Who Killed The Electric Cuomo?

Joker, Wild Things Hit Web
Jonze ventures out Kaufmann-less with Where The Wild Things Are, an adaptation of that book you loved as a child or you have no soul. Pictures.

Heath Ledger meanwhile officially kicks ass as the Joker in The Dark Knight, with a bootlegged trailer doing the rounds over the last couple of days. I'd be wary of his dialogue if it weren't for the fact that Chris Nolan made this movie. Jokes combined with Batman bring back too vivid memories of Arnie as Freeze, though perhaps if it works here (and it will) it'll erase those memories for good. You'll have to search for it yourself as any link I post will be taken down by the Warner Nazis by the time you click on it. Otherwise, an official version should be up soon if it isn't already.

Another Reason To Hate Rolling Stone
Not that you need one to keep hating this inexplicably reputable publication and its bandwagon pandering.

Today's reason is Rivers Cuomo. Weezer used to be one of the best rock bands in the world about a dozen years ago, with Radiohead and the Smashing Pumpkins competing for honours (those were the days... no wait, I was 8 and oblivious). Then Weezer made Pinkerton, taking a risk in discarding the cheery bubble-grunge sound of their successful eponymous debut with a tortured choir of feedback screaming along with the pain of frontman Cuomo's soul-baring lyrics. Good old Rolling Stone led the charge labelling it the worst album of the year and, with an ensuing absence of critical support coupling with the album's failure to produce a mainstream hit single, Pinkerton crashed and burned critically and commercially. For Cuomo it wasn't quite Nick Drake bad (tortured and awesome and totally ignored altogether... three times) so rather than take Drake's way out he simply painted a room black and hid in it for a year. And ever since the emotional pen's been running dry, seemingly unwilling to tap into that once fruitful mine of biographical geekiness for fear of rejection, instead allowing Weezer to become a plastic characature mimicking the most-accessible surface elements of their first record without a moment of inspiration to be found on their last three releases. In a way, Weezer's like Family Guy. Pure genius that lost its audience, went away, was rediscovered in its absence and become more popular than ever... only to return, back by popular demand, a shadow of its former self largely devoid of the greatness that led to such popularity. Weezer, like Family Guy, has become a copycat exercise designed to cheaply tap into its former glory often enough to keep the casual fans, most of them, happy, and leave those of us first exposed to it at its peak shaking our heads (but of course still keeping tabs 'just in case'). For another cartoon comparison, because I like cartoons, New Weezer's like New Simpsons. And "Hash Pipe" was the Armen Tanzarian episode.

All of this has come back to mind in the last few days with the release of a compilation of Cuomo's home recordings. I haven't yet heard it all, but with the first official release of 1995's "Blast Off!" and "Superfriend" from the abandoned Songs From The Black Hole (which to Weezer fans is Chinese Democracy, due but never released between the "Blue Album" and Pinkerton) I found myself once again pining for the Weezer of old, and revisiting some old b-sides of the era have furthered this feeling of frustration. Yesterday I compiled 11 such outtakes into a record which kicks the ass - from start to finish - of any similar combination of actual album tracks from the past three Weezer records. Yes, "Island In The Sun" is 'nice,' but "Jamie" and the Pixies-esque "Paperface" are inspired. And you can't go wrong with "Superfriend" and it's opening lines "What the hell am I doing/thinking with my willy" To an 'original Weezer' fan, such a Cuomoism could only be the intro to an inevitable Weezer classic. And yet the song's life has stretched no further than a retread in the form of 2005's "Perfect Situation," firmly highlighting in the contrast between the two tracks not only a musical gap between Weezer noe and the Weezer of old but more notably the shift from genuine, heartfelt lyrical expressions of emotion, albeit geeky emotion, and generic crap about generic girls who a generic idea of Cuomo pretends to be generically in love with for 3 minutes at a time. The saddest part is that Cuomo considers "Beverly Hills", the second-worst thing Weezer's done (behind "We Are All On Drugs"...), one of his greatest achievements. It basically just rips off "I Love Rock And Roll" and his own '95 outtake "Blast Off!" and becomes annoying quickly. "Falling For You" was great. "El Scorcho" was great. "Say It Ain't So" might well be a contender for single of the century. When you used to put out stuff like that and nowadays marvel that you can still pump out trash like "Beverly Hills" it doesn't give fans much optimism for a revival in the future. I really wish Cuomo would come out and declare Make Believe a piece of shit, to acknowledge it was designed to return Weezer to MTV or something. I don't want to believe one of the most talented songwriters of the 90s can't see something's terribly wrong with his band right now. But with Make Believe's sales (of course) topping the million-mark, firmly re-establishing the band as a popular act, I guess it might be easy for someone in his position to skim over such criticisms. Pinkerton clearly hurt, and perhaps Cuomo just wants an audience. Even if they're buying while they pick up the new Fall Out Boy CD.

