Jack White & Alicia Keys Do 007

There was some juicy gossip news months ago when Amy Winehouse whined about producers of the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace nixing her theme song attempt. What followed was a denial from producer Mark Ronson, and the announcement that none other than Jack White and Alicia Keys would be performing a duet on the actual theme song.

Well, now the day has arrived. The track has been played on European radio and already ripped onto the internet. The track is called "Another Way To Die" and features some odd production for a Jack White track.

It's interesting, I'll give it that, and hearing Keys and White singing opposite each other is surely a trip, but I'm not sure if this really belongs in a Bond movie yet. Maybe another couple listens will help me make up my mind. I am digging the piano, strings, and drums combo underneath the combined wailing of Jack and Alicia.

Take a listen, tell me what you think, and ignore the radio interruptions in the track from time to time.


Jack White & Alicia Keys - "Another Way to Die"

The Box Office Mystery of Tyler Perry

There aren’t too many filmmakers that I outright do not care for at all. I don’t like the films of Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, or Uwe Boll, but I don’t harbor ill will against the people themselves, just the poor-quality films they turn out. I can’t say the same thing about writer/director/douchebag Tyler Perry.

A playwright by the age of 18, Perry has made his own fortune touring his sentimental yet “edgy” family dramedies around the country, featuring his own “original” character Madea (how original is a heavyset, opinionated, wise-cracking black woman, even if its a guy in drag?). When he made the transition from stage to screen in Diary of a Mad Black Woman, I wasn’t surprised to see critics collectively pan the film. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t good, it wasn’t even mediocre. The film was poorly made, poorly written, poorly acted, and was far too cliché, borrowing liberally from other stories and situations that had been done better before Perry chose to drop Madea into them.

What was surprising was how the box office figures turned out. Now we’ve seen people turn out for bad movies before, and my favorite moment of the Hollywood elite not understanding audiences may be Chris Rock’s video at the 2005 Academy Awards where moviegoers tell him their favorite movies of the year were White Chicks and The Chronicles of Riddick, but Tyler Perry becoming a franchise (mainly in the Bible Belt, but there are sizeable audiences elsewhere) just seems wrong to me.

The man doesn’t seem to have any original ideas, and brings back Madea far too often to be the stereotypical loud, angry, black woman who just cracks jokes. I love Kevin Smith, and the knock that he always relies on Jay and Silent Bob is a little bit of a different case to me. The two have very minor roles in Clerks and Chasing Amy, and got their own specialty film in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but they actually provide insight and a moral compass to Smith’s films.

Perry’s films are vaguely religious in their tone, and to that end he’s right when he says Hollywood doesn’t understand the audience of his films. Most big art – and by that I mean television, film, and music - is not made by devoutly religious people anymore; artists don’t require the patronage of wealthy devout people or the church to create works of art.

Where I don’t like Perry on a filmmaker level is that he is bulletproof to bad ratings and devoted audiences drink his stuff up like Kool-Aid. Films like the Movie have seen declining grosses over the years as the terrible ratings rack up, but the devoted audience Perry has cultivated seems content with buying tickets to see his plays, DVDs of his plays being performed, tickets to the movies based on his plays, DVDs of those movies, and continuing to see everything he produces. Perry is a figure that works outside the system, mocks it, and survives the way artists never used to be able to: making money in spite of the lack of quality of their art.


His new movie The Family That Preys comes out on Friday, and in light of the critical beating he’s taken over the years I’m anxious to see if he’s finally made a respectable film, or he’s just recycled another plot that we’ve seen a million times before and packaged it so that his core audience will deliver him another typically-sized profit. It’s as though he doesn’t strive to bring in a bigger audience, to convert nonbelievers if you will. He is uncompromising, difficult, and shuns those that don’t “understand” what he does. If it’s critically substandard, and the ratings all over the internet reflect that, I think people understand fine.

I Am An Air Bud Apologist

There are a few movies in each generation that stick in childhood minds more than others. Disney animated films are ubiquitous, but some children don't latch onto them. I have my favorite Disney animated films, but there are live actions ones I thoroughly enjoyed. Bedknobs and Broomsticks for instance, is a great memory from my childhood, as is Mary Poppins. In later years, there were many Disney films I watched on video, but one theatre experience stands out from all the rest: 1997's Air Bud.

