back to the Lazy Sunday thing

See, cats like this have been doing rhymes like that Lazy Sunday thing with a straight face. I guess that's why I didn't find the skit all that funny.

Mission intolerable

I will not make a habit of the "OMG, the trailer for BLADE 7: The Ressurection is up!" movie nerd type of post. However, I do feel it necessary to comment on the Mission Impossible 3 trailer. Not because there is any Crazytom action you need to be alerted to. It's because the trailer reminds me of playing Metal Gear Solid 2, minus the cool stuff. Action video games long ago subsumed and reinterpreted the wrote structure of action movies, and the interactive elements and low cost of microwave popcorn made the video game version much more attractive to guys than going to the theatre. So in the Bizarro world we live in, movies, genre movies, have begun to ape video games in turn. Now you have scenes like, Tom aiming a small gun. Tom Aiming a big gun. Tom aiming a missile launcher. Tom dodging guided missles. Tom outrunning a helicopter. ETC. Pan up of a hot chick. Pan up on the (soon to be) obligatory Asian chick. The Black Sidekick heartily welcoming Tom with the language he barely understands (English). I guess there would be nothing too sad about this if the people who made this stuff remembered that WATCHING SOMEONE ELSE PLAY A VIDEO GAME IS BORING AS HELL. The thing that makes cats forgo your $300 Million action flick or video game adaption is that by making the story non-participatory, you have ripped the controller out of our hands and make us sit and watch while some crazy person has all the fun.

amusing

Not often the interviewer gets interviewed. However, I was doing some last minnit Xmas shopping and was approached by a television reporter doing a story on last minute shoppers. I was just getting some wrapping paper for my parents gifts, and so answered when the reporter asked me. I knew at that moment I would probably be sitting with my parents watching the story when it aired . . . (for Nashvillians, the spot aired on Channel 4, though looks like most of my hits come from other parts of the globe) Y'all have a very special holiday season. Get crunk on the nog.

Let them eat cupcakes

Okay people, it was cute. I saw that “Lazy Sunday” sketch on SNL, you know, the one everyone is blogging about, passing videos back and forth. Oh, isn’t it hee-hee-larious, white guys rapping about Narnia and cupcakes. Andy Samberg does a pretty good approximation of Slug, and I suppose Parnell is funny because he’s rapping and over 30, or something. Admittedly, it was one of the better things to come out of that show in awhile. However . . . come on. T-shirts? You’re selling t-shirts about this thing now? Have you people lost your minds? Anyone caught wearing this (probably back to back with their “Vote for Pedro” t-shirt) deserves a BEAT DOWN. The saving grace about the skit and the subsequent madness is that it doesn’t really lend itself to a recurring appearance that could be parlayed into a bad movie produced by Loren Michaels.

Movie Review: Three Extremes

Three Extremes Directed by Takashi Miike Fruit Chan Park Chan Wook Three shorts from the mavericks of East Asian cinema. Takashi’s first up to, his “Box” plays like a suburban, snow capped remake of Audition. A young woman (Hasegawa Kyoko), an author, lives a waking dream, haunted by a childhood of abuse and the possibly accidental death of her father and twin sister, who reappears in the woman’s waking dreams as a child (the ubiquitous white gowned scary little girl). Takashi’s not too concerned with frightening the viewer. He focuses on the storytelling, using the lush landscapes and vivid colored interiors to amplify the tragedy of envy and grief (and bad parenting). Chan’s consumer culture criticism plays like a top flight episode of the “Twilight Zone.” In “Dumplings” a city slicker and desperate housewife, Ching (Miriam Yeung) seeks a mythic cure for aging from Mei (Bai Ling), a country girl from the mainland. With wry, dark humor, Chan juxtaposes the anxiety of Ching’s existence as a trophy wife whose shine has tarnished and the joy of Ling’s witch doctor who achieves a life of comfort like a trophy wife without becoming one. The twist? Soylent Green is stem cells! Arrgh! Park once again takes on revenge in an elaborate set piece, “Cut.” A movie director’s violent films come to haunt him when he and his girlfriend are taken hostage by a raving lunatic. As is often the case with Park’s work, the less said about it in advance the better, as he often relies on jolts and shocks and train wreck visuals for our rubbernecking pleasure. In his segment, Park minimizes the theme in favor of maximizing the humor and sadism. It’s too cute by half, though. He executes the short with zeal, however he forces you to consume empty calories. Though “Dumplings” is the most accessible and “Cut” is likely to become the Internet Asiaphile’s favorite, “Box” is the most accomplished of the segments. Takashi’s foray into Kurosawa Kiyoshi style atmospherics and psychological terror lifts the short work out of the realm of trite Japanese horror tropes. Note: On my DVD, the order of viewing is up to the viewer, I went with “Box” first, though in the theatrical release “Box” is last.

