Marmalaise

What the Fuck

2008-10-28T21:23:00.000-07:00

Joaquin Phoenix has quit acting.

Can we blame this one on Reservation Road, too?

Is that so?

2008-09-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

Many people cite "Top That" as the pinnacle of 1980s gimmick rom-com epic Teen Witch, but in my humble opinion, "I Like Boys" is the song-and-dance number to beat. As I see it, it's a perfect aggregate of an era marked by excruciating musical and aesthetic vapidity. Matching purple track suits? Dancing on top of the lockers, in the showers, and under the hair dryers? Two minutes of repetitive lyrics about abandoning childhood whims in favor of the sweet, sweet cock? It's a revelation!

Fortunately, the cranky lesbian gym teacher came to put an end to these crazy boy antics just in time.

The Seasons 1 and 2 Veronica Mars Character Rankings

2008-08-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

I hold in my heart an unquenchable love of Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas' aborted femme-noir brainchild. It had a valiant two season run on UPN, where it received undeservedly low viewership, before the CW picked it up for a third and final season. The show has a devoted cult following, because it is perceptive, enthralling and incisively funny; why it did not perform better is completely beyond me.

At the backbone of Veronica Mars is its characters, a sordid cast of miscreants. Most are superb models of the human condition, written with insight and originality, but as with any show, a few are not. I took it upon myself, then, to deliver my (HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE) list of which characters are better than others. I haven't found many lists like these around the Internet, so as any bigmouthed blogger must do, I decided to offer my two cents.

Note that this list has a noticeable skew toward a character's showing in Season 2, versus in Season 1, simply because 2 is the season I most recently watched. I have not yet seen Season 3 and am told by several people not to, though I suppose I owe it to myself to be a good fan. And note that this list contains spoilers for both seasons.

Without further ado...

16) Dick Casablancas

Deciding which of the Casablancas progeny I wanted to put in the dead last spot was a pretty brutal internal war. Dick here finally won out, simply by virtue of actively poisoning the entire season versus Beaver creeping in at the very last episode and trashing most of the greatness we've already seen. Dick Casablancas has absolutely no reason for being anything more than the interchangeable guest character he was in Season 1, but for some twisted reason he makes himself more obnoxious in Season 2. Thematically, he only seems to reinforce the fact that - ready for this one? - the 09ers are assholes. Whoa, really? Wasn't sure about that one. His dialogue is stupid without a trace of ironic cleverness to it, and again, he serves no purpose in the season arc.

I think a little IMDB trivia clears up this mystery for us:

Rob Thomas, the creator of "Veronica Mars," says on the season 3 DVD extras that Ryan Hansen's character Dick Casablancas was not originally meant to be a series regular. He was first cast for the pilot, as a nameless, rich Neptune resident with one line ("Logan!"). Thomas said that they read many young actors for the line, and when it came down to a choice between Hansen or another actor, they cast Hansen purely because he had "good hair."

It's not that Ryan Hansen is particularly terrible in the role; it's just very poorly written and offers him few chances to flourish. He is obviously just a marginally attractive actor thrown in to provide the show with a spot of new eye candy. Too bad.

15) Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas

While I selected the above picture of Dick to highlight his attractiveness, thus explaining his sole reason to be on the show, I intentionally picked the worst picture of Beaver I could because I am bitter about how he fucked up the ending. In Season 2's first twenty-one episodes, Beaver is tolerable background noise - at times, he's clever and even interesting. Ignored and wilting in the shadow of his older brother, he is a perpetually sad presence on the show. His relationship with Mac is cute and actually loans Dick a brief bit of interesting exposition. And then comes the fatal mistake - the show reveals him to be the Big Bad of the season.

He killed a busful of teenagers specifically to get at two of them, sets up a bunch of innocent people to cover his tracks, blackmails the mayor into killing the incorporation plan, puts a bomb in the mayor's car AND his plane and succeeds in blowing up at least one of them in an attempt to kill not only him but also Veronica's dad, and then tries to kill Veronica and Logan. And this is JUST BECAUSE he got molested and was awkward about it. Far be it from me to belittle molestation, but there are about 50 subplots running through the show that hold more gravitas than a one-shot personal trauma. Gang wars? Political plots? Nope, Beav claimed over ten lives simply because he got touched at a Little League game a decade ago. In no way does the show justify the actions he takes throughout the season.

If this all isn't enough, his character makes a sudden 180 in the last episode, turning into a raving mastermind, bereft of any of the vulnerability that colored him throughout the season. The show desperately plays the sociopath angle, but it all feels like a sloppily constructed excuse.

Perhaps the most insulting thing of all, however, is that he's ALSO revealed to have raped Veronica back in Season 1. Gone, then, is the thoughtful moral gray area that was created last season, when a girl's life had been made a living hell and no one was truly accountable for it. Instead is just an offensively bad heap of exposition written in just to make this character seem more fucked up and evil.

Poorly played, Rob Thomas.

14) Leo D'Amato

Leo isn't particularly complex or important in either season - he appears in eleven episodes, eighteen less episodes than Deputy Sacks, but I opted to include him instead. Why? Well, for one, I don't think that poor bastard Sacks got to do ANYTHING interesting through the course of the show. And for another, Leo did have his uses, though they're primarily relegated to Season 1. He proved that not everyone in the Sheriff's Department is an incompetent, cruel bastard, and did a decent job filling the void between Veronica's relationships with Duncan and Logan. Sadly, the show was concerned with more important things than him, and he vanished midway through the second season after a couple of forgettable guest spots.

13) Gia Goodman

Gia has even fewer episodes than Leo, at a whopping eight, so I'm just going to admit right now that I included her mostly because I want to talk about how weird she is. She looks weird and acts weird, and her character is written with no reason or rhyme, almost like some wildcard for Rob Thomas to use when he needs to move the plot or certain characters in Mayor-related directions.

That said, Gia does bring some unique things to the show. She plays a character who is both intelligent and yet oddly vacant at the same time. Think Cordelia Chase, only oblivious instead of self-centered, and not nearly as layered. She's a very edgy presence and scenes always seem to move a little faster when she's in them. It's an odd effect, really. I'd have like to seen her in the final episode in some capacity, but I guess they were too busy raping the whole season to find a place for her.

12) Kendall Casablancas

This is seriously the best they could find for Charisma Carpenter? A MILFy gold digger with a crime-tinged past. Yawn. Next!

11) Duncan Kane

Duncan is surely the most important low-ranked character on this list, but I've just never found any reason to get attached to him. I think that, more than anyone else below him, it's an acting-related problem. Duncan is surrounded by characters that are far more interesting than him, but the fact is that Teddy Dunn is simply not very good in this role. He is vacant and unthreatening, not even close to the untapped powder keg that the show tries to paint him as. Other characters who know about his condition speak of him as a berserk, almost Hulk-ish figure if he has an attack, but there's maybe one scene where he emotes to this point. That's the scene where Veronica confronts him about their possibly being related; it's no wonder that this is the most memorable scene he gets in the series. Most of the time, though, you just want to give him a big hug and some warm milk and a blanket.

There also exists the problem of chemistry. As a potential lover to Veronica Mars, he pales in every way possible compared to Logan. Be it comic interplay or actual romance, Duncan just can't keep up with her quickness, her strength or her vulnerability. Even when he's with her, he feels absent and inadequate. I don't know if his bizarre disappearance halfway into Season 2 is indicative of this perceived lack of chemistry or even poor fan response (many people, as I've gathered, feel similar about this pairing), but he leaves at a very opportune time for Logan to take the reins again.

By no means is Duncan truly "bad." He gets plenty of interesting things to do near the end of Season 1, though I honestly can't remember what he spent the first 80% of it doing, and his showing in Season 2 is incredibly blank. His relationship with Meg is really hard to care about, save for the internal strife it causes in Veronica, and I still can't get over the fact that the writers chose to get rid of him by having him kidnap her coma baby. Of a show that is generally graceful in its stretching of credibility, this may well have been a snapping point.

10) Meg Manning

This is a horrible picture, but I couldn't miss the opportunity to show off Sassy Hospital Bed Meg. Anyway, most of Meg's placing here is because she left an impact on me, despite not having much place in the series overall. She's only in ten episodes, five in each season, and her greatest ultimate purpose was getting Duncan off the show. Alona Tal is absolutely luminous, for one, and I could totally believe that Duncan would choose to fill the gaps that Veronica left in his heart with her. She creates a unique dynamic for Veronica, as a female 09er who could be a potential ally, but later as a sparring partner over Duncan's affections. This latter relationship was involving to me simply because I thought Meg was too likable for Veronica to fight with for too long. When she tumbles over the side of the cliff in the ill-fated Death Bus, Veronica's anguish at not being able to reconcile with Meg hits hard.

Of course, she gets the chance in the one scene where Meg regains consciousness, tying this loose end neatly. It's kind of a shame that Meg dies so arbitrarily, obviously as a conduit for Duncan to steal her newborn baby and leave...the whole scenario smacks of "these actors have other commitments and we need to get them off the show." She's not the best character on the show by any means, but she's the best of the supporting ones.

Meg also gets bonus points for setting up Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner, the creepiest episode in the entire series, and one of the most interesting subplots that season - one that, sadly, died in the water with little relevance to the actual arc.

9) Eli "Weevil" Navarro

Weevil's position on the morality scale is the most interesting thing about him. He's a gangster with a heart of gold, right? No, not really...for the most part, he's a bastard with a you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours view on life. He's really only close to Veronica because they've had to help each other in the past. Weevil has far more important things on his mind than altruism, primarily surviving the ravages of douchey 09ers and the cruel grip of being poor in Neptune. He does a great job illustrating the class divide and what the less fortunate of the city have to do to make ends meet.

It's just a shame that they never find anything important for this character to actually do. He only ever gets to play Plot Device, the figurehead in the PCH's gang war against the Fighting Fitzpatricks that Veronica can safely extract information from. I don't even remember what he does in Season 1, but by looking at his ultimate irrelevance to the mystery at large, it can't have been very important. He as an actual person is little more than a gangster caricature: loyal to family and his crew, with a middle finger to the rest of the world.

8) Aaron Echolls

Aaron Echolls is a through-and-through creep. He lived a young life full of abuse, and as many abuse stories sadly end up, perpetuated that abuse with his own family. The single most painful, powerful scene in Season 1 is when Logan essentially forces his dad to donate half a million dollars to a homeless shelter to prove what a philanthropist he is...a cheeky trick that Aaron rewards by beating Logan with a belt once they get home. This scene represents a massive turnaround for both characters, immediately deepening Logan past the frat boy lothario he starts as and setting up Aaron as a major antagonist.

Aaron is obviously significant because he's the first season culprit. As insidious as he is, he really could have used more screen time - he only gets eight episodes in a season where he is the murderer. (Then again, Beaver got twelve and it sure as fuck didn't help him.) When Veronica finally takes Aaron down, it's a feeling of immense excitement. And he continues to contribute to the show when he gets acquitted in the second season, which should fill any sensible viewer with bilious rage. The hierarchy of justice in Neptune is that blind and unfair so as to let this incontrovertibly despicable man walk free? It represents a sort of boiling point for the caste tensions in the city. Sadly, this potentially interesting plot thread is again thrust to the wayside by the second season's idiotic scrambling for a resolution, and Aaron is swiftly dispatched by a hit that Duncan puts out. It's not the most satisfying end for the character, but it still merits a "good riddance."

7) Wallace Fennel

I am so disappointed with second-season Wallace. He just has nothing to do except spit one-liners from time to time and go after Jackie. He doesn't even get to steal files for Veronica anymore. This season really neuters his character, despite initial attempts to flesh out his backstory with a "look! your real father!" subplot. Unfortunately, like several others in this season, it goes absolutely nowhere and seems to only exist to whisk Wallace away for a few episodes while Percy Daggs took a break or something.

Season 1 Wallace is great. The crux of Season 2 Wallace's development is, again, his relationship with Jackie. This works out far better for her than it does for him for several reasons. Wallace shows an uncharacteristic lack of discretion in pursuing her, ignoring the fact that she's kind of a slutty bitch. At his lowest, he tells Veronica to "let it slide" after Jackie sets her up for massive school-wide humiliation (though to be fair to him, he bitches out Jackie for it immediately after). His six-episode exodus is soon after, though once he gets back he starts chasing Jackie around again. Wallace's relationship with Jackie obviously didn't go on long before it disintegrated, and it just doesn't make sense that he would be obsessed with her at the level he is, especially after how she's treated his best friend. I have a lot of trouble with the continuity of his character here.

