I haven’t seen “The Other Guys.” Like Wahlberg. Like Ferrell. But the trailer looked hideous. Now, however, I might have to break down if the whole movie is like this scene, which seems to be an exercise in who refuses to break onscreen while Ferrell continues to improvise circles around everyone. The entire scene you can see both guys barely holding it together. I’m guessing oh, fifteen, twenty takes to get this exchange?
Case in point: the “Plums” scene in Eastbound & Down. Robinson and McBride are helpless while Ferrell just has his way with them (NSFW).
And would you be sewprissed if I toweld yew, that’s theres no Rudolph MacFroody in the whole countystate of Mississsipi-alabama?
On the first take, John Grisley’s The Trial looks like a really clumsy Danish attempt at the micro-genre of Southern Courtroom Drama. You may experience a period of confusion where it’s difficult to tell who exactly is being made fun of. Is this artfully-crafted schlock or painfully sincere European imitation from the early nineties? Apparently the Swedish comedy collective Grotesco have suffered through as much of our bad tv as we have.
The technique is kinda brilliant in it’s simplicity: the words “how can I defend you if I can’t trust you?” is whimpered by lawyers in approximately 87% of legal dramas. It’s a phrase that should be in a home for battered cliches. Grotesco toys with your recognition of these tropes by showing that you still recognize them, even when they are delivered as near-rhymes or peppered with complete nonsense. The result is shame-inducing: “My god, did I really watch this exact same story that many times?”
Note for note, it is one of the most cutting mockeries of American middlebrow genre work that I’ve ever seen. I can tell you that Part 2 has a surprise ending, and you will still be surprised.
A staggering visual history celebration of Prague’s 600-year-old Astronomical Clock from Oct. 2010, with video mapping projection. This artform slays me. Unlike all of the people taking flash photography during a light show.
del Toro discusses his process, trials with Hollywood, The Hobbit, At the Mountains of Madness, monster theory, and squashes his daughter with his gut in Daniel Zalewski’s fantastic New Yorker profile.
“The Hobbit,” he said, “is much less black-and-white. The monsters are not just evil. They’re charming, funny, seductive. Smaug is an incredibly smart guy!” Del Toro later said that he inevitably imposed his sensibility on source material: “It’s like marrying a widow. You try to be respectful of the memory of the dead husband, but come Saturday night . . . bam.”
I’d love to see this dude with a Korg Wavedrum or a J Dilla style set-up, where he could trigger samples with a drum machine. I’ve never seen an MC drum before- I think it’d be incredible to see him with a hi-tech rig.
Then again, the foot-and-pens thing is pretty damn great on its own.
“A million people die in Iraq, and all these people go, ‘Hey, as long as it doesn’t happen over here.’ But it is over here! It’s over here=over there! It’s people you don’t know, who were born somewhere else, who fucking got jacked.
You get trapped in that whole idea of ‘this is my team, these are my people.’ And someone fucking plays a country music song, and throws up a flag. I’m in. Fuck it. Feels good. Feels good to be in, doesn’t it?”
I haven’t always been a Joe Rogan fan- his Carlos Mencia call-out was pretty epic. But this video definitely puts me in his camp. Do I believe that Obama is equal to Bush? God no. I believe that Obama will be a transformational two-term President. (Who’re the Republicans gonna run? Huckabee? Romney? Pawlenty? PALIN? Please.)
But questions being asked are never a bad thing. And 90 percent of his points are spot-on.
And his points on Eisenhower’s “Military Industrial Complex” speech are so apt as to be goddamn depressing. Roll on, great river, roll on.
I plan to see Tron: Legacy in the theater. I know it’s getting bad reviews. One of the President / Also-a-Customer founder-members of this blog has a position on the use of CG “salt” in a movie. His position is that the Star Wars prequels are a creation of pure salt. I disagree. The Star Wars prequels are a bouillabaisse gone bad: over salted as hell to hide the flavor of contaminated shellfish. The first Tron was a creation of pure salt: a beautiful inorganic structure, as perfect as a crystalline crystal. I loved Tron.