Bangers & Mash

The In Rainbows B-Sides disc leaked today. Listening first time through now, inevitably searching for that "should have been on the album instead of House Of Cards" track. So far Last Flowers is that track.

Spent the last three and a bit days feeling on the verge of a flu without the damn thing just kicking in and getting itself over with. Tiredness in every muscle. Lack of concentration. Getting up early to drop off sound gear yesterday didn't help. Been editing the film responsible for this sickness (three near-sleepness nights leading up to the shoot thinking/worrying about everything from shots to equipment failure) and things are coming along slowly but, as of this morning, with some encouraging signs. Pretty much finished with the Tony-Velouria bit which has surprised me in actually working about as well as I'd hoped, with the exception being where some guy stops when he sees the camera. A few concerns elsewhere but mostly the types of things which some careful cutting has already ironed out in places, so optimism remains. I can say without a doubt that no amount of theory can compare with what you learn actually going out and shooting stuff. Made a lot of mistakes, underestimated a lot of things and feel a lot more confident about my next shoot for it. Will certainly write something reflecting on all the stuff I've learned on this project soon, but right now I'm going to use whatever remaining hours of lucidity this semi-flu's allowing me today to continue chopping up the movie.

Spectacular Balls

And The Newfangled Interweb
"All our Daily Show clips were pulled off YouTube by Viacom, who is suing them for a billion dollars. That was not at our instigation – we were happy for people to watch the clips. But instead they wanted to set up a website where they can sell advertising while the clip is buffering, although I thought we were at the point where clips don’t need to buffer anymore. So you have to watch a commercial for thirty seconds or whatever. So they’re clearly making money on that; they’re also clearly making money because they’re suing YouTube for a billion. So that seems quite strange when they’re saying, “Well, there’s no money to be made off the internet but we’re suing YouTube for a billion dollars.” That takes spectacular balls! There are so many areas of it that seem so desperately unfair."
- The Daily Show's John Oliver regarding the current writers' strike

http://gothamist.com/2007/11/15/john_oliver_wri.php

Things I Never Thought I'd Say

My Bloody Valentine Are Back
Sweet. And this isn't one of those neverending-tour cash-in type reunions, apparently they're actually going to finish that Loveless follow-up they started 14 years ago and abandoned 11 years ago and put it out next year, which means this is already more exciting than the Pixies' promise of a new album and consequent quashing of that promise because notoriously difficult bassist Kim Deal (with it?) decided she "didn't need another Pixies record." Well as long as she's happy.

Michael Bay Made A Good Movie
The first thing on my post-exam to-do list, before having a much needed haircut, was to get around to seeing that most will-it-or-won't-it-suck of movies, Transformers. I used to love the old animated series as a kid (actually I was a fanatic) but when I heard this was being made I thought it sounded like the dumbest idea for a live action film since John Rambo, and with Bay attached I felt pretty confident in that assertion. Then something strange happened: people liked it. And rather than appealing to nobody it made $700m worldwide. At which point I went "hmm" or something and pretended I was a Netflix subscriber adding it to my imaginary queue. I then imagined it'd probably reached the top of that queue around exam time so I resolved to finally watch the damn thing once they were over, and to ensure that I'd at least get to see one enjoyable film that evening I grabbed Danny Boyle's Sunshine in a 2-for-1 deal.

Sunshine opens by ripping off the opening mess hall scenes from Alien and then proceeds to rip-off 2001 and Solaris in equal measure for the rest of its story, occasionally distancing itself from those films by replacing something awesome that they did with something new and crap. The set-up is that the sun's dying and some astronauts have to plant a giant bomb on/in it to reignite it, and that they're the second mission sent to do so after the previous one "mysteriously disappeared" seven years ago. All of which you've already seen before. By the one hour mark it's actually still going along okayish with a fair balance of its aforementioned ripped-off elements creating enough tension and psychological drama for the film to be mildly enjoyable. Then one of the guys from the old mission - seven years ago - inexplicably appears on the new ship and tries to kill them all while ranting and raving about conversations with God and looking like he crashed into the make-up trailer shortly before they called action, which director Danny Boyle seems intent on covering up by shaking the camera and smearing the lense or something so you can't see him. Actually I think these techniques are employed to somehow make him seem scary, woefully copying the whole unseen-creature aspect of Alien. Either way, this plot twist is bizarre and unnecessary in equal measure. At best it could have turned out to be a poorly-conceived low-effort method of setting-up for some great final pay-off, or at least one of those pretentious philosophical-ramble types of pay-offs that these types of movies seem to love, but instead it all goes absolutely nowhere and the character could have been (and should have been) omitted entirely. Oh and then the movie ends all happy. They blow up the bomb somehow and all die but then we see dancing children holding hands and prancing with deer as they look to the bright sun and see that all is well. At some point Boyle and writer Alex Garland forgot what movie they were making.