Still, he's a welcome presence on the show and never contributes anything truly negative, even at his lowest points. The show sorely needs a comic relief character who is not an idiot and/or a tool. It's just sad that he got so shafted in the second season.

6) Jackie Cook

It always amazes me how deftly Veronica Mars can play with your perceptions of a character. Jackie Cook starts out, to put it bluntly, as a detestable cunt. She is impatient, catty, and obviously written into the show as a conduit for drama and a love interest for Wallace; she does not make a good first impression. With her incessant on-guard rudeness and her frigid demeanor, she's all bark and no bite. That's not to say that she doesn't make for good drama, however, and Veronica plays on the defensive very well, both for Wallace's sake and her own. It's about time that she had another hard-lined female to clash with.

The show makes it clear that she's just using Wallace for a little arm candy, seeing a few of her much-loved "bad boys" on the side. After Wallace leaves, Jackie vanishes from the show in turn. As soon as he returns, she does, and on that very same episode her father becomes the prime suspect for the bus incident. This spurs an interesting change in her character - she becomes universally loathed by the students of Neptune High, something that she apparently couldn't manage while acting like a total bitch. So to try and salvage a little bit of dignity, she suddenly makes an attempt to become a straight-laced, generally good person. She takes the bullied geek to prom, gets a job to support the family while their assets are frozen, and even acts totally cordial to Veronica. This turn of character is jarring and struck me as a bit out of place at first, but if you give it some thought, it makes perfect sense. Jackie clearly just wants attention, but when she gets plenty of the negative kind, she realizes it's not worth the effort to get people to hate you. But what does she know about attention? Her parents never gave it to her, we know that much. The only solution for her now is to try and be nice, which comes too late for most to appreciate.

I was really impressed with Tessa Thompson's ability to pull off this potentially awkward shift. The character is complex and a little bit confused, but never unbelievable. Kudos to her.

5) Don Lamb

Don Lamb is a hyper-douche. Frustrating as fuck to watch on basically every level. So why is he ranked so high? Simple - he is one of the primary sources of friction and conflict for Veronica in the show. Without him, she'd be working hand in hand with the police department and everything would get solved in the blink of an eye. Michael Muhney plays him dripping with devious venom, but never to the point of caricature. You understand that this man has an enormous ego and a major power complex, but he's not a symbol, just a human being with a lot of obvious unresolved issues. We get the tiniest glimpses into a possibly troubled past with Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner, where he sets Veronica and Duncan free after they break into an abusive family's house (heavily implying that he was a sufferer of abuse). We learn that he's a college dropout after blowing his knee and losing a scholarship; if that isn't a recipe for insecurity, I don't know what is. But Lamb never, ever invites your sympathies. He has no vulnerable moments, no softening of his general assholery, and no figurative redemption. He's just a pretty awful person who lucked into a civil service career, another cog in the fucked up gears of Neptune's government.

The man is also a total fox, by the way. I hear he dies a pointless death in Season 3...disappointing.

4) Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie

I'm biased. Mac never really accomplishes anything throughout either season, except for being Veronica's go-to girl in case of technological need. She manages to make Beaver interesting, and her relationship with him is an experience that many of us can relate to: the sting of not feeling adequate for a partner. By this regard, she is totally heartbreaking in the last episode. She has two or three scenes at most, but they're enough to give us one tiny glimmer of honesty and reality found in the fucking idiotic events of the previous ten minutes.

Aside from that, she's up here because she's fucking cute. Seeing her on the show is a promise of a good time. It just makes me happy that Veronica keeps a friend like her around, dowdy and cynical but genuinely good-hearted. I like how Dick calls her "Ghost World." Come on, if she can enrich Dick, then she must be a keeper of a character...though I'd eat my hat if Rob Thomas wants us to believe that Dick has seen Ghost World.

3) Keith Mars

Keith Mars is a guarded man. We never get much out of him in terms of backstory, but it doesn't matter. All we really need to know is how much he loves his daughter. He does not allow his personal issues to crack his professionalism, like his troubled wife's abandonment or when he blows it with his new girlfriend; the viewer is invited to fill in the blanks with his reactions, sated on bits of subtle reaction. The show never dwells on his romantic problems. But if you fuck with Veronica you'll get him in full force. He is a presence of inimitable solace on the show, someone who both Veronica and the viewer can come back to in troubled times. It is legitimately scary when she tries to take steps outside his boundaries, breaking his trust and putting herself in places where he can't protect her.

His character is by no means the most complex in the series, but he makes himself known. He has the most presence of anyone else there. In a show with so many larger than life figures, that is a major compliment.

And let it be known: Keith and Veronica Mars are the best father/daughter pairing in television history. Bar none. I dare anyone to come up with anyone else.

2) Logan Echolls

Remember what I said about Jackie? How Veronica Mars plays with your sentiments endlessly, making you love and hate and love and hate characters until you just don't know where you stand anymore? Welcome to Logan Echolls. It would do him injustice to nail down every single incident that changes a viewer's perspective on him, so I'll just leave it at this: he is the single most complex character on the show, one who will break your and Veronica's heart and then stitch them back together, one fighting off a lifetime of internal demons the best ways he's been taught.

A great amount of the character's success comes from Jason Dohring, who gives one of the most consistent performances on the show. Meticulously attentive to the continuity of the character, he doesn't let an action go by without appropriate justification, be it external or otherwise. He has about fifty times the amount of memorable moments that Duncan does, and the effect that he has on the show is palpable even when he's not in the frame. That's how you make a character, ladies and gentlemen.

1) Veronica Mars

What can I say? She is the show. Kristen Bell is quite simply flawless and I think it is criminal that she didn't pick up an Emmy for this. You dream it, she can do it - she pulls off the witty one-liners, the absurdist humor, the brokenhearted gaze of a scorned lover, the concerned daughter, the spy, the potential murder victim, the grieving friend...anything and everything. She is pitch-perfect with everything that is asked of her. She could probably grow wings on command if asked. It's a shame that this show went relatively unnoticed, because this character deserves to go down in the TV hall of fame. Veronica Mars is an icon. She is a reminder that women can be funny, charming, powerful and resourceful without any need to kowtow to their sexuality. If you've already seen the show, you have known the charms of Veronica Mars, the depth of her character and the irresistible magnetism that keeps you glued to your television.

Sandcastle Disco; or, one younger sibling's venture into awkwardly-dressed musical stardom

2008-08-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

Something this low-key and cute...coming from a Knowles? I almost don't believe it. The video is tacky and messy in all the best ways, but the song is more pure than anything Beyonce has ever done. It's probably a lost cause to wish Solange success, but it won't stop me from enjoying this while it still lasts.

2008-06-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

Today's Selection:
Don't Look Now (1973)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069995/

Don't Look Now is a mystery-horror movie (or as the movie bills itself, "a psychic mystery") starring screen powerhouses Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Directed by Nicolas Roeg, it depicts the tale of a couple in Venice who are plagued by psychic happenings after the death of their daughter.

It was first released in the UK in 1973, then moved to a limited release in New York on December 9th of the same year. The movie finally received a wide release in January. Box office data for the movie is hard to find, and it's difficult to tell how weird 70s horrors fare in this regard - but its two stars had quite a bit of draw 30 years ago, so I'm willing to believe it did well (at least in the UK if it got a release here). In Hollywood tradition, it is slated for a remake, probably starring Naomi Watts.

What Turned Them Away?

- Forgotten by time. This movie is highly regarded by those who remember it or have seen it, but 1973 was not a prominent year for movies. The Exorcist was by far the highest-profile release of the year, and let's face it - THAT is the horror movie that the world remembers from that time. This actually has the 18th highest amount of IMDB votes from that year, but I think that goes to point out the weakness of 1973 at large versus the clout of this movie. I just don't think I've ever seen it mentioned on this board, and I think that it's very much worth seeing. Hell, I'm surprised I've even seen it.

I guess I don't really feel that this is underrated - just underviewed.

- It's weird. Exceedingly so. I haven't read the source material, a short story by Daphne Du Maurier (whose works seem to turn out uniformly excellent when adapted), but this movie is filled to the rafters with bizarre ****. Psychic phenomena, midgets, Italians, seances, long and un-erotic sex scenes, and a straight razor. In its own special way, the movie is over the top, and subtle at the same time, which I love it for. There's so much to be seen here and all of it is kind of mindblowing. To think people call this movie uneventful!

What Should Have Kept Them?

+ The atmosphere. Don't Look Now's pace is somewhat slow, probably to mask a deceptively thin storyline, but you wouldn't think that for a second as you watched. The look and feel of the movie is utterly absorbing. Nicolas Roeg has created a tonal masterpiece; anything he tries to invoke in the movie succeeds absolutely. It's a fascinating fusion of one of Dario Argento's trashy giallo flicks and some sort of dreamlike alternate reality...a strange combination to be sure, but one that turns out incredible results.

Scenes that probably didn't mean as much in the screenplay are given unbelievable life here. The initial death of the couple's daughter. Julie Christie passing out in the restaurant. A mysterious figure lurking the streets of Venice after dark, a desperate seance, and sad omens aboard a gondola. Scenes like this just jump off the screen, enticing and morbid. It's the kind of movie you dream about.

+ Julie Christie. I'm not a huge Donald Sutherland fan. I think he's cheesy and self-aware. Christie does double-time for him in this movie, though. Watching her in just about anything is a treat, and this movie gives her so much to work with. She is beautiful but fragile, which extends the viewer's connection with her even more; she almost asks to be protected, and it becomes clear through their rocky relationship that Sutherland is not the one to do it. Between the death of her daughter and the promise of seeing and talking to her once again, her character is full of emotions. Christie refrains from melodrama or over-emoting, but she looks perpetually sad. It is an exceptionally intelligent, understated performance, one of the best in horror.

+ The ending. It's intense as hell! So perfectly paced and terrifying (not to mention bizarre), it comes out of absolutely nowhere and smacks you on the side of the head. If the rest of the film isn't all that scary, falling into the trappings of a 35-year-old horror movie, this more than makes up for it. The last ten minutes of the movie are enthralling.

Don't Look Now is probably one of the more appreciated titles I've covered so far, as it's a critical darling and has a small ardent fanbase, but again, I've never seen it mentioned on this board. I think that's a shame - as old horror goes, I almost think it deserves to stand among the greats, were it not for some narrative shortcomings. Anyway, I highly recommend picking this one up and throwing it on on some dark, rainy night.

Underrated, Underappreciated Movies, Day 6: Shadow of the Vampire

2008-05-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

Today's selection:

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0189998/

Shadow of the Vampire is director E. Elias Merhige's first major Hollywood project, previously most known for his bizarre cult flick Begotten. Shadow is the tale of German director F.W. Murnau's attempts to film Nosferatu by making a pact with an actual vampire. It first received a 6-theater release on December 29, 2000, and widened to its peak of 513 theaters by January 26, 2001. The film brought in around 11 million dollars overall.

What Turned Them Away?

- No particular genre or marketing hook. As we've seen with movies like Bug and Fearless, movies that do not adhere to one particular genre ("drama" doesn't really count) tend to not perform nearly as well as things like "horror" or "comedy". The closest Shadow of the Vampire comes to a genre is horror, which seems to be the studios' go-to genre for darker movies of no real predisposition. This isn't a scary movie, unless you count the ethereal chill that the atmosphere of the movie gives. It's enthralling, hypnotic and darkly humorous, but not really scary at all.

- People simply don't seem to talk about it. To be fair, this is not really the kind of movie that inspires fervent praise. It is dark, mellow and unconventional; there's no quotable dialogue, no grandstanding machismo...it just exists. This is the kind of movie that sat in the back of the fourth grade classroom and cut centipedes in half with scissors, and then when it got to college it suddenly became really awesome and sexy but still a little creepy. I think people are kind of alienated by that weirdness, enough to skip over the beauty of the imagery or the many other things that it offers. The structure is very free-form, there's little outstanding scriptwork to think about, and a lot of the plot is left up to the viewer's imagination - it's an oddly European movie, and I wonder if people were threatened by that. Either that, or it's simply been forgotten by time, as some great works tend to be.

What Should Have Kept Them?

+ Atmosphere. This movie, in terms of composition, is unlike few others. As dumb as this will surely seem, it's like a silent movie with sound - the image is placed at the forefront and what the characters are saying is secondary. Some of the best scenes of the movie come when Murnau is filming his movie and what we are seeing is shown in grainy black-and-white film, interwoven with the "real" scenes in color. I think it's a reminder of some of the things that we take for granted about black and white film...The stimuli are different, sure, but the starkness of the image can make what you're seeing all the more visceral. The first time this technique is used, Murnau is filming the vampire's first appearance, and it is downright chilling to watch him emerge from the shadows.

