Arts & Entertainment – Page 59

Me gusta las películas

I’m not enjoying my theme week anymore. As much as I love giving out my unsolicited opinions (and in the list form my OCD craves, no less), I’m tired of writing a novella about it every night.

So here I’m taking the Livejournal/MySpace route and just listing

My Favorite Movies

Name your own in the comments! Or tell me where I’m wrong! (Bonus points for using words and phrases like “populist” and “popcorn summer blockbuster” and “dumb-ass”). Or just say “THANKS FOR THE ADD!!!!!”

Me gusta los libros cómicos

I thought I had more to say about comic books, but once you get past the fact that I’m 35 years old and I still read them, there’s not a whole lot more left to say.

I’ve gotten several collections recently that I’ve enjoyed the hell out of, so they go into the list of

Best Comic Book Collections

1. Batman: Year One by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli
I don’t like any other thing that Frank Miller has ever done, but this is my favorite comic book. Go figure.

2. Hellboy: The Right Hand of Doom by Mike Mignola
There’s only so many different ways I can say that Mike Mignola is a genius. He’s such a brilliant artist, that it’s almost unfair his stories are so good. I’ll admit that 90% of the time, I can’t even figure out exactly what’s going on in a Hellboy story, and it doesn’t matter — he gets the mood, the pacing, the congolomeration of folklore and mythology, and the snatches of dialogue so dead-on perfect. B.P.R.D. is a lot better at plotting, which in a way is to its detriment — the stories just feel “smaller” somehow. The Right Hand of Doom gets my vote just because it has the story Box Full of Evil.

3. Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon
When Garth Ennis took over the book, he completely made it his own, and this is one of the best stories ever, comics or otherwise. Plus there are plenty of Pogues references. John Constantine makes a deal with the devil to cure his own lung cancer, with a genius twist at the end.

4. The Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Matt Wagner, and others
What happens when Lucifer abandons Hell. This was the storyline that got me back into the series after I’d given up on it.

5. The Collected Sam and Max: Surfin’ the Highway by Steve Purcell
Steve Purcell is my hero.

6. Fables: Animal Farm by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, and Steve Leialoha
This series is about storybook fables (Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella, etc) living in exile in the “real” (they call it “mundy”) world. From what I’ve seen, it’s the best ongoing comic running. It took me a while to get into it, because the first collection is a pretty weak attempt at a mystery story set on top of an engaging premise. It takes off with the second storyline, though, and it’s completely engrossing. It’s funny, shocking, scary, violent, sad, and surprisingly fast-paced.

Willingham could’ve taken the easy way out, and just had characters like Goldilocks and Snow White having sex and shooting guns and tried to ride through on “edgy” street cred. And there is plenty of that, but it always takes it a step further, and builds a really engaging and surprising story on top of a predictable concept. Plus, Buckingham’s art is just perfect for the story. The biggest fault I have with it, and it’s kind of a nitpick, is that the characters suffer from Kevin Smith Syndrome, in which all people, no matter their age, sex, education, intelligence, history, or background, all speak like chubby white college-educated pop culture junkies in their early 30s.

7. The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa
A ridiculously exhaustive tribute to Carl Barks’ Scrooge McDuck comics, this book traces the life of the character based on small, off-hand references throughout the earlier stories. And it may be sacrilege to say it, but I enjoyed it even more than Barks’ stories. (And I think Barks’ stories are fantastic, which tells you how much I liked this book). It just amazes me to see someone putting so much care and detail into something that relies so heavily on such corny jokes.

8. DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
The story really doesn’t do all that much for me. But the art kicks so much ass, you can’t help but like it. The premise is all of DC’s Justice League heroes recast in the 50s Cold War era.

9. Mage: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner with Sam Kieth
An 80s “urban” retelling of the King Arthur story. It seems a little juvenile and dated now, but at the time I first read it, it was astounding.

10. Essential Fantastic Four: Volume 3 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
I was never a fan of Marvel, so all I knew about their comics and characters were from cartoons, and the bits that rub off just by nature of being a comic book fan. It’s always just been understood that Jack Kirby was one of the greatest comic artists there was, so I accepted that without ever really being sure why. When you look at these issues, you can totally see why. He’s got the cosmic power dots, and the 50’s-era white guys with overbites, and the chicks with swingin’ bobs, and the crazy space helmets, and the Silver Surfer and Galactus. Just like you can’t appreciate a movie just by looking at stills, you can’t appreciate Kirby drawings without seeing them in the context of the whole story. I can’t explain it; it just is. And also, as pandering, sexist, and shameless as the writing of these comics are, you can’t deny that they’re just plain fun. I feel like I understand for the first time why Fantastic Four was such a big deal.

