eels interview

It's been six years since I last interviewed E, the brilliant singer-songwriter who leads the L.A. indie-rock collective Eels. On their occasion of the release of their latest album, Hombre Lobo, I spoke with E about writing as a fictional character, the lack of sex in indie rock, and the right reason to make a polka album. I thank him for his time.

eels - in my dreams

If all goes well, I'm interviewing this guy right now. (No, not Letterman.)

los angeles film festival

The Los Angeles Film Festival kicks off this evening. As always, L.A. Weekly is all over the festival, offering dozens of capsule reviews and longer pieces on special sidebar presentations. You can read my reviews of Branson, Harmony and Me, Turistas, and Zero Bridge here.

superstar (or is that super star?) review

Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani's latest movie, Superstar (also written as Super Star), concerns the exploits of an arrogant celebrity actor who learns important life lessons from a young girl who claims to be his long-lost daughter. My review is at L.A. Weekly.

the musical history of los angeles

I put together a piece for the June issue of the Los Angeles Times magazine that was a musical map of our fair city. It didn't make the print edition, but it's online currently. The piece ended up being organized by year, and I should advise that some events have been placed in the incorrect year, but the article does give a sense of the breadth of musical styles and legends that have made an impact on Los Angeles and its cultural landscape.

the proposal

Here's my review for The Proposal. I thought Ryan Reynolds was especially good in it, though I wish I wish I wish the film wasn't nearly as predictable as it is.

I should also point out that my wife and my mom both liked it much more than I did. With this movie, you may want to take their word for it over mine.

game 5: lakers 99, magic 86

I've been pessimistic about this team's chances all season -- in retrospect, I think the experience of losing to the Celtics in last year's Finals really stuck with me. Apparently, it stayed with the Lakers as well -- again and again, they talked about that humiliating elimination loss that occurred June 17, 2008. They remembered and they didn't let it happen again.

Kobe and Derek have their fourth championships, all of which were won on their opponents' court -- that's killer instinct.

Being a pessimist means you get a little bit of consolation in being able to tell other people "I told you so" when things go bad. But tonight, I'm very happy to report that my more-optimistic friends were right all along about this team. They told me so.

Update: You know how I said the Lakers never won a championship on their home court? Forget that -- they won the 2000 crown at Staples. Duh.

the temptations - just my imagination

My parents are in town, so this one's for my dad -- my thanks to him for turning me onto it.

game 4: lakers 99, magic 91

Life got in the way tonight -- I only saw the last quarter and overtime, and even then it was only in little bits and pieces. But I will say this. Derek Fisher is a guy I've always loved. Watching him go through a slump for most of this year's playoffs has been really depressing. But he's played great in the Finals -- and from what I gathered from tonight, he was the difference maker. I could not be happier.

albert brooks' real life at the cinefamily

In 1979, writer-director Albert Brooks made his feature debut with a very funny comedy about reality television. It was called Real Life. Thirty years later, it plays like a documentary about the way we live today. Comedian Bob Odenkirk will be hosting a special screening of the film this Friday at the Cinefamily. I explain all the ways Real Life was prescient in L.A. Weekly.

game 3: magic 108, lakers 104

I actually thought the Lakers were dead meat about halfway through the third quarter, so give them a lot of credit for fighting back the way they did. I'm not sure what to say about Kobe. He didn't have a great fourth quarter -- it happens.

I do think it's crucial that they win Game 4, though. The Magic played at a very high level tonight and still only barely won -- I think it's fair to say that the momentum still favors Los Angeles at this point. But that will change if the Magic even the series Thursday night.

On a side note, does anyone actually watch the halftime analysis? Have those four morons made a single interesting point yet?

game 2: lakers 101, magic 96

The Lakers deserved to lose tonight.

Of course, both teams did. It was just a sloppy game -- lots of bad calls, cruddy shooting, a real lack of flow throughout. It was one of those games that if your team wins, you're mostly just relieved -- and if they don't win, you have a thousand reasons to moan about what could have been.

Magic fans will spend every second between now and Tuesday's Game 3 thinking about The Miss. Courtney Lee makes that layup at the end of regulation, and we're having a whole different conversation. That's the most obvious lament for the Magic faithful, but I also think Orlando's inability to get Lamar Odom to foul out will be missed in all the post-game analysis. Andrew Bynum was doing very little, and if Odom had picked up his sixth foul in the fourth quarter, I think the Lakers would have been in big trouble. Instead, Odom iced the game with those free throws at the end.

Laker fans will probably walk away with this thought: Kobe Bryant didn't play all that great, Orlando started shooting like they can, our team as a whole didn't have an inspired outing, but we still won. That's all true, but they almost didn't pull it out. Some games you win, some games you lose, and some games fall into the weird nether region were, really, it could have gone either way. Game 2 was one of those. We were just lucky it bounced our way. And that Lee missed that shot.

Bill Withers - "Hope She'll Be Happier"

I saw Soul Power this week, the forthcoming documentary about the epic 1974 R&B concert that was mounted in conjunction with the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" title bout in Zaire. The James Brown stuff is amazing in the movie, not a big surprise, but another clear highlight is Bill Withers doing a pretty stunning acoustic version of "Hope She'll Be Happier."

I tried to find anything remotely comparable online, and this is the closest I got. The strings might be a bit much, but the emotion comes through all the same.

game 1: lakers 100, magic 75

Game 1 of the NBA Finals played out like a best-case scenario for the Lakers. The Magic, who live or die by their three-point shooting, couldn't hit a thing, and the Lakers, whose toughness has been questioned in these playoffs, were locked and loaded pretty early on, grabbing offensive rebounds and hustling like crazy. Bottom line, the Lakers looked like killers tonight.

In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers were blowing out the Magic early, but they let Orlando hang around, and the Magic came back to beat them. I think that made the difference in the entire series -- it proved to the Magic that they could hang with the big boys (without home-court advantage, even). That didn't happen tonight. The Magic had the lead after the first quarter, but once their shooters went cold (and stayed cold), it was over.