It's easy to say that because of a series' later disasters, the original loses some respect, but I beg to differ. I feel like Air Bud has a ton of classic moments in my childhood that the later sins of Golden Reciever, 7th Inning Fetch, and the like cannot sour.

Most kids from the 90s know the story. "Buddy" the golden retriever with the ability to hit a ball with his muzzle, belongs to a mean, abusive clown named Norman Snively (they really stayed impartial on the character with that name, didn't they?), but escapes. Josh Framm's family has just moved to a new home in Washington state after the death of his father, and is too shy to play basketball, the sport he loves. Of course, the boy meets the dog, the boy tries out for the team after meeting the school's "engineer" (who's actually a retired ex-player for the New York Knicks), and Buddy becomes the accidental team mascot after demonstrating his ability to hit the ball into the basket with his muzzle. There's a generic underdog plot going on here for the basketball team, but there's also much more subtle commentary that I only picked up on vaguely as a child, but now notice and commend the filmmaker's for including.

There are three moments that raise Air Bud out of the realm of forgettable and repetitive children's fare, and have stuck in my mind forever.. First, there is the demon of a basketball coach at Josh's school. After the first game Josh plays (one in which Buddy runs onto the court and causes a commotion), one of his teammates has repeatedly dropped the ball. During a thrillingly annoying speech from Josh's principal, he sees Buddy running back towards the gym, where everyone finds the coach chucking basketballs at the poor kid. There's only one light on in the gym, directly above the boy being struck by basketballs. I know mean coaches now, but back then I was scared by this guy, and I'll never forget the principal's line "That'll be enough coach...that'll be enough."


Second, there's the ball hog of the team, Larry Willingham (played by Brendan Fletcher, who went on to appear in the Nickelodeon series Caitlin's Way and The Onion Movie). He's your generic ball hog that always wants the ball and hates his teammates, but his dad is one of the first onscreen examples of terrible athlete parents I ever saw. Mr. Willingham is essentially a second coach for the team in yelling at his son for small mistakes, and eventually yanks his son off the team to move to Spokane so he can play for another team. Obviously this team in Spokane is who Josh's school plays against in the championship, giving the "good guys" a chance to defeat the meddling father who should stay out of his son's athletic life and let him choose what to do. I've seen parents destroy their children's athletic dreams due to too much pressure to succeed. Even my friends at Stanford notice Michelle Wie's parents and their horrible meddling into their daughter's life.

The third moment is perhaps the most heartbreaking. When Snively sees Buddy on television, he comes back to claim the dog. Josh breaks Buddy out before the championship basketball game, and attempts to set Buddy free, but the dog won't understand that he has to leave his new owner. Josh is forced to yell "Get!" at the dog repeatedly, ending in screaming with tears rushing down his cheek before throwing a basketball for Buddy to chase in the wrong direction before running away. I own a golden retriever, and I think of Air Bud every time I play with her, and that scene still brings a little tear to my eye. Giving up a dog, or watching a pet separated from its owner, is always heartbreaking.

I'm a sucker for dogs, underdog stories, and movies from my childhood, and Air Bud hits all three of those buttons. Call me soft, sentimental, or hypocritical for liking these movies, but I distinctly believe that there is a difference between what we find great, and what we personally like. Can I apologize for the terrible lighting in much of this film? Or the overacting by Josh's mom and several of the kids? No, but I don't care, I find the dog story incredibly enthralling, and I will always stick up for this movie.

I Know Everyone Is Tired of The Movie Movies...

