Year

1. Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
2. Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler
3. Robert Downey Jr. – Tropic Thunder
4. Song Kang-ho - The Good, the Bad, the Weird
5. Robert Downey Jr. – Iron Man

Female Performances of the Year

1. Sally Hawkins - Happy-Go-Lucky
2. Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
3. Melissa Leo - Frozen River
4. Anjelica Huston - Choke
5. Samantha Morton - Synecdoche, New York

Top 3 Albums of 2008

1. The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath - The first half of the album perfectly captures the band's explosive stage presence, something they've gotten progressively better at doing with each album, while the latter half contains a weirder, more emotional and "cinematic" collection of songs, the kind that makes this band special to me.
2. Portugal. The Man - Censored Colors - Catchy, emotional tunes that easily get stuck in your head and heart.
3. Blitzen Trapper - Furr - My favorite musical discovery of 2008. They sound right out the 60s or 70s, as if they could have been playing on the same stage as the Grateful Dead. They also win for best band name.

Top 10 Most Anticipated Films of 2009

1. Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
2. Public Enemies (Michael Mann)
3. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
4. Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
5. Cold Souls (Sophie Barthes)
6. The Road (John Hillcoat)
7. Funny People (Judd Apatow)
8. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
9. Moon (Duncan Jones)
10. Dragonball Evolution (James Wong)

My Year in Film: 2008 (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-04T04:16:00.000-08:00

As with my Top 10 music list, this is a repost. I've made a few more changes to this one, though. Particularly, I've clarified my thoughts on Gran Torino.

So, without further adieu, my top-ten films of 2008 are:

1. Che – Fantastic. The first half of the film was the best cinema I’ve seen since There Will Be Blood. The second half was a bit of a disappointment (compared to how incredibly perfect the first half was), but I still can’t decide if that’s a bad thing. After all, the first half of the film illustrated the Cuban Revolution and Guevara’s success as a military leader, while the second half is about his failure and eventual execution in Bolivia. For its sheer grandness in scale and vision, Soderbergh deserved a nomination for Best Director. This film should have won Best Picture. Oh wait, it wasn’t even nominated. What the fuck, Oscar?

2. JCVD – The closest “second place” possible. I almost put JCVD first, and maybe it should be. It’s certainly the most entertaining film I’ve seen in a long time – more than any of the “big studio” films that came out this year, certainly. Should have won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, if not Best Picture, as well. Oh wait, like the film above, it wasn’t even nominated.

3. Vicky Christina Barcelona – Woody Allen’s best film since Small Time Crooks. Better than Match Point. Way better than anything else he’s done this decade (except maybe for Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, which I haven’t seen). Barcelona depends upon the performances of its lead actors. Bardem is fantastic, and Scarlett Johansson is pretty and confused, like her character is supposed to be. Rebecca Hall, who plays Vicky, delivers an even better performance than Johansson. And then there’s Penelope Cruz. OmigodPenelope. What can I say? Beautiful, manic, crazy - an amazing performance.

4. Slumdog Millionaire – So what if it’s derivative? So what if it is basically a bunch of clichés? Danny Boyle pulls it all off without any of the (rather unsurprising) plot points seeming tired. And how ‘bout that Dev Patel? What a guy. The soundtrack was pretty cool too.

5. Waltz With Bashir – Not as amazing as all the reviews led me to believe, but still very affecting. It’s a documentary about the 1982 Lebanon-Israeli war. More specifically, it’s about the director’s experience as an Israeli soldier who witnessed (and it could be argued was complicit in) the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees. Rather than simply document his travels and interviews on film, the director (Ari Folman) animates the stories that are told. Every time a “character” tells his story, the audience sees the memories interpreted through flash animation. I was constantly reminded that even though I was watching a “documentary” and the people talking were supposedly telling “true stories,” everything was colored by the perspective of the person being interviewed.

6. WALL-E – Ahh! Global Warming! The first half or so, the part that was almost entirely devoid of dialogue, was great. This is a children’s film? Oh yeah.

7. W. – Imperfect, just like its subject. Josh Brolin’s performance was marvelous, though. He didn’t attempt to “play” Bush; he created a character that was informed by Bush’s personality and actions, and then made a new, and yet very similar, person.

8. Gran Torino – I recently re-watched A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More. As I watched Clint Eastwood's seminal performances in these two films, I kept thinking back to his most recent film. Seen in contrast to the "bad boy" persona with which Eastwood established himself in Hollywood, I began to appreciate his characterization in Torino even more. I don’t care what people say about some of the other performances (and many of them were bad – the Priest? Blech.), Gran Torino was just Clint bein’ Clint. Part "The Man With No Name" and part "The Thoughtful Director of Such Films As..." Eastwood married his two personas - the badass and the auteur - into one character. And I'll see a movie like that any day.

9. Milk – Not as great as everyone seems to think. I was actually a little disappointed in Sean Penn’s performance. It was certainly good, and from everything I’ve seen and read a very good impersonation of Harvey Milk, but it just seemed so… routine. Don’t get me wrong, I liked his performance, I just wasn’t wowed. I thought Brolin, who was fantastic, upstaged Penn. What a year Brolin had, huh?

10. Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D – The second most fun I had at the movies all year (behind JCVD). Tyrannosaurs! Lava! Brendan Fraser! God I love 3D movies. Almost as much as I love Brendan Fraser.