Honorable mention goes to Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker, which would’ve been forced me to drop something from 1-10, but I can get away with it because it’s a “graphic novel,” not a collection. The real number 11 would’ve gone to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume 2.

I didn’t include Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, on purpose. The Dark Knight Returns, I’ve never liked, at all. And Watchmen is a great comic like Citizen Kane is a great movie — sure, I can look at it and see how meticulously set-up everything is, and how it’s full of allusions and references and literary influences, and how the design of it all some perfect construct. But I don’t like reading it at all. It’s clever, but doesn’t feel at all real to me. The plot, especially the resolution, is kind of weak.

Now, the most fun comics collections I’ve read recently are DC Showcase Presents: Teen Titans and DC Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups, both by Bob Haney. You’ll see lots of things describing his writing as being “wacky” or “over-the-top;” better descriptions would be “batshit crazy” and “shamelessly pandering.” And it’s all awesome. You can tell with Fantastic Four that Stan Lee was having a lot of goofy fun with comics, but Haney just takes it to the next level. When you’ve got some free time, do a blog search for Bob Haney and read about some of his master works. It’s really what the silver age of comics is all about.

Me gusta un poco de televisión más que el resto

“So you like ’30 Rock’ and ‘Battlestar Galactica’ and ‘Lost’,” you might be saying. “Big deal. Join the frakking club, sheep!”

Fair enough, but would a sheep dare to post on the internets a comprehensive list of the best episodes in the history of television? The answer is yes, if he were an exceptionally nerdy sheep.

Best Episodes in the History of Television

1. Lost: “Pilot”
Say what you will about the declining quality of the series, the pilot is the best two hours of television ever produced. The numbers station, the first night on the beach, Jack’s story about counting to five, and a guy gets sucked into a jet engine. I tried watching it twice, when it first aired and when it was repeated, and had to stop because it was too intense for me. When I finally watched it on DVD, I was hooked.

2. The X-Files: “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space“
This is the episode where Charles Nelson Reilly’s character is writing a book about Mulder & Scully, and there are guest appearances by Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek as Men In Black. Plus the line: “You don’t play Dungeons and Dragons for as long as I have without learning a little something about courage.” All of Darrin Morgan’s episodes were brilliant, but this one realized the real potential of “The X-Files” better than any other episode. Not only did it give a better account of UFO sightings than any other episode, but it made fun of itself, the series, the FOX network (with the alien autopsy video), the producers, and its stars, without ever crossing the line of being too post-modern. And it’s funny, creepy, and philosophical in equal doses. If you had to pick one episode of any TV series to prove to people that TV is capable of intelligence, this is the one you’d show.

3. Arrested Development: “For British Eyes Only”
Michael visits Wee Britain for the first time, meets Rita, is struck by something from his childhood, and is threatened by a foul-mouthed British guy. And the Bluth family joins together in a mass chicken dance. Plus, Lupe’s reaction to Tobias’ hairplugs: “Mr Gay! He is bleeding!” The only thing that could’ve made me like this better is if this had been the one with “Mister F.”

4. Alias: “The Telling”
The one where Sidney and her roommate finally come to blows. “Alias” may have been all over the map quality-wise, but it always had the best season finales. And this was the best of the best. I was more shocked by Francie’s death a few episodes earlier, but the fight scene in this one is just epic. And the twist at the end was so good, it kind of makes you wish the series had ended there, considering how they “resolved” it.

5. Lost: “Orientation”
The only reason “Lost” is still on my list of best currently-running TV series is because, season 3 or no, it still has two of the best episodes of any TV series ever. Actually, the first episode from season 2, “Man of Science, Man of Faith,” is a contender for best episode, just because of the opening sequence and the reveal of the bunker. But overall, this is the one that turned me from a casual fan of the series into an obsessive. And just because of the orientation movie. From the film grain, to the title cards, to the soundtrack, to the missing bits of film, to the pacing of the episode up to the movie, and the fact that Locke said “we’re going to have to watch that again” right at the moment I started to hit rewind on my remote: this was the bit that convinced me that this series was trying things I’d never seen before, and that these guys really knew what they were doing. Even now, after realizing that they didn’t know what they were doing, I can’t forget that that was one of the coolest bits of TV I’ve ever seen.