There is also a sniffling, douchebaggy position that likes to hold spectacle/popcorn/explode-a-ganza movies to some kind of Dan Day Lewis acting standard. This is like complaining that they changed the recipe for steak tips at the The 99. If you are getting steak for $5.99, there is something you need to know: you are eating a steak that cost $5.99. Some people complained that the plot was paper-thin in Jurassic Park II* (49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). And it was. But to be fair, I’m not sure there was a plot in Jurassic Park II so much as an arbitrary sequence of semi-logic, contrived to run a boat filled with kickass FX into Port of San Diego. (I think it was the also only time Vince Vaughn tried to play a character that gave a shit about anything other than Vince Vaughn.) But the reason I went to see Jurassic Park II – the only reason – was to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex rex run ripshit through downtown San Diego. It took a long time too long for that ship to finally hit the docks, but it was worth the wait.
David Edelstein – who’s opinion I very often agree with – said that Tron: Legacy was an extraordinarily bad film, and that I should send people that I loathe to see it. And that it reminded him of “Disco Night at the High Life Ran Tan.” (You understand what he means even though you have no idea what he’s saying?) And that he thinks it has given him a brain tumor.
If Tron was an inert polyhedron, then Tron: Legacy looks to be a silicon-based life form. I’m prepared for the tumor.
* Roger Ebert said this of Jurassic Park II: The Lost World, “It can be said that the creatures in this film transcend any visible signs of special effects and seem to walk the earth, but the same realism isn’t brought to the human characters, who are bound by plot conventions and action formulas.” Since we’re working a theme.
UK directing team Garth+Ginny are doing brilliant little pixel animations that make me want to put a quarter in them. The animations, that is, not Garth+Ginny.
This graphic appeared in Wired a few years ago. I was immediately piqued by the fact that I could recognize a few of the characters. Curiosity quickly turned to Obsess Much? as I realized that each figure or ensemble represents a real (presumably) musician. I absolutely love this piece for it’s pixel-pushing meticulousness. When I presented it to a circle of my friends, they attacked it with geeker savagery. We are still stumped by a small handful of them. (Highlighted in blue)
Here are our answers. I’m reasonably confident of them – our dorkus-maximus peer-review process required photo evidence and nearly-unanimous-consensus.
This video is a beautiful disaster. It looks like Terry Gilliam was kidnapped by steampunk robots and force-fed a tub of Plasticine and ipecac in the MOMA. It’s just lathered in anxious digital filigrees, and I think the whole thing would be a busy failure if it all weren’t less interesting than the heavy-lidded charisma of Eugene Hütz. In the past, the lead singer’s girlfriend would shake a tambourine or hold a triangle. We’ve finally disposed of that lie: just sit there and look hot. Slap your thighs to the beat if you feel like it.
I am Christmas-morning-excited about the new season of Eastbound & Down:
I realize that it’ll be hard to duplicate the perfection of the first season, but I’ve got a feeling this one’s gonna be even better. I mean, just look at the damn cornrows: it’s amazing.
I love these. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues against the ethics of charitable giving, which I don’t fully agree with, but the method of communication of these videos is fantastic. If all dry economic philosophy talks were this fun, we’d be much more savvy. I can’t find the artist’s name anywhere (who, I think, is the real unsung hero of the pieces), but they’re all pretty great, and keep getting better. Zizek’s argument about an impending world-wide cultural “zero point” is simply ‘declared’ and barely touched upon, but I think it’s salient- in many ways, we as a planet are heading towards a point where old answers don’t seem to be enough. This, to me, is a point for optimism, not fear- using the phrase “turning point” versus “apocalyptic vision” would be my choice.
But then again, I’m not a big Roland Emmerich fan. I think anyone who uses the idea of the world ending to scare up box office seems a bit ethically dubious, to me.
Imagine this as a sort of note-taking- what if students all learned “comix” as a second-language, as a device for retention. I read somewhere that the Army uses comics to illustrate a number of sensitive training points, as comics (and, I would assume, this form of dense-animation-comics hybrid) apparently engages both the right and left side of the brains, leading to faster neural connections (that last part is my own b.s. hypothesis- disregard as necessary).