Yesterday saw the release of the latest "spoof" movie Disaster Movie. In the past 8 years since Scary Movie came out, there have now been 9 films in the series. It started with the Wayans brothers, moved to David Zucker (of Airplane! and The Naked Gun fame), then to Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg for the Non-"Scary" Movies. Here's a list of the loosely tied together "series":

2000 - Scary Movie
2001 - Scary Movie 2
2003 - Scary Movie 3
2006 - Scary Movie 4, Date Movie
2007 - Epic Movie
2008 - Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie

I don't know about anyone else, but this series is pretty much the worst ever made. I don't think a single one of them has a positive score on the Tomatometer or on IMDB. I'll be honest, I enjoyed Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2. They had the right kind of bad humor going for them, and at least they parodied horror movies for their blatant silliness. Even 3 and 4 kept a reasonable amount of the parody within its own genre.


Anna Faris legitimized the series to a certain extent, and when she left, the writers just went off the deep end. Things started to unravel to the point of lunacy in Date Movie, but there was still the mostly-genre parody only for romantic comedies. It was in the last four that things have just become absolutely out of control. Beginning with Epic Movie, there has been essentially no semblance of plot along with stupid parodies of recent films that had almost nothing to do with the genre. It's as though the creators of these recent ones just think people will laugh if you put a joke in with a reference to a recent movie, instead of creating context for the joke and a reason why their observation is funny in light of the original. There's no substance here, only recreation of moments from recent blockbusters.


Meet the Spartans starts with 300, but devolves into referencing Britney Spears shaving her head and including such terrible movies as Stomp the Yard and You Got Served, and borrowed its title from Meet the Parents, which has nothing to do with the haphazard, piecemeal, Frankenstein monster-like screenwriting that apparently occurred. It includes references to Nacho Libre and Snakes on a Plane, two at-the-time-recent but distinctly non-epic films. There's also an obligatory scene involving a Paris Hilton look-alike saying "that's hot" before being crushed by a woman falling from above.


The newest, Disaster Movie, might be the worst offender. In the trailer, it combines references to Enchanted, Hannah Montana, Sex and the City, Don't Mess With the Zohan, Juno, Hulk, Iron man, and Hancock. It even repeats the joke of Paris Hilton getting crushed by having Hannah Montana die under a huge rock and bikini-clad women getting killed. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but NONE of those are "disaster" movies. Hulk and Iron Man belong with superheroes, Juno and the Sex and the City girls have nothing to do with disasters, and those two are combined in a single scene which also contains the completely unfunny and unnecessary reference to Zohan. They are mocking jokes from films nobody even though were funny in the first place!

The Hannah Montana scene confuses me the most. It posits that the character wants fans to go out and buy "2 new albums" as she's crushed to death. Now while I understand that Disney has made a ton of money from releasing Hannah Montana albums, created a tour for those songs, released a film version of that concert, and then released a DVD of that movie of that concert in a Star Wars-like cash grab, but all of that possible commentary is completely lost in how lame the joke is. Couldn't it have been a list of what they needed to buy? It's just an unintelligent parody of what could be an interesting commentary. That's what is lacking all over the place, there's no thought put into these jokes to make them subversive or intelligent, they just are trying to ham it up and hope that people laugh.

The proper parody of disaster films is Airplane!; this is just a cruel joke gone horribly wrong. Check the reviews on RottenTomatoes: they're the worst I've seen since Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, the famed worst-reviewed film of all time on the site. The best to me comes from eFilmCritic.com : "So ugly, unpleasant and devoid of laughs that the notion of releasing a film with such a title on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is actually one of the least offensive things about it." Good lord does that sum up how it looks.

The box office can't sustain this, can it? There must be some semblance of intelligence in the American viewing public to stay away from the horrific downturn these films have been for our culture. Here are the numbers in domestic box office grosses, rounded to the nearest million:

Scary Movie - $157 million
Scary Movie 2 - $71 million
Scary Movie 3 - $110 million
Scary Movie 4 - $90 million
Date Movie - $48 million
Epic Movie - $39 million
Meet the Spartans - $38 million
Superhero Movie - $25 million

I'm thankful that the grosses have almost uniformly gone down, and that it looks as those this series could soon meet its end in the same way the Hostel films did, but we've gone on too long with all of this. There are fantastic indie films that have had total grosses less than the opening weekends of these disgusting excuses for film. Disaster Movie is predicted to make around $13 million this weekend, which is extremely high for how bad the film is. I can't believe that people would be so mindless that they would go see this steaming pile. That's not to say mindless entertainment doesn't have its place, but even in the category of mindless entertainment this ranks one of the lowest. Please, do me and everyone you know a favor, and do not see Disaster Movie or any subsequent film by these men. It's for our own good.

