you will need one egg.

I just wanna be a sweetheart

Fri, 16 May 2008 04:54:26 GMT

Studio B is weird. I mean, likely no venue in my life will match its convenience so I shouldn't complain. But (he complained) tonight there was a Long Blondes with two opening acts, doors at 8. I figured I could get there around 10, maybe catch part of the second opening band, and get a spot. I walked in a little after 10, and the floor was so empty I wondered if I missed either the show or daylight savings. But no, the second band was still setting up. They came on at 10:30, and played for what seemed like about 25 minutes. I wonder: was the other opening band's set also 25 minutes? And if so, was there really only 25 minutes worth of music during the preceding 90 minutes?

The 25-minute band was pretty good so I bought their CD. I think. I didn't hear them say their name and they didn't seem to have a rep at the merch table so I had to take this girl's word for it on who they were. Hopefully they were Drug Rug (OK, internet says they were). Studio B merch tables are always weirdly meager, too. The Long Blondes only had albums and some free stickers (window stickers that say "My other favorite band is the Long Blondes" -- OK, that's pretty cool). I was given the impresson that I bought the only copy of Drug Rug's album. I hope this wasn't a mistake.

Also weird was how relatively quickly the Long Blondes set up and started their set, and how few people were in the club when this happened. I'd say it was about the size of an average show at Valentine's in Albany, though there was probably some Eurotrash (or faux-Eurotrash) lurking on the leather couches off to the side. But you seriously could've walked in as the band was starting and walked to the front, easy. I really could've had a completely normal evening, and then just gone to Studio B instead of going to bed. Maybe that's not Studio B weirdness, maybe that's just "hard to break British bands in the US" business, and/or maybe all of the Long Blondes fans in the city are going to the Bowery show tomorrow.

Anyway, they played (order approximate but pretty good):

Round the Hairpin
Weekend Without Makeup
[an old song I didn't know; maybe it's on the bonus disc that came with the first album and that I never listen to. Possibly "All Bar One Girls"]
Here Comes the Serious Bit
Separated by Motorways
I Liked the Boys
Century
You Could Have Both
Too Clever by Half
The Couples
Once and Never Again
Guilt
I'm Going to Hell
Giddy Stratospheres
---
Lust in the Movies

The new songs sounded good and reminded me how solid the new album is despite its lack of a "Once and Never Again"-style triumph. In general the band was solid, tight, a bit unexciting, except for Kate Jackson, the lead singer. She's part of that British thing where the lead singer doesn't have to do anything else (I don't think she even writes the lyrics), but oddly she seems to be the only member of the band really giving it her all. She was so glamorous and her voice was so commanding that her ridiculously high-waisted shorts didn't look super-ridiculous the whole time.

Now I'm already up late so I might as well watch the DVR'd Lost and work 10-6. No one spoil The Office for me, though! I'm saving that for later.

Sort-of vindication!

Sun, 11 May 2008 19:40:00 GMT

Hardly anyone I know wanted to see Speed Racer, both anecdotally and, it turns out, statistically. Hardly anyone was supposed to like it, either. But everyone else can suck it because Marisa and I went to see Speed Racer on opening night in IMAX and it kicked ass!!! The movie is so much ridiculous candy-colored tripped-out pinball machine fun, and I never liked the cartoon so it wasn't a nostalgia trip for me. It has a chimp and ninjas and Christina Ricci with bangs and as much crazy editing that goes on, there's way more crazy zooming and impossible transitions and slow motion shots of cars punching each other and it was awesome and not liking it is for old people! It doesn't have the characterization or wit of Iron Man (or rather, the wit of Robert Downey Jr.) or the story quality of the Matrix trilogy, and it does drag a little. A running time over two hours was probably not necessrary. But I was actually a bit bummed when I heard that this would be the new Wachoswki project and now I see what they were going for and I take it back. Summer is two for two. Maybe the best course of action is to not see Prince Caspian at all. It'll only annoy me when that thing makes so much more money. Also, as Marisa points out, as far as I know its audience-satisfaction rating for Speed Racer is running around one hundred percent.

Actually, just about every movie I saw this weekend had kung-fu in it (just like almost every SNL sketch this week had some kind of gay joke in it -- not that all or even many of them were really homophobic, but it was still weird). On Saturday we went to see The Forbidden Kingdom, and even though my expectations were middling I still found it sort of disappointing. It's not really all that bad -- it's certainly better than recent-ish Jackie Chan movies like The Tuxedo or The Medallion, or your average Jet-Li-and-a-rapper American urban-fu movie -- but a lot of pretty good fights and some sorta-fantastical House of Flying Daggers styling and some kids-movie bits aren't mixed very well, just as the Jackie Chan/Jet Li pairing doesn't do much beyond one pretty cool fight scene. You can see their styles contrasting a little -- Chan's slapsticky resourcefulness and Li's tenacious furiousness -- but the movie is never more than okay.

Then we went across the street to see David Mamet's Redbelt. Since The Spanish Prisoner, which I really liked, Mamet has made a string of solidly pretty-good movies and this one fits into that same Heist/Spartan rubric of cons, tough guys, duplicitous women, some but not a peak amount of swears, Ricky Jay. So it has a lot of archetypal Mamet stuff but the martial-arts angle elevates it a notch or two above simple rehashing of pet themes. Plus it has Chiwetel Ejiofor; he's pretty great. I should really Netflix the other Mamet movies I haven't seen, like Homicide and House of Games. I should really get more use out of the Netflix account this summer.

After the movies, we went to Flor de Mayo, Alison's birthday party way uptown, and Kate's birthday party downtown. In a little bit we're heading back out to Manhattan to see my mom. Next weekend will be similarly marathon and maybe without any movies at all! If anyone wants to see The Fall later on Wednesday evening, that might happen out of scheduling necessity. But if you're busy seeing Speed Racer instead, I understand.

And it's dancing!

Thu, 08 May 2008 03:14:11 GMT

Even as I'm mildly underwhelmed by the line-ups for Summerstage, Celebrate Brooklyn, Siren Fest, and River to River, I'm finding new ways to entangle myself in concerts before I'm even (maybe not actually) graduated (my department head is writing a letter. I'm checking back next week to find out how that went. My hopes are not high).

I've been listening to the Los Campesinos! album a bunch lately. I was only vaguely aware of them before Marisa and I told Rob about our haul at Last Vestige in Saratoga, and he one-upped us by relating the tale of how he got the Los Campesinos album used for six bucks because it was incorrectly filed as World Music. This illustrates one benefit of record shopping outside of NYC; a used copy of the Los Campesinos album at Sound Fix or Other Music would get hit with a hipness tax and be like ten bucks just because it got good reviews. So Rob played this album for us in the car, and it really hit the spot. It sounds like how I hoped the Go Team would sound but didn't really, crossed with how I hoped Broken Social Scene would sound but didn't really. I came back to NYC and bought a new copy almost immediately. So basically, I bought a new copy of the Los Campesinos album because Last Vestige misfiled a used copy of it. This is not unlike the time that Jeff and I both wound up trying to listen to British Sea Power because I had mistakenly thought he recommended them to me. (Side note: I totally bought a used copy of the new British Sea Power record at said trip to Last Vestige. It is, as ever, pretty good, I think. I'll give you more once I'm properly sick of Los Campesinos.)

The non-World album, Hold On Now, Youngster..., is pretty great. Once in awhile the musical invention outpaces the similar-sounding lyrics and delivery, but usually the whole thing rollicks. You know how there's this whole subgenre of twee/cute/indie bands with song titles that are way more interesting than their actual songs? (Pioneers of this field: Beulah.) Los Campesinos! are like that but with good songs.

Naturally, this got me thinking, hey, maybe I should see them live. I went to their website to see if they'd be coming around here soon and, hey, they're actually rolling into town next week. Next week, I am seeing the Long Blondes at Studio B on Thursday night, then Bishop Allen at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday night. But Los Campesinos are playing Bowery Ballroom the following Monday so I'm thinking I might have to extend my weeknight music marathon for several reasons.

One is that it is a minor booking miracle that I can see all of these shows. Los Campesinos! are actually playing the super-convenient Music Hall of Williamsburg on that Thursday. But I already have tickets to see the Long Blondes that night -- who are playing the Bowery Ballroom on Friday, when Bishop Allen is playing Music Hall of Williamsburg. This keeps Los Campesinos from playing Bowery until Monday. OK, maybe it's not a miracle, but it confused the hell out of me while trying to figure out if I can go. At very least it's a close call. I still feel like I'm going to realize I made some kind of rudimentary math error, like I forgot to carry the "sday" and it turns out next Monday is actually tomorrow.

Another is that Cristin's brother's band that just took Pitchfork by storm is opening!

Another is that I did a bunch of homework tonight so it shouldn't matter that this show kicks off my last week of classes (graduating now or September, it better damn well be my last real week of classes).