Like the Jefferson's show

Seems that in spite of the attempts of some folks to present his candidacy as a loser in progress, Harold Ford Jr is looking like a winner, or at least a tie-er. One supporter who blogs about Jr has collected the pertinent data here. Before I go on, a disclosure. My father taught Ford Sr and Ford uncle when he was a college professor. I'm aquainted with Jr from my days working Clinton/Gore. Now, these numbers aren't all that surprising. With Ford Jr's name recognition, connections, and national stature (Don Imus' favorite black man, apparently) fund raising was going to be a cake walk for him, especially with no other serious (sorry Kurita kids) primary competition. He's as centrist as any Tennessee Democrat with hopes of winning a statewide election should be. He has the kind of diction that makes white people call him "well spoken." He's got nice hair. Were he working for say, Bass, Berry and Sims, there's probably a few conservatives in this state who wouldn't mind (too much) if he took their daughter on a date. All that to say all things being equal, with weak, divided (at the moment) and scared Republicans lining up on the other side, he should be planning his victory celebration allready. Two words: Harvey Gantt. Y'all good liberals remember him, right? He ran against Jesse Helms for Senate, twice. The last time, Gantt was LEADING going into the last week in every poll. He ended up losing by 10%. Need I say more? Well, one more thing, Helms team ran an ad that last week about Affirmative Action. Perhaps it wasn't a scale tipper, just a subtle reminder. This doesn't mean that Democrats go running out to find a "winner." No. It means when Ford wins the nomination from the party, Dems and Independants who vote for him should work that much harder during the general election. Don't just assume he's going to lose because of his race. Keep that subtle reminder in your head. Remember Harvey Gantt.

Movie review: IZO

IZO Kazuya Nakayama Dir. Takashi Miike Takashi Miike has often sworn off any attempts to glean subtext from his pulpy genre films, even though he often tugs at the edges of commenting on Japanese society. He’s taken on the paid dating phenomena in Visitor Q, the dissolution of the extended family in Happiness of the Katukuris, racism several times, and some say Audition is a feminist empowerment story. He’s treated each subject with such distance and brutality it’s easy to accept his claim that his movies are all about sensation and less about intellect. That will be harder to do with Izo, a wildly ambitious film stuffed with Monty Python like violence, coal black humor, and bizarre experimental touches. The Izo character is very loosely based on the legendary Tokugawa era assassin Izo Okada. He was instructed by Hanpeida to kill everyone who supported the shogun over the Emperor, and put to death by the Emperor after his capture. In life, Izo was a pawn. In death, the Buddhist version, he roams through time as a force of nature, of death. He’s confronted in the afterworld by all his enemies, and he slashes through everyone of them in Miike’s over the top comic fashion, acts which take up 70% of the movie. The gods are aware of Izo’s Thanatos quest and set out their minions to stop him. They can’t, of course. Izo is an idea, and you can’t kill an idea. Izo is as close as we may see to an onscreen personification of the director. He is an arm of revolution, a cinematic revolution in Takashi’s case, and as Hanpeida says in the film, like Pol Pot believed, the tool of revolution is to kill. Izo aims to kill all orthodoxy, the orthodoxy of Japanese society, academics, business, government, crime (represented by the ultimate smooth criminal, Kitano Takeshi) . . . but not creativity – that god seems to be on Izo’s side. Perhaps it’s Takeshi’s insistence on denying subtext that makes this attempt at explicit meaning so problematic. He thinks everything has to be explained, so in between thrashings, nipple peeks, archival footage and star cameos, the maniacal action stops for some exposition. Also, do we really have to see everyone one of Izo’s victims go down in a pool of ketchup? It’s the same problem I had with Kill Bill, so you killed all 88, couldn’t you just show 44? I know, there’s some meta-ness going on there, action is meaning, etc. Still, an hour and a half in, it just becomes tiresome. There’s a lot to like in Izo, like the tribute Takashi pays to his heroes (Suzuki Seijun is all over the movie, and there’s a neat homage to Bruce Lee’s Game of Death that doesn’t delve into cinematic larceny, take notes QT). Some of his exteriors are Ozu gorgeous and he even manages to portray a woman And a romantic relationship sympathetically, rather than pathetically. This isn’t a case of Takashi’s reach exceeding his grasp, it’s a case of his grasp on the AVID controls being stronger than that of an editor. There’s a lot that could have been trimmed from the film, though I’m sure he believes that in this Every thing Has Meaning picture nothing could be cut. That is, except many limbs.