What will be really interesting for Sunday's Game 2 is whether the two teams will go back to their normal selves. I don't put it past the Lakers to take their foot off the gas again -- they've done that a few too many times this playoffs -- and I expect Orlando to shoot better. (There's no way they can shoot worse, right?) I went into this series picking the Lakers in 7. Despite the Lakers' dominant performance tonight, I still think there's a long way to go.

corked!

Corked! is yet another indie mockumentary aspiring to Christopher Guest-ian levels of comedy gold. This one's about a bunch of eccentric characters who work and live in California's wine country. It has its moments, but not enough of them. My review is at L.A. Weekly.

francis ford coppola doesn't want critics calling him pretentious

In an interview with Movieline's Kyle Buchanan, Francis Ford Coppola talks about how he deals with criticism:

What I look for with critics is more that they’re going to write about something I did and I’m gonna read it and not make those mistakes again, I’m gonna learn something from it. Often, though, they don’t do that: they say, “It’s a muddled mess.” “It’s pretentious.” I can’t learn a lot from someone saying “It’s pretentious.”

(I'm sure most people will be more interested in the part of this interview where Coppola says there should have only been one Godfather film.)

dave matthews band - big whiskey and the groogrux king

Like it or not, the new DMB record, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, is very much a traditional DMB record, despite the fact that a lot of the songs reference the untimely passing of band member LeRoi Moore. Ornate arrangements, tasteful melodies, vaguely philosophical musings in the lyrics -- you know what to expect, people. My review is at About.

eels - hombre lobo

The new album from Eels, Hombre Lobo, is a minor work. I don't mean to suggest that it's bad or disappointing, but while it's reliably melodic and well-crafted, it rarely surprised me. (The one truly out-of-the-box moment is the strong first single, "Fresh Blood.") My review is up at About.

albert brooks blows your mind -- in 3-d!

Up opens today in 3-D. Filmmakers have made major advancements in 3-D technology of late, but this trailer for Real Life from 1978 is still my favorite incorporation of the cinematic gimmick.

spike lee brought barack and michelle obama together

Director Spike Lee has mentioned this story before, but he brings it up again in connection with the 20th anniversary of the release of his seminal film, Do the Right Thing. The Los Angeles Times put together an oral history about the film's production history over the Memorial Day weekend, and Lee couldn't resist:

Spike Lee: There was a benefit for Barack Obama on Martha's Vineyard when he was running for the Senate. I didn't really know who he was. He came over and said, "You're responsible for me and my wife getting together." Then he told me how they saw "Do the Right Thing" on their first date, and then went to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream and talked about it.

Roger Guenveur Smith [actor]: We're actually responsible for a whole new era in American political achievement.

Lee: I think he is a very smart man, because if he had taken Michelle to see "Driving Miss Daisy," things would have turned out a whole lot different.

Driving Miss Daisy is, of course, the film that won the Best Picture Oscar that year.

terminator salvation and the girlfriend experience

In my latest Consumables column, I sheepishly defend Terminator Salvation and heap praise on The Girlfriend Experience. Plus, I discuss O'Horten, Jerichow, Easy Virtue and Kobe Doin' Work.

thinking about jay bennett, and wilco

If you haven't heard, former Wilco member Jay Bennett died on Sunday.

His untimely passing got me thinking about the band. I used to be a huge Wilco hater, especially around 2002 when the overrated Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was being hailed as some sort of visionary piece of music-making. Soon after the album's release, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, a documentary about YHF's making, was released, and I was pretty merciless in a review at the time. Looking back on it, I'm clearly responding more to the band's hype than the band itself, although I still think the documentary is too fawning and glossy. But this paragraph from my piece is interesting, in retrospect:

For a songwriter too often referred to as a poet in the press, [frontman Jeff] Tweedy doesn't make for an engaging film presence. Even his aloofness feels unremarkable. And the much-discussed fission between him and chief collaborator Bennett -- a man more than a little responsible for the deepening of Wilco's music over the years -- never really takes hold. What you have here are two strong personalities fighting over the future of a band, but [director Sam] Jones clearly favors Tweedy and therefore reduces Bennett to an easily discarded side character. The real story is far more fascinating: Bennett's assertions in the film that Tweedy is a little bit of an egomaniac, desperate to control the band, have been repeated by others in the past. But the film doesn't even consider the possibility. Tweedy (the hero) triumphs, and Bennett (the villain) is vanquished. No muss, no fuss, no drama, no gray area, no interest.

Of course, Bennett was supposedly a bit of a control-freak himself, so it's hardly as if Tweedy was the only guilty party. Still, re-reading this reminds me of how sympathetic I was to Bennett -- the film is fairly cruel to him. (I still recall how the audience laughed derisively at Bennett when, after he'd been kicked out of the group, he plays a solo show to a small smattering of fans at a tiny club -- what, was this some sort of karmic comeuppance for something he'd done?)

After a while, I got off my anti-Wilco kick -- Sky Blue Sky went a long way to helping in that regard. But with Bennett's passing, it brought back the fact that I still think Tweedy gets too much credit and Bennett not enough for the band's musical evolution.

the hangover

I don't think I've laughed more at a movie this year than while watching The Hangover, the new Todd Phillips comedy. I don't think it's quite as terrific as Wedding Crashers, but it's in the same ballpark -- my review is up at Screen International.

away we go: what other critics had to say

I already linked to my own review of Away We Go, the forthcoming Sam Mendes film. Let's take a look at what the other trades had to say -- and what I thought of what they thought.


Dennis Harvey of Variety:

Burt's a bit immature, and Verona, the grown-up of the couple, occasionally impatient (partly explained by the discomforts of advanced pregnancy). But the protags are essentially blank slates, despite the skill and charm Krasinski and Rudolph bring to the roles. It's their job simply to represent "normal" against so many illustrations of bad parenting, worse marriages and damaged adulthood. But given they're such harmlessly pleasant folk, why don't they have any non-messed-up friends?

Because that would un-stack the deck in a script that needs to paint them as two lonely souls in a hostile world. But in positing normal as special, the pic requires caricaturing almost everyone else.