Another is pretty much any of these songs, just pick a title you like.

Conclusion: if this still seems like a good idea tomorrow morning, I'm a-gettin' some tickets. So if you want to see the Long Blondes, Bishop Allen, Los Campesinos! and/or Cristin's brother's band, you know where to holler. I don't think any of them are sold out yet.

We named the dog Indiana

Mon, 05 May 2008 01:20:08 GMT

Summer is here and Iron Man is in charge of kicking it off this year so I went out to Times Square on Friday to see it with Marisa, Allison, Sara B, Katie, Jon, and Tim. The crowd was crazy, mostly in a good way, cheering and applauding all over the trailers, the movie, and of course the secret ending. Yup, secret ending; Favreau knows what he's doing, even if he's not as visually exciting as Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer. Indeed, his superhero movie isn't quite at the level of the first two X-Men or Spider-Man movies, but it's in the same ballpark. It definitely follows the (good) Marvel superhero template: it gives you a good origin story and sets you up for what you assume will be a completely awesome full-speed-ahead sequel. I think the problem, if you can call it that, is that you basically need the entire movie to establish what exactly Iron Man's deal is; even the origin-focused first Spider-Man movie gets to the crimefighting by about the two-thirds mark. Iron Man is a trickier character all around because he's not really a kids-from-burning-buildings type of superhero. In fact, the movie only has two or three action sequences -- which is fine because its character work is often more exciting.

Speaking of which: Robert Downey Jr. can sit comfortably with Hugh Jackman and Tobey Maguire as actors who translate Marvel heroes to the screen with their own personal, distinctive touch, giving equal definition to himself and the character. He's been on an incredible roll since he got sober (highlights: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang; Game 6; A Scanner Darkly; Zodiac; and now this) and Iron Man gives him a lot of room to play around. It also gives him Gwyneth Paltrow, lots of fun as his gal Friday, and at least two sassy robot sidekicks. It's a lot of fun despite a slight lack of urgency in the story. I'm psyched for the sequel already.

On Saturday Marisa and I caught up with Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay which I found disappointing in the same way that Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was surprisingly good. White Castle was basically a smarter, more idiosyncratic remake of Dude, Where's My Car? (complete with the same director) -- it's not a perfect comedy, but it has its own point of view. The sequel was written and directed by the original's screenwriters, and while they come up with a clever way to revisit and revise the earlier formula (Harold and Kumar, on their way to Amsterdam, are mistaken for terrorists, sent to Guantanamo Bay, and must make their way home), they don't find many inventive jokes or episodes to populate their new odyssey -- it feels oddly self-conscious and over-emphatic, like something fans of the first movie might make.

The first film is driven by a sense of intersecting subcultures (ethnic minorities, stoners, Jerseyites, post-college slackers); the racial material in Guantanamo Bay is far less clever, and the gross-out stuff seems far more prominent. White Castle had a lot of broad jokes (cheetah-riding?) but had more subtle, personal touches, too (like the Jewish buddy stoners across the hall, who reappear here to little effect). In the newer film, even some of the better jokes rely on pretty easy reversals or double-reversals -- a couple looks like hillbillies, but turn out to be kind of swank, but turn out also to be hillbillies -- and some clever callbacks to the first film still aren't as hilarious as the first time we saw the bag-of-pot fantasy sequence or the debauched Neil Patrick Harris (his scenes are still a highlight -- but that's more of a relative term this time).

Then we snuck into Deception which I reviewed later that night. It's not quite as bad as I had been led to believe -- nice cinematography! -- but it's still kind of a "huh?" moment for Hugh Jackman and especially Ewan McGregor.

After dinner, we went to a surprise birthday party for Tom (of the Andrew/Trinity contingent) at Subway Inn ("admire some of the worst amateur art known to man"). Mike expressed astonishment that not only had Marisa and I seen My Blue Heaven, we both love it. Proof. Cause you could melt all this stuff. I stuffed myself with cake last night.

Today Jen and Nick and Cristin and Michelle and Sara came over and we watched all three Indiana Jones movies in chronological order (this idea courtesy of Nick, and despite Jon messing with my head at the last minute by asking whether we'd hold to that by watching the first ten minutes of Last Crusade first). Hooray us! Everyone saw the better part of at least two movies and Jen and Nick stuck it out for all three. I stuffed myself with bagels, muffins, scones, and candy. I may regret this later.

Thoughts after watching all three: The first half-hour and last forty-five minutes of Temple of Doom are amazing. Kate Capshaw is still annoying as hell. Short-Round seemed less offensive this time and I can appreciate his relationship with Dr. Jones much moreso than the Capshaw character's. All three movies have a prominent section of exposition during the first forty minutes or so, and Temple of Doom's is by far the most boring. I think it's been the longest since I've seen Last Crusade all the way through -- maybe since I first saw it on HBO (I feel like in high school, we attempted to watch all three on multiple occasions and usually wound up watching most or all of Temple of Doom, which is a lot weirder than only watching Return of the Jedi, which happened semi-regularly). Raiders is still the best one: best girl, coolest MacGuffin, best chase (the trucks!). I had no recollection of the conceit that Dr. Jones is a beloved teacher at his (unnamed?) alma mater. It'll be good to see Karen Allen back for Crystal Skull. My friends are funny and love the Indiana Jones theme music at least as much as I do.

Now it's back to the work-week, and go time for finding out what my graduation deal is going to be.

So wait

Sat, 03 May 2008 05:00:53 GMT

Is like basically no one into seeing Speed Racer, specifically Speed Racer in IMAX?

That's the vibe I'm getting.

I guess it makes sense. That show did suck. But the movie looks like Mario Kart on acid. And in IMAX.

Oh well. Live and learn and see it anyway!

Prince Caspian is my designated "meh" for the special effects movies of the next bunch of months. And I'll still probably see that because at least it looks a little more kick-ass than the first one.

Stay positive

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:21:09 GMT

The graduation thing still isn't resolved. The chair of the library department, who as far as I can tell is a wonderful man, said he would write a letter to the registrar on my behalf. I asked him if he had any anecdotal evidence of my possible chances. He said that four, five weeks after the deadline is usually not a problem; eight weeks is a little dicier, "but we'll give it a shot." That "give it a shot" alone nearly made my day, because the first two people I talked to essentially gave me variations on "you're screwed" and "you're stupid." Which, granted, may be the case, but I have plenty of time to think about that myself.

Anyway, I probably won't know much until mid-next-week at the earliest. So for now I will concentrate on better things like:

--How happy 30 Rock makes me!

--Iron Man tonight!

--All of the Indiana Jones movies on Sunday!

--New Hold Steady record in July! Secondarily, the new Weezer album is the red album!

OK, that might not be $750 worth of positivity but it will last me a few days anyway.

Hold off on that Vitamin C song

Thu, 01 May 2008 15:05:43 GMT

So I found out this morning that, thanks to some paperwork I never filed, the chances of me being able to graduate this spring are approximately 5%. More likely I will have to marticulate over the summer and graduate on 9/1, which means I have to either:

(a.) find a one-credit course to take and withdraw from because it would be relatively cheap (the library dept. has few-to-none of these)
(b.) pay a nonrefundable CUNY-mandated $750 matriculation fee that my dean tells me is very, very rarely waived
(c.) actually take another course, the thought of which makes me feel like throwing up a little bit, besides which could only serve to screw up my vacation plans, screw up my GPA, or all of the above.

This day can only get better*.

*Not necessarily true.

How Gossip Girl is changing the way I read New York magazine

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:33:09 GMT

One of the dangers of keeping a blog is the tendency to spend a lot of time posting reactions to other blogs and/or actual articles. I've been trying to avoid that to some degree, hence keeping my "why Stuff White People Like isn't remotely funny or insightful" observations to the privacy of email and haranguing conversations. But as I read through the compellingly awful New York Magazine cover story on Gossip Girl, I decided I'd probably have to write something about it if only to attempt to keep comprehensive track of how little I liked it. The article has a six-point outline of why Gossip Girl matters, so it's only fair to provide a point-by-point explanation of why they are wrong.

"Because Gossip Girl is the greatest teen drama of all time."
Right off the bat, this illustrates the article's main problem; while writers Jessica Pressler and Chris Rovzar claim to have started out watching the show as a silly guilty pleasure, they're endeavoring to explain why it's so much more than that. So of course they begin without clarifying how serious they are when making this first point. Given their this-isn't-just-irony-(we-think) preamble, it's fair to take this claim at face value. As way of support, the writers then: (1.) name some other teen dramas; (2.) name some reality shows; and (3.) conclude that Gossip Girl is way better than The Hills, a non-teen non-drama, and therefore is the best teen drama of all time. Oh, it's also "modern" because (a.) the kids have camera-phones and blogs and (b.) the parents have problems, too -- major breakthroughs both, especially if you've never seen a TV show or movie about young people made in the past twenty years.