The movie is very Gothic, not in the meaning of the term that most of us know, but in that it's evocative of crumbling European castles and creatures lurking in the shadows. It successfully captures two tones: that of the original Nosferatu, and something completely new, bleak and haunted and totally beautiful. It seems shallow to praise a movie so heavily for its aesthetic, but Shadow of the Vampire is truly remarkable work.

+ Willem Dafoe. This is the role that really brought Dafoe to the forefront for me. To be honest, I never paid any attention to him in anything else he's been in, even though people claim he's a real acting chameleon and stuff like that. His work in Shadow of the Vampire as Max Schreck, however, is too good to be ignored. It is a truly incredible immersion of an actor into his role, standing well among the work of DDL's much loved Daniel Plainview or any other transformative performance in recent years. Frankly, for him to have lost the Supporting Actor Oscar to Benicio Del Toro's work in Traffic is a travesty; Benny is good, but it was a boring role and he's done far better work in a lot of other movies. Dafoe is unforgettable. He is the only actor to have nailed his accent, for one. Regrettably, a lot of the other accents are God-awful; between this and Mary Reilly, John Malkovich seems unable to do much with his voice.

Dafoe must have watched Nosferatu a hundred times to prepare for this role. He moves like a vampire, looks like a vampire (thanks in part to the awesome makeup), talks like a vampire (a great feat considering Nosferatu didn't have any sound) and acts like a vampire, in more meanings of the term than one. There are so many dimensions to this role: black humor, longing, primal fear, vengeance, theatrics... the character is compelling enough as it is, and Dafoe nails every single one of these aspects effortlessly. You simply forget that it is a person playing this creature.

I think this movie is an acquired taste, and no matter how much I praise it, there are going to be people who it doesn't quite gel with. I don't really have a problem with that; it just depends on what you're watching a movie to see. But if you're looking for something of dark, fundamental beauty, Shadow of the Vampire is tough to beat. And for those concerned, it is only 86 minutes long, so you really don't have much to lose.

(I'm pretty sure that screenshot is actually from Nosferatu, but whatever.)

Underrated, Underappreciated Movies, Day 5: Land of the Dead

2008-04-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

Today's Selection:
Land of the Dead (2005)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0418819/

Land of the Dead is George Romero's return to the zombie films that made him a household name, after a twenty-year sabbatical away from the genre to pursue other projects like Monkey Shines and Bruiser. Released on June 24, 2005, it opened to a respectable 10 million dollar weekend in 2200 theaters and took in 45 million dollars worldwide. Critics received it pretty well too. And yet I see it garner far more hate than it deserves around the Internet. What's the problem here, then?

What Turned Them Away?

- Revisionist zombies. A lot of George Romero/zombie movie fans really dislike Land of the Dead - as far as high-profile zombie movies go, it is by far the most maligned. One of the big reasons, as far as I can see, is the distinct set of changes made to the zombie itself. Previously a non-functional, shambling undead husk, the creature begins to develop a whole new skillset in Land of the Dead...tool use, primitive thought/reasoning, and analytical ability, to name a few. I myself see no problem in George Romero making this type of change to a monster that he single-handedly popularized anyway. Though it may not have been his change to make, who's going to contest him? It's not like it was that blind of a retcon anyway - look at Bud, from Day of the Dead. And further, the plot simply would not have worked with conventional zombies, which I'll get into a bit more later. To me, it seems perfectly natural that a zombie should be able to restore some of its lost processing abilities, but I guess the more hardcore zombie fans felt otherwise.

- Change in genre. This movie is not Dawn of the Dead! Let's face it - there is very, very little room for horror in the zombie genre anymore. They've become more campy than creepy. Romero was perfectly aware of that when he made this movie, and revised it as such. Instead of the conventional horror movies that Night, Dawn and Day were, he produced a gory action movie with a few scary touches and an exponentially high body count. Again, a step in a different direction, which I don't feel should be viewed as a flaw.

- Perceived lack of quality. Okay, so the special effects kind of suck. I can't argue that. It's the price Romero paid for taking a 20-year break from an effects-driven subgenre. But really, is it that huge of a deal? Are people seriously trying this hard to suspend disbelief while watching a zombie movie?

What Should Have Kept Them?

+ Same ol' zombie fun. Even if the movie itself is a lot less dark than Romero's previous forays, Land of the Dead is still an entertaining vehicle for undead carnage. The setting is very new for the genre; it's a post-apocalyptic, almost cyberpunk movie, and there's not much else cooler than zombie dystopia. The conflict, a battle between sequestered rich-man's haven Fiddler's Green and the slums of what's left of the world, may be somewhat predictable, but watching it come to a close is more than satisfying. Fiddler's Green is a near-impenetrable fortress...to the lesser zombies. Their development of intelligence is something that bad old Dennis Hopper never saw coming, and that much-maligned change in the zombie canon was a necessity for the final showdown. Even before the zombie war, the movie is littered with gory, exciting sequences. George Romero really knows his craft.

I'll never understand some of the snobbery over, of all things, zombie movies. In my opinion, it's one of the most harmless and fun genres of films ever. The balance between camp, violence and giddy horror that a good zombie movie reaches is downright blissful; Land of the Dead and its ilk make great movies to watch with friends, maybe after a few drinks.

+ Asia Argento. Okay, maybe not this reason so much as the other one. She's a decent actress at best, but she has ****loads of presence. Whenever she's on screen she's the first character you look at and listen to. This, I think, is partly because she's hot and partly because she's just damn interesting. Look for her in three 2008 movies, all of which sound to be at least entertaining.

I wouldn't call Land of the Dead a perfect movie, but then again it doesn't need to be. The writing's a bit heavy, the CGI is obvious, and of course it's not really a patch on Dawn of the Dead. It does stand on two very strong decayed legs as an excursion into the action-horror-zombie genre, however, and you can't say no to the return of an old master.

Underrated, Underappreciated Movies, Day 4: Fearless (Jeff Bridges)

2008-03-17T23:55:00.000-07:00

Today's Selection:
Fearless (1993)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0106881/

Fearless, not to be overshadowed by or mistaken for by Jet Li's "last" movie, is Peter Weir's tenth directorial effort. It's about a man who survives a plane crash and finds himself completely unable to experience fear of any form - physical, emotional, social. A highly positive critical reception didn't mean much to its distributors. Getting a "wide" release of 749 theaters on November 5th, 1993, the movie pulled in a domestic 7 million dollars - scant, but impressive, given its rather small release.

What Turned Them Away?

- Size of release. Perhaps this is because I wasn't aware of much of anything back in 1993 (I was five years old, bite me), but there's really no reason that this received the crappy little release that it did. 750 theaters? I guess not every movie merits the 1800 theaters that Robocop 3 snuck into that same weekend (http://imdb.com/title/tt0107978/). Or the nearly 2000 that Look Who's Talking Now decided to stink up (http://imdb.com/title/tt0107438/). I know that we bemoan how American movies are dying but let's be honest - things like this have always been popular. Fearless was never meant to be seen by the masses.

- Jeff Bridges's character. The handful of poor dumb bastards who ended up in the wrong theater may have found themselves surprised to see Jeff Bridges playing an emotionally contorted, almost superhuman sociopath, instead of Kirstie Alley or robot explosions. He is a fascinating character, but a rather difficult one to like, and I can't imagine a lot of people giving him that chance. He is really a prick for the first hour or so of the movie; only once he begins his journey to heal himself and another woman is he redeemed. I'm not sure a lot of people made it that far.

What Should Have Kept Them?

+ Jeff Bridges's character. Max Klein is a man almost completely unique in the world of cinema. Before his accident, he seems to have been a loving father, competent businessman and all-around decent person. After it...he's something totally bizarre. His survival seems to have unlocked something in both his mind and body that completely prevents him from feeling any sort of fear. He screams at people he barely knows just for the hell of it, eats foods he's fatally allergic to with no repercussions, and does whatever he damn well pleases. Some of his actions may come off as unsympathetic or shocking to a viewer, but we have to look at them without our own cultural guards up. The things he does are totally removed from the way society has conditioned him; he is humanity at its root. Selfish.

The movie is largely about Max (and his interactions with another survivor who lost her baby in the accident), and Jeff Bridges does this bizarre figure justice. He sells Max as a sort of Crazy Jesus, alternating between calm and completely irrational. A lot of his actions may seem bizarre, but make almost perfect sense once you re-examine them, and Bridges is a really great guide for this kind of evaluating. You can't NOT watch him, and the movie demands that sort of attention from you - otherwise, the payoff wouldn't work. You wouldn't understand what he does.

+ The direction. Peter Weir gets a lot less attention than he deserves; his bigger, more general (but no less great) Hollywood movies like Witness and Master and Commander are widely-seen, but the smaller ones like this and Picnic at Hanging Rock seem to slip under the radar. His hand is just as steady and masterful in this film as in either of his blockbusters. His choices of visuals are unforgettable, such as a burning cornfield full of wounded, dead, terrified people, and a car slamming full-force into a brick wall in a cloud of broken glass and metal. His use of music is sparing, which makes its appearances all the more remarkable (see below). And the performances he draws out of his actors, like Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, and the Oscar-nominated Rosie Perez, are uniformly stunning. He's a real Renaissance director, talented in many fields and lacking in none.

+ The ending. Without hyperbole, I can safely say this movie has one of the greatest endings of all time. Obviously, elaborating too much would be spoilery, but the confluence of visuals, music, and emotional impact is just enlightening. Absolutely unforgettable.

Fearless, unlike my previous three selections, isn't widely-hated or misunderstood. It's simply great, which a lot of people have yet to recognize. You really owe it to yourself to watch this movie, no matter who you are or what genres you're interested in. If you can bring yourself to accept the initially dubious decisions that Jeff Bridges makes, you will be paid off with a moving, scintillating, dynamic parable.

Underrated, Underappreciated Movies, Day 3: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2008-03-01T20:23:00.000-08:00

Today's Pick:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0103893

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie predecessor to Joss Whedon's smash hit television series, was also his first major writing credit (aside from a few episodes of Roseanne, but who cares about that show). It got critically reviled and publicly ignored, holding a 30% on Rottentomatoes and a 5.3 overall rating on IMDB, and pulled down a 16 million dollar theatrical run.

What Turned Them Away?

- Uh...the whole thing. Honestly, this movie is kind of a mess, and it would be a challenge for me to convince you otherwise. It's basically Heathers with vampires, and though it doesn't speak much for its originality, just try and tell me that that isn't a winning formula in and of itself. The movie never quite lives up to its premise, though, What it ends up being is a sanitized, theater-friendly packaging of healthy girl power and unselfish altruism coming from people you'd never expect it from. These very serious themes end up clashing with the first hour of the movie, which is a bizarre mixture of fluffy Valley Girl comedy and bizarre satire.

What Should Have Kept Them?

+ It may be a mess, but it's a very watchable one. I seriously can't imagine anyone sitting through this movie without cracking a smile or laughing, whether it's from the humiliating way the movie has aged or one of the movie's legitimately amusing moments. Donald Sutherland is taking himself entirely too seriously (of course), but it's all comically dispelled when Buffy asks him if he has any gum during a long huffy monologue about evil powers. And watching Buffy surreptitiously look for her first vampire to kill while walking through a dark alley and singing "Feelings" is one of the most surreal, amusing moments I've had in a while.

And even if you don't find these kinds of things funny, the movie is simply bad enough to enjoy in the MST3K style. Where most bad movies generally take themselves too seriously to torment, and most "camp" movies do it to themselves to the point where it actually gets tiresome, Buffy strikes the perfect balance. I really think there's something in this movie to please everyone, if they're willing to buck up and give it a shot.

+ The evolution of Joss Whedon. For those who are fans of any of Joss Whedon's other efforts, it's interesting to see where the master got his start - from some twisted rendition of anti-undead feminism to writing ratings gold (or in the case of Firefly, quickly-canceled but well-loved gold). And though I'm sure the studio nerfed it all to hell, there are glimmers of Whedon's trademark cleverness scattered throughout the movie. In the hands of anyone else, this would have been unwatchable on any level.

I classify Buffy the Vampire Slayer as underappreciated because I think people took it way too seriously, as they still seem to. Maybe it had been billed as a legitimate action/comedy flick 15 years ago - I wouldn't know - but in this day and age, it best serves its purpose as a laughable/laughably bad excursion into...vampire comedy? Yeah. I make no promises with this one but I'm sure some of you could find it in your heart to give it a shot.