While handled by resourceful actors, the foibles of the supporting characters are less funny than they are forced and unpleasant. Janney and Gyllenhaal in particular play figures venomously conceived.

I think Dennis is right about the caricaturing that goes on in some of the supporting roles. It's worse early on in the film, which doesn't make the road trip look all that promising for the viewer. But I do think Away We Go eventually eases up on the freak-show exhibits and starts getting into some honest emotions.

And while I agree about Janney, I thought Gyllenhaal was dead-on as the smug, more-enlightened-than-thou New Wave hippie. I've met these people, and she got it exactly right.

Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter:

Obviously each destination offers a snapshot of the various challenges inherent in carving out the family unit one would like to create as opposed to the family into which one was born. But though it's nice to see Mendes take a looser, not quite so studied approach to his filmmaking, some stops along the way -- like a detour to visit Burt's suddenly single brother (Paul Schneider) -- feel dramatically off-course.

Production values have a nice, grassroots texture, including Ellen Kuras' cinematography and John Dunn's costume design, though musically the film could have packed a bit lighter where the extensive and occasionally intrusive acoustic song selection is concerned.

Michael's review hits on something important -- that while Away We Go represents a stylistic shift for Mendes, it's not that different from some of his other films when it comes to its study of domestic stability. I would say, however, that the couple's scenes with Schneider were some of my favorites, even if I didn't quite love the resolution to that sequence.

And I agree about Alexi Murdoch's score -- must every American mini-major independent film now come equipped with earnest acoustic-guitar doodlings?

guns n' roses - you could be mine

Happy Memorial Day weekend, people. Like a lot of you, I'll be checking out Terminator Salvation over the holiday. With that in mind, let's take it back to 1991 ....

away we go

Away We Go, from director Sam Mendes, is a bit of a departure for the filmmaker of American Beauty, Jarhead, and Revolutionary Road. It's a comedy-drama-road movie about a young unmarried couple expecting their first child and trying to figure out where to move to start their family.

My review in a nutshell:

Though burdened with an arch, overly clever temperament, the film remains resonant thanks to understated performances from stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph.

Rudolph especially is a revelation here -- she's a wonderfully naturalistic performer better known as a comedic actress from her years at Saturday Night Live.

The rest of the review is here.

dance flick

In 2000, my roommate at the time went to see Scary Movie, the spoof film from the Wayans brothers. He came back to our apartment with this threat: "If you go see that movie and you laugh even once, I'm moving out."

Dance Flick, the latest Wayans spoof, opens today. I'll admit I laughed a decent amount. I won't go as far as saying that I recommend the movie, but it's not completely terrible. My review is at Screen International.

kids respond to yo la tengo's "little eyes"

If you've never seen this, you should check it out, especially if you love kids' drawings and/or the music of Yo La Tengo.

conan o'brien gives great life advice

From Lynn Hirschberg's fantastic New York Times Magazine profile, Conan O'Brien talks about the pressure to compete with Jay Leno and the weight of expectations as the new host of The Tonight Show:

“When I can’t sleep and it’s 3 in the morning, I’m not thinking about Jay. I’m thinking about all the things I want to do on the show. And I’m not thinking about how I’m going to change myself to fit a certain demographic. I just have to block that nonsense out. In entertainment, you have to stake out what you think is right, you have to put out that signal, make sure it’s pure and then do it and do it and do it and know that they will come. And if they don’t, you have to pack up your bags and say: ‘I enjoyed my time here. Sorry it didn’t work out.’ But the biggest mistake would be to alter my signal to make sure that I reach all these different people. Because then you’re lost.”

What comes through loud and clear in Hirschberg's piece is that O'Brien is just a great, genuine guy. I hope he kills in his new gig, even though he'll be running head-to-head with my beloved David Letterman.

night at the museum: battle of the smithsonian

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is one of those rare sequels I prefer to the original. The first Night was pretty mediocre, but this new film has a secret weapon: Amy Adams. My review is up at Screen International.

the prodigy - invaders must die

The Prodigy just embarked on their first U.S. tour in forever. For Detroit's Metro Times, I review the dance-rock band's latest album, Invaders Must Die.

barack obama wants to play forward on your basketball team

Obama's speech at the University of Notre Dame today had more meaningful moments, of course, but I particularly enjoyed this section:

I also want to congratulate the class of 2009 for all your accomplishments. And since this is Notre Dame, I mean both in the classroom and in the competitive arena. We all know about this university’s proud and storied football team, but I also hear that Notre Dame holds the largest outdoor 5-on-5 basketball tournament in the world - Bookstore Basketball.

Now this excites me. I want to congratulate the winners of this year’s tournament, a team by the name of “Hallelujah Holla Back.” Well done. Though I have to say, I am personally disappointed that the “Barack O’Ballers” didn’t pull it out. Next year, if you need a 6’2” forward with a decent jumper, you know where I live.

I'm not the only Obama supporter who thinks he's at his weakest when he's trying to be funny. But this was nicely handled.

american teen

So, this is a new feature called Blind Spots that I'm going to be doing on this blog. It'll give me a chance to write about movies or albums or whatever that I missed during their initial run. I'll write them in the style of Consumables and, ideally, this exercise of going back will help me fill in some gaps. I'll write these whenever the spirit moves me.

American Teen
Here's a movie that worked on me despite itself. Documentary filmmaker Nanette Burstein (who co-directed the equally shallow The Kid Stays in the Picture) journeyed to an Indiana small town to follow a bunch of students over the course of their senior year. American Teen was the result, a deeply slick gloss of all the stereotypes we remember from our adolescence -- the jock, the bitchy popular girl, the cool artistic outsider. The narrative structure is everything you've come to hate from the proliferation of reality TV in the last decade -- every conflict has a resolution, every single second of real life is part of a story arc.

But, as I said, I have to admit that the film touched me. Perhaps not even realizing it, Burstein does her best work when showing her subjects' thought process when it comes to choosing a college. American Teen does a fine job illuminating that most crucial of early decisions in a person's life -- what a momentous decision at such a young age. And while Burstein doesn't tell me anything I don't know about adolescent boys, she seems to have gotten to the root of young women's insecurities. The charge against American Teen that the filmmaker's cameras inspired the students to act out is fair, but there is a benefit -- Burstein's young ladies really open up and seem comfortable around her.