I guess that's not all there is to the argument; the writers do, after all, mention that the show's first thirteen episodes included "a pregnancy scare, a marriage proposal, an attempted rape, a lost virginity, a near-deadly accident, a divorce, a suicide attempt, multiple thefts, blackmail, a drug addiction, a threesome, at least two counts of breaking and entering, and an eating disorder" -- which marks a spirited revival of that age-old confusion between "best" and "most." You know, even if they're being a little bit ironic, it's a lousy argument. Hell, even if they're going by quantity over quality of drama, the 100+ episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation rack up all of the above times a million (except maybe the threesome -- or the "near-deadly," because Degrassi actually has the balls to kill its characters).

"Because offscreen, the drama continues."
Apparently the show is awesome because its young stars are tabloid-ready. This is akin to saying that a book is awesome because it can be ground up and fed to goats.

"Because Gossip Girl is changing the very model of a successful TV show."
Here is where they almost, kinda, sorta admit that Gossip Girl is not particularly highly rated or widely seen. Now, I normally would not be one to mind when a low-rated show is championed; for years, we've all had shows we love get the axe because not enough people are watching. But here's where I admit the personal grudge most of you know about: on The CW, Gossip Girl essentially replaced Veronica Mars, a smart and offbeat teen drama, and one of the many recent teen-targeted shows with better stories, writing, and acting than Gossip Girl. Veronica was a critics-and-cult favorite that had languished in the ratings during its three seasons, sometimes reaching highs of over three million (which would be considered decent for The CW) but often bottoming out around the 2.5-2.7 million range. These are similar to the Gossip Girl ratings so far -- if anything, Gossip Girl has a lower average, and presumably higher production costs, as Veronica was one of the cheapest shows on network TV at that time (they couldn't even afford to employ their entire ensemble in more than a handful of episodes per season).

Yet Gossip Girl has been declared a winner, by its network and by the press. It was the first show of the 2007-08 crop to be picked up for a full season despite doing worse than its timeslot predecessor. Everyone, including this article, points to the fact that such a low-rated show does extremely well in iTunes downloads, and that many others watch older episodes on the show's website. Of course, the current article doesn't attach solid numbers to these Internet viewings, and they in fact admit that the show is not necessarily particularly profitable. They also admit that The Office and Lost are also widely watched online, with the caveat that Gossip Girl seems to be watched primarily online, which makes it revolutionary.

The thing is, the ideas at work here -- that this points tothe multi-platform entertainment delivery of the future; that the parameters of what is considered a successful TV show are changing; that networks are more amenable to considering dedicated niche audiences rather than chasing universal appeal -- are good ones, and point to a lot of positive change in the TV industry. Even five or six years ago, the idea that a show like 30 Rock, averaging fewer than seven million viewers per episode, wouldn't even be on the bubble for its third-season pickup (which it received several weeks ago), would be crazy. Friday Night Lights also survived, and even the prematurely canceled shows of our time, like Arrested Development or Veronica Mars, now tend to get fifty or sixty episodes, instead of ten or twenty. Slowly but surely, it's become easier for a show to survive without blockbuster ratings.

But this has little to do with Gossip Girl itself. In fact, if anything, the show is at a weird middle ground: it's not a mainstream hit; it's not an internet cult hit in the sense that it's offbeat or original or has critical support; it's not a marginally well-rated show that gets a huge boost from internet exposure; it's not a poorly rated show that has become a cash cow thanks to its internet popularity. It gets mediocre-at-best ratings and augments them with some degree of online viewership that is, admittedly, out of proportion to its mediocre ratings.

But the online component is more a part of its marketing message then a marker of actual success; Gossip Girl is deemed "successful" because The CW has decided to term it that way -- to treat it like a success. The network supports this show in a way that they did not support Veronica Mars; they essentially decided before it had even premiered that Gossip Girl was their new hit, and so it was done. It's not at the forefront of the cultural shift. This is a case of a network marketing its own marketing, and then issuing press releases about how successful this marketing-marketing has been.

"Because of Blake and Leighton."
Here's about where the writers stop even really making an argument. The only "point" I'm seeing here is "this show has stars and we like them." The main reason they like them is because they're on the show, and that off the show they seem like they're sort of like their characters, except not. Tautologies inside of tautologies. Nothing about the stars of this show sounds compelling; what Pressler and Rovzar consider brilliant wielding of cultural archetypes are, in fact, executions of formula. I'm fine with formula if executed well; just don't try to tell me this is something unique or savvy (except, again, the marketing, which is strong. Honestly, I love those "OMFG" posters that promoted the show's return; they were a lot funnier and sexier than anything I saw on the first two episodes of the actual show).

"Because there may really be a Gossip Girl."
This is essentially the same reason as the "offscreen drama" point, except with more marketing! It's possible that series creator Josh Schwartz has fed actual gossip into the tabloids to help promote the show! That this is treated as innovative by the writers is odd, because they sure seem like they've heard of Us Weekly.

"Because, against all odds, it offers profound social commentary.
Be wary of anyone who describes Gossip Girl as "the New Yorkiest show since Sex and the City" (30 Rock is New Yorkier than either of them). Be further wary of 5,000-word praise articles where fewer than 400 words are dedicated to the "profound social commentary" explanation. The writers need a whole lot more to describe that why, after many pages of seeming to take the show kinda-sorta seriously, it's suddenly considered "social satire" that we can "laugh along with." The article bandies around these terms of knowingness -- the show also supposedly "mocks our superficial fantasies while satisfying them" -- without ever really describing the show's tone, probably because the reality of the show wouldn't fit their breathless praise any more than the reality of New York would fit the show. How, exactly, does Gossip Girl mock or satirize? By occasionally making a bitchy joke of its bitchy characters' bitchiness? Or just by being laughably vapid? Are we really supposed to take this as a comment on vapidity? Is that what The Hills is doing, too, then?

Gossip Girl presents "class warfare as blood sport" – really? Between which classes? The lower-upper class and the upper-upper class? Also, comparing something to "blood sport" is, by this point, as hackneyed and meaningless as, well, Gossip Girl.

In short, Gossip Girl isn't reinventing the teen soap, much less actual teen drama. Pressler and Rovzar have made the understandable but in this case embarrassing mistake of assuming that because they really, really, really like something, then it must have cultural importance. And so the cover of New York magazine goes to a show with approximately the same revolutionary power of Dawson's Creek.

And then they began to quarrel

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:58:27 GMT

Ostensibly Marisa and I headed up to Saratoga this week for a last look through stuff that was in the attic and/or basement of the house where I grew up, which was sold last month. So I now have my Frog & Toads and my hardcover Millions of Cats and all that. Also, a Dana Scully for my Fox Mulder (this sounds figurative but it is closer to literal, though I guess it's not really either).

Rummaging only took about an hour, though, so we schedule some more social and/or familial activities. On Friday we went by my mom's apartment for belated birthday cake-and-gift-giving, and on Saturday we took my dad out to an even-more-belated birthday dinner after checking out his new condo. I'm liking this new flexibility with birthdays. Next year I'm going to try to get not just each of my parents but maybe also my sister, Derrick, and Chloe the cat all celebrating on the same weekend. Just kidding. I would never celebrate with Chloe; she's a total bitch.

We also hung out with Rob & Sabrina, including the requisite trip to Friendly's, followed by a Saturday night showing of Baby Mama. It's good enough but not nearly as good as Mean Girls, which I liked when I first saw it but later realized, as I did with Bring It On, that it is not just a solid movie but a particularly rewatchable one -- but then, Tina didn't write Baby Mama, so expectations should be lowered. It does seem to spring from issues she's interested in -- even stuff she's touched up on in 30 Rock and on Weekend Update commentaries -- so it's surprising to me that she didn't take a more defined crack at the screenplay, rather than the bits of rewriting here and there that you have to assume went on. Another semi-surprise: Fey often cedes the best lines to Amy Poehler, playing the white-trash surrogate mother, often playing straight woman rather than her alternately sharper-tongued and more hapless Liz Lemon character on 30 Rock. But I never tire of Poehler playing characters who are white trash down to the bones and her chemistry with Fey is natural. Pretty much everyone else in the cast is good, too, with a nice sustained Steve Martin cameo.

The reason this movie isn't to the level of Mean Girls is similar to why Forgetting Sarah Marshall doesn't match Superbad or Knocked Up -- the director doesn't keep up. Michale McCullers and Nicholas Stoller (both writers making their directorial debuts) have trouble building a lot of funny scenes into a smooth, flowing movie; their blocking and transitions seem indifferent, as if the directors are just standing there gawking at their very funny, committed actors, rather than fully engaging with them. Baby Mama also doesn't have an Apatow-or-Fey-level screenplay as its foundation, though it is more grounded and even-handed than the other comedies McCullers had a hand in (a couple of Austin Powers sequels and Undercover Brother -- so unevenness is sort of a trademark). But fans of Fey and Poehler should enjoy it, as it's definitely enjoyable. Funny, too; just not a laugh-riot.