sashin

a couple more at the fair and the beach (in Japan. What, you thought there was a beach in Tennessee?)

better half

Don't hate

testing the blogger picture upload. Well, I got server space of my own . . .

Ghost of Hoover

NY Times reports that the FBI has been spying on . . . er I mean monitoring several DOMESTIC organizations, including PETA, Greenpeace, and the Catholic Workers organzation. The bureau found that groups like PETA, who likes to put celebrities in fake fur and Greenpeace, whose members like to ride in little rowboats, are associated with other organzations that the FBI describes as "extremist special interest groups" and a "a serious domestic terrorist threat." Granted, bored college kids have on occasion set fire to construction sites, costing large corporations HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS in damage. Are they really a serious domestic terrorist threat? So, perhaps PETA's placing Pamela Anderson on billboards can be considered terrorist. What's really troubling is that now it seems ANY social activism can be considered enough to warrant the FBI tappin' my telephone, like Chuck D said (somebody call Tony Rome). This is exactly the kind of thing people who opposed the Patriot Act were concerned about. Yeah, I know, I said this kind of thing has probably been going on prior to 9/11. But now you know, so act like you know. I'll be curious to see if any right wing organizations are on the list that the ACLU plans to release tomorrow.

Heels hoops

I started this season with no hope of the Heels doing anything much in the post season. However, they've been quite a surprise. They should do well in the post-season tournaments this year. UNC 76, Santa Clara 58

Miyazaki's son

Getting chills yet?

SharonCobb: Political Bloggers Lunch

SharonCobb: Political Bloggers Lunch

coming up

I’ve just joined the Belcourt Film Committee. We help the theater publicize upcoming films. There’s tons of great cinema coming your way this winter, what with the Scene picks ( the films picked by Scene critics as the best of the year) and whatnot. Though I’m not a huge fan of the samurai jidai-geki, I’m psyched about the samurai film festival that’s coming at the end of January, especially the weekend of Kurosawa joints. I’ll edit the post later to show the full list of films being shown. Also, kids, Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Pulse is coming up as well. I’ll do a short review from memory later. Coming up, thoughts on Syriana. Hey, is Nashville not getting a Geisha screening?

Briefly

Things are getting mad hectic with me at home and work. I’ve got a backlog of reviews and updates to post. One thing I’m really interested in talking about, though, is this kind of thing, the push to take on Iran. Not only is this kind of drum beating among the populace alarming, it is as if the new leadership in Iran was installed by Wolfowitz. I mean, this new President should just draw a big ass red target around his palace. I remember in the early stages of Iraq II, even before the “Axis of Evil,” some on the left were predicting Iraq was just a jumping off point. Were we wrong? Meanwhile, back at home, the NSA is up to some dirty tricks, all in the name of the war on terr’. I’m neither surprised nor shook up at the story, frankly, though I’m glad it’s finally surfaced in the Times after a year. It’s likely that this kind of thing has been going on for years, though. I’ll prolly get redflagged for linking to Xinhua in this post instead of a domestic rag, well, they don’t require visitors to register.

