Doomsday Occasionally, not often, a moment arrives that is so defining, so transcendent, that one realizes a new artistic paradigm has arrived, something has occurred that will change everything . . . . this was not one of those moments.
This movie is another post-apocalyptic sci-fi—horror flick. Everybody thinks they can do a better job with this genre, or they’ve found a new angle, and the genre always makes a little profit so they get financing. This one is so derivative it’s pathetic. It stars Rhona Mitra, as the one-woman special forces killing machine, as well as mildly easy to look at, Bob Hoskins as the completely superfluous chief of police—or whatever they’re called in England, and other people I’ve seen whose names I don’t know and am too indifferent to click back and find.
The Plot. Think Road Warrior meets Resident Evil meets Twenty-Eight Days Later. Only nowhere near as good as any of those—and this in a genre where “good” is a relative term at best. A new super-virus called the Reaper Virus, erupts in Glasgow Scotland, and begins to spread uncontrollably. They try to stop it, but finally, in desperation and terrified they are failing, build a new Hadrian’s Wall and lock the infected in with the healthy to let nature take its course. Triage writ large. Go forward 25 years (to 2035) and satellite imagining has revealed survivors at just the same moment a new outbreak is discovered in London. What timing! I can’t bear anymore. We’ve already seen every scene from then on in other movies. Scotland was nice though, and there is a certain logic to putting the crazy, cannibalistic, make-up wearing, chain swinging, and weird-hair-doo packing survivors in that particular country, because they would save so much time and money on special effects, make-up and costumes.
The story is stupid. The writing is vapid, the acting is obviously acting and Malcolm McDonald plays yet another seedy role in a career ruined by his starring role in A Clockwork Orange. Just goes to show you, never dance with the devil. Every move made in the entire movie is irrational, illogical, and worst of all, unnecessary. Good special effects and lots of scenes with cool fighting and action—none of which make any sense at all—and then it ends by sort of petering out while setting us up for a sequel, which will be like being in remission and having the disease come back again. It is Über-gory, and violent. Why is it that survivors in movies like this are always crazy, psychotic murdering cannibals? The writer should have made them zombies; then all the nonsense would have had some kind of bizarre rationale. But these losers weren’t even sick—they were immune to the virus (thus their survival). This flick brings up so many questions I haven’t the time, space, or inclination to even ask them. Okay, just one example. At one point our heroes are running from bad guys, out in the country. A local takes them to an old bunker. They are told the tunnel is a short cut through the mountain. The bunker turns out to be a massive fallout shelter, obviously government designed, built and stocked. It has everything someone would need to thrive in a post-nuclear war world. So, it’s been there the whole time, lots of people know about it because they use it regularly as a kind of underground railroad, but it is still pristine, after 25 years of anarchistic mayhem where resources are so scarce the populace has resorted to institution cannibalism. Nobody has explored it, rifled it, looted it or is living in it. And when the good guys return to it, everything they need is right there—even an inventory list hanging on a wall out in the open. One of the containers has a brand new Bentley in it. The local girl asks “what does it do?”, even though she has seen all kinds of Road-Warrior inspired vehicles running around everywhere all through the movie. I mean, it’s beyond belief.
It is rated R for ridiculous. Blood, prurient exploitation, gore (including decapitations and squishing bodies under heavy things) nudity (very brief), usual British potty language, and an incomprehensible story-line. It will make a profit because there are several million teenagers out there with fake ID’s who will see anything that might have a boob or entrails in it. But I’m not like them—my ID isn’t fake.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Movie Review: Untraceable
Untraceable This one’s an FBI suspense thriller in the vein of Silence of the Lambs and Seven. This one is as brutal as either of those, but not quite up to their “quality”, if that is the appropriate word. It stars Diane Lane as an FBI cyber specialist, catching predators and hackers by being better with computers than they are. I went to this one for two reasons. One—it looked pretty good in the trailers, and two—Diane Lane is my number one favorite world-class gorgeous actress. Be still my heart.