Still, a movie like American Teen irritates me because it's yet another documentary that's more of a documentary-lite. There aren't really that many observations or insights to it -- but, it's, y'know, real life, so that means it's true.

all i care to say about lakers-rockets game 7

Sports Illustrated's Scott Howard-Cooper sums up this Sunday's game perfectly:

To not win a championship would be the Lakers falling short of their expectations and the expectations of many. To not so much as reach the conference finals when they had home-court advantage and a wounded team on the line would be a monumental setback. Sunday is for their legacy, not just for their playoff lives.

If you get beat by a better team, you may not like it, but you live with it. But if you get beat by a team that's not as good -- not even close, frankly -- then it suggests a real lack of character and mental toughness. And that I cannot stand.

yeah yeah yeahs - zero

Love this song -- love it, love it, love it. Here's Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing it on Saturday Night Live.



And here's the original video for the single.

night at the museum

So, this is a new feature called Blind Spots that I'm going to be doing on this blog. It'll give me a chance to write about movies or albums or whatever that I missed during their initial run. I'll write them in the style of Consumables and, ideally, this exercise of going back will help me fill in some gaps. I'll write these whenever the spirit moves me.

Night at the Museum
When this movie came out around Christmas 2006, the critical consensus was something like, "Eh, it's not bad." That's sorta how I feel about it, too -- if the filmmakers had spent just a little more time with the story, they might have really had something. Instead, it's yet another family comedy where too much of the humor comes from frantic action executed at high volumes. Of the cast, Robin Williams gives the best performance -- he dials down his excesses, and he's actually effectively poignant as Teddy Roosevelt. I haven't read the book that the film's based on, so I don't know if the big plot holes are the fault of author Milan Trenc or screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, but I would have given just about anything for the whole film just to be Ben Stiller's interactions with his onscreen son, Jake Cherry. Cherry doesn't act like your typical movie kid, thank god, and Stiller has a real sweetness in those scenes.

Still, this is just another divorced-father family film, although I'm happy there's no forced attempt to get him to reconcile with his former wife (Kim Raver) at the end to make everyone happy. And, yes, it's worth noting that Night at the Museum actually endorses the importance of knowing history -- not just the Civil War but, y'know, the whole world's. But what was most interesting was that the film's setup echoes our current financial crisis in an eerie way. Stiller needs to find a job -- any job -- as quickly as possible or he'll get evicted from his place. Meanwhile, his former wife's new husband, Paul Rudd, is a jerky Master of the Universe. Stiller refers to him as a stockbroker, but Raver corrects him -- he's a bond trader. If the movie came out now, Stiller would seem even more like the noble hero, while Rudd would be set up to inspire boos and hisses from the audience -- isn't he one of the creeps who got us into the mess we're in now?

brian williams loves jay-z

We learned today in an interview with Rolling Stone that NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is a big indie-music geek. We also learned this:

Q: When you prepare your newscast, what do you listen to?

A: Something quick that gets your energy up. The other night, I was listening to Jay-Z's "Dirt Off Your Shoulder." That was the last song I listened to before going on air. I was tempted to go on and say "Yeah, boy!" but I didn't. It was close.

Me, I prefer "99 Problems" off The Black Album. But just by a smidge. And I'm never tempted to say "Yeah, boy!" while listening to either track, much to the relief of all those around me.

not forgotten

Not Forgotten is a B-movie thriller starring Simon Baker as a nice guy with a Mysterious Past. That never ends well. My review is at L.A. Weekly.

the shins' james mercer knows that his band is for wussies

From the Los Angeles Times' interview with James Mercer of the Shins:

He knows fans will be waiting and that for others, the Shins will remain a symbol of the soft, contemplative side of indie rock, and therefore a target for contempt. Mercer understands.

"I remember being in high school," he says with a laugh, "and you had to draw those lines and define yourself. I don't think when I was in high school I would have been willing to admit that I liked the Shins. I was into TSOL and Black Flag. I probably would have listened to the Shins secretly in my bedroom."

As someone who was into Matthew Sweet, Public Enemy, R.E.M. and Nirvana in high school, I think I would have dug the Shins. I'm starting to look ahead to best-of-the-decade listmaking, and I have to say: I think Chutes Too Narrow is going to place very high on my album list.

kids say the darnedest things: summer movie edition

Every year around this time, Los Angeles Times writer Patrick Goldstein rounds up a bunch of teenagers to gauge their interest in different summer movie trailers. It may be rather unscientific and silly, but I do find myself looking forward to hearing the teens' reactions.

The best comment this year has to go to Jasmine Jafari, 15, who had the following reaction to the trailer for Drag Me to Hell:

The crazy old lady, who keeps saying 'You're going to burn in hell,' reminded me of one of those nutty Proposition 8 people. She was really scary.

Accurate indication of how the next generation feels about gay marriage? We'll have to wait and see.

green day - 21st century breakdown review

There are two camps: those who dismiss Green Day for selling out a long time ago and those who will love 21st Century Breakdown. Guess what camp I'm in?

star trek, star blech

Did I like Star Trek? Yeah, ultimately I did. But it's way overrated. I go into that in the latest Consumables -- I also review State of Play, Sugar, Tyson, Sin Nombre, Il Divo and Anvil!

tom waits - i don't wanna grow up

My favorite Tom Waits album? Probably Bone Machine. "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" is on it. Jim Jarmusch directed the video. In some ways, this is a precursor to The Limits of Control. Actually, it's not at all.

tony la russa reacts to the news of manny ramirez's suspension

From sportswriter Jimmy Golen's AP story:

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was talking to reporters before Thursday’s game against Pittsburgh when a clubhouse attendant stuck his head in and said: “Manny Ramirez, 50 games.”

La Russa’s first reaction: “You’re kidding me.”

Then he checked the schedule to see whether the Cardinals would be playing the Dodgers while Ramirez is out.