Speaking of comedy and family, today we drove back to Brooklyn and I jetted back out to meet up with my sister and her friend to catch ASSSSSCAT and UCB Theatre. We were going to be hardcore and wait in line for the free 9:30 show (because, less hardcore, the 7:30 show was already sold out) but we got on into the 7:30 on standby. We're going back again in a couple of weeks.

I'm ready for this summer-movie-reason business. Lots of comics movies and comedies plus one about robots. And including the Batman.

Kids with broken hearts, kids with broken bones

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:06:27 GMT

The mothereffing Hold Steady is playing Wesleyan's spring fling this year. Though I'm a good six years out of Wes, this still somehow seems inequitable. Spring fling performers while I was there included: Dead Prez, De La Soul, Biz Markie, and Bela Fleck (not even with the Flecktones). De La and Biz Markie were pretty fun but I wound up seeing them both before and/or since. And in general, the headliners seemed to be chosen based on the idea that if we didn't get 80% hip-hop, we would all be exposed as partners in racism (how was Bela Fleck, of all honkeys, the major exception to this rule? You got me). The Hold Steady is a degree of awesomeness more suited to those early years of Rob @ Binghamton where they got Liz Phair one year, and They Might Be Giants the next.

I'd totally be up for rallying the troops and crashing (it worked when TMBG played Conn College's fling in '99!) (also, alumni rights!!), but it's on a Wednesday.

In other news, I saw the upcoming Son of Rambow and reviewed it. It was cute.

In other other news, is it weird that I kind of want to buy this despite knowing very, very little about Sabbath apart from whatever Andrew played in our room freshman year? Maybe I should just buy it for Andrew for his birthday.

She disappears!

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:43:54 GMT

So after some rescheduling and reshuffling, Allison and I were able to get out to the She & Him show at Webster Hall tonight. It seems like the illness thing wasn't complete BS -- Zooey had lost her voice and didn't talk at all between songs. Instead she held up signs that said things like "thank you!" and "Hi" and "You all look great, you really do." So yes, she was pretty much as cute you as imagine. The show was pretty good -- short (under an hour with the encore) but sweet. She seemed a little nervous at the beginning, but you could see enjoyment in her face as she got into it, which was fun to watch. They also beefed up some of the songs, adding little M. Ward solos and stuff to tracks that sometimes recede too quickly on the record. It would've been nice to see Zooey at 100% but it made a good weeknight concert: not too much standing, home by 11.

Here's sort of the setlist (order is probably off). I'm just assuming the longer songs where M. Ward would often sing too were covers.

Black Hole
Change is Hard
I Was Made for You
[cover I didn't know]
You Really Got a Hold On Me
Take It Back
Got Me
This is Not a Test
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
I Thought I Saw Your Face Today
[cover I didn't know]
Sweet Darlin'
---
Magic Trick
[cover I didn't know]

"Magic Trick" is a very good M. Ward song from Post-War so that was cool. No "Sentimental Heart" or Beatles cover, though. Kind of a shame. I would pay to see the two of them do an entire set of Beatles covers.

Ooh, floor-pie!

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:37:30 GMT

Allison and I had tickets to see She & Him tonight at the Hiro Ballroom, but the show was postponed at the last minute "due to illness" (and not the good, Beastie Boys kind of illness). So instead of watching an actor do singing, Allison suggested that we go watch some singers do acting. Mainly Norah Jones, but it turns out that woman with the bangs was Cat Power. My Blueberry Nights is a strange film, made stranger -- I assume -- by being the only Wong Kar-Wai movie I've seen, which as I understand it is something like being introduced to the Coen Brothers via Intolerable Cruelty, or to Spike Lee via She Hate Me, only more so: he usually makes movies in Hong Kong, but this one stars Americans, in America, in English. The result is off-kilter and not always in a good way. Norah Jones wanders through a few different vignettes, all shot in what I guess is the filmmaker's trademark mix of frame-filling neon and streaky slow-motion. Hmm, I just made this movie sound like Batman Forever, but if nothing else it's pretty. It's also disarmingly corny at times, and not really what you'd call a "good" movie in many ways (not least of which includes the only bad Rachel Weisz performance I've ever seen), but I found its uneventful, cloud-headed driftiness oddly interesting. I'm left wondering if I'm being more charitable not having seen his other, presumably far better movies that make this one more of a letdown, or if these qualities just seem more poetic in a more quasi-exotic context. I don't recommend it but I'm not sorry I saw it.

I came home and found out that tonight's She & Him show is just being combined with tomorrow's via a venue change, which I have to consider may have been part of the plan the whole time (due to increased capacity, additional tickets are now on sale for tomorrow's show, now at Webster Hall). Blurg. I'm gonna go but I'm a little peeved to sacrifice my previously planned night of doing very, very little.

I also came home to an email from Andrew alerting me to the existence of this. MXP indeed.

There were only a couple of flipper-babies.

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:06:37 GMT

On Friday, I broke from Apatow Movie tradition and saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall outside of Kips Bay (where I saw Knocked Up, Superbad twice, and Walk Hard, and which Marisa has hailed as "convenient to no one"). Instead, Marisa, Sara B, Rayme, Dave, and I saw it in Chelsea. I didn't laugh as hard or as often as I did during any of those three movies, but that's not really fair. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is consistently funny, and I especially appreciate the generosity towards its characters -- neither ex-girlfriend Sarah Marshall nor her new boyfriend are painted as villains, and Jason Segel (who also wrote the screenplay) isn't shy about showing his own character's flaws. If anything, I could've gone for more of the Freaks and Geeks/Undeclared-style creepiness that initially made me nervous about whether Segel makes sense as a film lead. But it's probably better that he erred on the side of likable.

I hate to say so because director Nicholas Stoller is an Undeclared guy and I have undying love for everyone associated with that show, but Sarah Marshall, while highly enjoyable, made me appreciate just how well-directed Superbad is. While that move goes from scene to scene with smooth momentum, about half of the scenes in Forgetting Sarah Marshall start with someone basically going "oh, hey, it's you!" -- maybe that's the writing, too, but I think a more skilled or experienced director could've shaped these miscellaneous interim comedy sketches into something more fluid, and less choppy. Sometimes even the framing is distractingly blocky and awkward-looking. Still, the movie is a lot of fun and the funniest straight-up comedy of the year so far.

Saturday was another in a series of the nicest days of the year so Marisa and I went to the new-ish East River State Park to eat bagels and read magazines. Then it was on to Manhattan for the Kids in the Hall show at Nokia Theater. Our seats were better than I thought -- I knew we were relatively close but all the way to the side, and we were, but "all the way" was not as far as I thought/feared, and "relatively close" turned out to be like fourth row. That was a nice surprise. I also didn't realize when we bought the tickets and was happy to find out a week or so beforehand that it's not really a reunion tour as they've done in years past -- they're performing the first substantial new material they've written together since Brain Candy, in hopes of eventually doing another TV show and/or movie. So what we saw was essentially a new 90-minute episode of The Kids in the Hall. I can't claim to have seen every episode of the show, but this was still an excellent development. There were some all-new bits including car-fucking, awful babies, time-travel, and alcholism, and a bunch of new sketches featuring old characters like Gavin, the Kathys, and the head-crusher, among others. At the end, the head-crusher came out with a camcorder and crushed the heads of selected audience members, before calling out the other Kids to insult and head-crush them, one by one.

Then we got ice cream for the second time in two days which is how you can tell it's nice out now.

Today Marisa abandoned me for a baby shower so I went off on my own to see The Life Before Her Eyes. This is the indie movie where Evan Rachel Wood and Uma Thurman play the same character at different ages. I think I'm going to write up a full review for the L Magazine's blog, but I will say here that the section with Evan Rachel Wood (and her best friend, wonderfully played by Eva Amurri) is quite good -- a convincing and affecting little dual-character study. Evan Rachel Wood often -- near-exclusively, in fact -- plays these rebellious wild-child parts, but this one is well-realized with the Amurri performance bringing out less cliched elements than usual. Uma Thurman's section of the movie is not nearly so successful, or even all that well-integrated, for reasons that actually make sense by the end of the movie, but don't really excuse their during-movie clumsiness. You're left with an interesting and halfway decent movie that doesn't quite hold together the way it should.