Either way, these are great, keep ’em coming, RSA.
The world is always beautiful/when it’s seen in full retreat
The worst of life is beautiful/as it slips away in full retreat
And then, of course, there’s Ornette Coleman’s viciously brilliant solo on “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation,” one of those songs that made me pull my car over the first time I heard it. The walk-down after the “squeal” crescendo makes me depressed every time I hear it. Simply masterful.
This man hasn’t released a bad album yet- they’re just varying degrees of incredible.
Here’s a fun little trailer for League of Legends Season One:
I don’t play WoW. Apparently, this is a spin-off from it, and the Trailer is marketing for the game. Which is cool.
If one peruses the LoL website, you can check out the multiple characters, and it’s pretty staggering: artistically, it’s like you took comic books, Mortal Combat, pro “wrestling”, steam punk elements, Harry Potter, Frank Frazetta, Pokemon, D&D, pin-up models, cute anime characters, and Capcom into an blender, and this is what you’d get. It’s like a unified theory of role-playing, power-wish-fulfillment, and avatar-powered escapism. And it’s pretty grand.
These MMORPG games are an artistic borg- “What? Superheros? Sure. We’ll take ’em. A He-Man-type comic Orko sprite-thing? Yep. Magic chick in an improbable bustier? Yes, please. Sauron-huge guy with proportionally ridiculous armor? Uh-huh. Werewolves? Well, WHY the f*@k NOT?!?” And I’m not even capping on the sensibility; there’s something amazingly, geeksomely democratic about the whole thing.
Watching the two teams of super-hero archetypes in fantasy-sheep’s clothing Avengers Assemble! into two fighting forces for “the Final Battle” would make Jack Kirby proud. You’ve got your huge bruiser-type, your hot-chick-who-can-best-any-man, your thief/mage, your magician, your small-yet-mighty lil’ guys- it’s the Superfriends vs. the Legion of Doom, WoW-style. When I saw it, I was like, “Of course it was heading in this direction: take the proven super-hero soap-opera, skin it with fantasy elements, add some FIGHTING…” and there you go.
When I saw BioShock a couple of years ago, I was really taken by how it combined Myst-like storytelling, remarkable cinematic design (both character and sets), with Doom and Silent Hill-like scary atmospherics and action. Intense. I think at this point, it’s beyond safe to say that the true visionaries are working in games, not movies.
Taking chances in the box, not worrying whether someone’s nephew (who got the studio job because of staggering nepotism) will greenlight a project if he can get his client/good friend on board. Game production is punk rock, in the box (the computer, rather “artistic box”), with an unlimited budget for effects, costumes, and sets.
Even though I’m going through Andrew Sullivan withdrawal, I thought this was a nice summation of current memes:
Simultaneously, the Morlock “I’ll click on anything” side of the Internet and the Eloi “I only read Boing Boing on my iPad” side decide that it’s funny, and indulge the joke. It churns for a day. It wins a place in meme history. And now that we know the joke, it’s over. These concepts are approaching the lifespan of fruit flies while getting us closer and closer to the phony interactivity of Max Headroom. As deodorant concepts go, that’s fairly exciting.
I’m more of a Morlock, “Click on Anything/Hunter-Gatherer”-type. Old Spice Man (as if you haven’t seen it):
Every Thursday morning, while driving home, I listen to Jeremy. His show is always amazing, and he’s got a really sublime talent of making you feel as if he’s just an unassuming friend hanging in your car or living room, turning you onto great music with the Ricky Roma soft-sell.
Mr. Sole had a remarkable set yesterday morning: Prince covers and Forever in my Life (impeccable taste, that one), turning me onto Aloe Blacc’s cover of Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale, a Roots/Joanna Newsome joint (!), Nick Drake, Paul Simon’s Spirit Voices, and the song that took my head off, Back From Africa by Nickodemus.
I love, love, love this man’s radio show. Check last week’s show here.
Check this out: Chris Ware was commissioned to do a cover for Fortune. Can you believe they rejected this?
Everyone knows Chris is an artist of some intensity, which for the most part has been directed toward meticulous cartoon dissection of childhood trauma.