So my evening looked ruined until Michael Bay delivered the upset of his career. Transformers is (almost) brilliant (for a Hollywood action movie). Just as Batman Begins nailed its grittier tone and more realistic take on things, Transformers finds its own perfect balance because it realises it's about giant talking robots that can change into stuff and doesn't take itself too seriously. It's just so damn well written for 100 minutes, Shia Leboeuf (sp?) nailing his lines and role in general for 100 minutes and Michael Bay proving, for 100 minutes, that he can actually competently bring good material to life. Then after 100 minutes he goes back to blowing shit up, allowing the characters to become faceless pawns designated at random to partake in empty action set-pieces that go on way too long and suck all the life and humour out of the film. Hmm. But for 100 minutes I wasn't just enjoying myself, I was genuinely blown away. By Michael freakin' Bay. How?

I think even Bay himself realises he's turned a bit of a corner with this film; at one point some guy goes "this is a thousand times cooler than armageddon!" for a bit of self-referential back-patting.

Third Sign Of The Apocalypse...
...would if the new MBV record is actually up to par, seeing as reunion albums always come across as forced grabs at past glories (or else see bands attempt to adapt to more "modern" sounds without undergoing a natural progression of their sound over time) and, as a consequence, always suck. At least some of the material will be old stuff, from when they were still together, so that's promising. Less promising is that they didn't see fit to release it at the time...

My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow" (from Loveless, 1991)

Fi15een Step

Gary Kemble Must Lose

After all the games over the years spent sitting on the edge of my cat hoping and praying for the Kiwis to win, when delayed coverage of the third test against Great Britain starts in about 2 minutes I will, for the first time, be cheering on the Poms - and surely after all the losses over the years when we've actually had good teams I'll be rewarded for this treason? Surely on the back of a 44-0 hiding and with Thomas Leuluai, one of the few decent players in the squad, ruled out and replaced by one of the seven Jeremy Smiths we seem to have on stand-by we can't actually improve on that massacre? Plus my cat ran away or suffocated or something years ago, and that's bound to somehow count for something. Fact is that Kemble's out of his depth, and that his depth is week-old residual wetness from someone spitting half-heartedly on the surface of the Sahara. Even the captain's said as much. If by some miracle the Kiwis do win today it will not be as a consequence of his coaching - see Brian Ashton and England at the Rugby World Cup a few weeks back for an example, particularly the post-tournament truth-telling by the players who overcame his shittiness and made the final in spite of his "guidance." So please lose and leave Kemble with no choice but to resign and the NZRL with no choice but to abandon their archaic coach-residency law so we can hire some Aussie guy for the World Cup. Any would do.

"Film is a visual medium" - Random Primordia promotional email. Urgh.

Edit
Ya- No! We're winning 12-0! Must resist... Kiwi pride... think of long term chances... of winning the... cup... Damn you Kemble!

Shit. I'm enjoying this :(

Edit Again
Never mind. The Kiwis lost AND the gave me 25 minutes of enjoyable play before the usual capitulation - that's probably the best scenario I could have hoped for. See ya Gary. Plus next year we should have Benji Marshall, Brent Webb, Francis Meli, Ali Lauiti'iti and Sonny Bill Williams in the squad and probably others I can't think of off the top of my head, ensuring the Lions do an All Blacks and peak now to lose when it matters most. The Kangaroos (who may as well just field Melbourne plus Matt King and Darren Lockyer) will win the World Cup anyway, but at least they'll beat us in the final. That's what matters, that all important first-loser spot on the podium.

Oh and apparently Malawi's complaining that they only lost (85-26) to the Silver Ferns because... they had to play indoors. Aww. How sneaky of the Ferns to pull that stunt. It's like saying the Kiwis would have won the series but the Lions insisted on playing league instead of hosting homoerotic cooking wars.

She Hate Me

A little too tied down at the moment to write anything or indeed to have anything interesting to write about, but fortunately not everyone in the world has 3 exams this weekend, so go read "9 Awesome Directors Who Temporarily Lost Their Mind" instead. A couple of snippets:

"Russell Crowe Drinks Wine For Two Hours" (aka "A Good Year") goes beyond mere "What was Ridley Scott thinking" and plows headlong into "This can't be Ridley Scott" territory. After the first hour and a half of uneventful poolside wine-drinking, you're more likely to believe that there is a second director named Ridley Scott, or that Ridley Scott was replaced by a replicated robot whose primary function is to monitor Russell Crowe's alcohol consumption.

...

No, our problem is that Gilliam, anticipating people not liking his movie, is explaining that it's the fault of the viewer for watching it wrong, and that they should re-watch it while pretending they're a little kid. You made a shitty movie, Terry Gilliam, now live with it. You didn't see Coppola make a speech before "Jack" saying "Look, folks, this movie blows, but when you watch it, imagine yourself as a person with really shitty taste in movies and I think you'll really enjoy it."