Then I snuck into Street Kings which is, as the ads say, "directed by the writer of Training Day." Yeah, that's about right. I actually liked David Ayer's first movie as a director, Harsh Times, mostly for its crazy-ass Christian Bale performance. I can't give the same recommendation for this movie's crazy-ass Forest Whitaker (supporting) performance, nor its against-type leading performance by Keanu Reeves. The Human Torch is pretty good in it, though. Street Kings isn't as over-the-top as I had been lead to believe; it's ridiculous, but in a standard-issue corrupt-cops sort of way. Boy do corrupt-cop movies have to be something special in order to avoid becoming this movie or We Own the Night or The Corruptor or whatever else. (Good luck, Pride & Glory.)

Now another week is starting, but I am on spring break from school. WOOO SPRING BREAK! Of course, in a few weeks, I will be on FOREVER BREAK from school (at least library school) which sounds a lot more fun.

Annual springtime rock + roll progress report 2008!

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:05:42 GMT

Several weeks in the making, here are the new records I've been listening to and how acceptable they are.

The Raconteurs
Last Album: Broken Boy Soldiers, Jack White's first major non-White Stripes album, back in 2006; better than many albums, not as good as a White Stripes album.
This Album: Consolers of the Lonely feels more like a White Stripes record in that it is eclectic and often energetic, but maintains (and expands) its own distinct sound with a hell of a lot of sixties and seventies touchstones. I think "Rich Kid's Blues" is an old-timey cover but its harmonies sound eerily akin to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Strengths: Jump-started by the Vulture's early review of Consolers, Marisa and I were talking about how well Jack White does the side-project thing. The Vulture was saying that they weren't buying the Raconteurs hype from last time out, because this project just keeps Jack from making White Stripes albums. But truthfully, apart from the minor slowdown in album-making that always happens when a band becomes successful, the White Stripes haven't experienced many hold-ups. They've released an album every two years since White Blood Cells and I don't know any other big bands who have managed to maintain that pace for four straight records (granted, their first few albums came out annually, but most bands go from two-year gaps to three-to-four when they hit it big). White is actually a great example of artist who can go the side-project route (though he insists the Raconteurs are not a side project; they're just another band he's in) without compromising the awesomeness of his original thing. Compare/contrast (as we did) with Damon Albarn, who spends years fucking around with half-assed side projects in lieu of making Blur records. When he does channel that energy into his actual band, you get a terrific record like Think Tank, and if he can make Think Tank as part of Blur, what makes him think that he can't just take Blur in different directions, rather than setting it aside while he noodles around with less interesting supergroups? Granted, Gorillaz is something that he legitimately could not do within Blur, but is there any earthly reason for a non-touring and mostly fictional band to take up as much of Damon's time as Gorillaz seems to? Gorillaz releases B-sides albums more often than Blur releases singles these days. Anyway, I digress. The point is, the Racontuers are actually a valuable use of Jack's time. That's a major strength. There are also some awesome songs like "Salute Your Solution" and the title track, among others.
Weaknesses: At nearly an hour, it's a bit too long. And Jack's lyrics and ideas are still a lot more original and interesting when he's following his White Stripes muse; I won't argue with that. I'm not really sold on these other guys providing much beyond more vocals and some decent instrument-playing.
Development: I liked Broken Boy Soldiers well enough but Consolers is a true stop-gap solution to my insatiable hunger for White Stripes material.
Grade: B+

The Raveonettes
Last Album: Pretty in Black, their third and the only other one I have (though Marisa has most of their other stuff), which had me convinced, against all descriptions and common sense, that I did not like the Raveonettes.
This Album: The rap on Lust Lust Lust is that is a "return to form" following the more polished sound on Pretty in Black. All I remember about Pretty in Black was that it was dead boring, which surprised me only on the basis of "The Great Love Sound," which Marisa put on a tape for me a few years ago (long enough so that we were still making tapes). So I can't speak much to sonic changes on that record. But it is better -- noisier, more hypnotic -- albeit still monotonous.
Strengths: This is one of those albums where your "favorite" songs tend to be the first few, not necessarily because they're better, but because you're less sick of the album at that point. That said, "Aly, Walk with Me" would be a highlight even if it wasn't track one. "You Want the Candy" is a good late-album song.
Weaknesses: Like I said, the Raveonettes aren't a dynamic bunch. Several songs use the fake-stop trick and they always manage to sound bored doing it.
Development: A big step from Pretty in Black, but nothing that makes me excited for their long-term career. I think they're always going to be a "buy if it's really cheap and enjoy a couple of excellent songs" band for me.
Grade: B-

R.E.M.
Last Album: Around the Sun, which is one of those "maybe I don't like this band as much as I thought" albums, especially on the heels of Reveal, which I also wanted to like but didn't. Both of them are dull, sleepy, old-mannish records with a couple of strong songs. But I have to say, I love their first quasi-boring album, Up. That one is awesome. But I was relieved to find out later (because rock critics are usually too timid to say this stuff up front) that Around the Sun is in fact considered their career nadir. So it wasn't just me.
This Album: Some of the reviews of Accelerate read like press kit quotes: lackluster last album, back and ready to rock, reinvigorated, etc. This is indeed the fastest and most concise R.E.M. album in years and/or ever. Though the "return to rock" thing is a bit of a cliche, I'm impressed that Accelerate doesn't really sound like R.E.M.'s other harder albums: New Adventures in Hi-Fi (my favorite of theirs) is an epic that lasts about twice as long as this one, and while the new songs do recall that album's "Wake-Up Bomb" in particular, Hi-Fi covers a lot more ground with more ballads and reflection. The half-great Monster is less driving and less polished than Accelerate; little on the latter sounds like "Crush with Eyeliner" or "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" So stylistically, Accelerate does stand on its own to some degree, which I admire. It's an easy record to like but short of the transcendence that results in love.
Strengths: "Supernatural Superserious" is as strong an archetypal up-tempo R.E.M. song as "Leaving New York" is an archetypal pretty R.E.M. song, which is to say: very. I also really like "Mr. Richards," which sounds like it could fit in on Up, and the Nirvana-ish "Horse to Water." There are a few duff tracks but it all goes by so quickly that they don't matter as much as they did in the past.
Weaknesses: I'm not a big fan of "Man-Sized Wreath" with its over-repeated half-refrain of "just don't care." None of these songs will be busting into my personal R.E.M. top ten anytime soon.
Development: Even making a good-not-great album, R.E.M. does sound engaging again. I was about to call for a cooling of the "best record in years!" hyperbole, but then I realized Up did actually come out about a decade ago, so fair enough: best record in years. But in fairness to the band's output, it would've been their worst album of the nineties if it had come out then.
Grade: B

The Long Blondes
Last Album: Their debut, Someone to Drive You Home, one of the better Brit-rocking albums I've heard since Oasis fell off, Blur went on hiatus, and Pulp dissolved.
This Album: There are moments on Couples that sound nothing like Someone, like how the album opens with a five-and-a-half-minute synth-driven song ("Century"), and then there's some rough-anthem chanting that sounds a lot like Someone ("Here Comes the Serious Bit"). Sometimes the approaches are combined, as when the mostly non-experimental "I'm Going to Hell" concludes the album with a long, gorgeous accumulation of noise.
Strengths: Drive uses up a good chunk of its inspiration about two-thirds of the way through, while Couples has just ten songs -- not enough to overstay its welcome. I like some of the weirder touches. "Here Comes the Serious Bit" is as good as its title.
Weaknesses: Pitchfork criticizes some of the songs for being built on "overly mechanical loops" and I know exactly what they're talking about. The band sounds particularly disinterested on "Guilt," the stomping backbeat of which sounds like a soulless version of Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out." Nothing here matches the loose greatness of their best song so far, "Once and Never Again" from Someone.
Development: The Long Blondes are clearly playing around with new musical while resisting a full-scale reinvention, and in a way they're moving forward like a flip side of the Raveonettes: I'm sold on their next album even though they haven't made a great one yet.
Grade: B

The Breeders
Last Album: It doesn't seem like this kind of album, but Title TK was the soundtrack to my summer when it came out in 2002. I bought it on a whim and wound up listening to it constantly, fascinated by its stumbling, strung-out, low-key weirdness, which meshed well with some standard-issue post-college ennui. This record is fascinating because it sounds like a band struggling to keep it together for ten or eleven tracks, until they finally work up the resolve to play one really awesome two-minute song ("Huffer"), at which point the album ends. But the stuff they play in the long run-up has its own unnerving brilliance. In short, I love Title TK beyond reason and consider it their finest achievement.
This Album: Mountain Battles functions, in a lot of ways, as a sequel to Title TK; it has the same mix of a couple of fast songs, a couple of creepy, plaintive slow songs, and more than a couple of really weird songs.
Strengths: "We're Gonna Rise" feels like the calm before a storm that never quite comes (in a really good way). "Walk It Off" has a classic Pixies bassline. One song is in Spanish. Another is in German. "It's the Love" is as peppy as "Here No More" is pretty.
Weaknesses: Some of the songs, admittedly, sound like they took longer to play than they did to write (and this is on an album where no song exceeds four minutes). I also don't love this one as much as I love Title TK. This may in fact be a personal weakness of my own, not the album's.
Development: After the haze of Pod and the poppier Last Splash, Kim and Kelley Deal seem to have settled on a very particular, peculiar style of semi-at-best-accessibility.
Grade: B+/A-

the new class!