Underrated, Underappreciated Movies, Day 2: Bug

2008-02-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

Today's Pick:
Bug (2006)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0470705/

Bug is an adaptation of Tracy Letts's well-loved play of the same name. It debuted at Cannes in May 2006 and received a release in over 1500 American theaters a year later. Thrown into the fray with Pirates 3, Shrek 3 and Spiderman 3 still in theaters, it managed to pull down an opening weekend of 4 million dollars but plummeted significantly after that. Word of mouth and middling critical reception seems to have sunk the film. Why? Let's find out.

What Turned Them Away?

- The marketing. This is by far the biggest reason for the film's chilly reception. You first have to understand that Bug is a ****ing weird film. Marketers design their campaigns around broad genres: adventure, romance, drama, horror. Bug doesn't fit into any of these conventional categories, so Lions Gate decided to stick it into what seemed to work best: horror. If Americans were more tolerant of the "horrifying dramatic black-comedy paranoid love story" genre, Bug may have found a great deal more success, but alas, it was not meant to be.

- The movie itself. Once the marketing got asses into seats, people were alarmed to discover that they were not watching a horror movie. What they saw was half an hour of talky drama, followed by a few weird things that escalated into a bizarre, twisted fever dream of a movie. Certainly not your average summer fare, and with the 60% revenue dropoff from one weekend to another, highly unappreciated. This film is as far out of the box as you get. Bug sees the box, screams and flies away.

- It WAS a play. Ready for the shocker of the century? Plays tend to thrive on their dialogue. Bug is very, very dialogue-heavy, which is dangerous for any film to pull off. You have to give yourself completely to the actors and suspend all disbelief, and it gets especially difficult in this movie. To be fair, I do think it is one of the movie's faults - it really would have benefited from a more radical adaptation from the play.

What Should Have Kept Them?

+ It's unique. As I mentioned before, this went up against a handful of blockbuster threequels and got absolutely destroyed. It's a pretty telling statement for the rewards that originality receives in American media when three derivative formula movies gross a small nation's worth of profit and Bug can't even pull down five million. If I had to invent a genre in as few words as possible for Bug, it would be "absurdist psychological horror". You simply can't do it justice with anything less. It develops two compelling, tormented characters and sends them straight to Hell. Like recent darling There Will Be Blood, there are plenty of humorous moments interlaced with absolutely horrifying ones; it's as if the movie is challenging you to laugh at its insanity. Ashley Judd screaming "I am the super mother bug!!!" in the middle of a heated monologue about governmental conspiracy is about as bizarre as you can get, and surely is an unforgettable moment in the midst of a bunch of forgettable movies.

+ It's powerful. Bug is only a "horror" movie in that some truly unspeakable things happen to the characters we see. The movie allots time to let these people build: Agnes White, bereaved mother and on the run from her terrifying ex-husband, and off-kilter war veteran Peter Evans. Agnes is going through a difficult time emotionally, after the disappearance of her son and her husband's release from prison, and she finds emotional solace in Peter's presence. Sadly, Peter's not all there, convinced that the government is planting "bugs" in him; before you know it, he's got her on a psychological rollercoaster. Agnes is clearly a good, if troubled, person and the things she sees in her exposed state sting us by proxy. One scene, for instance, involves the removal of a bug's "egg sac" and is absolutely terrifying. It is filmed in cold, lengthy shots, not giving the viewer a chance to rest as we watch the painful process. There are never any "safe points" in the movie, riding a steadily mounting wave of fear to the several scary climaxes.

+ Ashley Judd. Who the hell knew she could act? And act she does in Bug; in fact, she acts incredibly well. It is certainly one of the strongest performances of the 2007 movie year, one that she was never going to be honored for but may have deserved it in some alternate world. Agnes White is the crux of the movie; it gives you a half hour to buy into her plight and understand why she so willingly buys into Peter's lunatic ravings. She represents the last bastion of rationale in the twisted chain of events that unfolds, and Judd plays her part with a tempered, wary sort of delusion. She gives off the impression that though she is externally agreeing to whatever she's told, there's some part left of her that simply can't buy into it all - a superb feat from an actress who hasn't been able to prove herself quite like this before.

Bug is a movie that you have to come into with a very open mind. If you expect typical horror tropes, you're going to be deeply disappointed. Allow the movie to be what it is, and you may find yourself shocked, disturbed and perhaps even entertained in a sick sort of way. As I said before, its play roots cause it to be a little long in the tooth in some spots, but a majority of the dialogue is riveting and clever. Bug is truly one of 2007's most underrated pictures.

Underrated, Underappreciated Movies, Day 1: Marie Antoinette

2008-02-21T14:40:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the first post in what will (hopefully) be a series of underrated, underseen, underloved movies. I don't expect to change everyone's mind about the films I want to cover, but hopefully I can offer a new perspective on some of them. These are the kinds of movies that got unfairly dismissed for whatever reason and deserve another shot.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0422720/

Marie Antoinette is the third film by daughter-director Sofia Coppola, and it is also her most ill-received. It started out inauspiciously when a few people at Cannes perceived it as "historically inaccurate" and booed it, which degenerated into sensationalized stories of crowd-wide hatred. The movie kind of snowballed from there until it finally hit the States, where it opened to a flimsy domestic box-office and mixed critical reception.

What Turned Them Away?

- The plot, or lack thereof. Marie Antoinette, as its title kind of obviously suggests, is a historical character study. (More on that later.) The film is very different in its narrative construction - Marie has no real character arc to speak of. The story is a collection of fragments from her personal life, touching on the highlights like her famed bitch fight with a royal prostitute and her sordid love affairs. It isn't really a movie in that way - it's like a chaptered retrospective of a tragic, naive figure. People claim it's style over substance, but it couldn't be farther from the truth. There is plenty of substance, but it's subtle, and the style masterfully expounds on that substance anyway.

- You don't get to see her beheaded. I'm sure a lot of people would have loved to see Kirsten Dunst's decapitated head rolling around the gallows of France, but Sofia Coppola's decision to leave it to the viewer had a lot of bloodthirsty viewers pissed off.

- Sofia Coppola herself. A lot of people thought she fucked up the third installment of the Godfather series. I mean, sure, she can't act, but why hold that against her in her behind-the-camera pursuits? The backlash grew especially venomous when Lost in Translation found critical and commercial success - people began to cry nepotism. The ill will was bound to explode at some time...

What Should Have Kept Them?

+ The visuals. Say what you will about her storytelling abilities, but it's undeniable that Sofia Coppola has inherited her father's talent for putting a stunning image on film. Between the lavishly-designed costumes, the flawless cinematography and the meticulous set design - surely aided by the fact that it was filmed in Versailles - Marie Antoinette is the kind of movie that leaves indelible images burned into your brain.

+ The sound. Some might not care for Coppola's jangly indie-rock "nouvelle vague" sensibilities, but there's a lot more to be appreciated on her soundtrack. She skillfully juxtaposes not only modern tunes against the historical backdrops of her film, but also makes sure to include several classical pieces as well. Between this and the distinct visual style, Marie Antoinette is a totally unique movie. If the vocal tunes aren't your thing, the instrumentals she selects are fantastic - haunting, simple tunes that fit the mood perfectly. People might like the movie's OST for The Cure and Bow Wow Wow, but Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Dustin O'Halloran's contributions to her score are the real standouts.

+ The character. As I briefly touched upon above, Marie Antoinette was a character of great complexity. The movie doesn't hit all of the points of her tragic life, but few movies could without being four hours long. What it instead offers is scenes, vignettes that tell us as much about the queen as possible in the two hour run time. She wasn't malicious in the slightest, but simply a sheltered teenager placed in a position of incredible power. What 16-year-old is expected to know how to rule a country? Of course she was bound to make mistakes - she is, after all, a teenager. And when she begins to have emotional problems, such as her unconsummated marriage and the political outcries of her foes, she uses luxury to bury them just as anyone her age would. In fixing the focus on Marie, rather than the political turmoil of the country, Sofia Coppola manages to keep the character sympathetic while highlighting her flaws and mistakes at the same time.

I wouldn't call Marie Antoinette a perfect movie. I think it's slow to get off the ground - the first twenty minutes aren't easy to sit through. But the rest is gravy...beautiful, sumptuous gravy. It's a tale of inherent contrast: the vagaries of a teenage girl tempered by an oppressive, dangerous governmental climate. For my money, that's the kind of contrast that creates substance, and doesn't deserve to be ignored.

Best Picture - Clash of the Titans (and some other guys)

2008-02-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

(One of hopefully many Oscar posts. They'll be accompanied with pictures like these: the gold star means I think it'll win and the smiley means it was my favorite!)

2007 has been a pretty splendid year for film. Sure, the first nine months of it were inundated with some of the most heinous horse-shit ever to be shoveled into theaters (with a few precious exceptions like Breach or Zodiac), but this final quarter has proven to be more than generous. It almost seems unfair that with so many fantastic movies, only five could be honored this year.

Whether or not these five are the right selections remains to be determined. I don't get a lot of access to limited releases, being a) poor and b) 45 minutes away from the artier cinemas of Sacramento, but I made it a point to at least see all the Best Picture nominees this year. Having done so, I dwelt briefly on my feelings about them; the first impact they made, how they endured in my psyche and the things that bugged me about them. And while the category may be a little loaded, all the movies in it are pretty damn good.

Let's work our way up the list, starting with the sad old nags doomed for the glue factory and finishing with the thoroughbreds:

5) Michael Clayton

Michael Clayton's one advantage, a scant one at best, is that its screenplay is by far the most literate and accomplished one in the field, adapted or otherwise. Like all of its other nominations, however, it's doomed to lose out simply by dint of bad timing. Though it may have a fighting chance in some of its fields, Best Picture is absolutely a lost cause. To be honest, the nomination really just smells of "let's revive the adult legal drama and honor George Clooney at the same time!", and while I did like the movie a lot, it sticks out pretty sorely in this category (not as badly as Juno, at least).

This movie's presence in the 2007 race strongly recalls The Insider, another dark, like-minded law thriller that scored a handful of nominations but didn't pick up any. This genre simply doesn't resonate emotionally with critics enough to gain any sort of traction; they can appreciate the technical approaches, thus leading to nominations, but come ballot time it fades from memory.

- Does it deserve it?: Sure, in a weaker year. But if they were going to honor a mystery movie, Zodiac - easily a more ambitious, accomplished, polished film - got screwed the pooch. Then again, it would have made this an Oscar race filled with deeply depressing and angry movies, which I think would have unsettled people. Clayton's not exactly sunshine and roses, but at least it's not serial killers.
- What are its chances?: None. It's the fifth wheel on the Oscar wagon. It's good to see that the movie even got the honor, but anyone who thinks it has any sort of chance is kind of fooling themselves.
- What about the other nominations?: Original Screenplay, like I said before, is its best shot, but Juno's racketeering will be difficult to overcome. Tilda Swinton gives an unbelievable performance but it's not baity enough for AMPAS and Cate Blanchett has Supporting Actress on lockdown. Tom Wilkinson will get trounced by big bad Bardem. George Clooney didn't deserve the nod.
- My personal rating: 8/10, 4th favorite

4) Juno

Widely regarded as the tiny indie crowd-pleaser this year, as per Little Miss Sunshine in 2006 and Sideways the year before, Juno got an assload of valuable critical support right out of the gate. In addition, the campaigning effort has been tireless; Fox Searchlight really gets behind their movies in times like this. And finally, it's just a damn good comedy. Endearing, tight and wickedly clever, there's not much the movie can't do. On the surface, it seems like the kind of film that no one can bring themselves to hate.

...Or so you'd think. For whatever reason, Juno's harmless quirk has managed to garner some of the ugliest, most hysterical backlash I've ever seen directed at a movie. People fancy themselves that much smarter than the movie simply because they can point out the fact that it's directed with a stilt to a certain audience and the characters talk with an above-average cleverness. OH WELL HOLY SHIT BURN IT AT THE STAKE. No one complained when Fight Club, THE movie for stroking intelligent yet insecure male egos, came out.

In the parts I venture (aka the Internet), males from 15 to 22 are the most vocal demographic and their disdain for the film is overwhelming simply because it trafficks mainly with women. They were cool with Knocked Up because Katherine Heigl was tertiary to Seth Rogen's dumbassery and the tired, unrewarding Paul Rudd-Leslie Mann subplot. Not to say I didn't like Knocked Up, but I think Juno exposes some of the flaws in it, most notably because it's a half hour shorter and still has more emotional pull. It is sad that a movie as innocent as Juno gets crucified with the intensity that it does - any Oscar gold that might fall its way will be decried. But Best Picture is out of its reach.