I Am an Accepted Apologist

I am a little ways away from returning to Chicago for my sophomore year of college. I watched the application process happen up close two years ago when I was a junior in high school, went through it myself a year later, have watched friends go through it in the past year, and now my younger brother is just entering the cycle of doom for himself.

I didn't think it was that stressful when I went through it, but looking back on applying to college and that whole process, I hate it with a passion. I'm mostly upset that two years of my academic life in high school was not centered around learning material, but trying to look good to colleges on applications. I think it robs you of some freedom, a lot of fun, and the ability to relax and enjoy some potentially really good years.

Before the tornado really got going at the beginning of my senior year of high school, Accepted came out at the end of August 2006. It was light, funny, but not a great film. What was great about it was the message and the feeling of the film. It wasn't a pressure-cooker of college fright stories, it was exactly the attitude towards applying to college and going to college that those with too much pressure in the college process needed to see and hear. If I had it my way I'd show it to every rising high school senior in the country as a relaxation tool.

Justin Long is great as a lead in Accepted. He works better on the fringes of films like Dodgeball and Live Free or Die Hard, but here the same character works as the center of the story. His character Bartleby doesn't get into college anywhere, and decides to create his own to fool his parents. Trust me, no matter how sure someone is that they will get into college somewhere, they all have a fear of not getting in anywhere. I always just plain enjoyed the premise, because it was a passing thought I never gave much creedence to, but Accepted fleshed out the fantasy with reasonable success.


Jonah Hill has perhaps his best performance outside of Superbad in this film as well. I'd put this over Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, and even his hilarious bit part in The 40-Year-Old Virgin just for his likeability. Along the lines of bit parts, a before Gossip Girl-fame Blake Lively plays Bartleby's love interest, and she isn't half bad. It even has Lewis Black as the dean of the made up college, the South Harmon Institute of Technology, making their college regalia emblazoned with SHIT.


The plot doesn't really make sense when parents, a Harvard-esque college looking to expand its campus, and a few too many students get involved, but for light-hearted fun that has a good message about college acceptace it's pretty good. The film resonated with me at the perfect time in my life, and too far on either side of that window I think the film wouldn't work if you saw it for the first time. I definitely reccommend it to anyone about to start applying to college, or someone who's just gone through it.

I'm sorry, I thought I already saw that one...

I just saw the trailer for the newest John Cusack movie War Inc. on Apple Trailers.

The plot features John Cusack playing a hit man who has to disguise himself as he poses as a trade show producer in Turaqistan.

Now correct me if I'm wrong...but wasn't that pretty much the premise behind Grosse Point Blank? This one even has Dan Aykroyd and Joan Cusak from that film, just transported into a much more convoluted plot involving a corporate invasion of a war-torn pseudo-Middle-Eastern country, a trade show, and apparently Hilary Duff doing the worst accent this side of The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

Now, I'm a big fan of the Cusacks, and John is one of my all-time favorite actors, but I absolutely hate retread plots. We've had enough of the Iraq war satires for a little while, and this one is recycling plots and jokes from all over the place. I'm sure it's got a bit of good somewhere buried inside it, but the first trailer just left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

There Will Be Bud

The Academy Awards went off pretty well despite being the lowest rated year ever. Despite that, last year was a great one for films. The Best Picture category was full of fantastic films, and barring nominations for Norbit and Transformers didn't recognize terrible filmmaking for the most part.

My one problem is that the awards are turning into a ceremony that rewards its great filmmakers retroactively. The last two Best Picture and Director awards have gone to filmmakers that made better films in the past and seemed to be getting rewarded for their career achievements instead of their current films. Sure, Scorcese and the Coens are fantastic, but I would've rather seen them in the category of great directors never to win (like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Altman, etc.) than given a makeup Oscar.