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Superstar”
The nerdy kid from high school casts a spell to create an alternate reality where he’s a superhero. Lots of sci-fi shows have done alternate realities, and “Buffy” even did it a few times. This one wins because they really made it an alternate reality: they changed the opening credits, and the main plot of the episode continued from the last as if nothing had happened. The shot of Buffy walking mopily down the street, with a wall plastered with posters of Jonathan behind her, was just genius.

7. Cowboy Bebop: “Speak Like a Child”
The crew has to fly back to the ruins of Earth to find an ancient VCR to watch a mysterious tape left for Faye Valentine. The entire episode plays like a comedy until the last five minutes, which hit you like a punch to the gut.

8. Police Squad!: “Rendezvous at Big Gulch”
There wasn’t a bad episode of this series, and whoever cancelled it has reserved his own spiky chair in hell. But this is the episode that has my favorite gag: “Who are you and how did you get in here?” “I’m a locksmith, and I’m a locksmith.”

9. Doctor Who: “The Unquiet Dead”
Charles Dickens fights zombies. If that doesn’t spell awesome to you, then you’re a big dumb gay communist.

10. Mr. Show with Bob and David: “Oh, You Men”
This is the one where they film their “lost episode,” the Druggachusettes sketch, the bit with the lie detector, and the east coast/west coast ventriloquism wars. There are episodes with funnier sketches, but this one has my favorite gag in the entire series: the “who wants a banana?” line in the opening monologue, where you have to wait an hour for the payoff.

I didn’t include “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” because it’s in a league of its own; if I’d listed one, I’d have to list ten. But my favorite is “Godzilla vs Megalon,” if only for the Jet Jaguar Fight Song. But then, “Mitchell” was great too. And “Master Ninja I,” as well as “Master Ninja II”. And “Fire Maidens from Outer Space.” And “Werewolf.”

I also didn’t include “NewsRadio,” only because it’s been a while since I’ve watched any of it, and the episodes run together in my memory. “Super Karate Monkey Death Car” has the best title of any television series ever, of course, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it all the way through.

I invite, nay, encourage readers to give their own favorites in the comments.

Me gusta la televisión

Thanks to the last few months of under-employment (which ends tomorrow), my TV-watching has almost gotten back up to the levels before I worked for EA and before I discovered RSS feeds. I still haven’t suddenly regained consciousness sitting on the couch 35 minutes into a History Channel documentary about classified Nazi cheese experiments, but I have spent 3 straight hours watching back-to-back episodes of “Mythbusters.”

And I still won’t watch whatever’s on, just for the sake of watching TV. Which means that the list of shows I watch with any regularity is also the list of

Best Series Currently In Production

1. “The Venture Brothers”
This could’ve been just an obvious parody of “Jonny Quest,” ‘cept it’s all edgy, and the pilot was pretty much exactly that. But Jackson Public and Doc Hammer just get it, more than the creators of any other series except maybe “Arrested Development.” One episode of “The Venture Brothers” has a dozen throwaway gags that lesser writers would try to form entire TV series or Lorne Michaels-produced movies from. Just the details are hilarious: like when Hank & Dean make the Go Team Venture! sign and you can see the light from it reflected on their dates. And also, Patrick Warburton as Brock is the best animated character ever. Next to maybe Dr. Girlfriend.

2. “Battlestar Galactica”
I admit I didn’t watch it at the start. It was too depressing, and I didn’t cotton to the idea of a female Starbuck. I still don’t like her very much, and I still hate Apollo, but the series is just every bit as good as people are saying it is. And huge stuff happens, all the time. Whenever I see the count of survivors at the beginning of an episode, I remember being a kid on the way home from elementary school (okay, maybe it was middle school) and screaming at the bus driver to go faster so I’d get home in time for “Starblazers.”

3. “30 Rock”
I’m still baffled as to how a show that started out so shaky turned into one of the best comedy series ever. Everybody goes on about how great Alec Baldwin is, and he is, but he’s not even carrying the show anymore. Most series would’ve been content just to have Paul Reubens as inbred Austrian royalty (with only one real limb, which was genius), but they threw in a catfight between Isabella Rosselini and Tina Fey, as if they had a direct line to my subconscious. I still say it’s a shame they don’t use Rachel Dratch more often.