- Does it deserve it: It really depends on how you posture this. As the comedy selection of the race, definitely. Hot Fuzz was the funniest movie of the year pound for pound, but it didn't really have the emotional hook that Oscar needs in its comedies. Knocked Up was too long and too difficult to take seriously, and Superbad was inconsistent (though generally pretty damn good). But amongst the other four nominees, it's like the emperor has no clothes.
- What are its chances?: Almost none. The critics could all simultaneously experience mid-life crises and vote for it in a shameless bid to seem cool, but it's AMPAS - they're probably all twenty years past a mid-life crisis anyway.
- What about the other nominations?: Ellen Page is the only potential threat to the Cotillard-Christie brawl, and even then she's still a hell of a long shot. Screenplay probably has this in the bag; Diablo Cody's personal circumstances are too irresistible to pass up. The script is overwritten, but also shows hallmarks of profound talent, so the Academy will probably throw it to her as encouragement. Jason Reitman has no chance for Director and I have to say that his nomination was kind of a travesty.
- My personal rating: 8/10, 5th favorite

3) Atonement

Atonement was the initial golden child of the 2007 race, before most people had even seen it. It was a winning pedigree - an adaptation of a widely-loved Ian McEwan book, directed by uprising period piece auteur Joe Wright, and starring the dazzling combination of Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. People were predicting Oscar-wide sweeps of every category, three nominations in Supporting Actress, shit like that. The film's popularity crested right before the Golden Globes, but that didn't stop it from taking home Best Drama. A lot of people were surprised to see that it still had the power to pull down any Oscar nominations, let alone seven of them.

To be fair to the movie, it is very good, but not a powerhouse. I liked it just a little more than Michael Clayton just in terms of scale - the best way for me to phrase it was that Atonement engaged me a little more. Michael Clayton was fun and involving but detached, and a lot of people thought Atonement was more frigid than a "romance" movie had the right to be, anyway. I think the movie works on a deeper level than basic romance, in light of the turbulent ending and a plot wracked with despair, which is one of the things I most admire about it.

If Atonement does have any chance at all, it's that it contains the largest aggregate of star power, in the forms of Keira Knightley, Vanessa Redgrave and James McAvoy. George Clooney can sell a movie, but Knightley has more crossover appeal (even though she is fatally dull in her work as Cecilia); Redgrave corners the older market; McAvoy covers the drooly fangirls.

- Does it deserve it?: No. There were stronger entries in the "general drama" category this year. Once would have been a fun substitute, but it is far too small for the Academy to even consider honoring. I never saw Into the Wild, and to be honest I didn't much want to, but a lot of people consider it a snub and I wonder how things would have stacked up with it in the race.
- What are its chances?: Slim, but not discountable. Best Picture at the Golden Globes sure didn't hurt it. The Academy pussying out and failing to honor either of the Big Two, on account of being very dark movies, is a distinctly real possibility. Heads will roll if Atonement picks up Picture, more so than Michael Clayton and maybe even Juno. It'd mean that the Academy was willing to honor a drama, but one as proportionately weak as Atonement. It might be worth it just for the spectacle of intellectuals shitting both themselves and all over the Oscars.
- What about its other nominations?: Adapted screenplay is cornered pretty intensely by the Big Two, though it has an outside chance if they want to honor it SOMEHOW. Everyone loves Saoirse Ronan, which I think is because her name is so cool, but she's not going to get the Oscar. Music (with pesky There Will Be Blood out of the way), costumes (the green dress!) and art direction (tracking shot) are probably locks.
My personal rating: 8/10, 3rd favorite

2) There Will Be Blood

For my money, There Will Be Blood is the strongest movie of the year, a truly sensational parable about greed and hatred. I was absolutely hypnotized by the movie, a sentiment that 90% of critics share - it is more divisive than No Country for Old Men, which is ultimately its downfall, but what love it gets from the big men is that much more fierce for it. I really like No Country, but I think it's going to be relegated to a status like that of Fargo: a widely-loved movie that exists in everyone's peripherals, versus a film that is regarded as a true classic.

But the classics don't always get Oscars, and like I said, this movie is just a smidgen more alienating than No Country was. Paul Thomas Anderson got no awards for Magnolia and Boogie Nights in arguably weaker years than this, so what's saying that he's automatically entitled to a few now? Besides his awesome movie, of course. This also picked up more nods than those two combined, so maybe this is his year. Time will tell.

- Does it deserve it?: Absolutely. It's the movie event of the year. I would have been upset if it hadn't been nominated.
- What are its chances?: Strong, but right now it's trying to claw its way to an echelon that No Country for Old Men has securely established for itself. In the long run, it's harder for me to envision AMPAS honoring this before the Coen Brothers, so I'm going with my gut feeling here.
- What about its other nominations?: Daniel Day-Lewis is a lock for Best Actor. Cinematography is likely as well, threatened once again by No Country. Screenplay has a fair shot, moreso than No Country. They might honor Paul Thomas Anderson with Director if he doesn't win Picture, but I think that's the Coen Brothers' game to lose as well.
My personal rating: 10/10, favorite movie of 2007

1) No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men is the movie to beat thus far. Loved by nearly every critic and many intelligent film-goers, despite an ending that left several scratching their heads, it is the Coen Brothers's much-lauded return to form. There's very little to properly fault here and the movie's only real weakness is its darkness. The Academy has historically been hesitant to honor movies such as this one, and even if they don't it's unlikely that it'll trickle past There Will Be Blood down to Atonement. More on this later.

- Does it deserve it?: Yes. Even if this was an appeasement nod for the Coen Brothers's dawdling filmography, it's still definitely the right film to give it to.
- What are its chances?: As I've said, it's the most likely of the bunch to pick up the award.
- What about its other nominations?: The sound Oscars are inevitable; this movie uses sound effects and ambience noise to flawless effect. Cinematography is very likely as well, and even if Roger Deakins doesn't get it for this, he probably will for Jesse James. Directing is very likely - again, this is flagbearer Coen material and the Academy will certainly welcome them back somehow. Screenplay is highly likely as well. Finally, Javier Bardem is a distinct threat to win Best Supporting Actor for his truly chilling portrayal of Anton Chigurh.
My personal rating: 9/10, 2nd favorite

I died!

2008-01-21T18:13:00.000-08:00

Well, not really. But this has been a busy time in my life, and sadly, the blog has fallen by the wayside. No longer, however! I shall rejuvenate it with - what else? - late-ass Oscar predictions. Perhaps I'll gussy these up later to make them more appealing, but here's the bare-bones of it all:

Picture
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Diving Bell and Butterfly
Atonement
Michael Clayton

Director
Coens (No Country for Old Men)
PTA (There Will Be Blood)
Schnabel (Diving Bell and Butterfly)
Gilroy (Michael Clayton)
Penn (Into The Wild)

Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)
Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild)
Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd)

Actress
Julie Christie (Away from Her)
Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose)
Ellen Page (Juno)
Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart)
Laura Linney (The Savages)

Supp. Actor
Javier Bardem (No Country)
Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)
Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)
Casey Affleck (Assassination)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War)

Supp. Actress
Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)
Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)
Saoirse Ronan (Atonement)
Kelly MacDonald (No Country. We're all allowed our longshots :x)

Original Screenplay
Juno
Ratatouille
Eastern Promises
The Savages
Michael Clayton

Adapted Screenplay
No Country for Old Men
Diving Bell and Butterfly
There Will Be Blood
Into the Wild
Atonement

Animated
Ratatouille
Persepolis
The Simpsons Movie

Foreign (I haven't seen any of these, I don't know what I'm doing)
12 (Russia)
Beaufort (Israel)
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Brazil)
The Counterfeiters (Austria)
The Unknown (Italy)

Documentary (See above)
Taxi to the Dark Side
Autism: The Musical
Lake of Fire
No End In Sight
Sicko

Cinematography
No Country For Old Men
Diving Bell and Butterfly
There Will Be Blood
Assassination of Jesse James
Atonement

Editing
No Country For Old Men
Into The Wild
There Will Be Blood
Bourne Ultimatum
Michael Clayton

Original Score (R.I.P. There Will Be Blood)
Atonement
Assassination...
Ratatouille
3:10 To Yuma
Lust, Caution

Visual Effects
Transformers
The Golden Compass
POTC 3

Some of the tech categories are missing but who really gives a shit about Best Makeup?

Oregon Trail 2 taught me the word "miscellany"

2007-12-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

- Today I received a call from sub services.

Sub services lady: Yes, would you like to fill in at this school? You'll be subbing for a Mrs. Fields.
Drew: I'm sorry, what was her name again?
Sub services lady: Fields. Like...Strawberry Fields Forever.
Drew: ...

I think it's fucking great that she said that, but I'm not really sure why. Subtle appreciation of The Beatles? Bizarre cultural reference? The world may never know.

- I advanced to the quarterfinal round of Slamdance's annual Horror Screenplay Competition! Kickass. Now...to triumph over the remaining 99 scripts and claim victory! Wahahaha!

- H.P. Lovecraft is awesome and when winter break starts I am making a resolution to read his complete body of work once and for all. You should too! We can do it...together.

Cover me!

2007-12-09T23:42:00.001-08:00

Call me shallow and everything, but a first impression can mean a lot, and generally it's a pretty accurate reflection of what you're going to get - at least in the entertainment world. I didn't actually have this theme planned when I started writing the post, but I realized that I was posting the covers of everything I wanted to talk about, and ran with it. You can call me shallow, but at least call me resourceful too.

First: I just love the DVD cover for David Cronenberg's oft-forgotten 1996 vehicular erotica, Crash. Namely, that quote by Janet Maslin. "Sex and car crashes." I don't think the point of a movie has been so succinctly addressed in any DVD cover quote. It would be like if you put a quote that said "Zombies" on the front of Dawn of the Dead, "Racism" on the other Crash, or "Suburban dysfunction" on any drama that's been made after American Beauty.

I wish my passion for this brilliant work of advertising had transferred to the movie itself; I thought it was incredible that Cronenberg could take a great premise like people who do the sexy time after automotive issues and make it so utterly boring and repetitive. You can give it a philosophical/fetishistic read, but ol' Mr. Body Horror won't allow you a leg to stand on there. (That was a totally unintentional pun that I caught only after a reread. Damn my subconscious.) You can view it as a critique of pornography, but if that's the case then I think it failed in the way Funny Games failed as a critique on stylized violence. The movie stubbornly refuses to expound on its fascinating foundations and that is its undoing. But you do get to see Holly Hunter's tits, and watch James Spader have sex with a leg wound and another man, so I'm not totally discounting it yet.

Moving on to significantly gayer things, check out this herpetic Lisa Frank explosion of a CD. It is the debut effort of American Idol 6 runner-up Blake Lewis and it is awful. My problems with Audio Daydream are innumerable, but there are a few big ones that any idiot (read: not Blake's fans) could pick up. The boy wears his influences on his sleeve: if you've been listening to the radio this last year, you'll notice that his vocal stylings are basically Justin Timberlake and Adam Levine's retarded crack baby. This also moves us to his professed 80s obsession, which apparently crept into the album. "Crept into" is not the right phrase to use, so much as "burst in with a hatchet and shat all over"; Lewis lacks the knowledge of what made 80s music work, which is nothing in my equally unfounded opinion, and it shows. No one wants to remember what they listened to when they were tripping balls two decades ago.

And the final complaint, which is most glaring and least subjective, is that the boy couldn't write a lyric to save his life (or his album, apparently). "Hot and sexy is the definition of her"? Well, it isn't the definition of syntax! If grammar determines how hot and sexy you are, then Lewis's command of the English language seems perfectly appropriate for his gnomish stature.

To be perfectly fair to Blake, I did like "How Many Words". I don't know why it caught my ear amidst all the other swampy ballads and abysmal synthesized abortions on A.D.D., but I think it's pretty much the high point of the album. Now you guys can stone me for actually enjoying something on this. I die without shame.

A few days ago, I made a pledge to myself to start reading for pleasure again; 999 was the first book I picked up to begin this odyssey. Granted, I'm only a few stories in, but it has proven itself to be a consistent and excellently-written collection of horror short stories. "Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue," the lead-in by Kim Newman, is a darkly satirical tale about post-apocalyptic Russia. It happens to be plagued by zombies, who are all for some reason American tourists. Wacky things ensue.

Less goofy works include my personal favorite entry so far, "The Ruins of Contracoeur", by prolific author Joyce Carol Oates. Ruins is a tale of a politically disgraced family biding their time in a relic of a house, owned and disowned by their grandfather; Oates guides us through their eventual breakdown with stark isolationist horror. She does an incredible job of capturing this melancholy, windswept atmosphere in the pages. At one point she describes two characters as being blurry, like "poorly realized watercolors", and I couldn't help but feel much the same way about the story. It is enigmatic and dizzyingly sad.