Honorable Mention:

Iron Man – Robert Downey, Jr made this film (I mean that in the metaphorical sense, not that he actually directed it or anything).

Tropic Thunder – Robert Downey, Jr also made this film (once again, metaphorical). Also, I think this may be my favorite Matthew McConaughey performance ever. And Tom Cruise was pretty funny, too.

Pineapple Express – What can I say? Made me want to get high. One might say it was highlarious. Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Most Overrated:

The Wrestler – Mickey Rourke gave a good performance, but the film itself is pretty terrible. The camerawork is lazy, it just looks bad, and none of the other performances are inspired or even good. Also, it pisses me off to see Rourke get all the accolades for a really personal, honest, and brave performance when Jean Claude Van Damme did the same fucking thing (and did it better) with JCVD. Too bad there isn’t a big studio pushing Van Damme’s performance, or maybe he’d be winning the Oscar tonight. Props to Marisa Tomei for looking damn good, though.

Burn After Reading – Oh surprise! The Coen brothers made another overrated movie! Pardon me, I’ll be watching Fargo, or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, or Lebowski again, and remembering how good they used to be.

Wish I’d Seen Them Because They’d Probably Be on My List Somewhere:

Man On Wire
Ballast
Revolutionary Road
Synecdoche, New York
Changeling
A Girl Cut In Two

And Finally – The Most Overrated, Ridiculously Popular and Critically Acclaimed, I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-The-Second-Highest-Grossing-Film-In-American-History:

The Dark Knight – Okay, don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this movie. I really did. I had fun. But it was A) too long and B) pretty amateurishly directed for an action movie and C) not the best superhero movie of the last decade (*cough* Spider-Man 2 *cough*) and D) was so frustratingly and insanely popular! The one thing that Oscar got right this year was not nominating TDK for Best Picture or Best Director. Yes, Heath Ledger’s performance was phenomenal. But that was the only phenomenal thing about the movie.

So there’ya have it. My quickly-put-together thoughts on the year 2008 in movies. Hopefully now that the writer’s strike is well behind us, we’ll start seeing an upswing in the general quality of movies. Though if the first quarter of 2009 is any measure, that’s too much to ask.

Oh, and before I go:

Best Male Actor – Benicio del Toro OR Jean Claude Van Damme. I can’t choose between the two. Del Toro for his sheer brilliance in recreating Mr Ernesto, and Van Damme for an incredibly personal and moving performance. Too bad neither of them are even nominated.

Best Female Actor – Penelope Fucking Cruz. See my above comments on Vicky Christina Barcelona. And she won an Oscar this year. So - see! I agree with the Academy on one thing!

My Year in Music: 2008 (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-04T03:42:00.000-08:00

A repost of the top ten list I published on Facebook a while back, but with a couple new additions. McNally - you were right. Justice's studio album was '07, so that's off the list.

Top ten lists always seem sort of arbitrary, especially in the world of music. Every year there are innumerable albums, EPs, and mixtapes released that it is virtually impossible to catalogue all of them. To write a top ten list that somehow "sums up" the world of music for the past year is a Gordian knot, if I've ever seen one.

That being said, I have attempted to make a list that represents the best of several of the popular genres, although my particular interests (cough hip hop cough ) are certainly apparent.

Without further ado:

1. The Roots – Rising Down: Poignant. Interesting. Relevant. A near-perfect album. ?uestlove and Black Thought are certainly on a roll of late. Game Theory was a near-classic, and Rising Down reaches even higher points. Better than Do You Want More?!!!??!. Nearly as good as Things Fall Apart. "Criminal" is one helluva song.

2. Oasis – Dig Out Your Soul: What Eric said, basically. "Waiting for the Rapture" is so fucking rockin.

3. Portishead - Third: Eerie and mysterious and ethereal and haunting. It's impossible to describe this album in anything but synonyms. I've listened to it half a dozen times now and I still don't have any idea what it's about. But the orchestration and instrumentation is incredible. Get back to me in a month and maybe I'll know what the songs are about. "Silence" and "Threads" are perhaps the best opening and closing tracks of any album this year.

4. David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today: I didn't discover this album until after Wheeler and Kasmiskie sung its praises. It's pop music at its very best. "Home" and "Life is Long" are personal favorites, but the best song on the album is certainly "Everything That Happens."

5. B.B. King – One Kind Favor: Certainly not B.B. King's best material ever, but it's pretty damn good. I think it is his most consistent studio album. "See That My Grave is Kept Clean" and the triumvirate of "Blues Before Sunrise," "Midnight Blues," and "Backwater Blues" are reflective, groovy, and oh so bluesy.

6. The Last Shadow Puppets – The Age of the Understatement: Epic. The title track is this year's best single, and also this year's best music video.

7. T.O.B.I.A.S. – Magyver: The West Coast is back. T.O.B.I.A.S. stands for "Takin' Out Bustas in a Second," and his debut album is just like this MC's hyperbolic name: tongue-in-cheek and surprisingly original. Also incredibly well produced for an underground self-published album.

8. TV On the Radio – Dear Science: I'm not familiar enough with TV On the Radio's previous work to give any sort of intelligent blurb about this album. All I can say is that I enjoyed it. A lot.