The Oscars should reward original filmmaking that attempts to progress the art of cinema, instead of looking back into a rear view mirror. Yes, some films are able to take what has been made and perfect it (like No Country or Unforgiven, I would argue) but this year the most original and forward-thinking film was clearly There Will Be Blood. That film just has never been made before, and the emotion of Daniel Day-Lewis inhabiting Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's masterful script was just incredible. In the future, I'd like to see this kind of filmmaking rewarded, instead of simply nominated and passed over for career recognition. It is possible for a director to amass a body of work that is staggering without making the standout film of any one year.

I'll end on a comedic note, sticking with There Will Be Blood. I enjoy film parodies, a lot, and this video I saw a few days ago has to be one of the best little trailers I've ever seen. It goes all-out to parody TWBB, check it out. My favorite is how they deal with the bowling alley during the milkshake/bong rip.




I've got finals this week, but then I'll return to posting a ton of new music...I've been busy getting some of this year's potential best albums.

Lord of the Bones

It's been heavily reported over the past day or so that Mark Wahlberg has replaced Ryan Gosling in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones. Now, I'm not such a huge fan of the book, but this news came on the eve of the start of production, and it rings a bell somewhere in my memory...

Back when production started on Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, there was another actor who was fired right at the beginning of the production.


That man was Stuart Townsend, who was the original choice to play Aragorn. Jackson decided that Townsend looked too young to play Aragorn and replaced him with Viggo Mortensen four days after shooting began in New Zealand. Townsend ended up in films like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, one of my least favorite films of all time, and Mortensen went on to a career revitalization with the help of David Cronenberg. Though Townsend has pretty much fallen out of favor as an actor right now, he wrote and directed Battle in Seattle, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival a few weeks ago.

A bunch of stories have turned up saying that Gosling showed up to the production having gained way too much weight and with a monster beard, and was fighting with the wardrobe department. The news is collected over at /Film, and I pretty much agree with what's posted over there about Gosling. He's an actor, he should be concerned with saying his lines, and leave the rest of the stuff to Peter Jackson and the crew.

That being said, what is with Jackson and these last minute casting decisions? It looks to me like the person who should be getting the axe is Jackson's casting director, or maybe he should just think things through a little more before signing a lead actor. Granted, Mortensen was fantastic as Aragorn, and that change was probably a good decision, but I don't think the same comparison can be made here. I really like Mark Wahlberg; his roles in Boogie Nights, Three Kings, and The Departed were great, but I'm not so sure if this will be as much of a better switch. Wahlberg is an established actor who is still getting high paying lead roles unlike Mortensen was, and Gosling is an up-and-coming, respectable actor, unlike Townsend (who in addition to Gentlemen also had a turn in the Aaliyah movie Queen of the Damned). I'm not sure how this will turn out, but with the casting of Rachel Weisz as the wife of the character Gosling was supposed to play, it does make some sense to switch for someone older, even if that wasn't the original intention.

Hopefully the sudden change won't make that much of a difference, it sure as hell didn't make LOTR any worse off having Viggo in there. Who knows, maybe Jackson will get lucky again and Wahlberg will turn in a great performance.

Back From The Dead: End of Summer Movies

Okay, so I've been dealing with some pretty crappy circumstances the past few days. A power outage blew some telephone wires near my house, and my internet access went down. Then my family had the brilliant idea to switch to a much faster Comcast cable internet...which doesn't support Macintosh computers...like my brand new MacBook Pro...so I am stranded on another computer, posting here for a little while before I leave for college at the end of the week.

However, after being gone for a few days, I'll delve into something that I've been pleasantly surprised by over the past few weeks.

My dad and I have always talked about how shitty movies get when August, September, and January roll around. It's like clockwork, what with box office numbers declining and quality of movies going downhill even faster. The idea is obviously that as kids start to go back to school, there is less money to be made, and thus less viable movies in theatres. It also means that studios dump crappy films into the release schedule hoping that nobody will go see them and their reputation can remain as clean as possible.

On top of all that, I hate August and September movies even before they come out strictly on the basis of their release date. Knowing what I know about how studios release and promote movies, I tend to judge a movie based on the release date at the end of a trailer. If it says it's coming to theatres in August or September, it already has a hurdle to get over in my mind before I give it a fair chance.