That's why we love La Russa.

the whatever works poster

Vulture premieres the poster for Whatever Works. Fun Quiz: Whose name do you not see in big letters on it?

dan deacon - bromst

Dan Deacon is one of 2009's most-hyped talents thanks to his recent album, Bromst. I try to get to the bottom of it over at Detroit's Metro Times.

the onion pulls out of los angeles

No, that headline isn't a joke. From Gawker:

An Onion staffer whispers to us that the humor publication has already laid off editorial and sales staff for its Los Angeles and San Francisco print editions, which will, said the staffer, cease publication.

Tomorrow's editions of The Onion are said to be the last ones for those markets.

Like a lot of people, I fell in love with The Onion online in college but slowly got tired of its repetitive formula. In the last few years, though, I've started picking it up around town and fell back in love with it. This news bums me out: what am I going to read now when I go to Swingers?

lucian piane (a.k.a. revolucian) speaks

Musician Lucian Piane is the mastermind behind the great "Bale Out," the dance remix of Christian Bale's on-set tirade during filming of Terminator Salvation. When he does his awesome viral remixes, he goes by RevoLucian, but in person Piane couldn't be a nicer, sweeter guy. I profiled him for L.A. Weekly. (Forgive the horribly mangled sentence in the first paragraph -- it happened after I sent in my piece.)

(Update: The interview no longer exists on the L.A. Weekly site, but you can find it here.) 

steven soderbergh nails the critic's dilemma

Steven Soderbergh, a rather smart fellow, articulating the problem critics face when trying to write at length about movies or any other kind of art...

On the one hand, in theory, if you write about movies you can go on the Internet and write a 5,000-word piece on something if you're so moved. The question is whether anybody will get to word 500 before they go, 'Oh Jesus, just tell me how many stars.' Culturally, that kind of question of whether there is a place for that kind of ruminative, complex criticism, that's an open question, and not just for cinema, for everything.

I'm, by nature, a letter-grader. When I started watching films as a kid, I would assign them a certain amount of stars. (When Entertainment Weekly came along, if memory serves, I switched to letter-grades.) I see the value in it, but I also think a writer's analysis is more important. That's one of the reasons why I like the format of Consumables -- I don't list my grade, so I have to try my best in the write-up to approximate my level of love or hate for the movie/album/TV show/single I'm covering. Which is what a critic is ultimately supposed to do, right?

judge judy vs. michele bachmann

The brilliant ladies of Jezebel have done it again.

the thermals - now we can see

Folks, I love the Thermals, and I particularly love their new album, Now We Can See. This is the title track.

rick ankiel on the cardinals' promising start

Rick Ankiel got the big hit in the ninth last night to beat the Washington Nationals. Afterward, he summed up St. Louis' season (to this point, anyway) pretty well:

“Last year, if we lost a lead late, it seemed like our bats were dead and we just didn’t come around,” Ankiel said. “It’s early, but as early as it is, it seems like the game is never over with this team. We’ve always got a chance to come back.”

I've noticed that, too. There's no reason to even start talking about this baseball season seriously yet -- it's not even May 15 -- but thus far in the National League, both the Cardinals and Dodgers have been adept at getting late-inning hits to win games. And that's part of the reason they're the top two teams in the NL right now -- although, again, it's only May 1.

wolverine vs. the limits of control

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the big movie of the weekend, although for a different crop of moviegoers, Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control is the must-see flick. I review them both for Consumables, plus I discuss Every Little Step, Goodbye Solo and Rudo y Cursi.

bob dylan, the painter

Rolling Stone has a nice gallery up of some of Bob Dylan's artwork.

(No, I haven't heard the new album yet. I know, I know, I know. Hopefully once I get some stuff done today, I'll be able to spend some time with it.)

break

Good news: There's a movie opening this weekend in Los Angeles that stars David Carradine, Chad Everett and Michael Madsen. Bad news: It's Break.

management

Management is yet another of those indie romantic comedies where the laughs come from the impossibility of the mismatched lovebirds staying together. This one stars Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn. Here's the opening from my review:

“Management” deserves some points for its quirky approach to romantic comedy conventions, but it doesn’t offer enough rewards to make the experience worthwhile. A story of a sheltered man-child and the professional woman he falls hopelessly in love with, this feature directing debut of playwright Stephen Belber is odd and touching, but it unfolds as a collection of disparate gambits that could have used a surer hand behind the helm.

wilco - ashes of american flags

Wilco's first live DVD, Ashes of American Flags, captures all that's right and wrong about this beloved band. The songs are expertly played and sensitively rendered, but Jeff Tweedy will forever be a touch too "arty" for my taste. My review is here.

obsessed

Everything you've heard about Obsessed is true -- it's a hoot. My review is at Screen International. Spoiler alert: Of the three leads, only the guy takes his shirt off. (Does that mean it really is a movie for the ladies?)

wilco - hummingbird

You've had a hard week, reader. Why not sit back and enjoy a cute animated video set to the music of Wilco?

kids write letters to obama

The whole story about Dear President Obama: Letters of Hope from Children Across America can be read here. But let me just say that this 12-year-old's letter might be my favorite.

someone i loved

Someone I Loved opened last night's City of Lights, City of Angels festival in Los Angeles. I'll run my own review closer to the film's actual U.S. release, but Variety's Justin Chang sums up my thoughts pretty well with this sentence:

[Director Zabou] Breitman isn't afraid to use a few artful flourishes to blur the lines between past and present or heighten the melodrama of the moment; she's fond of letting cigarette smoke hang suggestively in the air, or adding a delicate layer of soft focus around the edges of the frame.

The artful flourishes are largely what I remember of this romantic-infidelity drama. But when it comes to suggestive cigarette smoke in my filmed entertainment, I prefer Wong Kar Wai.

glenn kenny on the whole miss usa "controversy"

Film critic Glenn Kenny draws the obvious parallel to a certain Woody Allen film. Brilliant.

neil tennant agrees with me about home and dry

From a very good interview at Idolator with Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant:

Actually, “Home and Dry” is one of my favorite songs of ours. I really love it. You know Brandon Flowers from the Killers told us that when he comes home from tour, his wife plays that song ..... I like it, I think it’s sort of beautiful, but at the time, seven years ago, it was a new Pet Shop Boys that some people had a quite a hard time dealing with. I just think it’s a beautiful song.

