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."

Killed Bill Properly This Time

So I just saw a TV spot for Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof on C4. I guess, given the spirit of its Grindhouse origins, that showcasing a series of hot women shaking their asses and riding in (and on) fast cars doesn't seem entirely out of place. But given the failure of the double-bill Grindhouse concept to sell in its American release, the very thing which lead to Death Proof's separate run elsewhere, you'd think something more coherent in terms of, say, actually articulating what the hell the film's about would have been the first thing on the agenda for senõrs Weinstein and Weinstein (the second one's the fat one). This ad doesn't just fail to sell what the movie is about. I knew what the movie was about, and after viewing the ad I can't remember. Although it apparently stars Kurt Russell, who can kill you in his sleep and still has bits of Chuck Norris stuck between his teeth, so I'm there.

I'd actually be genuinely skeptical about the film if it wasn't for the fact that I saw the two Kill Bills back to back for the first time yesterday. Watching them on their own is one thing, a thing which I'd done multiple times in fact, but seeing them as originally intended (and structured) as a single film has, in my eyes, greatly appreciated their worth. In the past I've viewed them as Tarantino childishly having as much fun as he can buy with his special effects budget, but to be honest I think this is actually his most, perhaps only, truly mature effort as a filmmaker. It might not have the inspired writing of Pulp Fiction, but other than that I think he reached a new peak with Kill Bill in terms of all-round creativity. We're basically talking about four hours flooded with mindblowing ideas - just all sorts of little things that add so much character to the film. Nobody, absolutely nobody, can do some of the stuff he does. Seeing it all in one go and getting the big picture as a single experience, I think that if anything its because the narrative is so simple that the gargantuan (rare indeed, Elle) success of the film is so remarkable. Sure it relies on a killer last half-hour to seal the deal (grounding the film firmly in its emotional core rather than opting for the big slice-em-up finale perhaps anticipated an hour or so in), but the way in which he just kicks all the rules to the curb and constructs this completely free form movie filled with fully-integrated genre shifts, pop culture references, outdated-technique-revivals (if that's a thing) and even fully animated sequences all within a wildly fractured chronology and actually makes it all work is just astonishing. I still maintain that you can't have as much pure fun watching anything else.

If you haven't seen them before, or even if you have, watch them back to back. Now. Especially if you have an exam tomorrow. Tarantino is the man, and having seen Kill Bill again I think I'd trust anything he puts his name to. Unless, you know, he's just 'presenting' it.

Two More Reasons Why Hollywood Is Shooting Itself In The Foot

or: Kevin Costner must have the best agent in the world
The Hollywood Reporter on the recently announced "New Daughter":

Kevin Costner will star as a dad whose daughter begins displaying scary behavior in the Gold Circle thriller "New Daughter." Spanish helmer Luiso Berdejo is attached to direct in his feature debut. Costner will play John James, a single father who moves to a farm with his two kids after a painful divorce. Soon, his daughter (Ivana Baquero of "Pan's Labyrinth") starts behaving ominously, and Dad begins to suspect that the burial mound in a nearby field might have something to do with it.

Let's first of all look past the fact that this is yet another "scary kid" movie. With a bit of an original spin they actually sell, it's not the worst thing to rehash from a business perspective.

This movie is called New Daughter because the daughter becomes different, thus making her new. And it stars Kevin Costner (who is, presumably, on board for the sadistic pleasure of personally ensuring the downfall of Ivana Baquero faster than his own career sunk). How does this guy still get jobs like this? Or any? Given he hasn't been a draw since around the time Kurt Cobain was still happy, I don't see why he'd have a better shot at headlining something than some unknown guy with actual talent who'd at least do a good job of it. But none of that's even why this movie will fail. Let's read this carefully, all together now: "Soon, his daughter begins behaving ominously." How might this behaviour be ominous? Because it copies what millions of other films have previously done to therefore suggest 'ensuing child-oriented scariness'? So the best synopsis they can think of is to point out it's what the audience has seen a million times before? I take back what I said about the rehash thing. At least The Grudge made its kid meow, that was a rehash with something new. Not necessarily needed, but new. The only thing new here is the daughter apparently.