9. Q-Tip – The Renaissance: After nearly a decade, Tip's back with a new album. Considering how long this was in coming, it should have been an industrious, meticulously crafted effort. But it wasn't. The Renaissance is fresh, interesting, and nearly as fun to listen to as a Tribe album. But Q-Tip alone is no Tribe Called Quest, as much as he'd like to think so. The Renaissance is good, but it's not flawless. There is no strong through-line, and many of the songs sound interchangeable, though with different lyrics. But twelve new Tip tracks are always welcome.

10. Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak: I originally thought that 808s was Kanye's worst album. I was wrong. It's his second worst album (behind Late Registration). But Kanye's second worst album is still pretty damn good, and for every bad song on his new effort, there's a song like "Robocop" and "Heartless." The dude cut the album in like three weeks and it should have been a halfhearted, predictable effort. But it was just the opposite. And as much as I hate the auto-tuner, Kanye uses it better than anyone.

11. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular: God this is a great album. One of the best (if not the best) side ones this year. "Weekend Wars," "The Youth," "Electric Feel," and "Kids" all blend perfectly together. In fact, like 808s, the album is better than the sum of its parts. Each track is so complimentary to the next. It's reminiscent of - but not beholden to - Britpop before its downfall, and yet MGMT is decidedly modern. If Justice, Blur, The Gorillaz, and Radiohead had a wild orgy, MGMT might pop out nine months later. Or something like that.

12. Beck – Modern Guilt: Nothing on this album can compare to the catchiness of "Girl," but Beck continues to make great music, Scientology notwithstanding.

13. The Streets – Everything is Borrowed: A return to form. No Grand Don't Come for Free but way better than Hardest Way.

14. Lil’ Wayne – Tha Carter III: Lil' Wayne only makes the list on the strength of the mixtapes he produced between Tha Carter II and this latest effort. I'm getting really tired of hearing Lil' Wayne on every cookie cutter T Pain, Akon [insert crappy "rapper" here] single. Weezy can be an incredible MC. His flow is wicked. He also makes songs like "A Milli." I may give up on the man if his next album isn't far better.

15. The Cool Kids – The Bake Sale: A good debut. The Cool Kids have perfected a spare, minimalist sound that is at once reminiscent of 80s hip hop and a modern efficiency. What remains to be seen is if they can go anywhere from here.

16. Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English: I only put this last because I'm not very familiar with the Rascal. I haven't heard his first album, which I hear is better than this one. Maths is silly, scatological, and like any good hip hop album, has a track entitled "Suk My Dick."

So, that's it. My top ten(ish) albums of the year. It's certainly not all-encompassing; I hear Vampire Weekend and Lucinda Williams both had great albums, but I never listened to them. Plush finally released Fed in wide-distribution, but I didn't hear that, either. Girl Talk's latest disappointed. T.I. had an album that was alright, but just alright. Snoop was Snoop -- if only "Sensual Seduction" had been that instead of "Sexual Eruption," and if only he had made more songs like that for Ego Trippin'. Nas has further proven his irrelevance, but Illmatic is still fucking awesome.

If anyone is looking for a book to read, I fervently suggest The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. It's the best Science Fiction novel of all time. And the novel's protagonist is one of the best characters ever written. Check it out. Andrew McNally did, and he claims to have loved it. I dunno... you'll have to talk to him about that. But yeah. Great stuff.

Rankings Never Die Tomorrow with a Golden Gun

2009-03-03T19:29:00.000-08:00

Part Eins: Bond Actors

1. Sean Connery
Perfect blend of danger, suave and MAN in all caps. Connery defined Bond and set the standard for all who followed and the fact that he had five of the ten best flicks to his name did not hurt. Diamonds Are Forever never really happened...

Best Moment: The original utterance of "Bond, James Bond." in Dr No. In just three words he has the character nailed. He is James Bond.
Worst Moment: Clumsily fighting two gymnastic champion femme fetales in Diamonds Are Forever, entirety of Never Say Never Again not withstanding. He hasn't aged well here and the result is painful to watch.

2. Daniel Craig
Lacks the purr and a bit of the suave but gets the rest right. The only other Bond actor besides Connery to bring a real, tangible sense of danger to the room.

Best Moment: The torture scene in Casino Royale: "You're going to die scratching my balls." He maintains Bond's wit and personality throughout a scene that should theoretically be too gritty and disturbing for a Bond film, successfully selling a reimagining that could've easily gone awry.
Worst Moment: More the writers' fault than his own, but leaving Mathis in the dumpster during Quantum of Solace stands out as a moment I didn't buy.

3. Pierce Brosnan
His attempts at icy smooth sometimes came across as bored and thus boring and he had lackluster material to work with more often than not. That said, Brosnan owned when he had a good scene and/or was on a role. Also probably looked the part better than anyone else.

Best Moment: The death of 006: "For England, James?" "No. For me." Brosnan's cool and collected execution of this badassery seals GoldenEye's spot as a truly great 90's action flick. It is also the best example of his style. Where Connery, Dalton and Craig might have growled the line with ferocity, Brosnan just lets it slip as if it were casual conversation and it works perfectly.
Worst Moment: Fencing with Madonna in Die Another Day.

4. Timothy Dalton
Like Brosnan, he's a talented performer who was just given utter crap to work with and made the best of it. The difference however is a simple one: he's not as well cast as Brosnan and his material was even worse. He was however quite a bit fiercer than his counterparts, bringing a welcome edge and seriousness to the franchise following two of Roger Moore's lowest points and deserves credit for that.