Maybe they thought – based on the scenes of Jimmy’s Grandpa – that he really had an instinctual sense for the Depression Era, and that this was a relevant visual cue. I could buy that. Maybe they even imagined he would do something unblinking, and pointed. You know: EDGY. When your mind’s eye floats back over his slavish cross-sections of emotional hurts, can you say you felt any strident political viewpoints leap off the page? After being offered this platform, Ware ripped off his Jimmy Corrigan sad-face mask and revealed: STAB YOU! Turns out that intensity has also been quietly set on Simmer over the economic crisis.
What the art director at Fortune didn’t see in Ware’s work, that maybe he should have, is his comfort with brutal honesty. Painful things don’t incidentally happen in Ware stories: he meditates on them. Maybe the guy who draws an intricate schematic of your heart being ripped into 6,000 pieces isn’t going to pull any punches with the corporate looting of the American economy.
What I love about this: Ware is a smart guy. He knows what Fortune’s niche is. (What’s their name again?) Let’s just say that if Bill Greider ever walked in the lobby they would ask him if he needed directions. Ware KNEW they would never, ever run this piece. But I picture him in his studio, setting the record straight with every futile pen stroke. For the few thousand or so people this would leak to on the internet, anyway.
I will never forget Johnny Depp retelling a conversation (I think it was in Rolling Stone) between he and Bill Murray about what it was like to play Hunter Thompson. They both exchanged accounts of how, even months and years later, they would have little moments where some dormant shred of Thompson’s psyche would wriggle inside them. “It’s just Hunter,” Murray said. (I paraphrase)
Based on this glimpse of Rango (and I realize that Depp is probably not producing this, ILM’s “fledgling” animated feature, but you never know!) it certainly appears that a big chunk of Johnny’s psyche is still in the desert with Hunter:
Completely invested in the song. And Elvis’s guitar playing is truly transcendent. Still slays me every single time I watch it.
Hey Elvis, what was the highlight of the evening?
…Fiona’s incredible job on ‘I Want You.’ For me, that was musically the high point of the evening, in terms of how much you can reach within a song and come up with something that was for you.
Now, I’m not advocating living in boxes on top of each other- it’s my pig-headed belief that trees and restaurants make a city, not buildings (I’m from that Ray Bradbury school), but it really is an ingenious use of space, using every part of the architectural buffalo, if you will. More ideas like this, please, along with smart cars, solar paint, eco-friendly Cannonball Runs in which the victor uses the least amount of fuel versus the asinine most to simply go in a circle real-fast-like (hyuk).
And, since I mentioned Ray Bradbury, here’s a nice little interview he did with Frank Black (yes!) who’s Massiff Central is probably in my top 20 songs of all time. The album version from Show Me Your Tearsis epic– here’s an acoustic version from the Christmass album.
Ray Bradbury interviews are fantastic, by the way. Just a take-no-prisoners, opinionated old codger who’s pretty much right about everything. I aspire to that level of imperious curmudgeony-ness.
I usually avoid Star Wars spoofs (as they’re omnipresent on the web- I’m guilty, too), but this one is a deft little way of pointing out the simplicity of the story of the first trilogy. If anything, it shows once again how little you need if there’s some feeling and actual relationships behind the script, versus toys-disguised-as-story.
Here’s a great little trailer for Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s new book, Instructions, made all the better by Neil’s voice over.
I’m re-reading The Sandman Companion by Hy Bender, which, for me, now ranks up there in my ‘invaluable insight into creator’s minds” library as The Onion’s Tenacity of the Cockroach, Stephen King’s On Writing, and Pressfield’s The War of Art. If you’re a Sandman or Neil Gaiman fan, I cannot suggest it enough. Bender’s summation of each story arc, his critical insights, and concise conversations with Gaiman himself give great insight into both creator and creation itself, especially if you believe (as I do) that Sandman was one of the great works of the 20th Century.
Been meaning to mention Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book for quite some time as well. Absolutely worth checking out. Between that and Coraline, bloke had quite a year. The man’s a force of literature.
Kenwoode 