It's off Release, which I think is a very underrated record in their canon. (It's definitely their most romantic album.) "Home and Dry" came around at a time when I was single, and the song was the best advertisement for a happy, stable long-term relationship I could imagine. Here's the video...

brian lowry on life after people: the series

Seriously, this may need to become a regular feature -- Lowry is a zinger machine. Here's part of his review of Life After People: The Series:

"Welcome to Earth. Population: zero," the narrator says at the outset.

Faced with the option of sitting through subsequent hours of "Life After People," the same description could apply to my living room.

I confess that I was intrigued by the original Life After People special. Then I watched it. Unspeakably lame. But, as Lowry points out, it was the History Channel's most-watched program, so of course the network execs would be stupid not to keep churning out more of it for audiences.

off to seattle ....

.... and the EMP Pop Music Conference. For obvious reasons, this song has been on my mind a lot lately. Everyone have a good weekend.

the butterfly tattoo

In a parallel world, The Butterfly Tattoo is just a harmless, likable coming-of-age romantic drama about two English teens. Unfortunately, in this world, it's a coming-of-age romantic drama that tries to grasp for Shakespearean tragedy when it morphs into a crime flick. My review is at L.A. Weekly.

Brian Lowry on 'Sit Down, Shut Up'

My tastes tend to line up with Variety's Brian Lowry's quite often. So his take-down of Sit Down, Shut Up is a real bummer:

"Sit Down, Shut Up” is an odd hybrid, and not just because the series places animated characters against photographed backdrops. Mixing social satire with a relentless array of kinky sex jokes, the early episodes limbo beneath the bar of bad taste set by Seth MacFarlane’s animated fare, feeling more suited -- mostly for ill -- to Comedy Central or Adult Swim’s latenight menu than primetime on Fox. Despite a pedigree that includes “Arrested Development” creator Mitch Hurwitz and many of that program’s stars, “Sit Down” seldom rises above sniggering double entendre. Seemingly preoccupied with impressing teenage boys, the show should possess scant appeal outside that demo.

For the record, put me down as someone who's not clamoring for the much-discussed Arrested Development movie. But I'd rather have that than what it sounds like we're going to be getting on Sunday with this.

south park - the spirit of christmas

Right, it's Easter, not Christmas. But I suddenly started thinking about Jesus and this popped in my head. I still remember seeing this South Park pilot back in the mid-'90s -- it really did seem like the funniest thing in the world back then. And, come to think of it, it's still pretty damn funny. (By the way, NSFW.)




Update 4/13/2009: Hmmm .... that was fast. Viacom took down the clip. Sorry about that. Enjoy this instead .....

'Old Joy' and 'Wendy and Lucy' at the New Beverly

Kelly Reichardt's two most recent films, Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, will be screening at the New Beverly on April 14-15. I sing their praises in L.A. Weekly, arguing that Reichardt "has become one of our most perceptive observers of outsiders, turning the Pacific Northwest ... into a microcosm for the decaying individualist spirit in an increasingly-conformist American society." That sounds pretty bleak, I know -- and yet there's so much beauty in her films.

alec baldwin agrees with me about rachel maddow

From Alec Baldwin's piece today in The Huffington Post (which is actually about the ongoing importance of The New York Times):

She is smart and charming but her writers are dreadful and the less cutesy she is, the better. She did an excellent interview with Colin Powell recently. The next night, I missed that tougher, less avuncular Rachel.

She needs to cut down on the aren't-I-adorable? moments. I still like her a lot, and the Powell interview was good, but I hope someone over at her show is in charge of watching out for encroaching smugness.

hannah montana: the movie

If you're going to go to the trouble of making a big-screen adaptation of your hit Disney Channel show, don't you want to at least put some ingenuity into it? Apparently not -- as Hannah Montana: The Movie suggests, maybe the best thing to do is hit ever cliche in the book so that the whole thing goes down very smoothly. My review is at Screen International.

eels - hombre lobo

If the first single, "Fresh Blood," didn't make it clear, this trailer for the making-of documentary suggests that Eels' Hombre Lobo is going to be a rock album, possibly in the vein of Souljacker. I'm positively loving "Fresh Blood," and I hope there's more like it on the album.



Update, 5/6/2009: According to the Eels camp, Hombre Lobo is indeed going to be somewhat Souljacker-ish.

the lonely island

In my latest Consumables column, I review the Lonely Island's Incredibad and spend some time surveying several notable foreign films: Tokyo Sonata, Three Monkeys, The Song of Sparrows, Paris 36, and Tokyo!

(What? You were expecting an expert analysis of Hannah Montana The Movie? Don't worry: That review will be up tomorrow.)

the hold steady - a positive rage

I wanted to love A Positive Rage, the first live album from the Hold Steady. But I ended up only liking it.

jerry orbach - try to remember

A colleague and I were talking about how much we loved Jerry Orbach on Law & Order, but, of course, he had a whole career before that. As if to remind me, this video came across my radar.



He would have been 74 in October.

leonard cohen

Leonard Cohen's first tour in 15 years has generated plenty of ink. I contribute my two-cents worth at the Phoenix New Times, where I analyze the ageless appeal of the Canadian singer-songwriter. I start this way:

One of the reasons we love Leonard Cohen is because we don't know him.

white lies, the band

White Lies' new album, To Lose My Life, just came out. My review is here. You want a preview? No sweat:

In the 21st century, this country has done its best to co-opt Britain's '80s gray-sky sound with homegrown groups like the Killers and Interpol. But as demonstrated by the new London trio White Lies on To Lose My Life, the problem with our bands isn't that they're ripping off their elders' torment, it's that they don't do it shamelessly enough.

on boredom and ken jacobs' razzle dazzle

I caught Razzle Dazzle last night at the Spielberg Theatre. I enjoyed it immensely, but Ken Jacobs' video project requires an audience member to surrender to its repetitions and seeming pointlessness — I found myself getting restless at first, but then I succumbed to its odd rhythms. The best way I can describe what Razzle Dazzle does is to quote part of a commencement speech from poet Joseph Brodsky on the merits of boredom:

When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.