Best Moment: Reacting to MI6-Ally-of-the-Day's death by way of malfunctioning sliding doors in The Living Daylights. When he winces and crushes that balloon with his hands, Bond's anger pierces through the screen in a way not seen in at least nine movies.
Worst Moment: "I gave him the... boot!" Lame pun, Dalton knows it, is bad at one-liners to begin with and fails to sell this particularly bad one. The humorous side of Bond was always Dalton's weakest point.

5. George Lazenby
Oh George Lazenby, what shall we do with thee. Not a trained actor in the slightest, Lazenby was plucked from modelling in Australian clothing? commercials to replace fed-up Connery at a time when nobody had yet proven that Bond could survive Connery's departure. He's a MAJOR contributor of awkward in the otherwise well-crafted On Her Majesty's Secret Service but tries hard, effort coming across here and there. Being a professional martial artist he's also probably the most physical of the Bonds, giving the film's fist fights and ski chases an unusually visceral feel. With a few more films he might have become the best, but alas we have only the one to judge from.

Best Moment: The end of OHMSS. Lazenby's strong suit, despite his lack of acting training, is in selling the film's more sensitive tender moments and when that lone tear rolls down his cheek after the attack, we buy it.
Worst Moment: "Bond, James Bond." If you thought I was giving Connery too much credit for his ability to sell this line, like "oh, how hard can that be?" ... get a load of this. Instead of icy cool and badass it comes across as bubbly and cocky. I wanted to punch Lazenby when he said it, not root for him. Sigh. Dalton couldn't say it either.

6. Roger Moore
Smooth and witty but so flippant that he is impossible to take seriously, assuming he's even taking the role seriously. He's not particularly interesting to watch either - most apparent in the otherwise glorious The Spy Who Loved Me in which his lack of edge is a clear weak link. When he tries to be funny he usually isn't and when he tries to act dangerous or angry he just comes across as robotic.

Best Moment: Kicking the henchman's car off a seaside cliff in For Your Eyes Only. This is one of the only times where his edge seems real.
Worst Moment: Seducing Mayday in A View to a Kill. She's so young and beautiful. He's borderline geriatric. It's ridiculous. Honorable mention to the slapsticky firetruck chase in the same film.

A Few Notes on Formats and Titles

2009-03-03T17:12:00.000-08:00

Sorry to lure you all in with the brash sexiness of this post title, but in this economy dignity is expendable. Speaking of which, there will be extensive coverage of the motherfucking #1 film of the century, The Expendables, in due time. On to the notes!

-Our goal here at Anamorphic Analysis is to provide you with the coherence and insight of in-depth magazine writing while at the same time getting our thoughts to you as quickly as possible and hopefully continuing the conversation with you in the comments section. Our unabashed goal is to be a cross between Cahiers du Cinema, NME and Twitter, but not fucking worthless and a waste of everyone's god damn time like Twitter. Just...frequently updated.

In order to achieve this we will be outlining each issue of Anamorphic Analysis beforehand and allowing the reader to retroactively piece together the strands of where we are intellectually and aesthetically each month. The internet. Interaction. You get the idea. Issues will be roughly monthly and volumes will be quarterly. This sort of organizational superstructure will hopefully become less cumbersome as time goes by and you wish to consult prior issues or specific posts.

This is not to say, however, that spontaneity is excised from the journal or that every entry will be a 12-paragraph eyestrain. Although we set outlines for each issue, there is an open-structure to the whole enterprise and cinematic and/or musical revelations should be shared while still warm. There will also be varied blog posts within and between issues touching on any sort of idea or opinion a writer has and at whatever length he or she has the inspiration to construct. We're also still coming up with ideas for semi-regular features, panels and roundtables which leads directly to:

-Brand new (although not eternally new, so it goes...) features such as:

"Stray Thoughts, Fringe Opinions" a soon-to-be-staple of the weBLOG which is hopefully self-explanatory

From the Vaults: Radiohead's Greatest Unreleased Songs

The Long and Winding Road to Cultural Literacy: Super Ape by the Upsetters

A Britpop Primer (with apologies to the A.V. Club)

Review of "The Explosive Cinema of Bruce Conner" event at REDCAT

"Paul McCartney: Hiding in Plain Site" essay

An absolute clusterfuck of all sorts of shit on post-modernism

"Appetite for Deconstruction" - A possibly-regular panel in which various objects of adoration, disgust and/or (dis)interest are nerdishly picked apart by our contributors

as well as...

"Underappreciated Appreciations" a twice-an-issue column in which we give the overlooked and undervalued a public salute. Expect to see such diamonds-in-the rough as: Brendan Fraser, Anna Faris, the early films of Abel Ferrara, Oasis in the 21st century, Bowfinger, Minus the Bear, the recent films of Terrence Malick, "Spider-Man: The Animated Series," the Chicago Cubs and much, much more!

- Finally, I'd like to lay out the significance of our title, for plebians and Ph.Ds alike. So in the tradition of all great academics and intellectuals, allow me to turn towards Wikipedia: "With an anamorphic lens the picture is optically squeezed in the horizontal dimension to cover the entire film frame, resulting in better picture quality. When projecting the film, the project must use a complimentary lens of the same anamorphic power to stretch the image horizontally back to its original proportions." So the idea is to grasp the richness of the "big picture" while reformatting it to our own aesethetic idiosyncrasies (or evil schemes).