I liked this one. It isn’t perfect, but the suspense is good, keeps you guessing, and there is a lot of super high-tech babble that might have been genuine or might not—I have no idea. There were a few times I thought they were making the bad guy omniscient. He hacked into everything-cell phones, On Star, FBI computers, etc.
The crime in this semi-cerebral thriller is diabolical. Someone is abducting people and torturing them while streaming the live video to the web. Here’s the clincher: the more people who log on to watch, the faster whatever is being done to the victims kills them. Which makes millions of us accessories to first degree murder. Nice touch, eh? The killers skills are a little too mad to be believable, and his ability to plot, plan, and execute (get it?) is Olympian, but it still manages to entertain in that sick, self-loathing kind of way. And you get to watch Diane Lane work her craft and be beautiful and stuff. Who needs a plot?
It’s rated R, for adult content and language. Nita would have loved the suspense and mystery and hated the crime and stuff. It was okay. They tried to make Lane look like a regular forty-something single mom but it’s impossible. She way too hot.
I liked this one. It isn’t perfect, but the suspense is good, keeps you guessing, and there is a lot of super high-tech babble that might have been genuine or might not—I have no idea. There were a few times I thought they were making the bad guy omniscient. He hacked into everything-cell phones, On Star, FBI computers, etc.
The crime in this semi-cerebral thriller is diabolical. Someone is abducting people and torturing them while streaming the live video to the web. Here’s the clincher: the more people who log on to watch, the faster whatever is being done to the victims kills them. Which makes millions of us accessories to first degree murder. Nice touch, eh? The killers skills are a little too mad to be believable, and his ability to plot, plan, and execute (get it?) is Olympian, but it still manages to entertain in that sick, self-loathing kind of way. And you get to watch Diane Lane work her craft and be beautiful and stuff. Who needs a plot?
It’s rated R, for adult content and language. Nita would have loved the suspense and mystery and hated the crime and stuff. It was okay. They tried to make Lane look like a regular forty-something single mom but it’s impossible. She way too hot.
Movie Review: Sweeny Todd
Sweeny Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street Well, it took a while but I finally managed to see this one. I had several reasons for wanting to. First, Nita and I had seen the stage production years ago in Cedar City. Second, it stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, both of whom I respect as actors (although not necessarily any other way) and finally, it’s a Tim Burton movie and I think he’s the best insane writer-director out there.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story line, a word or two will be necessary. A London Barber has a wonderful life—beautiful wife, new baby daughter, when a powerful judge (Alan Rickman) has him arrested in order to put the wife back on the market. As it were. The Barber escapes from prison after 15 years, comes home and is told his wife is dead and his daughter is the ward of the judge. He’s quite insane by now, obsessed with revenge, and changes his name to Sweeny Todd, colludes with Mrs. Lovett (Carter) who owns an uninspired (and unsanitary) meat pie shop.
Todd starts killing men he believes had anything to do with anything, and Lovett makes meat pies out of the cadavers. The plot thickens, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) makes a nice cameo as the Spaniard, meat pie stock goes way up, a twist or two, tragedy, the end.
Did I mention it’s a musical? Stephen Sondheim, the genius. The music is not as approachable as some of his others, which makes sense since the story is far more macabre than his others. Depp and Carter, neither singers, make up for lack of training with amazing emotional range. I like musicals, but I know many, perhaps most, people do not. Your loss. Camelot is my favorite.
I found this movie to be a disturbing, uneven version of the Broadway hit. It is brooding, dark, brilliant and bloody with the kind of graphic, gory detail only Burton is capable of. Very dark humor here and there as well.
If you are a serious aficionado, I highly recommend this movie. If not, I can’t recommend it. Hopefully you know which you are.