Change

Had to revert to a standard template.

Not quite top ten enough

This year I made up a little top ten urban/electronica music list for the Nashville Scene. The introductory paragraph written by the editors pretty much sums up my feelings about such lists. It was harder than I thought, though, especially coalescing into a few words how I felt about the #1 pick, Edan’s The Beauty and the Beat. There were several other LPs that were borderline, worthy of mention, so now, the also rans . . . Micatone – Nomad Songs (Sonar Kollektiv) Electronica, nu-jazz, whatever label you want to stick on it, it’s great late night, U-Street bar, apple martini sipping music. I probably played this more than anything else this past year that wasn’t a mix CD. Bomb ass track: Mars Kanye West – Late Registration. I can’t deny the beat skills West flashes on the LP. Too many holes in the playlist, though. I’m sure the disc will find itself on many a critic’s top 3. West is an underrated MC if ya axe me, that semi-serious exaggerated twang and often bizarre tangents provide a humorous counterpoint to his sometimes biting social commentary. M-Flo – Beat Space Nine. More quirky dance remixes from one of Japan’s preeminent hip-hop crews. They do for old school pop star Akiko Wada what did for Elvis’ Little More Action. If that song was released here there would be 5,000 commercials and sports shows using it for a theme song. Alicia Keys – Unplugged. Much of it is tedious American Idol style gliss and bad cover versions. However Ms Keys does have a great set of pipes that can make up for some corny songwriting. Bomb ass track: Unbreakable. Nitin Sawhney – Philtre, It was tough to decide between this one and The Cosmic Game. I actually would have chosen his last LP Human as the top choice of them all last year. Since he backed away from the politics this year and included more house, he dropped out of the top ten completely. Little Brother – The Minstrel Show. It’s one of the new trends in rap, indie-hop bands trying to stake a claim as the anti-indie-hop band. The CD’s title suggests a concept, a commentary on contemporary commercial rap music, however these North Carolina kids never follow through on the promise. Perhaps if they’d have mentioned Chapel Hill a little more . . . . Cage – Hell’s Winter – An engrossing personal statement set to thundering beats. It wasn’t as charming as The Loneliest Punk nor as impressive as Edan’s meta-personal statement. Normally I’d have waiting a list stocked with alt rock picks, too. Outside of a few acts who actually got a lot more press than I thought they would (Louis XIV, The Bravery, Trail of the Dead) I haven’t listened to a lot of new rock this year. Spock out.

The look

I like the option of having my own picture as a header, however there's something not quite right about this template. This is look is similar to that which I've planned for my hosted site, though, so I'm loathe to get rid of it. What to do . . .

woaaa

At some point I'm getting a host and putting up a Wordpress type of blog. This thing should do for now. All though there's mostly movie reviews up right now, and recent releases at that, that's not likely to be the focus here (and at the new site). I'll talk about older films, mostly foreign, also forgotten films that deal with the African-American experience, some music reviews (most of my published writing these days concerns music, rap, electronica, turntablists), and politics. Lots of politics.

a find

All American Otaku prolly bow down to this cat, or at least you should. I'm often interested in the view of Japan from a person of color (an American ethnic minority). Check him out. http://www.patrickmacias.blogs.com/

Movie Review: Kamikaze Girls

Kamikaze Girls (Shimotsuma Monogatari) Fukada Kyoko Tsuchiya Anna Dir. Nakashima Tetsuya Kamikaze Girls is rare in that it is a Japanese import that does not involve Takashi Miike or Kitano Takeshi, though it does include some yakuza and a brief, but funny parody of Fukasaku’s yakuza flicks. Momoko (Fukada Kyoko) is a baroque fashion obsessed girl from a small town somewhere in the Kansai region, who spends her father’s Yen on billowy petticoats and freakishly gaudy period costumes (based in part on the outre’ dressed art students in Tokyo’s Harajuku district). Once her pops stops forking over the cash, she begins a scheme to bilk the local yokels out of money by selling fake Versace goods and attracts the attention of a foul mouthed biker gang girl Ichiko (Tsuchiya Anna). Over the course of the inevitable wacky road adventures, the two girls who at first mix like Bush and Kerry of course become friends, each willing to put her life on the line for the other. The film keeps the broad comic tone throughout, even the brief moments of violence are thinned out with slapstick or animation. The two leads, pop music and TV starlets in Japan , surprise with their slapstick talent and comic timing and good chemistry. The style, the jokes, the humor, really has more to do with Japanese TV than with cinema, though it does have a polished look and rather vivid hues (in keeping with Momoko’s obsessions, likely). Still, even the uninitiated into Japanese pop culture may well find the film an amusing distraction. This look at two young contemporary Japanese women will make an interesting counterpoint to Memoirs of a Geisha.