The Felice Brothers
Genesis: Derrick called me up, and was like, hey, I like this band the Felice Brothers, they're from upstate NY and they're playing NYC in April, do you want to go? I said sure and bought the album, which came out a few months ago on Conor Oberst's Team Love label.
Debut Album: The self-titled record sounds like a lot of old-timey folk rock, most conspicuously Bob Dylan and, I'm told, the Band (I don't know much of the Band beyond "The Weight," but so far that seems like a fair comparison).
Strengths: Have I told you yet about "Frankie's Gun!"? That song is pretty great. I was afraid it would ruin the rest of the album for me, and while it is the best song, there's a lot to like here, including the bustling "Love Me Tenderly" and the lovely "Ruby Mae."
Weaknesses: Lordy does this record drag on too long. At ten or eleven tracks, it could be one of the best of the year. At fifteen, it feels like the band didn't know when to quit. Or what to pick: judging from their live show, they had some kickass songs that they held from their U.S. debut. Also, I like the voices of all three brothers in the band, so I wish Ian's Dylan-aping wasn't quite so dominant.
Prospects for Future: I don't know if I'll ever love them as much as Derrick does, but I'm curious about their next move.
Grade: B

She & Him
Genesis: Zooey Deschanel (the actress) had stockpiled some songs; M. Ward nudged her to make an album by producing, playing, and occasionally singing with her.
Debut Album: Volume One is a simple collection of love songs. I thought the sound would be torchy, a la Deschanel's singing in Elf, but there's a surprising amount of sixties-girl-group in there; the album (ten originals, three covers) sounds sort of like Neko Case crossed with the Pipettes. So obviously I love it; it's the most purely enjoyable record I've heard all year.
Strengths: "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" = 2008's most adorable song. "Sweet Darlin," co-written by Jason Schwartzman, is particularly boppy, and I love the way the mild chorus studio effects kick in towards the end of "Sentimental Heart."
Weaknesses: Some of the songs feel a little slight or unfinished, like demos.
Prospects for Future: I'm excited for Volume Two.
Grade: A-

So that's it for new spring music. Nothing disastrous, nothing revelatory. Summer music preview: um, the Hold Steady and Weezer? Anything else? The Cure?

Wednesday goods and bads

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:51:37 GMT

Good news, everyone!

The Hold Steady is playing a (probably free?) show at McCarren Park Pool on Sunday, June 29th!!

Rumors are flying that The Dark Knight is flirting with a three-hour running time!!

Bad news, everyone!

I saw 88 Minutes and it sucks hard!! Props to Alison for sitting through that one with me (though it is sometimes hilarious).

He shot me down

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:36:15 GMT

I tried to make a small dent in the growing queue of second-tier movies I kinda want to see on Friday; Rayme and Marisa and I first went to see The Ruins, which was not screened for critics. I can't really figure out why, except habit: it's a horror movie, but it's a pretty good one. The characters are believable -- a little stupid, but believably stupid -- and it's a lot creepier than 85% of the horror movies I see. It falters a little by way of not having much of a point, and being more uncomfortable than suspenseful, but I mostly liked it. Not as much as The Mist, which gets better the more I think about it, but a cut above the usual horror fray.

I was paranoid that, since we were at a Times Square theater, Smart People would be sold out and sneaking in would be a problem, so I made us buy tickets, which turned out to be a bad move on two counts: one, it was not sold out -- no one checked/ripped our tickets -- and the movie isn't very good although the performances are fun. I'm a Thomas Haden Church fan from way back (yeah Ned & Stacy!).

On Saturday, Derrick arrived in town for the Felice Brothers show, commencing 24 hours of solid fun. He and Marisa and I hit up Patsy's for dinner and ate a lot of pizza. Like, like a lot of pizza. Marisa headed home with our tiny bit of leftovers, and Derrick and I mosied down to the Bowery Ballroom, making a slight detour for dessert at Ferrara, where we went a couple of visits ago back in spring '06 (how bromantic). Then some water and on to the show.

I can't really put together a setlist because about half the songs were from a U.K.-released album that I don't have (but which Derrick has promised to copy and send to me), but they played a lot of good songs from their official debut, including "Frankie's Gun!" In fact, you all should go and download "Frankie's Gun!" here. It will kind of sort of ruin the band for you because it's probably their best song, but it's so good that I don't care. The other song they have at the website, "Wonderful Life," is good too. Once you love "Frankie's Gun!" I can tell you the other songs to check out in a futile but enjoyable effort to replicate that love.

It also helps to see them live, I think, as Derrick told me beforehand (he saw them open for Bright Eyes last year). Their live show is a bit more raucous than the album stuff. They do this cool thing where instead of the normal drummer-in-the-back, singer-in-the-front, bass-and-guitar-on-sides set-up, the five main band members all line up in the front, jostling together. By the end of the encore, two of the brothers were shirtless, several dozen people had been invited onto the stage, water was splashing into the ground, people were throwing stuff, and the drummer pushed his kit into the audience. Before that, they held it together pretty well, even though they didn't play "Love Me Tenderly." Then Derrick and I walked back up to the L train (all told, I walked about ten miles this weekend), went back to Brooklyn, and watched the surprisingly decent Ashton Kutcher SNL.

When we dropped by Sound Fix this morning before brunch (well, more like dunch), I foud a copy of Couples, the new Long Blondes album, in the used bin. Release schedules had long listed the album coming out this past Tuesday, the day after its U.K. release. But I didn't see it anywhere, and when I saw a May 6th date on a few retailer websites, I wondered if the April release was just a faulty assumption based on the U.K. date. But there it was in Sound Fix, probably some critic's promo copy, so I got my grimy hands on it.

It's still unclear as to when this album is coming out in the U.S.: Amazon still maintains that it came out on 4/8 but says it typically ships within three to six weeks. Barnes & Noble and the Virgin Megastore websites say May 6th. Somewhere else, I forget, said May 20th. This is a product of a variety of several related factors. One is that British bands still don't really give a toss about positioning themselves in America. The first Long Blondes album took about six months to get here, and now that they're somewhat established here, they still aren't going to bother putting out the sophomore record until a few days before their quick U.S. tour begins. Good show. Another obstacle: if you like a band on Rough Trade, good luck finding out how to buy it in the U.S., even if Rough Trade is the U.S. distributor. Last spring, when that Long Blondes record was coming out, I tried to work out a way to buy that and The National's Boxer (also on a subsidiary or something of Rough Trade, I think) from their label online, and Rough Trade didn't make this easy at all. Maybe I haven't researched enough, but Rough Trade seems to be a U.K. store first, and an international record label a distant second.

Finally, there's a general stupidity in the supposedly crippled record industry maintaining this staggered release schedule, where only the biggest releases come out in many countries at once. Obviously some records don't have distribution deals everywhere at once, but what is the excuse for a label waiting a month or more to release something that's already out across the pond? This is an invitation to file-share. I still like getting the actual hard-copy CDs of bands I really like, so I didn't just up and download Couples... but I did buy a used copy, which has the same zero financial upside for the label/band/whoever gets the money. This was an album I was all ready to pay twelve or thirteen bucks for on Tuesday when I was buying the Breeders CD, just out of convenience. In conclusion, the record industry is retarded.

Anyway, I got the album anyway; as Derrick said, everything's coming up Jesse. I also threw in the only remaining Mountain Goats album I didn't have. So that's done with.

After burgers, we hit up Forbidden Planet and though I partook of their 15%-off-everything sale, I was forced to realize that 15% off of most stuff in a comic book shop is not that great a deal. Then I put D-rock on a bus back to Boston. Hopefully he'll be back in June for the Breeders.

Peter Rabbit is this stupid book about this stupid rabbit

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:09:41 GMT

So I thought I'd start posting about books every once in awhile, probably more or less quarterly because it's the only way to build up a halfway interesting list. So here's what I've read this year so far:

Schultz and Peanuts by David Michaelis
Anne saw me reading this during lunch at work and asked me how it was and I realized I have no real way of evaluating a biography because I read so few of them. Schultz and Peanuts is certainly entertaining both in detailing Schultz's personal trials and triumphs, and in drawing lines between his life and his art (though, as Bill Watterson complained in his review, the comic strip reproductions are far too tiny). So it's an interesting six-hundred-page read, even as it trails off a little along the eighties-nineties portion of life -- I would've liked knowing more about what was going on with Schultz during those years when I was actually reading Peanuts in the daily paper. That's mainly what this book made me hungry to do: revisit all of those Peanuts strips.