The book also includes entries by William Peter Blatty, Neil Gaiman and - who else? - Stephen King, and if it can keep being as awesome in the next 20 or so stories as it has been so far, I'm excited to read the rest.

I beg to differ.

2007-11-30T17:29:00.000-08:00

(Do note that this post, as per the movie, contains a bit of graphic content, such as stabbings, flesh being ripped from the body and Lindsay Lohan. I know I was too late to save you from the above, but you've seen worse.)

Meet Aubrey Fleming. She is one half of the brassy, orange-colored harlot protagonist in the best movie of 2007, I Know Who Killed Me. And as we can see, she is a confused lass. But wouldn't you be too? I know I was as I crawled through this movie, not once, but twice. The first viewing was online because I was intent on not spending any money; the second, a rental party with two good friends on the day it came out.

Since I doubt anyone else has watched this movie, this post will be a brief summary of the movie, in both pictures and text. What better way is there to expose the incredulity of this movie but to use...well, the movie itself?

Point proven.

Anyway, the story begins with some incredibly inane stripping sequences. I didn't bother to cap them because believe it or not, LiLo does the least erotic striptease to ever be committed to celluloid. She doesn't even get naked. No weather-beaten orange tatas for you!

Of course, this is Evil Twin LiLo, who we don't see for about another half hour. In the meantime, we get to hang out with Aubrey. She's a sweet girl who likes blue roses, playing the piano, and getting fingered in Biology class.

This is her boyfriend. Conveniently, he found a blue rose. If you aren't familiar with this movie's incredibly subtle and expressive color symbolism, prepare to become so. Uh...that's a classy way of saying that you'll be seeing either blue or red in every single shot of the movie. Immediately after the shot above, for instance...

That idiot pricks herself on a thorn. Blue to red! You could interpret this as beautiful things having deadly secrets, or violence leading to pain, or a talentless film director shoehorning metaphors into his script to make his movie seem deep. I think you know where my dollar's placed.

Anyway, despite warnings of a serial killer prowling the neighborhood, Aubrey wanders off by herself after a football game and manages to get kidnapped. Cue ominous blue fade from this shot:

to this one:

Yep, ol' LiLo's stumbled into some torture porn! I actually kind of feel bad for her; she must have legitimately thought this would have been her big jump into a more mature film career. "Mature film" meaning something different than what it sounds like, of course, though porn only seems like the next logical step after this and her rehab stints.

So obviously, one person is having fun in this scene. It's not Aubrey, and it's definitely not the viewer, because we get treated to images like this.

Classy, right? This is the stuff adult dramas are made of. I, for one, loved the fingernail torture sequence in Remains of the Day, but that's just me.

Aubrey wakes up in the hospital and treats us to what must be the single most hilarious shot of the movie. I don't know what that says about me as a human being, but I laughed for about five minutes the first time I watched this.

We soon discover, however, that she is not only missing limbs but also her identity! Aubrey now calls herself "Dakota Moss," a hardened stripper/crack fiend, completely removed of the virginal if not still slutty-looking Aubrey. What's really great about her sudden transformation is that Lindsay Lohan plays both characters EXACTLY the same, right down to the mannerism. Her voice is a little harsher and that's it. The only difference between these two is Dakota says "fuck" a lot, which is clearly the key to being taken seriously as an actress.

This has little plot relevance, but I like that the police show a horrified amputation victim pictures of the last girl her assailant murdered.

See that look of anguish? That's Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. FBI, FTW!

Once ~~Aubrey~~ Dakota is well enough to leave her bed, the police interrogate her about her whereabouts and identity. I don't know where she lives - Callous Law Enforcement Town? It's almost as if the screenwriter was trying really hard to advance the plot forward...and sacrificed all credibility in the process. Nah, couldn't be! It was also during this scene that I noticed that LiLo's severed limb looks like either a hot dog or a penis.

Basically, Dakota regales the police with her hidden past. Her mother kept her a secret from the world, so she doesn't have any birth records, but that didn't stop her from becoming a stripper at the age of 4 or however old she is.

Hey, does she remind you at all of another recently melted-down celebrity? This shot is an eerie portent of the future Miss Spears, which is perhaps its only cultural worth. Hairless Testicle Cat notwithstanding.

Basically, Dakota's mom died and she has nowhere else to go, so "Aubrey's" mom benevolently decides to "adopt" her. But not before she gets fitted with some sweet cyborg limbs!

That is some straight-up Star Wars shit right there. I waited very expectantly for the scene where Aubrey's father goes "Dakota, I am your father" and Dakota says "No you're not! You stole me from the dead crackwhore down the hall and sent my sister off to New Zealand where you're paying her with monthly child support. I KNOW WHO KILLED ME!" Oh wait, that ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

~~Dakota~~ ~~Aubrey~~ Dakota comes back home to find her boyfriend expectantly waiting for his chaste Aubrey. What he finds is something completely different, though no less hot.

You know what it's time for? Cripple sex!

I kind of wish I had screencapped this more. It's really great because the sex scene is intercut with shots of Aubrey's mom scrubbing things with immense frustration, trying to drown out the sounds of her daughter's gimpy orgasming. The sex itself is incredibly boring and poorly-filmed, but that hardly seems to matter.

Now the movie cuts to a flashback. Confused yet? Hang on! Dakota's finger falls off in the shower, and she is immediately reminded of a similar experience she had at the strip club, where - I kid you not - her finger falls off during her routine. Most fucked-up strip club everrrr. Anyway, Dakota manages to avoid suspicion by telling her boss that she "cut herself with a beer bottle" and didn't need to go to the hospital because "they're for rich people." Yeah.

On the bus back to...wherever she's going, she encounters this ridiculously irrelevant Jesus figure.

And no, that second picture isn't pre-coitus - it's part of a twisted dream sequence that involves tattoos coming to life - but it wouldn't have surprised me because Dakota's a whore. This enigmatic Asian tells her "people get cut. That's life" and never appears again.

Back to the present. It is at this point that ~~Dakota~~ ~~Aubrey~~ Dakota becomes convinced somehow that her sudden injuries are of some importance (OMG REALLY???) Tapping into the unlimited power of the internets, she makes this excellent Ask.com search:

They're not just bleeding, but they're UNEXPLAINED too. Just like this movie. This incredibly useful search actually manages to take her to exactly the page she needs, an informative video about the stigmata. Look at this picture and try to tell me that this movie is taking itself seriously. I dare you.

He informs her that bleeding wounds unexplained can occur in identical twins, which automatically leads her to conjecture that she is a twin and her father sent her sister to New Zealand where he is paying her monthly child support. Now we knew that Dakota wasn't exactly a deductive mind to rival Holmes, but seriously, this is just ridiculous. Her mom whips out the sonogram of her pregnancy that she conveniently kept but NO science deters Dakota Moss!

At this point a lot of boring shit that I didn't feel like capping happens. What it leads up to is that Dakota wanders to the grave of the first girl that the serial killer murdered. There, she discovers this illegible ribbon.

This incredibly important discovery leads her to believe that it was the piano teacher who was behind it all along! SHE KNOWS WHO KILLED HER! But God knows how. Dakota/Audrey's brain kind of works in its own bizarre little world, where logical gaps make perfect sense.

Also, a dual-color split screen with your Saran-wrapped and buried twin-not-twin is something that every movie should have.

Aubrey, determined to stop her assailant at all costs, goes to the piano teacher's house armed with absolutely nothing but her battery-powered leg. I guess you can't really be "armed" with a leg, though. Fuck you I thought it was funny.

Also, her dad died.

But there's no time for grief! (as if we gave a fuuuuuck) The piano teacher finds her prowling around in his basement garden of body parts, and after a brief struggle, he - I kid you not - beats her unconscious with her own cyborg arm. If I could make GIFs, I would, and you would see it everywhere, because this scene is just too perfect. I think it's an accurate representation of Aubrey's struggles thus far; no matter what she tries to do, something incredibly stupid just beats the shit out of her. I KNOW WHO KILLED ME AND IT'S MYSELF!

Dakota or Aubrey or who-the-fuck-ever wakes to find herself tied to something. It takes her about six seconds to break free, however, and with the aid of a conveniently-placed sharp object she stabs her assailant in the neck.

You know, if I were making my on-screen debut as a twisted, limb-chopping psychopath, I would not want my final image to look like this.

He knows who killed him and it's really surprising!

Dramatic obstacle resolved, ~~Dakota~~ ~~Aubrey~~ ~~Dakota~~ Lindsay Lohan stumbles back to the graveyard and digs up a random grave, where she finds...herself, looking like a fucked-up 1800s schoolteacher. She curls up next to this matronly version of herself and falls asleep as the moon shines silently upon these inexplicable proceedings.

End movie.

If you haven't been able to discern it by now, I Know Who Killed Me is an immeasurable disaster. Though it is too obscure to slay the careers of those involved, I can name at least one director and two screenwriters who will never be working in Hollywood again. And this certainly isn't an auspicious omen for several of the actors involved, not the least of which is poor Lindsay Lohan. It really is sad that this is what her star-studded cinematic path has led to; it will take boatloads of good will to get herself in a project half as good as this in the future.

People who do not make it out of this movie with their dignity intact:

Julia Ormond

Neal McDonough

Crab Man

I would have said LiLo herself, but really...did she have any dignity left when she signed on to this?

Happy (three hour late) Thanksgiving!

2007-11-23T02:41:00.000-08:00

Wanna know what I'm thankful for this year?

No Country for Old Men, for easily being the best movie of 2007 so far (and probably for the rest of the year)

Amy Winehouse, for making fantastic music AND supplying the world with plenty of crazy tabloid fodder

and SaGa Frontier, a 10-year-old Playstation game that just bewitches me for absolutely no reason at all.

I could have said friends and family and health and all that but fuuuuck it. This is how I roll.

I need a Cute Immunization

2007-11-16T15:30:00.000-08:00

Goddamn it. I know I bitched about Enchanted earlier, but this just looks too fucking adorable to pass up.

I suppose Disney isn't totally dead. To. Me. Just yet.

You're Breaking My Heart!!!

2007-11-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

Every musician or band releases a disappointing album at one point in their career; if not disappointing, then something that doesn't hold up quite to the gold standard that they established for themselves. Usually these complaints are weathered, by dint of the album growing on you or the people in question moving on to better things. But when three of my most well-loved artists released three disappointing albums within a few months of each other, and I listened to them all at nearly the same time, it was a crushing blow. This is the part where I try to reconcile with myself.

3. m-flo - Cosmicolor

Though I touched upon this one briefly in my previous music post, Cosmicolor is an album of many peaks and valleys...mostly valleys. After band member Lisa left them in 2002, their albums revolved entirely around guest singers on the tracks, generally one song per guest singer. These were called the "love" albums; "m-flo loves melody", "m-flo loves Crystal Kay" and the like. Of the three "love albums", Cosmicolor is the longest at a bloated 13 tracks (17 if you count the cheesy skits). It is also the least engaging.

Though the highlights are really great, like the trim and effective Stuck in Your Love and the bangin' Love Long and Prosper, everything on the album is just dragged out to near-anemia. Few songs on Cosmicolor clock in at under 5 minutes. Lotta Love, a fun but uneven Euro track, is nearly 7 minutes long, with little to show for it but unapologetic repetition. Love Song is a Bonnie Pink collaboration that just goes on way too long; Luvotomy doesn't have anything to do but repeat itself after the 2 minute mark. She Loves the CREAM almost gets away with it, but there's a dull-as-hell jazz interlude halfway through that totally kills the momentum of the song. Though it would be tempting to reward the shorter songs on the album for understanding brevity, Love Don't Cry and Simple and Lovely are completely forgettable.

I could see this making a serviceable dance-floor record, but on standalone listens, Cosmicolor just totally falls apart. After the outstanding Beat Space Nine, this is a disappointing, mincing follow-up. m-flo has announced that the "loves" series is dead, and I can't help but feel a little relieved.

Check Out: Stuck in Your Love, Love Long and Prosper, Love Me After 12 AM, Picture Perfect Love

2. KT Tunstall - Drastic Fantastic

Of the three artists profiled in this list, KT Tunstall was the one I was expecting the least from; concurrently, it's the worst of these three albums. Where her debut, Eye to the Telescope, featured grit beautifully waxing to vulnerability and an almost cheeky empowerment, Drastic Fantastic just feels like a melange of underdeveloped emotional hosannas. Half of the songs sound like they should be played behind a medical insurance commercial, and the other half could serve very well in a commercial for a wacky teen drama.