"Notorious" Review (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

Latest Music Biopic Notorious For All the Wrong Reasons

Towards the end of Notorious (2008), the latest in a torrential slew of Hollywood biopics, Sean Combs a.k.a. Puff Daddy turns to Christopher Wallace a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. and says, “We gonna change the world, Biggie Smalls.” Biggie retorts, “We can’t change the world unless we change ourselves.” This is the dramatic beat in the film, the moment before the climax, but one cannot help but wonder: “what does that even mean?” And therein lies the problem. It doesn’t mean anything.

In fact, the intro tracks to Biggie’s two studio albums, Ready to Die and Life After Death do a better job at summarizing his life than Notorious. On Ready to Die, the listener hears Biggie’s birth as Curtis Mayfield’s “Superfly” plays. “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang plays next, as Biggie’s mother and (presumably) father argue about their son. Their argument transitions into “Top Billin’” by Audio Two. As “Top Billin’” plays, Biggie and a friend rob a subway train. Finally, “Tha Shiznit” by Snoop Dogg is sampled while Biggie is being released from prison. His last lines are, “I got big plans nigga… big plans.” The intro to Life After Death (which was released sixteen days after Biggie’s murder in Los Angeles) is less interesting, but serves as a nice bookend to his life.

Notorious follows the format of these two tracks almost exactly. A series of vignettes shows us Biggie grow up, sell crack on the streets of Brooklyn, go to prison, and then begin recording music. The rest of the film is devoted to Biggie’s meteoric rise to fame, his relationship with Tupac Shakur that (as we all know) turns sour, and ends, inexorably, with his death. What Notorious does in 123 minutes, Ready to Die and Life After Death do in a little over five.

To understand the problems with Notorious, it is important to recognize the film in a larger context – to understand its existence within the larger world of hip-hop cinema, musician biographies, and biopics in general. Although the “biographical film” has existed since the birth of cinema – Cyrano de Bergerac (1900) being possibly the very first – the biopic as a genre is a relatively recent phenomenon. Even more recent is the glut of music biopics, spurned on by the success of Ray (2004) and Walk the Line (2005). The hip-hop biopic, though, has been relatively neglected. The only other film that comes to mind when thinking of hip-hop biographies is 8 Mile (2002). And 8 Mile isn’t truly a biopic, it’s a fictional story based on Martial Mathers a.k.a. Eminem’s early life. “Aha!” you may say, “but what about Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ (2005), the 50 Cent biopic for which Terrence Howard received an Oscar nod?” Well, yes. Technically I suppose Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ is a biopic. It’s even directed by Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot – 1989). However, Get Rich is so utterly modeled after 8 Mile and so entirely forgettable that it hardly deserves mention.

Notorious is, then, a foundational film in many ways. So, what should be learned from this endeavor? Unfortunately, not much. And although Notorious is the “first” hip-hop biopic, it certainly does nothing new in the way of filmmaking choices. The real progenitors here are the filmmakers of Ray and Walk the Line, who perfected making the formulaic “hardships in early life lead to a spectacular rise to fame which leads to drug addiction and relationship crises which eventually leads to redemption” story palatable to awards-season audiences. Structurally, Notorious is no different than these films. And all of them, sadly, disappoint.

The problem with these types of films is that they do little more than “report” the life and times of their subjects. Ray, Walk the Line, and Notorious are like the biographies of John Glenn and Winston Churchill that we read in elementary and middle school. They show us what happened, but offer no analysis on why. There’s a lazy filmmaker at work here; rather than make narrative choices and attempt to glean insight into the minds of their subjects, the writers and directors prefer to create facile and methodic stories that fit into their formulas of what makes appealing cinema.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of these films is that they present their stories as fact. Notorious (which was executively produced by Sean Combs) paints a fairly saintly portrait of its subject. Biggie goes to prison, but he’s a victim of the system. He doesn’t have anything to do with Tupac’s robbery and shooting in Manhattan. He had already recorded the b-side “Who Shot Ya” (which provoked the East Coast-West Coast rivalry to new heights) before Tupac’s attempted murder. It was mainly Tupac’s fault that their beef was not resolved. Puffy and Biggie had nothing to do with Tupac’s murder in Las Vegas. And, of course, Biggie had patched things up with all the women in his life (his mother, Faith Evans, Lil’ Kim, etc) before he died. While some of these things are most certainly true, some of them aren’t, and several of them are still shrouded in mystery. There’s nothing wrong with fictionalizing aspects of a biopic; in fact, it’s nearly always essential to the narrative flow of the film. But Ray, Walk the Line, and Notorious never decide what these fictionalizations mean. Facts are changed, but the story continues along as if they hadn’t been.

When filmmakers decide to take a perspective about their subject and follow those ideas to a conclusion, their films are almost always more interesting to watch. Furthermore, films that do not attempt to tell an entire “life story” are more successful. Just as a biography of Winston Churchill that focuses on and analyzes specificities of his life is more interesting than the simplistic biographies of our youth, films like I’m Not There (2007) are also far more compelling. Though certainly not without flaws, I’m Not There is willing to do more than routinely describe. It takes Bob Dylan’s life and creates new characters and narratives from his actual experiences. Rather than pretending to be a total portrait of who Bob Dylan is, I’m Not There attempts to understand his various iterations and personalities through distinct characters, actors, and stories. There are plenty of films that are arguably even better at this (re)interpretation: in the music genre, Amadeus, and more generally, W., Che, and Lawrence of Arabia.