This doesn't come without some crappy summer movie-going experiences. Back in the day I had to suffer through horrific pictures like XXX in late August because nothing else better was out. Let me repeat myself: in that particular August, the best movie in theatres was XXX, so bare was the selection.

That is not to say that good movies do not get released in August or September. There's almost always one film that shines through the dreck, like Michael Mann's Collateral or Talladega Nights (give me a little leeway, it was good for an August flick). This year already had its one great film after July 31st: The Bourne Ultimatum. Yes, it was released on the first weekend of August so it barely counts, but it still came out in August and kicked ass. So imagine my surprise when another couple movies came along and were actually substantial movies getting wide releases late in the summer and early in the fall: Superbad and 3:10 to Yuma.


Superbad

I loved Arrested Development. It was one of the greatest TV shows I've ever seen, and I followed each cast member after its untimely demise to see whether or not they could recreate any of that show's magic. Will Arnett has basically been playing GOB in every single one of his small film roles, from Blades of Glory to last weekend's bomb The Brothers Solomon, both of which oddly co-starred Pam from The Office, and she might want to avoid any other offers for Will Arnett films. The young Micheal Cera, on the other hand, landed a role in a movie I tracked for months before it opened: Superbad.

These kinds of movies aren't supposed to be this good. There hasn't been a teen film like this since American Pie, and even that is pushing the limits when you list great teen comedies. Much like every review of the film said, it is extremely impressive to me that Seth Rogen and his writing partner started the script when they were just 13, but I credit Cera and Jonah Hill for really selling the parts. Michael Cera has proven to be a great young actor, and I'll be looking forward to his next role in the upcoming Juno.

I think I liked the film so much because unlike so many other lesser high school comedies, the film really isn't about high school at all. We spend almost no time actually at the school or involved in anything related to the school they attend. There's no football game, no teacher with a large supporting role, no fifty different funny kids to keep track of. The film is about leaving for college and what changes when that occurs. Seth and Evan are having a last hurrah as high school best friends, and I guess I latched onto that idea because I'm currently in the same transition.

I thought the script was totally believeable until the end, at which point I have to admit I agreed with one of my friends that some of the dialogue in Transformers was more believable than the final meeting in the mall. That aside, this wasn't a film that would normally come out in August, nor a film that would be so honest and heartfelt in its delivery. It's a credit to the Apatow school of comedy that something of this caliber came out of the film, and it was great for Superbad to turn out as good as we all wanted it to be.


3:10 to Yuma

When you direct an Oscar-nominated film, normally your next movie doesn't have too much trouble getting made and released with a big marketing campaign. That of course is unless your name is James Mangold, and you are trying to remake an old Western called 3:10 to Yuma. After years in development hell (the original stars were to be Eric Bana and Tom Cruise), this remake of the 1957 film of the same name was supposed to be released in October, the same month as Mangold's previous film Walk the Line was a few years ago. Then, LionsGate decided that the Brad Pitt-headlined flick about Jesse James would steal the western's thunder, and thus moves the release date up a month, hoping to make a little more money and get exposure at a time when no other westerns are in theatres. Also, DVDs will get released around early January, allowing LionsGate to attempt the same award campaign scheme that worked with a little movie some people out there might remember. It was called Crash, and was one of the first movies since The Silence of the Lambs to win Best Picture without a release during the October-January release window.

Just like with Superbad, movies like this released during September aren't supposed to be this good. They're supposed to be horrifically edited, or badly acted by one of the stars, or just mishandled by a studio and dumped into the end of summer movie graveyard. I guess the original October release date gives a little bit away about the quality, but I haven't seen a remake this good in years. Russell Crowe really gets back to some great acting, and Christian Bale continues his streak of wonderful performances following his lead role in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn.

I can't really understand any sort of stigma against this film. It's got two well-acted leads, a fine job by an Academy-Award nominated director, and one of the few good remakes to come around in about 10 years. I think all the people involved deserve a lot of credit, and anybody out there should give it a shot in theatres.