The other foot-shooting thing was this, which speaks for itself:


Ah, I See You Can Draft Blog Entries
Well actually I used to know that but then I forgot. Helps when posting incoherent midnight ramblings that require four edits over the course of eight hours to begin to half resemble what you think you recall meaning at the time. And to remove the overuse of the word "wonderful," a word which is, incidentally, not wonderful. Listening to overly-happy music can do that to you.

A Couple Of Memorable Quotes From Lynch On Lynch
"I'd like to bite my paintings, but I can't because there's lead in the paint."
"One time I used some hair remover to remove all the fur from a mouse to see what it looked like - and it looked beautiful."

The Modern Lovers

"Pablo Picasso"
Well,
some people try to pick up girls
and get called "asshole"
this never happened to Pablo Picasso
he could walk down your street
and girls could not resist to stare and so
Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole

Well the girls would turn the color of the avacado
when he would drive down their street in his El Dorado
he could walk down your street
and girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
not like you

Alright,
well he was only 5'3" but girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
not in New York

Oh well be not schmuck, be not obnoxious
be not bellbottom, bummer or asshole
remember the story of Pablo Picasso
he could walk down your street
and girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Alright this is it

Well,
some people try to pick up girls
and they get called an "asshole"
this never happened to Pablo Picasso
he could walk down your street
and girls could not resist to stare and so
Pablo Picasso was never called...

First listen through, these guys seem like the Velvets and Stooges rolled into one with a sprinkling of the Doors. Song above features both Jerry Harrison (later Talking Heads) and, on piano, John Cale.

Figures Obscured In A Dusty Ditch

Now Edited To Make Slightly More Sense. Midnight Ramblings Deserve Proofreading Too.
After a week or so of listening to that album I guess I don't really feel like breaking down what I get from it into a series of logical reasons why it's good or bad, where its strengths and weaknesses lie or feel the need to compare it with their other records. I've been reading a lot of reviews and things and after all the track-by-track breakdowns, star ratings, "not-as-good-as"s and "better-than"s the one thing I've taken away from them all is simply the notion that this album just 'is what it is' on its own and my experience won't be your experience and maybe you might try it and like it and maybe you already have and didn't but I hope you try it in case it works for you in some way. I guess I've been realising lately how important it is to just try things, maybe there isn't anything more important than that, just finding yourself in things (not in a material sense, some other use of 'things') and the way they make you feel or whatever it is I'm hopelessly trying to describe. The more music I've been exploring the more I've realised how much there is to experience, its like discovering things as a kid, all these new, unique feelings in every nuance, abstract and defined only by unique association with the way a moment works with and against the moments its embedded in, both in the music and in the listener. I don't want to dumb that down and analyse it that with such cold logic. It's making something so pure and real in its own right into something synthetic and relative for the sake of defining something in need of no definition. I'm not bashing the idea of criticism or something ridiculous, just the means with which so many critics seem to be going about it. Oh. Dear. GOD. No really, read that last one. As for the music, just try it and you might discover something. If not, cool.

Just as a further comment to that and what I was saying about the whole Mulholland Dr./Blue Velvet thing , sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm just lazy or don't want to deal with things or something in kind of... generally relying so much on abstract things I can't define and preferring the elusive and undefinable to the concrete, or if maybe it's the other way around and it's because the abstract appeals to me that I shouldn't feel the need to rely on definitions and absolutes. I guess that's something I maybe need to figure out. What I'm getting at I suppose relates to how I often feel like I only let people see me in glimpses between a false construction that portrays my personality in a very broad way drawing heavily on superficial, homogeneous ideas of what I consider people might accept, even if it means constantly underselling myself (and even if I really dislike that persona), to avoid the crushing hurt of exposing who I am at heart and being rejected with no comforting reality left to fall back on. I think that's something maybe reflected in my past unwillingness to share writing or make films or whatever comes from my mind with others (or even what I'm really thinking in conversations when I sit there saying nothing) just because they're so personal and to expose them to the possibility of rejection could destroy the illusion that they're 'better' than they are, like a little reassuring lie to avoid dealing with their actual reception in reality. I dunno, that probably sounds weirder or more pathetic than what I'm trying to describe actually is. I guess its like thinking of a melody or something for a song and never being happy with the lyrics because to lock it down as 'completed' then in light of the full song you might see it for what it is: far less than you imagined when toying that melody in your mind with abstract notions that somehow exaggerate it beyond what it really is.