Notorious, like many biopics, gets a good performance out of its lead Jamal Woolard. In many ways his performance is very similar to Sean Penn’s in Milk. They both essentially impersonate other people, and they both do it well. Jamal Woolard looks eerily like Biggie, and he perfected Biggie’s slow, syncopated drawl. In fact, the most indelible scenes in Notorious are when Woolard is rapping Biggie’s words. Each time this happens, though, George Tillman, Jr (the director, whose presence is barely felt) chooses to cut the scene before the song is over. We only see Woolard rap part of “Juicy.” We only see part of his performance of “Who Shot Ya” to a hostile crowd in California. Making a film about a musician and choosing to avoid a lot of time devoted to seeing his performance in favor of focusing on the musician’s personality can work (see I’m Not There). In the case of Notorious, though, the rest of the film is bland and uninspired. There was nothing insightful in the scenes where Biggie was not rapping.

Hopefully, as movie studios gear up many more hip-hop biopics in light of the success of Notorious, they will choose filmmakers who are willing to make films that realize the unique opportunities that are present when operating within the cinematic medium. Ideally, these films will model themselves after Amadeus and I’m Not There, not Ray and Walk the Line. I don’t think this is very likely, though. Audiences have shown what they want, and that’s inoffensive and predictable films that have good performances, but do not challenge the viewer in any way. As I left the theatre after the credits for Notorious had rolled, I thought about what, if anything, I was taking away from the film. I could only think of this: “We gonna change the world, Biggie Smalls.” “We can’t change the world unless we change ourselves.” In the greater context of Notorious, that exchange doesn’t mean a thing. But in retrospect, maybe it can be applied to what I’ve been discussing. If we, as audiences, demand better biographical films – films that challenge us – we can change the world of the biopic. We can change the world. But first, we have to change ourselves.

808s, Heartbreak and Ambition up the Yeezy (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

With Kanye's most recent re-imagining of the VH1 Storytellers format, here's a review of what I believe to be his masterpiece, 808s & Heartbreak...

Beeps and blips bounce back and forth over a sparse drum beat created by the generally reviled Roland TR-808 drum machine. Sampled vocals create a mournful choir and the occasional chord on piano drops. The light among this desolate arrangement? The melodies of auto-tuned Kanye West. A question arises - the same one that came to mind when I heard Charlie Kaufman would be directing a feature film of his own - why?

It all sounds too terrible to be true. A loudmouthed, arrogant popstar lamenting the life he's built for himself full of money, women and sports cars? 808s & Heartbreak would be worthy of contempt were it not so beautifully contradictory and simply strange. You get the sense that Mr. West is really trying something here. Trying to write a proper pop song. Trying to excise the pain of losing a fiancé (she left him) and a mother (to a botched surgery) in the same year.

Above all, Mr. West is coping with this loss using his music, hoping for some sort of catharsis. Each song has all the immediacy we've come to know from Kanye (the man's first single was sung while his jaw was wired shut after a car accident) with little reflection. This is both a strength and a weakness. On one hand it makes the album incredibly contradictory. Sometimes on the same song - "Heartless" laments the loss of a girl, while also bragging "you'll never find nobody better than me." But, in a way, its an honest snapshot of the conflicted, unfiltered emotions one experiences after a break-up. Kanye's not thinking straight and neither are his songs as they bounce through his doubts ("Love Lockdown"), the career he chose ("Amazing"), his regrets ("Street Lights"), and - most underrepresented on this album - his cool (the transcendent "Paranoid").

Then there's the formal elements, most specifically the auto-tune. The man can't sing. But in this day and age why should that stop him? His use of auto-tune I find most effective in his live performances, where the rawness of his voice often overpowers the electronic vibrato of the correction tool. Its not always the most aesthetically pleasing but its real in a way that is absent from most pop. The 808 drum machine is known as a punchline in the music industry for sounding unapologetically fake. It was introduced to Kanye by composer / producer / songwriter Jon Brion (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fiona Apple's When The Pawn..., Meaningless) who co-produced most of Kanye's sophomore effort Late Registration. Brion's love of orchestral strings appears to have also influenced Kanye (see "Robocop" on Storytellers below). The true beauty of 808s comes from the fact that Mr. West uses these tried and despised tools to create something wholly new and interesting. And the album ends up sounding like a robot discovering its humanity.

By "Coldest Winter" Kanye proves himself to be just as big as he boasts he is (or at least on his way), with a heart bigger than any of the written-by-committee trash found on most Top 20 radio. Its an album of awkwardness, ambition and honesty that is extremely refreshing coming from an artist who could just as easily keep shilling out more of the same with great returns. I didn't hear anything else in 2008 that featured an artist challenging himself and pushing himself to the edge of his limitations as much as 808s & Heartbreak did for Kanye. One hopes that once he overcomes this bout of self-pity and grief, this ambition will manifest itself in an even greater way. 808s deserves applause for its intentions and a nod for its achievements. Here's to the self-proclaimed Elvis of our day.

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(note: Please delete all versions of the bonus track found at the end of the album as it is pretty lame. You'll be doing yourself and Yeezy a favor.)