It’s rated R for weird, blood and gore, cockroaches and being a serious buzz-kill.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story line, a word or two will be necessary. A London Barber has a wonderful life—beautiful wife, new baby daughter, when a powerful judge (Alan Rickman) has him arrested in order to put the wife back on the market. As it were. The Barber escapes from prison after 15 years, comes home and is told his wife is dead and his daughter is the ward of the judge. He’s quite insane by now, obsessed with revenge, and changes his name to Sweeny Todd, colludes with Mrs. Lovett (Carter) who owns an uninspired (and unsanitary) meat pie shop.
Todd starts killing men he believes had anything to do with anything, and Lovett makes meat pies out of the cadavers. The plot thickens, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) makes a nice cameo as the Spaniard, meat pie stock goes way up, a twist or two, tragedy, the end.
Did I mention it’s a musical? Stephen Sondheim, the genius. The music is not as approachable as some of his others, which makes sense since the story is far more macabre than his others. Depp and Carter, neither singers, make up for lack of training with amazing emotional range. I like musicals, but I know many, perhaps most, people do not. Your loss. Camelot is my favorite.
I found this movie to be a disturbing, uneven version of the Broadway hit. It is brooding, dark, brilliant and bloody with the kind of graphic, gory detail only Burton is capable of. Very dark humor here and there as well.
If you are a serious aficionado, I highly recommend this movie. If not, I can’t recommend it. Hopefully you know which you are.
It’s rated R for weird, blood and gore, cockroaches and being a serious buzz-kill.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Movie Review: Cloverfield
Cloverfield At last! The long-awaited and much-anticipated new sci-fi-monster-action-thriller is here. This movie has been under a secrecy lid that would have made Lubyanka proud. Nobody knew anything about it except for the tantalizingly brief glimpses of something in the trailer. Cloverfield is the government code word for the “incident”. This movie is awesome—way better than most of the critics are claiming. They’re all idiots anyway. It is a breakthrough, it raises the bar, breaks the mold.
Picture this: Rob is moving to Japan—big promotion—and his friends are having a party for him. One of the guys, Hud, is tagged to videotape the whole thing, getting testimonials from everybody. The party is noisy, but we the audience manage to hear a few big thumps in the background. Then a big jolt. Earthquake. The lights go out, then come back on. And everything is being seen through the lens of this amateur videographer. They go up to the roof to see if they can see anything. Suddenly there is a huge explosion somewhere uptown. Pieces of debris come flying over and in. People are screaming . . . the guy with the camera is screaming. They run down the stairs, image jumping everywhere, making you dizzy. Out on the street people are screaming, running. Another explosion, and something comes flying towards you, hits the street, bounces and crushes a few cars. When it stops you discover it’s the head of lady liberty—as in the statue of. Panic, mayhem. Building are collapsing, there is a sound booming through the air you would not want to hear twice in your life time.
New York is under attack.
All the actors are no names—never seen any of them before. They do a great job. The entire movie is shot with a video camera as Hud, Rob, Lilly and Marlena try to stay alive, then go back into the city to rescue Robs girlfriend. He received a brief call—she is in her building and she can’t move. In the meantime something is destroying the city. The army arrives and is ineffective against this nightmare creature (which we haven’t even seen yet) but they manage to begin a mandatory evacuation and protect the civilians as they flee.
That’s all for the plot. This flick rocks the house. The tension level is a nine on the Richter scale. It starts out with no credits. Instead we are told it is an eyes only account of the “incident” called the Cloverfield event. Hud never stopped filming and it is the best record the government has. It is so inventive, so well done, that you totally forget it’s not real. Even the monster, when we finally see it, doesn’t break our concentration because by now we have totally bought into the whole documentary thing. And no one knows what the thing is, or where it came from or what it wants. It is the anti-Godzilla movie. Usually some bright scientist gives us a running explanation as to what is happening and why—think Matthew Broderick in Godzilla—but not this time. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Godzilla.) The camera follows the twenty-something’s with commentary by Hud—a dim bulb—all the while. Bombs exploding, guns firing, tanks shooting round after round, jets screaming overhead, and helicopters shuttering through the canyons of the city—all getting their asses kicked. The point of view never changes, we only see what Hud sees, and the lens.