4. “How I Met Your Mother”
I started watching this one just because Willow was on it. And I figured it’s pleasant enough, so I’ll watch it if it’s on and I’ve got nothing better to do. Somewhere along the line it became one of my favorite series. Just recently, they had three or four episodes back to back that were just hilarious, and now that they’ve hit their stride, they’re consistently funny. And they have the most appealing cast on TV right now. I think the best thing they did was changing the big question from when is Ted going to meet “your mother,” to when the remaining slap-bet slaps are going to happen.

5. “Lost”
This week’s episode was pretty strong, and it was a good sign that they’re slowly getting back on track. The sad fact is that even if the executive producers of the show really are as smarmy as they come across in interviews, and even if they have no idea where they’re going, and even if they’re unable to get themselves out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into, this still has some of the best performances, set design, and just overall production quality of any series on TV. (Even “Galactica.”)

6. “Monk”
I’d speculate the reason this series is underrated is because it’s so formulaic. That’s actually kind of why I like it. It’s got so many formulas and cliches weighing it down, and still manages to be great TV. Every episode has to have the hour-long crime drama format, plus the unassuming “Colombo”-style detective with issues, plus the comedy scene showing Monk freaking out because he’s completely out of his element, plus the black-and-white recap at the end, plus all the formulaic bits from a Sherlock Holmes story, plus the therapy session, plus the character development. As if that weren’t stifling enough, they’ve by now established their own formula, of making every episode somehow “bittersweet.” Still, instead of being hobbled by it, they come up with some great mysteries and characters that for the most part (except for Disher) feel real. I’m just really impressed with how solid the show is, going into its fourth season, dabbling a little bit in an overarching storyline (Trudy’s death) but not really needing it.

I’ve got to say I was completely wrong about Sharona’s leaving. The character of Natalie is my favorite one in the series now; she’s not abrasive or annoying, but not saintly, either. And the actress playing her (Traylor Howard, from the pizza place) does a great job. Her delivery is perfect, always, and she just makes you glad she’s there even during the frequent times her character’s given nothing to do. There’s a lot to be said just for being appealing, and she, and the series itself, always manages to do that.

7. “Heroes”
Yeah, the writing is still weak, and there are plot holes you could pilot the X-Men’s jet through, and the marketing hype blitz around it is annoying. Yeah, I’m still completely hooked on it. I don’t want to talk about it.

8. “Mythbusters”
They know what the people want, and they deliver it. Even if it is 10% science and 90% explosions, it’s not like they ever claim otherwise; they’re proud of it. I don’t recommend anybody watch three hours back-to-back of it, though: the gang gets pretty annoying after a while.

Asses on display

Photo from AP When are companies going to learn to stop hiring “guerilla marketing” firms?

First there was the ridiculously ill-advised Sony PSP blog (Consumerist saved the original here after Sony was forced to take it down), which got the company much, much worse PR than they could’ve ever hoped to gain with the campaign in the first place.

Now, of course, is the hubub over the douchebags responsible for the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” bomb scare. I feel compelled to point out first of all that I used to be a huge fan of Adult Swim, but they lost me sometime between the last episode of “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law” and the first episode of “Squidbillies.” Somewhere along the line, they got just a little bit too pleased with themselves, and assumed that they could put whatever the hell they wanted on the air, and stoners would watch it. (Which is true, but not a good long-term strategy). So it’s just a damn good thing this promotion was for “ATHF” and not “The Venture Brothers,” or I’d be in an ethical quandary.

The Adult Swim braintrust should realize that they’re already walking on a very thin line between “look how f-in’ edgy we are!” and being genuinely clever. And they should have a tighter lock on that, and realize that an outside company just isn’t going to get it, and they’re likely going to screw it up. Maybe they didn’t understand exactly the magnitude to which they’d screw it up, but surely somebody at Turner saw the idea and had to give it the okay.

Assume that you’re more sincere in your non-violence than I am, and you can look at pictures of the smarmy grinning marketing gurus responsible for the incident, and read their snickering responses to reporters, and not want to just never stop beating them. Still, you have to take a step back and get some perspective. This “guerilla marketing” combines two of the most horrible things to blight mankind: marketing, and performance art. If they could’ve somehow directly involved Fox News commentators, they would’ve scored a trifecta.