"Taken" Review (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-03-02T02:28:00.000-08:00

Taken Offers Actions Fans a Smidgen of Solace

Perhaps it’s the cushion of low expectations. Or perhaps it’s the lingering aftertaste of disappointment left by such poorly shot, poorly chopped recent action entries as The Dark Knight and Quantum of Solace. Whatever it is, I was absolutely flush with it during a recent screening Luc Besson’s latest film. Let’s get a few things straight. Taken isn’t a lot of things. It isn’t directed by Luc Besson, although he is unquestionably its auteur. It isn’t realistic. It isn’t socially constructive. It isn’t the result of a particularly distinguished screenplay. And it isn’t a great film. It is, however, a good film, and that is increasingly more rare than a great or a terrible one.

The very goodness of this film boils down to two things: one tangible, the other intangible. The first is Liam Neeson, who is almost frighteningly tangible here, revealing a strength and speed in his lima-bean frame previously unwitnessed (his athletics in The Phantom Menace being the closet thing to a clue). The other, the intangible, is the sense that here is finally a picture that has absorbed and fully understood the lessons imparted by The Bourne Supremacy, unquestionably the most influential action film of the last decade. It is also the first film since Supremacy’s follow-up, The Bourne Ultimatum, to make ground-level kinetics and razor-sharp editing as thrilling as John Woo and Michael Bay at their most elegant 1990s-baroque (Hard Boiled and The Rock, respectively). Replacing the incompetent pyrotechnics of The Dark Knight with swiftness and brutality, Taken pares down recent extravagances to the gut (dis)pleasures of flesh, metal and bone interacting and conquering one another.

This is not to say it is a film without flaws, far from it. The invigorating action sequences are bookended by opening and closing segments whose tedium is exceeded only by their mawkishness. The utterly ravishing Famke Jansen (surely the most beautiful woman over 40 years old) is wasted here as an object of sexual loss. The casting of Neeson, who has over a half a century under his belt, continues the contemporary, absurdist trend of casting pensioners with arthritis as the bone-crushing destroyers of the young (i.e. Stallone, Willis, Ford). The acting surrounding Mount Neeson is at best inconsequential and at worst insipid. There is a causal racism (which could benevolently be called ‘xenophobia’) at play throughout and a shocking denouement in which the Ugly American faces no consequences whatsoever for his post-modern rampage.

It should be noted, however, that many of the films lesser qualities interact with its worthier charms to present a fascinating friction. The xenophobia of Neeson’s character is tempered by the dual knowledge that his character’s accent is not of American soil and that the actor himself hails from foreign shores. The film’s distrust of foreigners also seems to be more a stylistic, genre-based decision rather than a deeply held political commitment. Finally, the casting of a weathered monument like Liam Neeson adds a surprisingly emotional undercurrent of poignancy and regret that could never be gleaned from the young and beautiful Daniel Craig, no matter how hard he pouts (and I say this as a fan of the newest Bond).

Neeson’s steel-eyed willingness to throw his character into a moral abyss, with no excuses and no thought of forgiveness, gives him an emotional weight unlikely to be found on the page. There exists a chasm between the man’s brain and body, between his heart and his head. The fatherly clumping together of wrinkles when he smiles at his daughter seems to come from a different, segmented part of himself than the cold-blooded murderer frequently on display. It is within this chasm that Neeson has both lost himself, and found his audience. Taken solves the post-modern problem engendered by such films as GoldenEye (1995), Mission: Impossible 3 (2006) and the aforementioned Dark Knight and Quantum of Solace, which have all attempted to drive a wedge of sentiment and self-consciousness into an aging, possibly irrelevant icon.

Luc Besson’s latest can thus be most usefully be seen as a blueprint to a proper follow-up to Martin Campell’s second James Bond reboot masterpiece, Casino Royale (the first being the aforementioned GoldenEye). That is to say, Taken is the film Quantum of Solace wished it could be, though still not quite as good as it should be. Alas, Taken’s finale proves it to be a stylistic exercise superior to its own goal and Neeson has crafted a character whose own profundity dwarfs his modest surroundings. Despite all this, Taken points the way out of the aesthetic dead-end suggested by Quantum’s recent hand-held hell and the Batman franchise’s stylistic deadweight. It is now only a matter of time before a superior film makes full use of its innovations.

Coming Soon

2009-02-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the slow-motion birth pangs here. We're still soliciting essays and contributors, but here's a taste of what's coming your way in the near future:

"Assessing the Van Dammage: The Life and Career of JCVD"

"The State of the Superhero Movie" - Competing essays

"Watching 'The Watchmen'" - Point/Counter-point

"The Inevitable and Unstoppable Decline of '30 Rock' (or not)" - Roundtable discussion

"The Unbearable Heaviness of the Bio-Pic"

"Coraline" review

"Taken" review

"Norm McDonald: Guest Star"

Additional contributors top 10 film and music lists

And much, much more...