It seems to me so hypocrticial to be that guarded about myself, particularly in drawing on all these stupid superficial traits in my outward personality as some sort of construction of an absolute notion of an 'accepted persona' (one incidentally undermined by this construction). I guess over time I've become more disillusioned with a lot of mainstream ideas often taken for granted in modern day society and the hypocricy lies in having a desire to escape some of those deeply-ingrained social ideals only to find myself unable to escape from my own protective shell. I think I'm too passive with respect to that and that's why I rarely get anywhere in terms of actually expressing myself and why these ramblings would probably just slip away inconsequentially to be forgotten for a while until my next passive resolution not to let them had I not forced myself to write them down. I don't know if they're for my benefit or what, I don't know if anyone will ever even read this and I guess that's probably the only reason why I even feel that I can put it all down. But it means something to at least try to describe some of this stuff as best I can, even if just to collect my thoughts and even if I could never do it justice with words (I guess that's where the appeal of film and music also lies - the things you can really convey through those, the opportunity to communicate those more abstract thoughts and feelings). Plus it's better than that bland bullshit that filled up the last blog where I'd read what I'd written a day later and see that fake person again in that writing and regret exposing that person again for no better reason than to feel better and quell some anxieties that I knew would ironically be refuelled both in that regret and in the knowledge that people had actually read those words.

"As" is a wonderful song. I'm lying in bed listening to Stevie Wonder jotting down all these random thoughts and resolving to post them tomorrow (today) no matter what comes out because I feel that's at least honest. This music's somehow created the perfect little sphere for that. I feel like I need to feel right now just from listening to an album I've never heard before. Isn't that the greatest thing? So if you want a review, maybe In Rainbows is just that what it says, something in amongst some reds, blues, greens and yellows. I hope tomorrow (today) I find something like that. Between the awesome CD Michael put together (cheers again) and an over-the-top stress-relieving music and movie shopping spree yesterday I've got a healthy diet of unheard Sufjan Stevens, Aerosmith, The Modern Lovers, Bloc Party, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Deep Purple, Can, Sigur Ros, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, King Crimson, Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine records to get to know over the next few weeks so I don't think it'll be a problem. Like Godard's Made In USA I shall now unexpectedly stop, mid-conversation, characters driving down the road, with a nice vivid FIN

Good Times

I Hate Uni
Actually no, but right now it's like when your favourite flavour of ice cream (possibly chicken) gives you salmonella; you still love it at heart, but you need a bit of time to forget about the way it looked mixed with peas and stomach juices at the bottom of the bowl.

This past week's been salmonella. A 60% essay due on Friday and a 50% test that same night, meaning 6am-midnight working/studying for nearly a week. Not fun. Feels great of course now its over, that's 2/5 subjects down I guess. In the process I broke my week-old word-limit-neglect record, which had been 3400 vs a 2000 limit in Italian Cinema, in writing a 4800 word essay with a 2750 word limit for Femme Fatale. This is why having time to actually plan an argument (and to edit the thing when you're done) is good.

Pop Is Dead, And So (Thankfully) Is This 'Thing' Claiming To Be Radiohead
As with the 'purchase' of any new album, In Rainbows has had me sniffing around the band's back catalogue a bit over the past week. In the process I had my attention drawn to the following whatever-this-is:



As for the video, in the words of Robert Plant, "Poor Thom" (I'm sure Goldilocks implied a silent "h"). As for the song, I find it difficult to believe that this band could 18 months later release a song like "My Iron Lung" and within just 3-4 years produce OK Computer. It would probably fit right in with all that mindless MCR-etc.* rubbish on C4 actually, so I guess now I can say those bands at their best really are only as good as crap Radiohead when people ask why I think their taste in music sucks.

*Though I did, admittedly, like that "Black Parade" song.

Catalogue

My (Physical) Movie & Music Library
Well here it is compiled, as per request. I actually had a lot of fun going through them all and reminding myself what I hadn't watched in a while so I thought I'd do the CDs as well to further remind me of one other thing: where all my money went. Oh dear.