I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
I do not often laugh out loud while reading a novel, but Larry Doyle's first book made me laugh a lot. The book takes place over twenty-four hours, Dazed and Confused/Superbad style, after a nerd blurts out his love for the head cheerleader during his valedictorian speech. Because it's about teenagers, Beth Cooper has turned up on some YA lists, but it's more like Dave Barry's fiction -- a comic novel with endearing characters. Doyle was a Simpsons writer, so there's his pedigree, but his screenplay credits on some truly lousy movies (Fantastic Four 2, My Super Ex-Girlfriend) did not prepare me for his way with momentum-and-punchline-packed prose. Maybe Doyle's screenplay version will restore some lustre to his movie career, oh wait it's being directed by Chris Columbus, so scratch that. (Also, Allison, I perused the cast list and I'm officially at a loss for whatever it was that both/either of us vaguely remembered being attractive about the movie apart from my love of the book.)

Slam by Nick Hornby
Between the unexpected-pregnancy YA book(s?) I read last year for class and the recent preggars comedies (Juno, Knocked Up, Waitress), it's hard to tell if Nick Hornby's novel is superzeitgeisty or verging on secondhand (though I actually had no idea it had a pregnancy component until I got a YA-trained sinking feeling during the first couple of chapters). Hornby's voice is more adaptable to a teen boy than some of his protagonists in How to Be Good and A Long Way Down, and like all of his books, Slam is brisk and entertaining. It manages to retread some ground, though, as it's essentially a clever flip on About a Boy -- still maybe my favorite of his books, though that may be due to my extra-good feelings about High Fidelity as a movie.

The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank
Speaking of Nick Hornby, I read the anthology of short stories he edited, Speaking with the Angel, a good long while ago. One that particularly caught my fancy was Melissa Bank's story "The Wonder Spot." A few years later, she came out with a novel by the same name, and it turns out that the story I liked so much is the final chapter of said novel -- practically an epilogue. That's to say that the way I came at this chick-lit-sounding book was semi-unconventional, as was Bank's way of excerpting a novel in short-story form (or of spinning a short story into a novel, who knows). Fitting, because Bank's story is too tenative, too episodic, too messy for the stereotypical rom-com slickness of the genre it approaches from a right angle. That's good all around; after a slightly rocky start (the prose seems overly simplistic for a few chapters, but I think that's meant to reflect the narrator's young age, because it feels more sophisticated later), I really liked this book. I guess I should read The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (OK, just bought it on half.com).

Love is a Mixtape by Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield writes an all-around irritating "pop culture" column (among other things) for Rolling Stone and he was blurbed by Chuck Klosterman, so imagine my surprise that this book is quite good. Actually, Sheffield reversed my expectations: his writing is often lovely (though sometimes he describes music with the weird combination of overwrought and supposed cleverness -- cloverwroughtness? -- that he reaches for in that damned column), and his taste in music is kind of lousy! Well, I shouldn't say that because he loves lots of music and he even lists the Hold Steady as his "favorite bar band" (or something to that effect) at the end of the book. But he's much less of an indie nerd than I would've expected from the mixtape theme. Anyway, the book is a memoir about Sheffield's wife, who died suddenly in the late nineties, and the music they both loved. It's vivid and touching, even as you shake your head at some his tracklists. Also, I'm quite sure that Sheffield lives in Greenpoint now (or did when he wrote this).

The Insanity Denfense by Woody Allen
I haven't actually read all of this compilation (which collects three of Allen's four prose-humor books) straight through, but I've been coming back to it sporadically when I need a laugh. I've read a bunch of these before, and while I know "The Whore of Mensa" and "The Kugelmass Episode" tend to get the most mentions, "Viva Vargas!" remains my favorite.

If you're sick of all this reading crap and would rather that I go back to telling you over and over to see certain movies: this week I make my case for a couple of recent movies as well as actually review There Will be Blood.

No fucking way!

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:14:46 GMT

Created by OnePlusYou

Now we are practical men of the world

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:34:26 GMT

It was bound to go lame at some point: all spring, concert after concert fell into my lap, from Jon having an extra National ticket to two awesome bands opening for R.E.M. downstairs from my job to the Long Blondes playing down the street, and on and on. But I must say, this Radiohead tour is kind of crap. They're not setting foot inside NYC proper, with the area represented by the All Points West Festival. Considering it's from the Coachella people and headlined by Radiohead on two out of three nights, this festival seems shockingly not worth it. The better night is Friday, with the New Pornographers and... Mates of State? Some good songs, but they probably wouldn't crack my top 100. I saw Grizzly Bear as an opening band and they were not my thing. I have no idea if Underworld or the Go! Team are actually cool live -- probably at least one of them are, but still, not exactly a dream team for me. And Saturday and Sunday are only more wan (Sunday in particular -- headlined by Jack Johnson -- seems hilariously misconceived, because the people who'd rather see Jack Johnson than either Radiohead night are probably not going to be up for an all-day festival on a Sunday night anyway, eh? Especially since Jack Johnson is headlining every single festival on the east coast this summer -- I'm pretty sure he'll play your Fourth of July party if you ask). So that's not an attractive option.

I was thinking maybe Philly or Boston, then, because I do miss the days of road-tripping for a concert. In fact, the last time(s) I saw Radiohead, I lived in Saratoga, Rob and I rented a car and hit Boston and Jersey. Good times.

But there aren't really Philly or Boston shows. Philadelphia is represented by frequent "most dangerous city in America" contender Camden, NJ. So for those keeping score at home, that's New Jersey Radiohead shows this summer: 3; all other U.S. east coast Radiohead shows this summer: 2. Sealing the deal's unattractiveness: it's on a weeknight.

We turn then to Boston, but not Boston, Mansfield, where they're playing the Tweeter Center. Also on a weeknight. This would've been perfect two weeks earlier, when Marisa and I will probably be touring (bumming around) New England ourselves for a week (current choices for this trip: Yes or Crosby, Stills & Nash).

So all of this plus seated venues plus ticket prices equals probably no Radiohead this summer. And yet. What I really need, I think, is someone else to say "fuck it, man, we are GOING to All Points West/Camden/Tweeter/Cleveland! Do you want to come? It's gonna be awesome!" and maybe also "plus I have an armored car and flak jackets" if we're talking about Camden.

Crazy make-em-ups

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:54:09 GMT

Friday was Leatherheads: the stuff they've been saying about this movie is not entirely inaccurate. It's not as screwy (which is to say Coen Brothers-y) as I would've liked, or expected from a Coens disciple like Clooney, who directed and rewrote. The pacing is a little slack, and the rivalry between John Krasinski and George Clooney is poorly developed (I don't know if reviews were harping on that last one, but that was one of my biggest problems). It doesn't really meet Clooney's lofty goal of The Philadelphia Story with football. But it's nice to see Clooney himself back in lighter Intolerable Cruelty mode (with a dash of Out of Sight smooth-loser charisma), and his back-and-forth with Renee Zellweger has a nice rhythm and tartness. As far as semi-retro-screwball comedy-romance evoking a byone era goes, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day kinda has it over Clooney's movie. But Leatherheads is still a lot of fun, even if Clooney's accomplished directorial career has so far peaked with his first film.

Saturday was parties: Marisa's uncle's birthday in the afternoon in Staten, Allison's birthday in the night in Manhattan, and SNL party at Tom's in the later-night in other Manhattan (the kind you have to take a cab to get home from, at least at 1:30AM). I enjoyed watching the SNL writers unload five years' worth of "weird guy" sketches on Christopher Walken.

Today was productive: homework, laundry, cooking pork chops for dinner, writing my There Will Be Blood DVD review, and still having time to go out for brunch. Plus much earlier today, I called the cops on the neighbors! Honestly, if you're going to blast music at 3AM, convince me that you're having a party and not just two-or-fewer dicks pretending to DJ. I was unconvinced. I'm on a roll; maybe I'll finally even read that most recent issue of Powers.

With all of this socializing and productivity, I've fallen way behind on my second-tier movies, and a whole new batch of them come out on Friday. I don't even know where to start in terms of figuring out what doesn't make the cut this spring. Here's what's doing:

--I'm caught up on everything first-tier, and the only really big deals between now and the summer movie season are broad comedies: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Baby Mama, Harold & Kumar 2 -- I'll make time for all of that. But there are some now-playing comedies that I suspect (a.) aren't all that good and (b.) might be better than many other comedies I've seen theatrically, so I'm not sure where that leaves Drillbit Taylor or The Grand, except about to leave theaters anyway.