Tunstall herself is not the least bit preoccupied with appeasing her audience. But since it's hardly an artistic triumph at all, I can only wonder what the goal of the album was. Nearly every song is cut from the same mold; play Beauty of Uncertainty and Someday Soon back-to-back and you won't even remember which is which. Hopeless epitomizes the album by sounding agreeable at first and then totally vanishing into the void right after listening to it. Not every song on the album is as elevator-music, though. Paper Aeroplane is as drifty and wistful as the title entails, and I Don't Want You Now embraces Tunstall's more effective upbeat side. Hold On does a great job at actually engaging a listener, the album's main fault...It's no wonder that it's Drastic Fantastic's first single, but expecting much more of its kind from the album would seriously betray a potential buyer. I mean, look at the cover. It looks like something challenging, exciting, epic. Drastic Fantastic is anything but.

Cosmicolor may have been a massively overlong album, but at 39 minutes, Drastic Fantastic is just not enough to satisfy. It's a jangly, cheap little bauble of an alt-pop album with nary a hook in sight. I can only hope that KT Tunstall hasn't landed herself in one-hit-wonder land with ol' Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, but I think she's got enough talent in her to produce something worth listening to again.

Check Out: Hold On, Paper Aeroplane, I Don't Want You Now

1. Bonnie Pink - Thinking Out Loud

This is the true heartbreaker of the list to me. Thinking Out Loud is Bonnie Pink's 10th studio album, and it is the one that cries "Stop this madness!" to me. Her 9th, the divisive Golden Tears, was her most dangerous flirtation with pop. It put a lot of previously unheard elements in Pink's music to the forefront, like synthesizers and really thick production, and though there were a few great songs some people thought it was a change for the worse.

But at least it was a change. Thinking Out Loud is an attempt to combine her previous style with her new artistic direction and the results are absolutely monstrous. The recurring problem on the album is that the melodies are too simple and the production is too overdone, which leaves poor Bonnie in between a rock and a hard place. To no fault of her own, nearly every song on the album is completely uninteresting. Commercializing her intimate, soulful voice has done her very little good.

As far as standouts on Thinking Out Loud, Anything For You is undeniably the strongest song on there. It is a ball of energy and melodic fun, overpowering the tedium by sheer bulldozer force. It's a shame that this song was shoehorned onto the album as its last track; it would have made a much better lead-in than the pointless Gimme a Beat. Sakamichi is like a grungy, sexy younger sister to her seminal groover Senaka. Catch the Sun is listenable, if not cheesy and unaccomplished.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album does little but make itself seem like a waste of time. The most flagrant offender is the Philharmonic Flava rearrangement of her smash single A Perfect Sky, which is...inexplicable. Totally self-indulgent and pointless. A Perfect Sky was one of Bonnie Pink's biggest chart hits, but cramming this bland old dinosaur on the album seems to have been done solely in commercial interest. You probably won't even make it to the chorus on Burning Inside, Nagusami Blue and - wait for this one - "Broken hearts, citylights and just me thinking out loud." She sounds too sharp on the melodramatic Water Me, sleepwalks through Lullaby, and has nothing to do on the horrible Imagination, which sounds like the retarded bastard child of Communication and The Answer.

What I guess comforts me is that Bonnie Pink has plenty of places to run after this debacle. She can return to her pared-down, beautiful melodies, the gems of the past from albums like Even So or Just a Girl, or continue to change herself as an artist and see if she can find a better niche. But she cannot do both, as Thinking Out Loud proves. Right now, what she needs to do is divorce herself from Burning Chicken's overwhelming production and take a little time to sharpen her melodies. Work like this is just upsetting for big fans like me, just because I know she is capable of far better.

Check Out: Anything For You, Catch The Sun, Sakamichi

Fierceness at the Workplace: Special Education Edition

2007-11-08T13:27:00.000-08:00

I'm finishing out a week at an elementary school, and the work is pretty easy (if not unremarkable). I kind of mill around the school and assist various classrooms; nothing awfully challenging, except the rough half hour in the SDC room trying to teach six learning-disabled 5th grade boys how to do massive multiplication by rounding.

My favorite part of the day has to be working with Austin. He's a bizarre little second-grader with - get this! - not only a mohawk, but also a rat tail. Not even the bravest (or trashiest) of men would dare attempt a coiffure like this, but Austin is no man. He is a god. Today when I came in to pick him up and take him to the counseling room, where I do random subtraction with him, he reached up and touched my head and said "I like your hair!" Oh, Austin. I'm sure I like yours far more.

The school I'm working at is kind of bizarre. It's in a low income area, and a lot of the teachers are the type who are knowledgeable in those different walks of life, so they're usually pretty cool. Teaching can be a really conservative, ivory-tower profession, which is an approach that I don't think works that well anymore. But I digress. The one exception to the generally tolerable staff is a woman named Tina. She is cheery and agreeable, but has absolutely no understanding of how her habits bear down on other people.

Example: I first met Tina in the copying room. As we went about our respective clerical tasks, she sang a song to the tune of "Clementine" about possessives. Made-up educational singalong songs are an excruciating necessity, but MOST people have the common sense to keep them outside the classroom. Not Tina. She sat there and sang "use possessives, use possessives, use poSSESSive apostrophes" over and over and over again, each time with a different grammatical rule tacked on the end. She must have sang this song nine times before I finished my copying job and ran out of the room as fast as I could, bleeding from the ears.

Today Tina told me a two-minute story about her personalized pencil. Telling people "I don't care" is in my opinion one of the rudest things ever, but women like her make it so, so tempting.

Brains.

2007-11-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

Know what's awesome? Zombies.

Not Rob Zombie, though. Go make another white-trash horror opera!

I don't care how nouveau-hipster that makes me sound, but I've liked them well before The Zombie Survival Guide (as good a read as it is) suddenly made them acceptable for the indie kids to have interest in. My mom showed me Night of the Living Dead on VHS when I was I think 13 years old, and I think that fostered the beginning of a deep appreciation in me.

I mention this because I watched Day of the Dead today, rounding out Romero's original zombie trilogy. Of the three, Dawn of the Dead is probably my favorite, as it is many others', but Day of the Dead is really underrated. It catches a lot of shit because there's very little zombie action in the first half an hour of a movie, to which I say - so what? Yeah, George Romero doesn't write particularly well; he knows where to put hot zombie action, and he knows how to disembowel a hapless human, but dialogue and coherence dance around him a little bit.

The basic premise of the movie is that there's a small military faction holed up in a bunker with some civilian scientists while zombies are apparently overrunning the earth. Romero's sociological allegory is obvious right off the bat: all of the soldiers are douches, especially their insane captain. The military/government is bad? Seriously?! It's cool to have a message in your movie and all, but I can understand why it frustrated people that it supersedes the zombies.

Obviously, the movie really hits its stride once he gets to the actual meat (no pun intended) of it all. It's the most gruesome of the trilogy, no questions asked, especially the final death scene. It's absolutely great in that repulsive sort of way. I think it's especially funny because all that moralizing that Romero did in the first act and a half of the movie just totally gets chewed through by ridiculous undead violence. It's as if he decided to say "you can have your politics if you like, but when the apocalypse comes, they're not gonna fucking matter."

Anyway, I decided to write about this partly because the movie is being remade. It has Nick Cannon in it. I assume he will be taking the place of the Jamaican helicopter pilot, simply because Hollywood thinks all black people are exactly the same so it's okay to have them talk like that. I hate Nick Cannon, but spare the man a little dignity! Anyway, the remake is going to suck. I can tell right off the bat because with the current political climate, the director's going to go really fucking overboard with the social messages, diluting the actual zombie part of the film in one way or another. What do you wanna bet they'll all link hands and sing "Imagine" while the legions of the undead bear down on them with tooth and nail? God save us all.

But yeah, zombies are great. I've been thinking about writing a zombie film of my own, and Day of the Dead has pretty much solidified the deal. Have any ideas? Post them here! I probably won't use them, because that's plagiarism and it is bad, but I know that I have some creative friends out there. Show me what you got!

(Image from Pangeacorp.

The soul-crushing state of America, reflected through a cultural prism - a.k.a. LOL DUMB

2007-11-05T00:24:00.001-08:00

Yeah, I have an internal comedy bias - it's my least favorite of the genres simply because it's the one most easily duplicated in real life - but seriously, Will Ferrell in another sports movie? Kicking and Screaming, The Legend of Ricky Bobby, Blades of Glory, and now this. Four sports movies, practically in a row. Talk about range! And that's the least of our worries, what with a premature Vince Vaughn holiday nightmare, the impending Alvin and the Chipmunks remake which looks terrrrrrible, some shitty fake biopic (paging Christopher Guest...), and something with Amy Adams pretending to be a princess in a lame Disney abortion.

(Be Kind Rewind might be okay, but I would have to get over my fear of Jack Black first.)

Did I mention I found this on my way to the Day of the Dead remake's page? I heard that Nick Cannon would be in it and, in a whirl of utter disbelief, found it to be true. This is the most disheartening evening I've experienced since I watched I Know Who Killed Me.

Also I think this is probably my favorite music video ever.

My love for it is deepened because of how much it upsets idiots. Apparently, watching a bunch of stop-motion paper children bleed a little bit is profoundly disturbing to them. Perhaps the part where the cat gets its head torn off is what gets them, but they sew it back on! And seriously, how is any of this worse than that God-awful Saw shit Americans continue to watch?

Stay in Iceland where you belong, little Múm. The people here are out to get you with entirely non-violent pitchforks.

Way to go, team.

2007-10-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

Can this please end now?

Seriously.

"Prove you're still worth a damn";

2007-10-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

so sayeth several of the lost souls wandering through the film adaptation of Frank Miller's seminal Sin City. Their words illustrate a common fear of inadequacy, the one thread linking their three separate stories together, and if there's one thing I can't stand, it's watching a bunch of impotent old men overcompensate.

Seriously, Bruce. Turning your head from Jessica Alba? Someone get the Viagra!

I kid, I kid. I have no problem with infirmity. After all, I'll probably be seeing the new Indiana Jones movie. But I think this motif fits the movie pretty well, because Sin City is desperately trying to overcompensate for its graphic novel roots with sheer force of violence and stunning aesthetics.

I mean, seriously. The movie is visual poetry. Why didn't it pick up any special effects Oscar nods? Oh, that's right; overexposure. As gorgeous as Sin City often is (gorgeous being a figurative term, when you consider what's lurking beneath the surface), you kind of get exhausted of the whole noir-on-crack shtick by the end of it. Eventually, the luster completely wore off for me. It's still an amazingly crafted movie - just one that overuses its assets, like the cheap strippers at Centerfolds.

But still...beautiful, beautiful movie. A bunch of mismatched screencaps don't do it justice at all (on a side note, I wish my DVD drive on my computer worked, so I could take some damn caps of my own.)

The same goes for the incredible brutality of the film. In the span of two hours, people get beaten, tortured, stabbed, raped, drugged, shot, devoured, exploded, skewered, castrated, hit by cars, and forced to sleep with Mickey Rourke, and what's it all for? To prove that Sin City is a bad place. Well, duh. To me, the most insidious sorts of violence are the ones that show themselves at the most opportune of times, peeking out their ugly heads only when the time calls. After watching them scurry around Sin City tirelessly and without respite, you grow numbed to the shock of it all. I think the pinnacle of my revulsion with Sin City's graphic deaths was watching Elijah Wood getting eaten alive by his own dog about 40 minutes in. Past that, I started moving through it like some sort of macabre routine. Even the third genital mutilation didn't faze me.

The big problem with this is that Sin City's narrative is constructed around its violence, and the action that delivers it. The movie honestly doesn't give a shit about its plot. It's merely a conduit for more violence; thus, the storyline gets glossed over to an unbelievable extent with internal monologues. Hours and hours of them. There is more voice-over than actual dialogue in the movie, I kid you not. I don't know if your English teachers ever made you learn "show not tell writing", but Robert Rodriguez's sure didn't. Scenes such as Clive Owen explaining to you how he's considering shooting the cop, while you're also seeing him finger the gun as the cop draws nearer to him, are downright insulting to the viewer's intelligence.

I realize that this sort of narration is a staple of film noir, but a) Sin City is not really film noir and b) all the self-pontification you see in movies like Double Indemnity is used to develop the thoughts and personality of the protagonist, not complete the storyline. I make my first argument on the basis that it's really just an action movie with film noir window-dressing. There's no mystery to the happenings of ol' Sin City; just mass violence. And with such a great setting, it's almost a shame that there aren't any secrets to explore.