Apparently I have 111 titles on DVD and 108 CDs. And probably not enough time to enjoy them all :p

Movies
12 Monkeys
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
Adaptation
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Alien
Aliens
American Beauty
American History X
Apocalypse Now
Back To The Future Trilogy
Band Of Brothers (Mini-Series)
Barry Lyndon
Batman Begins
Being John Malkovich
The Big Lebowski
Blade Runner
Blue Velvet
Braveheart
Brazil
Casablanca
Casino
Chinatown
Cinema Paradiso
Citizen Kane
City Of God
Collateral
The Conversation
Dances With Wolves
Das Boot
Dazed And Confused
The Deer Hunter
Die Hard
Dogville
Donnie Darko
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
Ed Wood
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Eyes Wide Shut
Family Guy Season 2
Fargo
Fight Club
Forrest Gump
Full Metal Jacket
The Godfather Trilogy
Good Morning Vietnam
Goodfellas
The Green Mile
Indiana Jones Trilogy
Jackie Brown
Jurassic Park
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
L.A. Confidential
Lawrence Of Arabia
Life Is Beautiful
Lolita
The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
Magnolia
The Matrix
Memento
Minority Report
Monty Python & The Holy Grail
Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different
Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus
Mulholland Dr.
North By Northwest
Ocean's Eleven
Once Upon A Time In America
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Paths Of Glory
Platoon
Pulp Fiction
Raging Bull
Requiem For A Dream
Reservoir Dogs
Saving Private Ryan
Scarface
Schinder's List
Scream
Se7en
Seven Samurai
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shining
Signs
The Silence Of The Lambs
The Sixth Sense
Star Wars Episodes 2-6 (Fuck You Jar Jar)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
The Sting
This Is Spinal Tap
Taxi Driver
The Terminator
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Traffic
True Romance
Twin Peaks Season 1, Season 2 Part 1
Unbreakable
The Unforgiven
The Usual Suspects

Music
Band Of Gypsys - Band Of Gypsys
The Beatles - Revolver
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
David Bowie - Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Station To Station, Low, "Heroes", Scary Monsters
Jeff Buckley - Grace
The Clash - The Clash
Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon
Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, Blood On The Tracks
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction, Use Your Illusion 1/2
Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland
Robert Johnson - A Proper Introuction To Robert Johnson
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures, Closer
Love - Forever Changes
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I-IV, Houses Of The Holy, Physical Graffiti
John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
Curtis Mayfield - Superfly (Soundtrack)
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady
Megadeth - Rust In Peace
Metallica - Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets, ...And Justice For All, Metallica
Moby - Play
The Offspring - Greatest Hits
Outkast - Speakerboxxx / The Love Below, Dre & Big Boi Present... Outkast
Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall
Pixies - Surfer Rosa & Come On Pilgrim, Doolittle
The Ramones - Anthology
Lou Reed - Transformer
REM - Automatic For The People
The Rolling Stones - Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street
Radiohead - The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Hail To The Thief
Sly & The Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin' On
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream, Rotten Apples (Greatest Hits + Rarities)
The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Bruce Springsteen - Greetings From Asbury Park NJ, The Wild The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle, Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Nebraska, Born In The USA, The Rising
The Stooges - The Stooges, Fun House
The Strokes - Is This It?
Talking Heads - Remain In Light
Television - Marquee Moon
Tool - Aenima
U2 - Greatest Hits 1980-1990/1990-2000
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico, White Light/White Heat, The Velvet Underground
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
Weezer - Weezer (Blue), Pinkerton
The Who - The Who Sell Out, Tommy, Live At Leeds, Quadrophenia
Stevie Wonder - Talking Book, Innervisions
XTC - Skylarking
Yes - Close To The Edge
Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After The Goldrush, Harvest, Tonight's The Night, On The Beach, Rust Never Sleeps, Decade

I Looked For You In My Closet Tonight

I'm Paul
With a few Lynch virgins in the room I admit I often found myself at a mildly-anxious loss trying to gauge what anyone thought of Blue Velvet until they explicitly said after it was over, and even then a tangible sense of hesitation seemed to linger for a few sink-in/dare-I moments. I admit I was a bit worried during a few scenes that when the credits came up everyone was going to nervously smile and resolve not to trust my recommendations anymore :D