My Year in Film - 2008 (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-02-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

TOP 10:

1) JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri)

2) Che (Steven Soderbergh)

3) Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)

4) Speed Racer (Andy Wachowski; Larry Wachowski)

5) Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)

6) My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)

7) Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle; Loveleen Tandan)

8) Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Guillermo del Toro)

9) WALL-E (Andrew Stanton)

10) Une Catastrophe (Jean-Luc Godard)

Where I Would Have Placed Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke) Had I Not Seen It In 2007: Top 3

HONORABLE MENTIONS (in alphabetical order)

Iron Man (Jon Favreau)

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D (Eric Brevig)

Man on Wire (James Marsh)

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Rob Cohen)

Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)

Rambo (Sylvester Stallone)

Shine A Light (Martin Scorsese)

Vicky Christina Barcelona (Woody Allen)

W. (Oliver Stone)

You Don't Mess with the Zohan (Dennis Dugan)

UNFORTUNATELY UNSEEN

The Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone)

Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)

Milk (Gus Van Sant)

Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)

Sparrow (Johnnie To)

INTENTIONALLY UNMENTIONED

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)

MALE PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR:

1) Jean-Claude Van Damme (JCVD)

2) Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)

3) Benicio Del Toro (Che)

4) Josh Brolin (W.)

5) Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

FEMALE PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR

1) Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy)

2) Penelope Cruz (Vicky Christina Barcelona)

3) Samantha Morton (Synecdoche, New York)

4) Lina Leandersson (Let the Right One In)

5) Ann Savage (My Winnipeg)

MOST DISAPPOINTING FILM OF THE YEAR

Quantum of Solace (Marc Forester)

Runner-up:

Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green)

MOST DISASTROUS FILM OF THE YEAR

The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan)

BEST TRAILERS OF THE YEAR

1) Pineapple Express

2) W.

3) JCVD

MOST PLEASANT SURPRISES

1) Hellboy II: The Golden Army

2) Speed Racer

3) Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Raja Gosnell)

PERSONAL DISCOVERY OF LONG-LOST MASTERPIECES

1) Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen; 2003)

2) The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper; 1971)

3) Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey; 1937)

My Year in Music - 2008 (Volume One, Issue One)

2009-02-23T15:35:00.000-08:00

Here we go:

1) David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today: Evidence that the simple pleasures of pop music are rarely simple.

2) Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash: The first of Malkmus' solo albums where the music approaches the sprawling density of the words; all the while his guitar wizardry nudges away its quotation marks. His best solo album yet and one of his best solo albums period.

3) Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul: The Brothers Gallagher abandon the pub-rock anthems in favor of ferocity ("The Turning") and thoughtfulness ("Falling Down"). Not that there's anything wrong with pub-rock anthems. The year's best Side One, regardless.

4) The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent: The Fall's best album of the last however-long slipped under my radar for most of the year, which is truly unfortunate. It's exactly like the last Fall masterpiece, only different. ("The Fall: always different, always the same." - John Peel)

5) Pavement - Brighten the Corners (Reissue): Pavement's worst album has somehow aged the best. This is a blueprint for late-90s classic-rock that only makes sense as it now approaches classic-rock age. Also, "Stereo."

6) Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak: Imperfect, moving, often ingenious. For every petulant pout there's a glimpse of a real artist taking chances.

7) The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement: Grown-up laments, teenage poignancy, grandfatherly arrangements. The rare example of restraint and bombast not only coexisting, but reinforcing one another.

8) Magnetic Fields - Distortion: What could have been a gimmick (the titular sonic affectation) becomes instead a focusing principle of an often too-disparate writer. A sonically-mature album that not only contains some of Stephin Merritt's best bon mots, but often has them in the same verse ("Too Drunk To Dream").

9) Portishead - Third: Spectral, light on its feet, but strangely weighty. The melodies constantly surprise and the production seems to retreat just at the moment of clarity.

10) Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy: A properly ludicrous album for which 17 years were spent on the Sisyphean task of getting each song exactly RIGHT regardless of cost, cultural relevancy, ruined personal relationships or questionable aesthetic taste. A cornrowed android's dream of electric symphonies.

HONORABLE MENTIONS (in alphabetical order)

Beck - Modern Guilt: Lyrically uninteresting, as per Beck, but blessed with ghostly arrangements and bottomless production. Reminiscent of Revolver with stronger dynamics and softer melodies.

Deerhunter - Microcastle: Spooky, pleasant, occasionally engaging.

Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English: Dizzee's skills refuse to fail him even as he drifts toward the mainstream. There are too many sublime moments to feel cheated.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes: The best overrated album of the year! Astounding EP, as well.

Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III: God bless that crazy man. I can certainly admire his unwillingness to make an Important Album, while still kind of wishing he had.

Monkey - Journey to the West: Wildly uneven at best, but it has ambition to burn and enough triumphs to justify the effort for both listener and artist (even if it's not as worldly as it thinks that it is). Contains a truly astonishing opening track.

No Age - Nouns: Joyous, raucous and coy in all the right ways. For all the American indie-rock connotations this record brings, it reminds me most of a higher-energy Jesus & Mary Chain.

TV on the Radio - Dear Science,: I like it. I don't get it. there are standout moments but little lingers.

Where In Rainbows would have been had I included it in this list since its physical release date was January 1st, 2008, thus qualifying it for various other awards: Top 3

SINGLE OF THE YEAR:

Snoop Dogg - "Sensual Seduction" (Edited)

Runner-up:

Kanye West - "Love Lockdown"

Most Ludicrously Overrated, Give-Yourself-A-Brain-Tumor-Thinking-About-It, Album of the Year:

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Runner-up

Coldplay - Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends

Thanks very much for reading and feel free to leave your comments below.