Okay, enough. Did you see The Blair Witch Project? This one has the same intensity, the same immediacy. Except it’s way better. This movie is a masterpiece, but not a lot of people are going to see it that way, so be forewarned. It is straightforward, head banging terror. Which comes not from gore or sudden noises, or hideous acts of cruelty by demented, demonic mutants, but from the fear of not knowing what’s going on. Never. Total ignorance in the midst of indescribable and impossible chaos. It’s not our terror—it’s their terror. It ends the same way it started, following the survivors until they stop moving. It is not the movie we see in the trailer. It is more complex, more subtle, more human. It is brutally realistic. It has no ending . . . the tape just stops and we finally hear music as the credits begin to roll. Awesome!
It is rated PG-13 but don’t take little kids. It’s a good date movie if your partner is a total freak. There is a little cussing, a little blood, a really big monster like nothing you’ve ever seen, and lots of dog sized-crab-shrimp-scuttley little manic biters. They fall off the thing like barnacles from a Teflon ship hull.
The CGI is incredible. Newell and I saw it at the Rave, in the Town Center and they have new DPL projectors. The picture and sound are so superior it hurts. Cloverfield is a keeper.
Picture this: Rob is moving to Japan—big promotion—and his friends are having a party for him. One of the guys, Hud, is tagged to videotape the whole thing, getting testimonials from everybody. The party is noisy, but we the audience manage to hear a few big thumps in the background. Then a big jolt. Earthquake. The lights go out, then come back on. And everything is being seen through the lens of this amateur videographer. They go up to the roof to see if they can see anything. Suddenly there is a huge explosion somewhere uptown. Pieces of debris come flying over and in. People are screaming . . . the guy with the camera is screaming. They run down the stairs, image jumping everywhere, making you dizzy. Out on the street people are screaming, running. Another explosion, and something comes flying towards you, hits the street, bounces and crushes a few cars. When it stops you discover it’s the head of lady liberty—as in the statue of. Panic, mayhem. Building are collapsing, there is a sound booming through the air you would not want to hear twice in your life time.
New York is under attack.
All the actors are no names—never seen any of them before. They do a great job. The entire movie is shot with a video camera as Hud, Rob, Lilly and Marlena try to stay alive, then go back into the city to rescue Robs girlfriend. He received a brief call—she is in her building and she can’t move. In the meantime something is destroying the city. The army arrives and is ineffective against this nightmare creature (which we haven’t even seen yet) but they manage to begin a mandatory evacuation and protect the civilians as they flee.
That’s all for the plot. This flick rocks the house. The tension level is a nine on the Richter scale. It starts out with no credits. Instead we are told it is an eyes only account of the “incident” called the Cloverfield event. Hud never stopped filming and it is the best record the government has. It is so inventive, so well done, that you totally forget it’s not real. Even the monster, when we finally see it, doesn’t break our concentration because by now we have totally bought into the whole documentary thing. And no one knows what the thing is, or where it came from or what it wants. It is the anti-Godzilla movie. Usually some bright scientist gives us a running explanation as to what is happening and why—think Matthew Broderick in Godzilla—but not this time. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Godzilla.) The camera follows the twenty-something’s with commentary by Hud—a dim bulb—all the while. Bombs exploding, guns firing, tanks shooting round after round, jets screaming overhead, and helicopters shuttering through the canyons of the city—all getting their asses kicked. The point of view never changes, we only see what Hud sees, and the lens.
Okay, enough. Did you see The Blair Witch Project? This one has the same intensity, the same immediacy. Except it’s way better. This movie is a masterpiece, but not a lot of people are going to see it that way, so be forewarned. It is straightforward, head banging terror. Which comes not from gore or sudden noises, or hideous acts of cruelty by demented, demonic mutants, but from the fear of not knowing what’s going on. Never. Total ignorance in the midst of indescribable and impossible chaos. It’s not our terror—it’s their terror. It ends the same way it started, following the survivors until they stop moving. It is not the movie we see in the trailer. It is more complex, more subtle, more human. It is brutally realistic. It has no ending . . . the tape just stops and we finally hear music as the credits begin to roll. Awesome!