Hmm, third time viewing the film and I got from it what I got from it the second time and that was what I got from it the first time. I think in a way that's why I don't rate it with Mulholland Drive. Critics tend to favour (though not overwhelmingly) Blue Velvet and I think part of that stems from the fact that you find yourself with a pretty solid grounding (if you aren't Ebert) to defend it as a great film, its fairly definable in its affect, whereas with Mulholland Drive it's often the very things that are easy to point to as what might normally be weaknesses in a film that are strangely what contribute to it being so great, particularly the fact that's it deals in so few absolutes - an absolute resolution perhaps the key thing here, something which can leave some unsatisfied with the film as a whole. Blue Velvet's satisfying for a lot of straightforward reasons that to me don't compete with whatever abastract appeal Mulholland Drive is enriched with. Mm. And The Straight Story's probably still my favourite from Lynch. I very much look forward to reading the Lynch book once this damn essay's over and thinking about these movies in light of what he's got to say.

I'm still keen to do more of a movie-marathon type deal sometime when people are more free. 2001, Requiem For A Dream, Brazil, Godfather 2... Anyone keen?

Rugby: The New Huge Grant
When France beat the All Blacks I was disappointed for all of four minutes, possibly because I was also listening to the end of Hail To The Thief at the time. But mostly I found it all quite amusing thinking about how everyone was going to react after all the hype and, moreso, blind assumptions of - at the very least - a first final since 1995 (as if our also-wrongly-presumed Aussie opponents would be a semi-final pushover despite beating us this year). And I just smiled. Not a denial-smile. A smile of genuine amusement. And I've smiled through every ten-minute deluge every news hour over what went wrong. And I smiled when Fiji almost pipped South Africa. And I was rooting for England today ('yay' by the way) just because it's so absurd that they could make the decider after everyone wrote them off as likely to fall to Samoa and Tonga just a couple of weeks back and not even make the quarters. They've got to be the worst team to ever make a World Cup final. This tournament's become the most consistently mildly-amusing, smile-inducing thing since Music & Lyrics. And that had an 80s music video parody in it.

















Huge Grant

In Rainbows
Obligatory in-depth review forthcoming in the next couple of days. Liking very much so far. You can download it free HERE, and if you're hesitant about spending... time doing so you can of course preview the tracks on YouTube. The sound quality of the YouTube clips does tend to compress a lot of the melodies though.

1. 15 Step (trippy jazz-guitar/electronica-beat fusion)
2. Bodysnatchers (Bends-ish but with more grunt and some Sonic Youth guitar fuzz)
3. Nude (minimal, haunting, awesome vocals)
4. Weird Fishes / Arpeggi (Coldplay's Clocks + talent & vision)
5. All I Need (musically happier (perhaps not lyrically) Karma Police)
6. Faust Arp (Beatles' White Album + Nick Drake's orchestra)
7. Reckoner (Kid A-ish)
8. House Of Cards (Jack Johnson with atmosphere/dark subtext? maybe?)
9. Jigsaw Falling Into Place (overdue OK Computer revival)
10. Videotape (Coldplay with emotional substance)

Or check out the LA Times Review which, unlike most publications, actually bothered waiting more than 2 hours before publishing an obligatory safe 4-star review.

And in all fairness I like Coldplay, I really do.

There is a God, and its name is Fondue

It's happened. Fonzie is officially no longer the best thing starting with "fon."






























Fondue marks a stark departure from Spielberg's soulless recent work, avoiding the pitfalls of the empty, lazy The Terminal and War Of The Worlds or the merely 'very good' (tut-tut) Munich and recapturing a sense of magic and wonder not felt since 2002, when he last made a heated dessert with DiCaprio and Hanks. And then there was this bang and a spark and I think the heating thing broke. Aaaaah.

Trailers
Haven't watched any trailers in a while, too many spoilers, but they help pad out a blog so I folded. First, something you might want to see: Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd.


And something you will want to see. Oh yeah: it's Uwe Boll baby. Postal...


And that's a real movie. No really.

Five days to Radiohead.

Get Free 'Head

In Rainbows Out Thursday 10th (NZT)
I wrote my own longish take on Radiohead's surprise announcement on Monday that you can register to download their new album for any price you like a week from now, but then I read this and decided it was (seriously) the greatest music article ever written and stole it instead:

On The Record: Radiohead As A Metaphor For My Withering Youth
By James Montgomery

It is October 1995. Altamonte Springs, Florida. I am making a left turn from state Route 436 onto Interstate 4. In the CD player of my brown Oldsmobile is Radiohead's The Bends. "My Iron Lung" is playing. Suddenly — before I almost T-bone some dude merging in front of me — I have a thought: "This record would sound great in a room with black-light posters!"