~*~

So I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of films during the end of this summer before I head off to college. Looking ahead, this fall is shaping up to be a good one, so I hope some of these films premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival turn out to be as good as the initial buzz has been.


And another random note: The posts will get much thinner over the next 7 or 8 days, as I am leaving for Northwestern University. Once I get settled in, I'll be posting some more about the new music that got released on 9/11, the first couple weeks of college football and the NFL, and even some more movies if you're lucky...

New Joe Wright Film Opens to Award Buzz in Venice

I have a list somewhere in my head of my favorite movies of all time. That list is completely different from my list of the greatest movies of all time, but the differences between the two would have to be put in a separate post. The point is, one of my favorite films ever was Joe Wright's adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. I've seen it more times than I can count. The cinematography is fantastic, the sets, costumes, and framing of all the shots seems perfect to me, and everything flows from one scene to the next flawlessly. It was also Kiera Knightley's best performance of her career, or so it seemed until now.

Wright's follow-up to P&P is an adaptation of another novel, Ian McEwan's Atonement, starring Kiera Knightley alongside James McAvoy. It's set in the 1930s, I've been looking forward to it ever since it was announced, and now it looks like all my wishes for the film are coming true.

At 35, Wright is the youngest director ever to have a film open the Venice Film Festival, which began this week. After the screening, media outlets started going nuts over it. This week can be remembered as the start of Oscar buzz for the film, Wright as director, and Knightley and McAvoy as actress and actor, respectively. I'm certainly going to see it at the soonest opportunity, and I can't remember the last time I was so happy that the people behind a favorite film of mine was on the receiving end of such good news.

Starry, Starry Night

Tonight was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. It was a really great spectacle, and it still has a few nights where there will be a lot of meteors streaking across the sky, so I suggest you get out and see them at a spot without a lot of light around about 11. And in honor of the time spent staring up at the night sky, here are some great songs having to do with or about stars:


My sophomore English teacher got me really into early 90s indie rock, especially Built to Spill. I had already been listening to Pavement, but these guys, the Silver Jews, and Yo La Tengo’s presence in my musical tastes are a direct result of that guy. This was the first BTS song that really hooked me, and rightly so. It’s got a great melody, and Marsch’s lyrics are childish (referring to the Big Dipper as a “brontosaurus laying on its side up in the sky”) and tender at the same time.

Built to Spill – Big Dipper


I definitely feel that Echo & the Bunnymen don’t get the respect they deserve for the great records they made back in the 80s. The Smiths get all the critical praise, The Cure got the album sales, but Echo was always my favorite of those three. This song comes from their first album, Crocodiles, which was definitely their most raw sounding, before they started messing around with more instrumentation in the studio. I don’t think this is one of their absolute best, but I still really like it. Echo is one of my favorite bands, so you’ll definitely see more of their stuff on here in the coming weeks.

Echo & the Bunnymen – Stars are Stars


Ok, so this only has a little bit to do with stars, but it’s such an awesome song that because the word is in the title I have an excuse to post it. Off of Radiohead’s second album The Bends, the entire album was like the band waving goodbye to the traditional rock music they were expected by fans and labels alike to keep making for the rest of their careers following the success of “Creep.” As we all know, they went down the rabbit hole of creativity to incredible artistic success, but the amazing thing here is that they were equally adept if not more impressive in their farewell to more traditional alternative rock music.

Radiohead – Black Star




In movie news, Rush Hour 3 topped the box office with a weekend total of just over $50 million.


However, I’ve read in a few different places that the total has been inflated a bit so the movie could get a little press out of opening over fifty mil. Here’s one movie-goer that hopes the actuals turn out a bit lower. It’s the summer of threequels to be sure, and not all of them have been good, but I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that the only person in America that really needed this movie was Chris Tucker.


UPDATE: Final numbers put it at 49.1 mil, which is still way too much, but at least it's not 50. Also check out a great post on /film here about how the opening is being received by the media. It's a great comparison to M:i:3, and a wonderful display of how Brett Ratner for some reason is getting cut more slack with all the crap in his back catalogue than Tom Cruise is with all of the great performances in his career.