randydolen

Brand Upon the Brain!

Brand Upon The Brain trailer

I just got back from a screening of Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain! at the Egyptian in L.A.  It was quite a production--a funny and amazingly edited full length silent feature accompanied by maybe 8 or 10 musicians and a conductor, 5 foley artists, a singer who was billed as a "castrato," and live narration by Mike Watt from the Minutmen, fIREHOSE, etc.
I had a great time.  It was funny and novel, but more than that.  I can't say the movie itself was terribly affecting on an emotional level, but that's not really the level at which it was pitched anyway.  The score was great, Mike Watt did a great job, the "castrato" was mind-blowing and really a strange experience (a grown man singing what sounded like a little girl's falsetto)...what really blew me away was the foley work, being carried out live with props under the screen.  The movie opens in a row boat on a windy beach, and it sounded exactly like that--creaking boards, rolling waves, wind.  Really incredible.
If you happen to read this and you are in L.A., you should go check it out tomorrow night.  Instead of Mike Watt, the narration tomorrow will be by Udo Kier...I can only imagine that it will be a completely different yet equally enjoyable time.

Hot Fuzz

Hot Fuzz trailer

I really loved Shaun of the Dead and I had heard lots of good things about Hot Fuzz, so I walked in with high expectations.  Unfortunately, I just didn't find the movie all that good or funny--it felt really worked-over in a way that doesn't befit this kind of comedy.  Some of the material is really good, but it didn't work for me overall.  It did make me want to see Point Break again, though, and that movie is pretty terrible.

Spider-Man 3

Spider Man 3 Full Trailer

This series has always presented problems for me: Aunt May and J. Jonah Jameson are both seriously miscast, the movies tend to blow their emotional moments by going overblown when they should be intimate.  Also, the action sequences with Spider-Man webslinging his way through the city have always been awkward CGI botch-jobs.  That said, the films have been mostly fun.  I like the overall tone, and they are certainly better than the X-Men, Hulk, and Punisher movies that have come out recently.
I came out of Spider-Man 3 feeling like I had witnessed a noble failure, but with a few hours' perspective I have come to realize that I liked and respected it, although it did fail in a lot of the things it tried to do.  There are actually a whole lot of daring choices going on in it, especially given the fact that it is the most expensive movie ever made.  It's amazing, for instance, how often dramatic moments are undercut by goofy comedy (James Franco with the pie being maybe the best example). for instance.  It all adds up to a really weird overall feel.  I was prepared to not see this, and I'm really glad I did end up going.

Great vs. Mediocre vs. Bad

Just a quick run-down:

GREAT

28 Up
21 Up
Seven Up / 7 Plus Seven
Crimson Gold
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
24 Hour Party People
The Seventh Continent
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

MEDIOCRE

Henry V (Branagh)
Escape from New York
Forbidden Zone
Mysterious Object at Noon
Grindhouse

BAD

The Wicker Man
Letters from Iwo Jima

Michael Richards Portent

Speaking of Michael "Hey, I don't come down to where you work and tell you how to pick cotton" Richards, here's a choice piece of his early work, from Whoops Apocalypse (1986).

Kramer Blacked Up

Article not found

How could there be no Wikipedia entry for the East Coast Family?  It's not like we can just write a great artist like Michael Bivins out of existence.

All 4One

After the Michael Richards incident, I think that the world needs the message of Calé, the Whytgize, and especially Hayden more than ever.

Casino Royale

Casino Royale

I saw this last night, and I am definitely convinced that Daniel Craig was the right choice for the new James Bond.  I wasn't a doubter in the first place like so many people were--I have seen all of the Bond films but I am certainly not a purist about them.  People were worried about his suavity, but Craig brings that and more: he doesn't seem like Pierce Brosnan, whom I loved as Bond and who was basically suaveness in human form.  Instead, he seems like a person who can turn it on when he needs to.
In fact, everything about this Bond seems more human than ANY of those who have gone before.  I think I am one of the rare Bond fans who generally dislikes Sean Connery's take on the character, preferring the bolder interpretations: Lazenby's wooden gravity, Moore's ham, Dalton's physicality, Brosnan's "class."  For my money, at least one film into the Craig era, we have a new best Bond ever.
The movie itself is a total blast, too--not as draggy as some Bond films and orchestrated with utter confidence and competence.  Eva Green is enchanting and a lot better here than she was in The Dreamers; Jeffrey Wright is the new Felix Leiter, which is genius...the only thing that kind of sucks is some of the "love" dialog, which I blame entirely on that expensive hack Paul Haggis.
Go see it today!  I think I might see it again this weekend--something I never normally do.

Bully

Bully Signature Series Guide (Signature Series(Bradygames))

BradyGames

This game is pretty great.  It's like a lower-key Grand Theft Auto but with more social humor.  It's not as narratively involving as the GTA games, but that is counterbalanced by the fact that you can give people swirlies.


BTW, here's something Vox needs: the ability to insert game covers from Amazon.  Or maybe just a general way to search Amazon without it being restricted to books or films.  Does anybody know of a way to do this?

"The Emperor's Children" by Claire Messud

The Emperor's Children

Claire Messud

The phrase "big, ambitious post-9/11 book" sends shivers down my spine, but that's exactly what this is, and it's great.  It tells the story of a bunch of New Yorkers--most of them around 30 years old--in the months up to and after September 11th.  In some ways, it is a bit cliched in its conception--rich, pretty girl friends with plainer girl who has her own, more subtle beauty and "has it together"; their gay friend who has trouble with relationships; Norman Mailer-type "great man" father of the rich girl vs. her upstart journalist fiancé; fat, troubled kid; and so on.
Still, it's a fantastically involving book, especially in the middle.  The beginning feels a little labored to me and the ending loses a bit of the book's delicate balance in an effort to make things resonate, but those middle passages display an enormous gift for writing and the admirable courage not to go for easy PoMo cop-outs.  A few of the people to whom I have described this book have brought up Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections."  As far as I'm concerned, this is a much better piece of work, and one that lays bare the macho failings of the Franzen book.

Borat

Borat trailer

This was a very funny movie, and everybody should see it.  It's not nearly as funny as the Borat segments on the Ali G show were, though it has its genius moments.  There is a bit of desperation about some of the more staged sequences--as if they go for the gross-out whenever they can't think of something else to do.  Overall, though, it holds together remarkably well.