It is July 1997. Orlando, Florida. I am lying on the shag-carpeted floor of my friend Mark's apartment. The lights are off and candles are lit. About an hour ago, we bought OK Computer at a Blockbuster Music midnight sale. About 30 minutes ago the air got all foggy and is now about to be punctured by Jonny Greenwood's opening guitar stabs on "Airbag." Over the next 72-odd minutes, I have a series of thoughts, including "The ceiling in here is amazing" and "I'm hungry." Also: "This is the best album I've ever heard."

Over the next three years, I am obsessed with Radiohead. I buy "7 Television Commercials," "Meeting People Is Easy" and several "Fitter Happier" posters for my college apartment. I snap up both the Airbag/How Am I Driving? and No Surprises/Running From Demons EPs, despite the fact that they have essentially the same track listing. (I even call the infamous "011-44-1426-148550" number on the front of Airbag and leave Thom Yorke several incoherent, rambling voice messages.) I play the sh-- out of Zero 7's "Climbing Up the Walls" remix and spend hours weaving my way through the terrifying cavern of whitespace that was Radiohead's Web site, printing out Yorke's scribblings ("If you don't ask me out to dinner, I don't eat," "What a clean city/ I'm kinda sleep ee/ Call an ambulance/ I feel icky") and sticking them on my walls.

Finally, in 2000, things start happening. There are rumors of a new album ... of nine-minute songs and Yorke pulling lyrics out of a hat. Then there are song titles — "Treefingers," "The National Anthem" — to search out on Kazaa and then wait 24 minutes while they download (they are totally not the correct songs either), and iBlips of smoldering mountains to watch. There are demonic bear heads and paintings of glaciers and even more bizarro babbling from Yorke. I am terrified with excitement.

It is October 2, 2000. Los Angeles, California. I am sitting on my friend's couch. The radio is tuned to KROQ, which is about three minutes away from playing Kid A in its entirety. Every morning for the past three months, I have driven past the Capitol Records building and felt a white-hot mix of envy and rage fill up my gut. "They have Kid A in there," I think. "They are the luckiest people on earth."

Then, at precisely midnight, KROQ goes silent. There is the radio-guy voice: "And now ... (And now! And now!) ... Kid A." Then there are the pulsing opening chords of "Everything in Its Right Place" — and we're off. I am covered in goosebumps. No one speaks for the next 50 minutes, the silence of minds completely splattered over the living-room walls.

It is entirely possible that I will never be as excited for an album as I was at that exact moment. When Capitol reps brought Hail to the Thief to the offices of Spin magazine (where I worked in 2003), I remember listening through the closed door of the editor in chief's office. There were no goosebumps or bong-addled declarations. It was just like any other record being toured around by promotion reps: a big deal, certainly — but, well, nothing that I could claim as my own.

This is the peril of working as a music journalist. You lose that sense of excitement. You are sent albums three months before they hit stores, you listen to them on your computer at work ad nauseam, and by the time they're released, you're done with them. You might hear things first, but you no longer get to hear them best.

Of course, it doesn't help that I am 28. Married. I like Wilco and Okkervil River records now, which makes me sort of an old man. Albums don't excite me anymore, because I am jaded. I've always heard something better ... something that reminds me of something else. Nothing is new anymore. This is all sort of a bummer.

But then ... it is September 30, 2007. Brooklyn, New York. I am on the phone with a friend who tells me to check Radiohead.com. They have finished their new album — and it's coming out in 10 days! I hang up the phone and have the following conversation with my wife:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

We bounce around our apartment for about an hour. Order the deluxe Discbox version of In Rainbows. It costs us about $81, which strangely doesn't seem all that bad. The following day at MTV, people are genuinely buzzing about the band's decision to release the album on their own — and to allow fans to name their price for the download. There is a palpable thrill in springing the news on people ("Dude, you haven't heard?!?") and I cannot tell you how much time I've spent over the past few days talking about just what the album will sound like.