--Then there's a mess of second-tier indies like Flawless (which is not the same as Priceless, which I don't particularly want to see), Chapter 27, and Sex and Death 101 that are similarly not long for this world. I'm sure I won't see them all. Sex and Death 101, written and directed by the guy who wrote Heathers and Batman Returns and Hudson Hawk (I know, right?) (Hudson Hawk is actually kind of good), seems like most up my alley: a weird comedy that probably no one is going to see. But for some reason Flawless is the one that I'd most want to watch if you made me choose one right now. I think I'd really have to be in the mood for Chapter 27, as much as I do try to see movies people single out as unpleasant.

--Then there are some more indies elevated slightly by more reputable casts: Married Life with Rachel McAdams and Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper, which has been out for awhile -- you'd think if I really cared about seeing it, I'd have seen it by now -- and Smart People (opening Friday) with Dennis Quaid and Thomas Haden Church and Ellen Page and Sarah Jessica Parker, which has an OK trailer that I've seen way too many times, but I find oddly appealing anyway.

--Then there's the other direction, artier stuff like My Blueberry Nights and Love Songs. I'm curious about the former despite never having seen other Wong Kar Wai movies that are supposed to be way better. Maybe I should skip Blueberry and save his filmography from a DVD festival when I'm old, like how I'm saving Battlestar Galactica and The Wire. I'm curious about Love Songs because it's a modern musical (though it's in French; I don't know if the singing would have the same effect only being able to read the lyrics), and because Mark from the L Mag told me it's probably the best from my to-see list.

--Marisa and Rayme and I have a pact to see The Ruins; can we also work in Prom Night (opening Friday), for a horror double-feature? (Let's see if the timing works.) Will I be able to see either unscreened horror movie before someone else reviews them for one of my outlets? (Probably not.)

--Shine a Light is its own category: I have a lot more history with U2 than with the Rolling Stones, and I didn't see the U2 concert movie, even in IMAX. But Scorsese directed Shine a Light with an army of amazing cinematographers, so that probably trumps the U2 thing. But I only want to go in IMAX which increases cost and decreaes flexibility. Actually, Street Kings (out Friday) probably belongs in the "misc" pile, too. Usually I can skip movies about L.A. cops, but I'm curious to see Keanu in one of these parts, and I actually half-liked this guy's previous movie, Harsh Times.

So that's thirteen movies I kind of want to see, with the time to see probably three or four. Looks like I'm going to have to rule out the (illogical) theatrical release of Zombie Strippers entirely.

With their tanks and their boobs

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:20:09 GMT

(Totally road-tested that subject line on Sara B.)

You may recall last week I mentioned going to see this movie, at a press screening no less. Well, Andrew and I showed up at the Sony screening room tonight at a quarter to eight, and there wasn't anyone at reception handing out press notes. Not a good sign. So I told the receptionist I was here for a screening, which meant when she asked for which movie, I had to say "Zombie Strippers" and probably make her think she was on a very feeble hidden-camera series. She called up to the screening room and the guy only said that it wasn't screening there without really clarifying whether it might be screening somewhere else, or if the time got changed, or what. But I didn't feel like I wanted to press the Zombie Strippers issue so we left and got some milkshakes. All in all, probably just as good, because our conversations never make me wonder why we didn't go directly to DVD. Hey, you know what stripper-free, zombie-free movie went directly to DVD? I Could Never Be Your Woman. It's kind of good, though. A mess, but a bit of a sexy mess. Andrew and I also discussed Jon Lovitz, who has a supporting role in the film, so this is indeed completely relevant.

I got REM (+Modest Mouse/The National) tickets today. I have never gotten seats on the floor of MSG before. I've also never personally spent three digits on a non-festival concert ticket before (and maybe not on a festival ticket either, since usually NYC festivals get ruined or canceled before coming to fruition -- good luck, All Points West!).

I'd be lying if I said these Leatherheads pull-quotes weren't worrying me a little, but I still want to see it on Friday.

Regular elephants on parade

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:13:01 GMT

There were elephants downstairs from my work, and I went and saw them, and they stood in a line, and I saw them eat carrots and cabbage and bananas and one ate most of a watermelon in one bite, and then they marched away down the street!!!

P.S. this is not an April Fools joke!!

Double down

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:22:07 GMT

On Friday I went out to see 21 with Marisa, Allison, Sara B, Cossar, and Rayme, and while my expectations weren't sky-high I did assume it would at least be trashy fun. If only. 21 takes a ridiculous amount of time -- two hours -- to perform the tasks of basically any movie ever. Hero comes from humble background, starts doing something exciting but disreputable, you've changed man, I can't believe I was such an ass, one final score, blah blah blah. The movie is passably entertaining at times but its failure to really immerse you in the world of these MIT-bred card-counters is disappointing. Robert Luketic, whose Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! I enjoyed and whose Legally Blonde was okay enough, shows little flair for even light melodrama, and the screenplay can only offer a half-assed subplot about Laurence Fishbourne the "old-school" casino security guy which spells out with bad dialogue what movies like The Cooler or even Ocean's 13 explored with a lot more creativity. Also, the movie looks kinda gash -- it's shot on video in a way that you can totally tell it was shot on video (e.g., not like Zodiac). Un-fun facts about the supporting cast: that's not Margaret Yang and that's not the funny guy from The Perfect Score. I feel almost as racist as if I were the filmmakers who made a big deal about the characters needing disguises for their scam, and then only ever giving real disguises to the white characters.

Saturday afternoon was my last shot at Doomsday before it hits DVD in, I don't know, probably a few days. I wanted to see this movie after I saw a cool trailer and heard that it was from the director of Dog Soldiers and The Descent, imperfect but promising horror movies. Then it wasn't screened for critics and other stuff came out and the TV ads made it look pretty lame so I lost interest. Then The Hater at the AV Club (whose column I usually find pretty tiresome in a gimmicky Mr. Cranky sort of way) called it "the best awful movie in theaters now" and equally disreputable sources threw around words like "bugnuts" and I was back on board. My adjective of choice for Doomsday would be "bonkers." Neil Marshall is British, which I guess explains his assumption that, if left unattended, Scotland is basically about thirty years away from devolving into a nation of motocross cannibals. And this is only one of the quarter-baked but high-volume conceits that Marshall glues together to simulate the experience of flipping between six different cable channels at four in the morning. It's somewhat idiotic (or at least ill-considered) but it's so much more fun than the likes of Pathfinder or Hitman that I maintain a quizzical affection for it, at least while it stays in my memory.

Then we got a little more serious (starting with Marisa's consideration of what I could do to make up for making her see Doomsday) and met up with Rayme to see Stop-Loss, Kimberly Peirce's follow-up to Boys Don't Cry. This is a smart, affecting film with strong performances, but occasionally comes out just a little on-the-nose with its themes and ideas. Without the personal nonfiction of Brandon Teena from Boys Don't Cry, Peirce and her co-screenwriter Mark Richards turn some of the characters into object lessons more than living personalities, as good as Ryan Phillippe and, especially and always, Joseph Gordon-Levitt are here. I don't mean to sell short a very worthwhile film with a strong emotional punch; it just has a touch of issue movie syndrome. As issues movies go, this is a very good one, loads better than Lions for Lambs or the trailer for Home of the Brave (apologies to everyone involved with that movie if it turns out to be even halfway decent -- well, apologies to Sam Jackson, anyway). It's also a strong companion piece to the similarly good-not-great In the Valley of Elah.

Speaking of Stop-Loss and issues, how in the name of anything is this guy able to survive as a newspaper film critic in a decade where more and more good ones, even at the alt-weeklies, are being let go?! He's seriously paid money to give this movie one star and talk about how it's all about "deserters"? I know it's the Post, but their main guy isn't a flaming jackass.

I also bought some pants and a $5 Children of Men DVD, both unexpectedly.

Today Nick and Jen came over for the second half of the Alien film series. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection are better than their reputations though Resurrection is the silliest of the four by far. Still, I don't know why it made Joss Whedon cry -- Wikipedia says that it wasn't that they changed his script a lot, but did it "wrong" -- come on, Joss, buck up. As we discussed after the movie, this series doesn't really have a Batman & Robin moment.

Next DVD film festival: the Indiana Jones trilogy, sometime in May. I'm not certain as to whether it should be done in one marathon, or three weekly sessions. Suggestions are welcome. Nick suggested watching them in chronological order (Temple of Doom first), which might be interesting in light of what I assume will be a lot of aging references in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Storytime

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:12:33 GMT

Pictures from the group reading are up at the One Story blog. There's also an audio link so you can download us all as MP3s and shuffle us into your very own One Story staff playlist.

Now on with the day, and hopefully to some movies that are better than last night's.

A sexy, bloody, hilarious good time.

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:57 GMT

So I just got a screening invitation to this movie for Wednesday night.

...

I'll go if someone goes with me.

The press notes describe Ms. Jameson as a "worldwide media sensation." Now there's a euphemism.