Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Countdown to Tom Waits
In less than seven days, I will be in Phoenix, Arizona. I am staying with an old friend. I'm looking forward to spending time with her, catching up on old times, and having a mini vacation. But on top of this, I will also be seeing Tom Waits perform at The Orpheum Theater for his Glitter and Doom tour.
This is a big deal for me as Tom Waits is one of my idols. He is a big inspiration.
So I decided to begin a countdown of sorts. Every day until Tuesday, when I leave, I will post a favorite video/song/or image of Mr. Waits.
And now, "Going Out West" from the album Bone Machine. It was his first album working with Larry Taylor where he incorporated more industrial noises. The album's overall concept is Armageddon.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Non Fiction is more entertaining than it used to be
I think this goes hand in hand with realizing I've reached an age milestone a couple years back that I never thought I would. When I was a child, my mother would listen to talk radio in the car and it was so boring. Yet, now, I listen to NPR way to much. I watch mostly news related shows on TV, and I've grown quite fond of The Food Network and Discovery Channel.
All this being said, I am now obsessed with the radio show turned tv show on Showtime called "This American Life".
Maybe it's because television sucks more and more. Maybe it's because in growing older and more conscious of the world around me, I yearn for my forms of entertainment to contain more substance that resonates the world around me. Maybe it's the concept of bridging different documentary style stories into an episode that centers around an overall theme. Maybe it's all of these things combined, but this show is just brilliant to me.
I recently added a handful of documentaries to my Netflix list. I just finished watching "When We Were Kings".
I find myself perusing History and Non Fiction books at book stores now as opposed to the horror fiction I used to indulge myself in. What has become of me? I'm officially a thirty something.
I am right now trying to get through Munich on DVD. It's the latest movie I rented and I fell asleep in the middle of it. I know, I'm a bad Jew. I am more looking forward to the other documentaries on my list, especially one called "The Power Of Nightmares". It's not even available yet on DVD but I read a review of it on Patton Oswalt's blog and it really sounds intriguing.
Seriously, with movies like the one above being released, it's hard for me to find entertainment in the fleeting piles of crap being released all over. Yet, I know there's a place for good escapist fun. I enjoyed Indy, Iron Man, and am sure to enjoy The Dark Knight. But there's a difference between brief escapism, and permanent ignorance.
Anyway, I'll be sure to post a review of this movie once I receive it...but it's quite far down on my queue and I still have to finish Munich.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
The Strangers
It's been quite a while since I've been excited about a horror film. During a time where it seems like films like Saw and Hostel have oversaturated the genre, I've become a bit jaded. I've always subscribed to the idea that less is more. That you don't need to overload the audience with gore and show every little detail to truly inflict fear.
With that being said, The Strangers was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed this movie a lot. It supplied enough scares and painted a truly frightening situation on screen. What's more, there was hardly any gore and the movie definitely utilized the Hitchcock style.
While watching the film, I noticed how well the director implemented sound to heighten the film's anxiety and in turn the audience's. The camera work, the sound, the lighting, and the overall sense of anticipation of what's going to happen next is something I yearn to see in horror films. When done well, it's a great ride. It was done well here. I couldn't predict really what was going to happen next and for the most part, this movie strayed from the typical formulaic bullshit you find in the run of the mill slasher horror film.
I'm not sure if I would even classify this movie as horror. It's as much a horror film as was Silence Of The Lambs. There's nothing supernatural about this simple story. It's the way the director brought it all together with the actors. As I said earlier, sound and camera work played a big part in making this movie as scary as it was. The actors too, brought a sense of realism to it where you really felt for them the whole way through.
I loved this movie. It doesn't end in a happy way and I heard a bunch of complaints from people as they were leaving the theater. One person even compared this movie with that crapsaster movie See No Evil. Well...there you have it. The demographic wanted something overloaded with gore and details. Whatever, this is probably the reason why movies like The Strangers are few and far between. It comes down to making money.
That being said, the theater was packed. I think this movie will bode well, for the most part and I would suggest anyone who likes a good scary movie to go check this out. It brought back the classic slasher scares that were experienced in the original Halloween movie....at least for me. There's even a scene that seems to be a homage to the closet scene in Halloween.
Good stuff.
If I had stars, I'd give this one 4 1/2 out of 5.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (review/addendum)
It's taken me a week to get myself to really sit down and write this review of the new Indiana Jones movie. Since I already posted a big blog entry about Indiana Jones here, I'm not going to post the trailers or pictures like I usually do in blog entries such as these.
I'm going to do my best and not post any spoilers for any of you out there that have yet to see this.
Plain and simple, I enjoyed this movie. I had a lot of fun in the theater. It may have been mostly because of nostalgia but that's fine. It was great seeing Harrison Ford back as Indiana Jones. 19 years later and I think it still works. I think everyone in the movie did a decent enough job for the movie as a whole. My least favorite was Cate Blanchett, to my surprise. I love her as an actress but her performance in this movie was borderline kabuki theater for me. I'm sure this is what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wanted.
It's no surprise to me that George Lucas still has a tendency toward the hokey dialogue and the far fetched in regards to story. But all that aside, this movie still moved like an Indiana Jones movie to me. It resonated from the original concept that the story was derived from the 1920s and 1930s cliffhanger serial comics.
Some of what happens in this movie is indeed outlandish and far fetched. But if we really dissect the past Indiana Jones movies, there's very similar outlandish elements to those stories.
The one thing I could have probably had less of was the CGI. There's a certain scene with monkeys in the jungle that was a bit distracting. But it wasn't THAT bad.
There's something about Shia LeBeouf that I don't like. I'm not sure what it is. I believe he's a pretty good actor. My best friend thinks I don't like him because he is the actor I wanted to be 10 years ago. As if I were jealous. I'm not sure if that's it. I think it's safe to say that's not it.
He does a good job here in keeping up with the chemistry with Harrison Ford. I've even heard rumor that they will be making another Indy movie with Shia starring. We'll see. I hope not.
Bottom line, I enjoyed the movie. There were definite Spielberg moments that called back to different cinematic 80s movie moments. I'm thinking of the bike chase sequence in particular.
Sure, different choices could have been made but given the fact that this script went through 5 different versions and 5 different screen writers, I think the overall package was done pretty well.
I give it 3 1/2 stars out of 5....if I had stars of course.
Evil Dead The Musical Posters
The link below is to teknohed's blog who got this from Neatorama
who in turn got it from Ads Of The World
So here's the link I am referring to, even though you can find the same content in the links above.
The Evil Dead Musical Has Funny Posters
Is that the layers of internet echo you were referring to, Ryan?
Saul Williams
I recently found out an old friend of mine who is an actress and singer just got married to Hip Hop Artist/Spoken Word Poet Saul Williams. I was surprised and thrilled by this. Saul Williams is one of those few hip hop artists that always blows me away with the words he speaks.
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