And the thing is, everyone is like this, because no one has heard the record. Blogs have taken to collecting live clips of songs on Rainbows because the thing hasn't leaked yet — and actually might not before it's available for download on October 10. It's a pretty amazing time. A bunch of unflappable pros suddenly becoming, well, flappable superfans.

It's testament enough to Radiohead that they've chosen to turn the industry on its ear by releasing In Rainbows on their own. It's a ballsy gamble that might just change the way established bands do business from here on out. But perhaps an even bigger compliment is that with one move, they've managed to make me — and the majority of music journalists I know — excited again.


















I'm fairly sure I won't celebrate the release of Rainbows the way I used to welcome every new Radiohead album (there will be no black lights involved this time around), but I guarantee you that on October 10, my wife and I are gonna download it, geek out and then just listen.

It's something that doesn't happen often enough to me these days, which is a shame. I miss experiencing something like a real fan, at the exact same time other fans are experiencing it. Maybe people will invite their friends over, download it together, experience it all at once. And when was the last time you could say that about an album? Is In Rainbows gonna be any good? Probably. But that's not important. The beauty of it all is that we're all gonna get to find out together. Everything in its right place.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571043/20071002/id_0.jhtml

I'm just stunned there's actually a music journo out there who's also a music fan. And I like how both he and the guy from Pitchfork apparently resorted to "Aaaaaaaaah!" upon hearing the news.


Weird Fishes / Arpeggi (if it works) from In Rainbows.

Tracks
15 Step
Bodysnatchers
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
All I Need
Faust Arp
Reckoner
House Of Cards
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Videotape

Good: no 4 Minute Warning (lyrics are fine, but its a little too... Coldplay). BUT - will have to wait for the bonus disc for Down Is The New Up (kind of epitomises their 'sound' at the moment) and Go Slowly. Was hoping those two would make the cut... Suppose its a good thing though right? Whatever the hell "Faust Arp" is, it must be better?

Wargial

University, A Side Project
It took me long enough but I finally feel like it's 'that thing' I'm fitting into the rest of my life and not the other way around. It's amazing how much of a drain it's been letting myself be confined to a tunnel path of how to get to wherever society/family/etc. might typically expect from here. I've been spending most of my holiday breaks feeling mentally drained and the rest of the time, at the end of those breaks, kicking myself for not having done anything. My commerce degree is boring. It's practical and at this point I'll make sure to pass it and probably do quite well in the process so I can live off it when I graduate, but it means nothing more to me than that and I generally spend those lectures listening to music and scribbling film ideas. And when I do go and whore myself out to some faceless corporation that won't change; as Dennis was saying yesterday, filmmaking (like any art) isn't some destination to get to, it's a process and there's no reason why you can't keep pursuing your passions for the rest of your life. There is no 'point of failure' where you can say you didn't get 'there' so long as you're still trying to do whatever it is you're doing. I'm doing a finance major and I'm good at it but I despise it somewhat and I can see how people end up 'successful' but unhappy later in life and I don't want to look back and wish I'd taken a chance that I've got no good reason not to take. A job like that will be a job and nothing more and to be honest I'd rather end up 'doing okay' and happy than waste my time trying to be a success in someone else's eyes. Over the next year or so I'm going to have to make the most of the frequently-taken-for-granted time I still have on my hands right now as a Uni bum and just keep trying new things all the time, no matter how far out of my reach they might be. An ambitious failure's better than just accepting the comfort of what I know is achievable and 'succeeding'; might as well buy myself a ribbon and be done with it if that's all I'm after. I like blue.

I guess it's just that these last three or four weeks have been liberating for all sorts of wildly different reasons, and so a big thank you to a few of my friends who've helped pave the way for that in a variety of strangely coinciding ways. I guess I've grown a bit in confidence which is something that really needed to happen because I've been letting shyness and self-doubt hinder me more and more for a few years now, especially in terms of getting to know people, and I just feel like I could be that much more articulate and open and don't feel the need to worry so much about what people might think all the time. While it's all something I still have to work on, and it might take a while to overcome a few of those issues, I don't think I've felt this... happy in a while. Mm. Nothing wrong with admitting that. And if there is, this was written on literally no sleep so blame that if I said too much.

Wargial





They made me type this code to prove I wasn't a 'bot' when setting up this blog. As you may have noticed I copied and pasted it into several other text fields at the time to help them feel even more comfortable.

...

Bye.