Apologists are coming out of the woodwork now, saying that the devices have been in place for weeks, they’re “obviously” not anything dangerous, and it shows how irreverent and edgy the network is and how lame and dumb and out-of-touch Boston’s city officials are. Okay, first: shut up. And then: just how much of a moron do you have to be to plant devices with visible circuit boards and batteries and wires on city overpasses? Acting all surprised that they’d be mistaken for bombs is just plain bullshit.

And if your whole schtick is based on how edgy and counter-culture you are, then you’re just a chickenshit for claiming that they couldn’t possibly be confused for bombs and that that wasn’t the intent. Of course that was the intent, and if you’re going to pull that kind of nonsense, then at least have the balls to stand behind it. I’ve got zero sympathy for these losers, and the details in that CNN story just make me happier and happier: not only could they get fired, but they could be charged with a felony, and one of them could get deported. I just hope if nobody at Cartoon Network’s marketing staff got fired, they’ve at least learned their lesson.

One hot French slut’s illicit obsession

Easily the best scene in the movie I rented With a Friend Like Harry… (the other translation, Harry, He’s Here to Help is actually a better title) because I thought Sergi Lopez was a bad-ass in Pan’s Labyrinth, and I wanted to see what he could do as the bad guy in a flat-out horror/suspense thriller. Also, I just wanted to see what a contemporary (2000, close enough) French suspense thriller would be like.

Overall, the movie feels like something got lost in translation. Not from French to English, but from the pitch meeting to the production. Somewhere along the line, the idea “What if we remade What About Bob? as a suspense thriller?” turned into “What if we remade What About Bob? and labeled it as a suspense thriller?”

There are a lot of spine-tingling, flesh-crawling scenes in the movie, but they’re more like the kind you get from watching “The Office” or “Da Ali G Show:” people caught in really uncomfortable and awkward social situations. Now, my reaction to awkward social situations, even scripted ones, is indistinguishable from my reaction to a horror movie — shifting uncomfortably in my seat, covering my eyes with my hands, violent shuddering — but I thought that was just because I’m preternaturally sensitive. I kept waiting for the big pay-off, but it never came.

Of course, for all I know, that was the intent. The French are supposed to be so much more cultured than we are; maybe there really is nothing more horrifying to them than an acquaintance who won’t go away and buys you gas-guzzling cars and eats all your eggs and talks about orgasms at the dinner table. (Then again, I always thought that being given free rein to talk openly and effusively about your orgasms in mixed company was part of the je ne sais quoi of being French).

When I finished the movie, I dutifully went back to Netflix and rated it two stars. The internets needed to know that no, I didn’t like it. But then I realized that this movie is worse than a boring Frenchy non-suspense thriller non-black comedy. It’s one of those movies that makes you think.

Not too much, understand. Just enough to realize that it’s actually a good movie, once you look past the “suspense” label and just take it on its own merits. All the performances are perfect, and there are plenty of directorial touches that let you know it was artfully made — lots of references to Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock, great sound design throughout, and a couple of stand-out scenes. (The opening in the car, and Michel’s dream at his parents’ house).

Thematically, it’s got enough just enough meat to it to be memorable. The idea of an average guy having to deal with an obsessive stranger isn’t a cliche, but it’s not exactly new, either. This movie adds some depth to that by showing how the obsession starts to go both ways.

And the ending that seemed unsatisfying to me when I watched the movie, has left kind of an aftertaste — it’s not a twist ending in the traditional sense, but it does change and become more profound the longer you think about it. What seems at first to be a happy ending, or at least an anticlimactic sputtering to a conclusion, becomes darker and darker as you think back on the events that led to it. What exactly was happening to the protagonist Michel for the last 15 minutes of the movie? At the time, his expression is impenetrable, and he just seems to be moving through everything in a daze. What kind of shift happened in his mind as he reached the ending? It seems like Harry helped a lot, in exactly the way he’d intended — so what does that mean to the man who received his help?

But still, it all feels like a simple thought exercise or character study, instead of being genuinely unsettling or thought-provoking. Despite its high points, there’s something missing from the movie that keeps it from reaching above average. It might be as simple as cutting half the movie out — the glacial pacing would be okay for building up suspense in a real thriller, but this just feels like stuttering moments of build-up with no release. Not a bad movie, but definitely tough to recommend.

But there is a flying monkey in it, so there you go.

Tonto! Jump on it!

My God, it's full of cardigans! Sometimes I’m forced to look into the very heart of my whiteness, and it’s astounding.