[skip]

For boredom is an invasion of time into your set of values. It puts your existence into its proper perspective, the net result of which is precision and humility. The former, it must be noted, breeds the latter. The more you learn about your own size, the more humble and the more compassionate you become to your likes, to the dust aswirl in a sunbeam or already immobile atop your table.

Razzle Dazzle is about many things, but its slow, meandering techniques can make you antsy, and I don't think it's an insult to Jacobs to say that boredom becomes part of the movie's point. Close, sometimes indecipherable scrutiny of a 1903 Thomas Edison film reel forms the basis of Razzle Dazzle, and after you hit bottom — once you realize that this will be most of what you can expect from Jacobs for the next 90 minutes — you do begin to appreciate time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor. The movie becomes like a dream, and it does crush you in a way — it makes you feel insignificant, like a speck in time.

J. Hoberman addressed the paradoxical nature of Razzle Dazzle's appeal in the last line of his glowing review: "Razzle Dazzle feels endless — not a criticism — because it is." It's also hypnotic and surprisingly visceral — it plays your emotions like a piano. And oddly, after being in the dumps for part of the weekend, I found it to be a powerfully cleansing experience.

ann powers has heard bob dylan's together through life

"I was lucky enough to attend a listening session Thursday night," Powers writes in today's Los Angeles Times, "where I sat on a comfy sofa in front of a good sound system and scribbled down some notes on the 10-song set. I got one listen. Here's a quick response."

I'm no listening-session expert -- I've done it a couple times when reviewing albums -- but I will say it's such a hard way to accurately judge a record. (How many albums have you been able to figure out after only one spin?) Still, Powers is one of our best music critics, so I very much enjoyed her song-by-song assessment of Bob Dylan's Together Through Life. I'm excited about all that accordion.

the dirty garage

This parody is half-funny/half-painful -- it brings back a lot of bad moviegoing memories. My only complaint with The Dirty Garage: It doesn't look nearly cheap enough to accurately replicate the feeling of watching no-budget American indie cinema.

The Dirty Garage - watch more funny videos

blender magazine folds

I started writing for Blender in 2004 thanks to Rob Tannenbaum, who had liked my pithy contributions to The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop issue and invited me to write for the magazine. With him and Jonah Weiner as my editors, I wrote a lot of album reviews and got to interview everyone from Kid Rock to Busta Rhymes to Lars Ulrich to Chris Brown. (Imagine that supergroup.) I enjoyed every minute of it, which makes today's news such a bummer.

the cross

The Cross is a documentary about Los Angeles evangelist Arthur Blessitt, who decided to spend 40 years walking the earth carrying a 12-foot wooden cross. He's a real character, but the film's fawning treatment gets tough to take after a while. My review is up at L.A. Weekly.

bob dylan wants to help you meet women

To raise awareness for his forthcoming album, Together Through Life, Bob Dylan is engaging in an interview with rock journalist Bill Flanagan that's running in segments. Here's a handy piece of advice from Mr. Dylan:

Flanagan: If a young man considering a career in the arts wanted to meet a lot of women, would he be better off learning to paint or to play guitar?

Dylan: Probably neither. If he had women on his mind, he might think about becoming a lawyer or a doctor.

(Now he tells me.)

los angeles loves pet shop boys

Neil Tennant, on the fact that Pet Shop Boys still have a large following in Los Angeles:

"Years ago I met Monica Lewinsky. I introduced myself and she said 'oh yeah, I know who you are, I grew up in LA in the '80s.'"

I take it, then, that she's also familiar with Depeche Mode, Jane's Addiction, Oingo Boingo, and the Cure.

battlestar galactica finale: what others said

A quick spin around the web for other reactions to the Battlestar Galactica finale "Daybreak," complete with my own response to their responses. (WARNING: There might be spoilers ahead.)

John Paulsen of Premium Hollywood:

Not unlike the finale to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, this one had about five or six endings. It’s understandable — the viewers want to know how each major character moves on, and it’s impossible to do that quickly. I think that this is why they decided to do a two-hour combined finale instead of breaking it up into two episodes. It just wouldn’t have worked as well separately.

I thought the multiple endings at the end of Return of the King dragged, but I wasn't as invested in those characters. I found the slow farewell to the characters in "Daybreak" to be intensely emotional -- the scenes between Roslin and Adama just about destroyed me.

Jacob Clifton of Television Without Pity:

What a silly, bloated, preachy, half-assed mess. It's embarrassing to see such great actors saddled with such unvoiceable, pointless activity, for so very, very long. After all the talk about holding something back and pacing yourself for the marathon, one would think the creators would follow their own advice, but then, this episode could have easily been written in 1992 when TV still had an excuse for sucking, so maybe they did.

For the record, Clifton liked the series quite a bit but has had problems with where it's gone recently. I felt the same way -- the last season in particular was a tough slog -- but the ending redeemed a lot. As for the charge about being preachy, "Daybreak" does have those moments -- especially its epilogue -- but I contend that a sci-fi series that plays to hardcore geeks and preaches an ecological, back-to-the-basics approach to life is at least novel.

Lord Kitchener's Own:

The main point of particular import in my theory is this: Baltar and Caprica Six both died on Caprica in the initial Cylon attack that began the series.

OK, got that? Baltar died in the first episode along with Cap Six.

From then on, they're both "angels".

I know, but stick with me here.

I don't buy the theory at all, but it's a fun read.

Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend:

Tonight’s Battlestar Galactica finale was a cop out, but it was also the perfect goodbye. Ron Moore dropped the ball on plot but as always, the show delivered where it really mattered: Characters.

The one truly iffy plot point for me was the relative ease with which the fleet was able to bring Hera back to Galactica. (Good thing Boomer had a Darth Vader-like change of heart when it really, really mattered, huh?) But beyond the characters, here's another point I don't think is being made enough: the quality of the performances. It's very tempting to go big and grandiose in a big finale like this, but you didn't see that from the actors in "Daybreak." If anything, it was actually a more restrained episode than many from this season, which only intensified the emotions at play.