Movie Review: The Squid and the Whale

The Squid and the Whale Jeff Daniels Laura Linney Noah Baumbaugh wrote and directed this dark comedy/divorce drama that harkens back to the 80's, not only in setting, but in feel. The film recalled Ordinary People, Kramer v Kramer, hell even My Bodyguard and A Little Romance. There’s no shame in being associated with any of those, however. I couldn’t help thinking of my childhood when I used to draw pictures of undersea creatures, often a whale who did battle with a squid, the two giants tussling forever, never really knowing who would win, nor who I wanted to win. Two kids, sons of a literature professor (Jeff Daniels) and a writer (Laura Linney) suffer through their parents acrimonious divorce. Daniels, as Dad, is besot with a beard that makes him resemble a puffer fish, an insufferable megalomaniac, Linney’s mother is a bit more fuzzy, presented through the eyes of the film’s center, the eldest son, 16 year old Walt, as a woman concerned more with her own personal satisfaction than with keeping the family together. The film’s myopia is its weakness. For all Daniels and Linney’s Herculean attempts to flesh out the parents, one never learns what got them together, and can only assume what’s broken them apart (we’re lead to believe it was Mom’s affairs, though we never know what drove her in that direction). Great scenes and great lines can make a great film, though not in this case. Did I need to sit through this just to learn that divorce can screw with kids, forcing them to choose sides with one parent or the other? Perhaps the final scene, whale battling squid, was all we needed. Daniels is brilliant here, as are Jesse Eisenberg (Walt) and Owen Kline (as younger brother and chronic masturbator Frank).

Movie Review: Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain Jake Gyllenhal Heath Ledger Michelle Williams Anne Hathaway Dir. Ang Lee In early 1960's Wyoming, two Log Cabin Republicans take jobs herding sheep up on a place called Brokeback Mountain. The working stiffs get stiffies for each other while working, buggery ensues. They apparently fall in love, though one, gruff Ennis (Heath Ledger) is bethrothed to a woman, Alma (Michelle Williams). That leaves the other midnight cowboy, the bottom , Jack “fuckin’” Twist (Jake Gyllenhal) to ride off lonesome. The two men get into a Same Time Next Year arrangement that lasts 20 years, about 15 or so years longer than Ennis’ marriage. This piece of Oscar bait might whip up some love for Ledger, who certainly deserves it, grunting and huffing his way through the film, his emotions wired shut as his jaw seems to be as he delivers his lines, every note he hits seems to ring true. Gyllenhall just seems to be in a different version of the movie, like he’s in Manhattan or something. Even though the film is packed (no pun) with Hollywood closeted gay love story stereotypes (the bottom isn’t very masculine, all emotional; Ennis prefers to make love with his wife doggy style) the story hasn’t all that much to do with being gay except that it serves as a barrier to the main characters having a happy life together. Observe Jack’s wife (Anne Hathaway, who is pretty terrible until one fantastic scene at the end of the film), who is really a feminine version of Ennis, emotionally distant. Does Jack seek out those kinds of people, and is that his undoing? Does he drive his wife to become like Ennis? We don’t know because it’s Ennis’ story, and I’d have been more interested in seeing Jack’s life play out a little more up close, and not so much in terms of his relationship with Ennis only. Also, the film is a bit drab. Don’t know whether that was director Ang Lee’s intention (their world is colorless, etc) or whether the print we saw was not that great.