It’s like walking down a long, white tunnel inexorably towards a blinding vanilla light. As I get closer I hear echoes of the Hellman’s Mayonnaise jingle and the white granny shouting “Where you at?” from cell phone commercials. Finally I reach the precipice and am forced to stare down into the abysshizzle.

Today I was reading an entry on the “Making Light” blog, which is about 30% sci-fi writers’ lounge, 95% repetition of leftist mantras and liberal outrage. They link to this video of 70s Danish pop star Tommy Seebach’s cover of “Apache.”

That sounds familiar, I thought, and not just because I’d already seen the video several months ago. The hook sounds a lot like “We Run This” by Missy Elliot, another song I got into about eight months after it was already old news. Apparently, it was used in the soundtrack of a movie about white high school gymnasts, and I probably heard it in a commercial.

And that blog post leads to “All Roads Lead to Apache”, a fascinating (seriously!) run-down of the evolutionary chart of the original song and how it stretched from surf music to disco onto the earliest hip hop and then dance, electronic, and back to rap and hip hop. James Burke would be proud.

Turns out Missy Elliot’s version is heavily sampled from the version by The Sugarhill Gang. Which is itself about four levels deep into the cover chain.

So the fact that I’d never heard the Sugarhill Gang’s version of the song before is a good indicator of my whiteness, but it’s also an account of how circuitous a route pop culture takes before it hits any kind of saturation. I’d heard of the band before, and “Rapper’s Delight,” but probably because of a soundtrack or a commercial. Same with Grandmaster Flash and Fab 5 Freddy, who I only know because they’re referenced in “Rapture” by Blondie. Which leads me to conclude: Deborah Harry was a hero to most, but she don’t mean shit to me.

Actually, I see it as a sign of just how extensively hyper-linked we are, and how it’s not a new phenomenon. We like to think that samples and mash-ups and remixes are relatively recent innovations, but people have been making covers and references and allusions and homages and outright intellectual property theft for centuries.

We’ve also been conditioned to think of it in terms of theft and culture rape, usually described as I do above — white people taking black people’s art and robbing it, watering the soul out of it, and making a fortune off it while the real artists toil away in obscurity. There’s plenty of that going on, and there always has been. But in the longer term, and if some measure of creativity is inserted along the way, it’s the way culture works and has always worked.

And we’re at the best point in history to be able to track how these things come about and see every step of the evolution and all the connections between the individual parts. Don’t like a remix? There’s easy access to the original, and to the tracks it samples from, and the track that inspired the original, and the four other covers of that track. Looking up the Ventures’ cover of “Apache” on iTunes, I found a bunch of other songs and artists I’d never heard of before, including some tracks that I’d never realized were themselves covers of earlier songs.

Before stumbling on this article, I’d been getting into a pretty jaded impression of our segment of the Information Age. The “If you like The Pixies, you’ll love Nelly Furtado” “features” on internet recommendation sites never work, because they just keep recommending crap or stuff you’ve already heard. And remixes are hardly ever as good as the original, and blog articles generally repeat the same stuff, are shallow, or just eventually lead to a Wikipedia entry. Occasionally you’ll stumble on some blogger’s all-time favorite obscure band, and you’ll listen and realize that they were obscure for a reason.

Back when I first saw HyperCard and then later, Mosaic, I got the sense that links and aggregating information were a novel concept, even if I couldn’t foresee exactly how they’d be revolutionary. Now, though, I’m back to feeling that there’s a ton of stuff out there left to see. More than even the most dedicated hipster could see in a lifetime.

And all on account of some dame

A movie called "The Killers" needs at least one funeral After 35 years and I don’t know how many film classes, I finally got around to seeing The Killers. What a completely bad-ass movie this is. It’s already one of my favorites, and I’ve already decided I’m probably never going to see it again, because nothing could be as cool as watching it all unfold on screen for the first time.

Everything about the movie just somehow oozes cool, even more than other film noir that just comes across as trying too hard. Even though all the guys wear ties that don’t go down further than their nipples and pants pulled up to their navels, and the fact that the entire movie comes across as a long promotional spot for the insurance industry, that somehow inexplicably reverses on itself and makes the movie even cooler.