And, lastly, Ronald D. Moore:

I think [the whole series] hangs together better than it has any right to. I do feel good that the process I always believed in and really defended -- about feeling the story instinctively as you go through it, and not being tied to, "Oh, we know exactly how it's going to end up" -- that that was true. We were able to get there and could say, "We've been making this mosaic, and now we just need to put the final touches on it and we'll have a complete picture." There's loose threads and things that don't quite work, but I think that's in the nature of almost any show. By and large, I think we did a pretty good job of it.

I concur.

monsters vs aliens

Monsters vs. Aliens is a real charmer -- although I'm sorry to tell fellow Stephen Colbert fans that he's not that funny in the movie. My review is up at Screen.

battlestar galactica finale: my thoughts

For Vulture today, I've done a quick overview of the major Battlestar Galactica questions that were finally answered (or weren't) during the series finale, "Daybreak." And, for the record, I thought it was a terrific episode.

obama goes with north carolina

Look, I love this guy, so of course I'm biased. But if we're talking about who we'd like to have a beer with, I'm going with Barack Obama, who masterfully keeps his cool while dealing with one of ESPN's reporters as he puts together his bracket for the NCAA tournament. I tried embedding the video, got nowhere, and decided to just do it as an old-fashioned link. Thanks, ESPN.

the thief of bagdad comes to los angeles

Douglas Fairbanks might have been Hollywood's most impossibly beautiful male star of all time, or at least that's the impression you get watching his film The Thief of Bagdad from 1924. A new print screens tonight at the Academy -- I explain why this 85-year-old movie still matters:

At a time when big-budget blockbusters are only getting more juvenile, The Thief of Bagdad stands apart as a wonderfully grownup adventure film: sweet of spirit, fleet of foot, and so delightfully quaint that for younger viewers its old-fashioned romantic sweep and wide-eyed joy will feel positively revelatory.

The rest of my appreciation is here.

observe and report

Observe and Report, which stars Seth Rogen as a mall security guard, will be compared to Paul Blart: Mall Cop for obvious reasons, but while watching it, I was thinking of another film:

This adult comedy feels more tonally reminiscent of The Cable Guy, the 1996 Jim Carrey comedy which struggled to balance silly slapstick humour with a dark, imbalanced central character. [Writer-director Jody] Hill has assigned himself an equally difficult task in trying to wring laughs from a man whom we slowly begin to realise is a legitimate threat to those around him.

My review is here.

super capers

There's no way to sugarcoat it: Super Capers is one of those spectacularly terrible movies that we get two or three of every year. (If we're lucky -- some years we get even more.) If you thought Fanboys wasn't dopey and geeky enough, then it's the film for you:

Just as George Lucas recently unleashed The Clone Wars as a way to lure his fans’ progeny into his lair, so too does writer-director Ray Griggs’ juvenile Super Capers target the next generation, hoping that kids will be interested in a witless send-up of pop-culture detritus like light sabers, Batmobiles and “Hasta la vista, baby.”

The rest of my review is here.

an horse

An Horse are an Australian duo that make delicate bedroom-pop -- their new album, Rearrange Beds, comes out today. I hadn't listened to the record in quite some time, but rereading my review brought it all back. It's a lovely listen.

trashcan sinatras - weightlifting

How about some dreamy, melancholy indie-rock to end our week? Your wish is granted: The Trashcan Sinatras are here to help. Their 2004 album Weightlifting is vastly underrated.

handsome furs - face control

Face Control is the second album from the indie-rock duo Handsome Furs. As the press notes tell us, they went to Eastern Europe, took notes of what they saw, and made this album. Sounds like it was a harrowing trip.

busta rhymes talks “woo hah!! (got you all in check)”

As part of Blender's Greatest Songs Ever series, I interviewed the always-entertaining Busta Rhymes to talk about the making of "Woo Hah!! (Got You All in Check)." I had a blast -- the full story is here.

watchmen

My Watchmen review heads my latest Consumables column. Also included are my takes on Two Lovers, Must Read After My Death, 12, Everlasting Moments and (out on DVD) I Served the King of England.

don't buy stuff you cannot afford

This Saturday Night Live sketch aired three years ago, before "subprime" and "economic stimulus" were media buzzwords. I remember thinking this was brilliant when I saw it back in 2006. Now, it actually makes me a little sad. And angry.

chris cornell - scream

After many delays, Chris Cornell's Scream will finally be hitting stores on Tuesday. I've heard the album. Here's the opening to my review:

Chris Cornell’s Scream is sure to be derided for the wrong reasons. Teaming up with top-flight hip-hop producer Timbaland for the album, the former Soundgarden frontman will undoubtedly be mocked as a sellout who has traded away his soul and comprised his integrity for a slick pop makeover. But the ambitious Scream isn’t a noble misfire because Cornell decided to work with Timbaland – it’s because the collaboration isn’t nearly as rewarding as it should be.

The rest is here.

body count - there goes the neighborhood

Remember that brief shining moment in 1992 when Body Count seemed like the coolest, funniest hard rock group in the world? It didn't last long -- the group went south pretty fast, and Ice-T decided to focus on acting. For a trip down memory lane, here's their single, "There Goes the Neighborhood." (I had forgotten that there was a censored, radio-friendly version of this song.)

why st. louis cardinals fans are the best in the world

Joe Magrane, former Cardinals pitcher and current MLB Network commentator, talking about his fondest memories of playing in St. Louis:

I would have to say just the support of the fans. Whether we were succeeding or not, they were just incredibly loyal ... You look at the sea of red and knowing that they're gonna be there with you, good or bad.

Very heartwarming stuff, and I'm sure most Cardinal fans would agree with his assessment. But then he added this:

Unlike some of the other teams around the league, these fans look like they've had a shower within the last couple of days.

Translation: St. Louis fans are hardcore, but they're not obnoxious cretins. (And shall we guess which "other teams around the league" he's referring to?)