But anyway, I don't hate on Sin City for having found such great success. It's an innovative if not deeply flawed step in the right direction. I'll probably watch Sin City 2, simply because it'll be an original treatment instead of a graphic novel adaptation, which is where from most of the flaws of this installment arose. As I've speculated before, things that sound cool in comic book land simply aren't when real actors are spitting them out, and that's what makes Sin City seem kind of...cheesy in the end. Cheesy and impotent. Damn you, old men.

(Caps courtesy of www.albafan.net and luckynumberjosh.com.)

I know, I know.

2007-10-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

Considering this was supposed to be a daily blog, I've done an extraordinarily shitty job. But I've been busy. Blow me.

In other AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME news...guess who's confirmed for Super Smash Brothers Brawl?

YES.

At the behest of Meghan...happiness

2007-10-17T23:50:00.001-07:00

Okay, so maybe filling half of my blog's first four posts with unrestrained hate may not have sat well with everyone, or at least my three or four friends who love me enough to actually read this. So I'm sitting here in my underwear, eating snickerdoodles and thinking to myself "how can I be angry at this moment in time?" It's not possible. Here, then, is a digression on something I love very much: music.

I cannot stress enough that my music taste is diverse. To say the least. It's matured considerably - five years ago, I would listen to absolutely nothing but Eurobeat or Japanese techno - but I'm still all over the place. Nothing is too mainstream or too obscure for me. Thus, I've taken myself to task to expose you to whatever I'm feeling at the moment, no matter what it may be. If you don't like it, tough fuckin' titties. It's not like you're paying for it.

Stuck In Your Love
Artist: m-flo loves melody
Album: Cosmicolor

The incontrovertible high point in what can be called a mixed bag of an album, Stuck in Your Love is sweet and forceful - romantic hip-hop at its finest. m-flo is one of the few acts in Japan who truly "gets" hip-hop. For those xenophobes out there, worry not; the song is entirely in English. As such, the lyrics are a little bit simple, but sometimes that's for the best.

Drivin' Me Wild
Artist: Common feat. Lily Allen
Album: Finding Forever

So perhaps I'm on a hip-hop kick right now, but seriously, Common and Lily Allen? That's Drew-bait, right there. Common makes some risky production choices, like playing one of Lily Allen's sonorous howls all through the song - she's not exactly a siren, but it works to surprising effect here.

Going to Georgia
Artist: The Mountain Goats
Album: Zopilote Machine

Yeah, John Darnielle or something, cool. Pitchfork called this the best-written song ever. They've brought a ton of counter-counter-culture hatred against themselves, though, so maybe that isn't a credible thing for me to say. I don't think I've ever been so taken by one man and his guitar before, but this has me singing along Every. Single. Time. Trying to imitate his voice, no less.

Letter ~ From the Lost Days
Artist: Akira Yamaoka feat. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn
Album: Silent Hill 3 Original Soundtrack

I realize that putting video game music on here makes me an unbelievable nerd, but I don't give a fuck. This song has a strange, ethereal quality to it. It kind of reminds me of Portishead. As far as Playstation vocal songs come, this is about as good as you're ever going to get.

Misery Business
Artist: Paramore
Album: Riot!

My mainstream pick of the day. What Paramore lacks in creativity, they make up for in sheer anger and honesty. This is the kind of music you imagine yourself kicking ass to. The kind of music that you put on as soon as you wake up and you're ready to go. This is probably what God was listening to when he created the world.

"The Eye" - as in, Eye know this is gonna suck eggs

2007-10-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Eye, a 2002 Hong Kong horror film, was very decent. Fun to watch, mildly scary, and ultimately unambitious. Unfortunately, it is also Asian and successful, which means it was only a matter of time before it was remade.

With Jessica Alba. Or more importantly, her tits.

Now it's time to play a game of "What's Sadder?"

1) They're remaking The Eye
2) They're remaking The Eye with Jessica Alba in it
3) They're remaking The Eye with Jessica Alba in it and they used Blaqk Audio, Davey Havok's God-awful industrial techno project, in the trailer
4) They're remaking The Eye with Jessica Alba in it and they used Blaqk Audio, Davey Havok's God-awful industrial techno project, in the trailer, and I recognized it without having to look it up
5) The fact that all of these aspects have already aligned to seal the movie's fate

Me, I pick "all of the above."

I am an angry person, sort of

2007-10-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

As I explained yesterday, there are certain things that I like to talk about and certain things that I don't. But there's also this mysterious middle ground that will probably be visited frequently on this blog: I love to talk about things that I hate.

I mean, with stuff like politics and geology, 99% of the time they constitute of things that are too boring to get my blood boiling. But there are certain subjects out there that inspire such insuppressible rancor in me that I can't help but, for lack of a better word, bitch about them.

Today's topic is Dane Cook. As a preliminary summary, Dane Cook is a tool.

I mean, honestly, I feel a little guilty about writing this because nearly everyone with an IQ of over 90 has been going after Dane Cook with a sledgehammer. In ranting on him, I fear I have become as unoriginal as the man itself. But today, I would like to discuss, in list form, several reasons as to why Cook reaches heights of douchery previously unseen in the ranks of standup (or basically the entire world.)

1

He has stolen material from no less than three established comedians: Louis C.K., Joe Rogan and, most recently, Demetri Martin. It was obvious that I was going to hit on this point, but really, yanking material from other people is the pinnacle of assholery no matter how you look at it.

In a twisted, sick, roundabout way, I almost have to commend him. Taking jokes from comedians who have had some success in the mainstream is a really gutsy move - thus, his balls far out-measure his intelligence. Louis C.K. isn't the hugest name in standup, but if he could get someone to actually produce Pootie Tang, then he must have some kind of clout. Joe Rogan's no comic titan either, but more people know him. Demetri Martin's star has really been rising lately, however, and with that people started to notice that Cook stole a joke off his 2005 CD.

See this video for proof. While I'm here, can I also bring attention to the delivery? Demetri Martin is rehearsed, savvy, deadpan. I don't understand why people enjoy Dane Cook's comedy because he basically screams at you through the entire joke. It's like Comedy Boot Camp.

Anyway, people have defended the similarities by saying that the joke's been around for a while, but the fact still stands - Dane Cook isn't writing his own material and that sucks. I wonder if he'll ever try to write a book? George Carlin has written several and they're awesome. A Dane Cook book would basically be 32 pages of other people's jokes, only in caps lock.

2

As I touched upon very briefly in the previous point, Dane Cook's style makes me want to die. Or to kill. It inspires death in many manifestations, I guess you could say.

It would be hypocritical for me to judge Cook for being loud; I am no soft-spoken lily in my own right. I know when to turn on the volume, however, and Cook simply doesn't know how to turn it off. All of his jokes start at a reasonable volume, then hit this interminable crescendo where he yells for the next five minutes. That's the median length of a Dane Cook joke, by the way. Homeboy takes way too fucking long to get to the point.

And then there's the body language. I have no words...only images.

(I'm especially fond of this one. He looks like a diseased chicken. See, even my Print Screen button is funnier than Dane Cook!)

If you're wondering about the quality, I capped these from Youtube videos, but I think you get the gist; his idea of humor is doing really bizarre things with his arms and yelling. He's like the class clown...at Monkey School.

3

Corporate. Sellout.

Yeah, yeah. It's not fair to decry someone for finding success, be it undeserved or not. But this motherfucker will do ANYTHING to keep people saying his name in really loud, obnoxious voices. His most notable offenses are his movie roles. Let's take a look at his recent resume:

Torque: Perhaps the biggest tip-off on this list. Anything with a 3.3 on IMDB is bound to be a pure, unmitigated disaster. I haven't seen the movie, but his participation warrants some (negative) attention.
Waiting: To be fair, this was a brilliant fucking move. The movie caters to his EXACT demographic. And we'll get to that later.
London, Mr. Brooks: Here's Dane Cook in some non-comedy films, where many would think he is a woeful miscast, but nooooo. I haven't seen London, but Mr. Brooks was bad, and the role was essentially a reprise of his annoying comic persona. Tooltooltooltooltool.
Farce of the Penguins: Enough said.
Employee of the Month, Good Luck Chuck: Two Dane Cook starring vehicles. Two miserable, universally maligned cinematic apocalypses.

Film is not the only media that he's rubbed his slimy tendrils all over, however. I learned recently that Dane Cook actually composed a song!

...Or did he?

"In late 2007, Cook released a single entitled 'Forward' in support of his upcoming movie, Good Luck Chuck. Members of the Ron and Fez Show staff discussed the song on their September 18 edition and noticed it was very similar to a song by the band Chicago. Upon playing the song 'Forward' back-to-back with Chicago's 'Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away', it became apparent that the two were nearly identical, prompting one listener to say 'Dane Cook writes songs the same way he writes jokes — stealing.'"

I'm starting to wonder if Dane Cook is actually functionally illiterate and just copies everything he hears so he can make it look like he has some abilities. Ad hominem attacks are rude, though, so let's take a look at Dane Cook's fanbase!

4

Dane Cook's fans are fucking dickholes. To spare myself from the gaping black hole that is a generalization, I'm sure that there's a handful of Cook fans out there that have some semblance of brainpower, but seriously, if I were him I'd be ashamed of the people who claim to like me.

I mean, when you make comedy aimed squarely at the 13-year-old white upper-middle class male, you're bound to get such results. As a more in-depth case study, I looked at a Youtube video's comments. Okay, not too in-depth, but it's Dane Cook; next to him I have more depth than a well-worn Thai hooker.

Granted, the original video isn't that funny, but here are some of the things his chivalrous defenders had to say:

"LOL omg i didnt think there was anyone out there who was more "queer" than Chris Crocker but dude u just proved me wrong. . . only "Fudge Packers" dont like Dane"

"yo f you dane cook rules you are a supper fag!"

"FAGGET!!! DANE COOK ROCKS!!!"

"UR A FUCKING FAGGOT! Go play in traffic"

"U know man Dane cook is the funniest guy in the world AND IF YOU THINK NOT THEN U R TRULLY GAY AND HAVE NO DICK!"

Wait, guys...are you noticing a pattern here? I sure am.

I must say that after all this exhaustive ranting about Dane Cook, I feel as if I've accomplished absolutely nothing. Not only that, but I've been indirectly informed that I'm trully gay and have no dick. Missing genitalia aside, however, there's a smug satisfaction that comes with knowing the difference between good standup and Dane Cook, and that's something that's worth sacrificing your much-vaunted penis over.

I got me a sense of purpose...

2007-10-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

There are many subjects I like to write about. These are not some of them:

- politics (except maybe in the face of blinding, extraordinary idiocy, in which case I might)
- clothing
- dull things, like geology and wine tasting

But past that, the world is fair game to me. Today I would like to briefly discuss my career.

Though most of the people reading this probably already know how I make my daily bread, I'm a substitute teacher's aide in the local school district. I work in special education classes. It's not the easiest job in the world, but it's hella fun and incredibly enriching, not to mention the pay beats the hell out of Taco Bell. I've learned so much about autism and learning disabilities in general - in the year that I've been working in the district, my preconceptions and ideas about the mentally retarded have changed drastically.

But what I love most about my career is that almost every day, I hear or experience something incredibly hilarious. Not (always) in a malicious way; there's just so much unabashed innocence and curiosity that has no restraint in special education.

A site that always puts a smile on my face is tardblog, which is an archived collection of stories written by a special education teacher. It may sound a little mean-spirited, but there's an FAQ on the site that really reflects how I feel about my job.

"This page should be seen in the same light as surgeons or paramedics making jokes about injured people, or psychiatrists making light of their mentally deranged patients. The people in those fields use humor as a way to relieve the daily stress and aggravation of their very difficult jobs. Paramedics and doctors, especially battlefield surgeons, are renowned for making sick jokes about their patients during their off-time. If they don't release the emotional tension through humor, then it has to come out some other way, hence the saying, 'If I don't laugh I'll have to cry.'"

What really gets me about special education is that 7 times out of 10, the parents just don't give a shit about their kids. They dump them in their classes from day to day; it's like a day care service to them while they do whatever shit they want. They view their children as nothing but an inconvenience. A lot of the time, that is the reason why their child is in special ed in the first place. Really, it breaks my heart.

Hopefully, I'll get the chance to share both the happy and the sad - oftentimes I get a lot of both of them in the work I do. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Whoa!

2007-10-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

I told myself constantly to start a blog, but I never thought I was actually going to do it. I need some sort of creative outlet.

Anyway, welcome to my new blog, (tentatively) titled Marmalaise. Clever, eh? I am a pretty clever guy. Hopefully I will be able to extend that cleverness into some sort of entertaining daily periodical, but that's wishful thinking.

I have little to say right now, so I'll just leave you with this bit of poetry in motion, as capped by the inimitable Rich of fourfour.

Isn't she beautiful?