The cinematography’s the highlight. From the first shot of a mysterious car pulling into a dark gas station in Brentwood, to a rooftop interview with the police lieutenant, to a shot of the Swede jumping down from a farmhouse loft, to my favorite, the funeral against a fantastic cloudy background where every shot is composed perfectly. When people go on about the look of movies in black and white as being impossible to reproduce in color, this is exactly what they’re talking about.

And the “lesser” performances stand out, too — Edmond O’Brien is a great, always clever and always likable protagonist, even though Burt Lancaster gets top billing. And the screenwriters manage to extrapolate a really engaging double-cross out of the short story. Even though the movie really just boils down to a standard detective story told through flashbacks, I always felt like something fantastic was just about to happen, and I was never disappointed.

And you don’t stop, you keep on eatin’ cars

There are many copies. And they have a plan. And they're HOT. I already confessed to how I broke up the Pixies and made the Pogues split. I don’t know how I do it; it just happens. I got into “Alias,” right before it went downhill and got cancelled. I waited until the last minute to start liking “Lost,” and then look what happened there. So it pains me to announce that I really, really like “Battlestar Galactica” an awful lot.

Don’t despair, though; I liked “X-Files” so much I even went to a convention, and that lasted a good four seasons before it went south. Same with “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” So considering I just got into “Galactica” this season, and bought the DVDs last weekend, there’s probably at least a couple good years left. I would just hold off on getting that tattoo of Apollo & Starbuck 4-Ever, if I were you.

Tonight was the half-season opener, “Rapture,” and it was pretty damn cool. I haven’t been keeping track of the fan rumblings, and I still haven’t seen all of the miniseries or the first season, but it seems like these episodes are moving a lot faster than the early ones. I’m still amazed that they have the stones and talent to set up huge, story-changing events and cliffhangers, and then quickly resolve them. It’s just plain exciting to see people who aren’t so afraid to mess with their prize-winning formula that they’re frozen into inaction and navel-gazing. They’re eager to keep mixing things up, putting their characters through hell and then pulling them out. Making huge, sweeping changes and then tying everything together all in the span of a few episodes.

I could see how some people would complain that it doesn’t linger on the real implications and ramifications of what happens long enough for them to have any weight, but I think that’s just traditional TV lulling everyone into complacency. This series credits the viewer with enough intelligence to follow everything that’s happening and fill in the details on his own — if something big is happening, you’ll know it, without having to make the cast and soundtrack reiterate how important this is a dozen times. The drama takes precedence even over the plot, and that’s just a great change. It feels like the creators of the show are eager to mess around with the story and the characters, just to see what happens.

Of course, it looks like this episode permanently wrote off my second-favorite cast member. (Grace Park’s my favorite). That’s a huge disappointment, but then I guess that’s what happens when you’ve got a series that isn’t afraid to change.

I just read a rumor online that there will be at least one ore major cast member to go before the season ends. Normally I’d dismiss that as a cheap ratings gimmick — whenever you hear a show creator mention the need to remind viewers that every cast member is expendable, that’s a sure sign the show is creatively rotten, and depends on cheap gimmicks to keep it interesting and “edgy.” Character death just for the sake of character death is as weak as the cat jumping suddenly from a dark place in a horror movie. It has to extend naturally from a storyline, or it’s just a cheap thrill. But I’ve got faith in “Battlestar Galactica,” from what I’ve seen so far. If they do kill somebody else off, it’ll be given a good setup, it’ll probably be bleak as hell, and it’ll almost definitely be good television.

Mama don’t wanna take her medicine

Just a spoonful of MURDER helps the medicine go down Somebody’s got to remind me not to go to the Kabuki for movies. For some reason I’ve got it stuck in my head that it’s perfect for dinner and a movie afterwards, and I always forget how they stuff you into cramped seats in a tiny 100-seat theater with a screen not much bigger than my TV. They run a disclaimer now before the movie, promising a big renovation with stadium seats and everything else to update it to the late 1990’s, so maybe that’ll change. But I’m boycotting it until I hear otherwise.

Tonight’s pick was Curse of the Golden Flower. This is a very, very silly movie. Absurd, even. For a lower-budget, action-heavy movie, that would be charming. But with as much pomposity as is in this movie, it just comes across as bloated, tedious excess.

Now, I’ve seen two of Zhang Yimou’s other movies: Hero, which was beautiful, full of intermittent action sequences, and completely nonsensical; and House of Flying Daggers, which was beautiful and exciting for the first 20 minutes and then turned into relentless tedium. So I’ve seen two and didn’t like either, but went ahead for the third; you’d be right in asking, who’s the idiot now?

Well, although both were ultimately bad movies, they did succeed on the visuals, so I expected more of the same. And when you’re going for spectacle, you want to see it on a big screen. The problem with Curse of the Golden Flower is that the spectacle just never lets up, so it all cancels each other out and leaves nothing memorable but a bright, blurry excess.

Every single scene is another designed and built to impress. Most of it is shot after shot of elaborately-dressed people walking down the hallways of the Forbidden Castle, past rainbow-colored doorways and pillars that look more like Willy Wonka’s factory than feudal China. Occasionally it cuts to a scene with hundreds or thousands of people working in the background while two people reiterate a plot point that’s already been established a dozen times over. For the more tranquil moments, it cuts to a Chinese stronghold in a dramatic mountain crevasse being besieged by dozens of ninja assassins. Every shot either has a million people in frame, or one person and a million set decorations.

Of course, this all works with the theme of the movie, such as it is. The story is about the Emperor’s dysfunctional family, and to convey the idea that they’re trapped by all the excess and ritual and tradition and political intrigue, you’ve got to show them bearing the weight of obscenely excessive wealth. But like everything else, that theme is explicitly repeated several times; the movie even has the two leads write it out on paper with English subtitles. Looking for deeper meaning in something so gratuitously silly and excessive is pointless, so the whole thing comes across like set designer porn.

Reviewers who are up to speed on Chinese cinema are always lamenting that everything released now gets compared to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but you just have to bring it up. There’s no denying that that movie changed how Chinese movies are perceived in the US. The problem, as I see it, is that that was a genuinely artistic movie — it took a form of popular art and used it to tell a truly adult story, subtly hiding its theme of freedom vs. being locked into expectations and roles behind over-the-top special effects and action scenes. It was high-art substance told with a low-art style.

As a result, movies like House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower are being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics as if they were art movies, when they’re really just pure style over substance. A lesser movie reviewer would make some comment here about how the Emperor has no clothes, but I’m above that. So I’ll just repeat my main point: this movie is hella lame.

She is one funny bumpy thing

I wasn’t a big fan of Jesus is Magic. In fact, it managed to do what I never would’ve thought possible: by the end of it, I was kind of sick of Sarah Silverman and wanted her to go away.

If you want to read somebody who can write say what I’m thinking, Stephanie Zacharek’s review once again lays it all out, Mouth of Sauron-style. I’d add that it wasn’t just the musical numbers that were unnecessary and went on too long, but the routine itself. At the time I saw the movie, I’d just seen Silverman do a short set at a benefit concert in the city, so I’d already heard all her material.

Obviously, that’s not her fault — that’s what comedians do. And her delivery is perfect, which is actually part of the problem. When she’s so good at making her routine come across as spontaneous, it ruins it when you realize she’s just performing well-rehearsed material.

And that’s why I’m really looking forward to her Comedy Central series, which starts in February. She’s just brilliant in small doses, and a half-hour time limit will just about do it. And most of the material’s got to be new every week, so there’s a bonus.

Plus, I’ve watched the intro about 12 times now and it still cracks me up:

Ben Folds Five

Tonight I saw the live RiffTrax show at the San Rafael theater. It was the awesomest, which is lucky for me, since I’m going to be seeing it again tomorrow night in the city.

A year or so after I graduated college, the MST3K guys did a Comedy Central-sponsored tour where they’d show one of their episodes (“Zombie Nightmare”) to a live audience. It was a blast; watching the show was always funnier with other people around, even if it’s just one other person.

This show is even better, because the guys do the whole show live, sitting on stage in front of the movie. Even though they were reading from scripts, the whole thing felt spontaneous, and they did a great job of gauging the audience’s reaction (and recovering from missed cues). And there wasn’t a single joke in the entire movie that didn’t work; there was no reference too obscure for at least a couple of people in the audience to get. For a long-time MST3K fan, there’s just no better way to see the show.

The guys (Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, and Mike Nelson) did a Q&A session after the show. Not too much of interest was revealed, but it was just a relief the fawning crowd didn’t get out of hand. I’ve been to plenty of comic book convention panels and other forums where obsessive geeks (like myself) are given free rein to make everyone wince and cringe uncomfortably, but the gang did a good job of fielding questions.

Now I’m going to go to Netflix and move Roadhouse higher up in my queue…