It is rated PG-13 but don’t take little kids. It’s a good date movie if your partner is a total freak. There is a little cussing, a little blood, a really big monster like nothing you’ve ever seen, and lots of dog sized-crab-shrimp-scuttley little manic biters. They fall off the thing like barnacles from a Teflon ship hull.
The CGI is incredible. Newell and I saw it at the Rave, in the Town Center and they have new DPL projectors. The picture and sound are so superior it hurts. Cloverfield is a keeper.
Monday, December 17, 2007
I Am Legend
I Am Legend You can’t possibly have missed the marketing for this one. They have been pushing it for a year now. Based on the old sci-fi classic of the same name, Will Smith plays Robert Neville, the last man on earth. The story has been changed and updated to resonate with contemporary society. In this new version (another one came out in 1971—Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston) a major breakthrough having to do with genetically engineered Measles virus has apparently cured cancer. This of course goes bad and kills 90% of the world’s population. 90% of the survivors develop symptoms similar to mega-rabies and kill and eat almost all of the immune. These infected survivors cannot abide ultra-violet light which keeps them in the dark until sundown. Neville (Smith) is one of the few remaining immune. He is an Army Colonel and a genius researcher trying to find a way to stop and reverse the virus. He and a German Shepherd are all that remain of humans (and dogs) in New York, and as far as he knows, the world. (Canines can’t get the airborne strain of the virus, but are susceptible to the physical contact variety, and that’s all I will say about that). The dog is wonderful and should get nominated for best supporting actor. Neville lives a life dedicated to order, organization and constancy, never giving up on his single-minded attempt to cure the infected. His life is solitary but full, as he divides his days into distinct chores, radioing each day in the hopes of finding other survivors, hunting, farming, working in his lab, replenishing supplies, and keeping track of where the infected congregate during the day. It has to be a daunting task to be in every scene of a movie with virtually all the dialog, but Smith is excellent in this picture, showing us new depth and range. The back-story comes to us via flashbacks which work well and are nicely timed. Which means other people are in the film but not for long, until the very end. It’s a good story, and a sensitive look into the mind of a man fighting loneliness and despondency, as well as his own demons and fear of insanity. The special effects are up to snuff, with grand views of a deserted New York City being overrun by nature. The infected creatures are scary but a little uneven in their abilities to reason. Their strength is superhuman of course, but they are killable. And despite the fact that they are technically still alive, they exhibit all the major characteristics of Zombies, which makes the movie that much better. The ending is bittersweet, reminding us of the vagaries of life, the need for sacrifice and the joy of survival. It is rated PG-13. There is no sex, no skin, no cursing. The violence is momentarily intense, but not gratuitous, and not overly graphic. I liked it a lot and recommend it to the action-adventure, blockbuster fan. All you Will Smith fans will enjoy the scene where he is working out and displays a totally ripped physique. He is starting to show a touch of gray around the temples these days and I liked that he didn’t dye it out. Unless the gray was makeup. All in all, a great treat that lived up to its hype and long-awaited release.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
The Eagles: Long Road Out of Eden
I flew over to Wal Mart a couple weeks ago to get the new Eagles release, Long Road out of Eden. It’s a double CD and the radio was saying Wal Mart was pricing it at $11.88, which was true, but I found out later the Eagles signed an exclusive contract to let Wal Mart sell the first 3 million copies at that reduced price. I believe it was an attempt to sell as many of them as possible before the pirate copies became too prolific. The boys in the band are my age (pushing 60) and sound pretty old school when it comes to intellectual property and copyright laws—as am I. My son and I have had some passionate and fascinating debates on those very issues and I find the generation gap to be radical in this area. My position is simple: Intellectual property is sacrosanct and should be vigorously protected. Artists of any medium need that protection in order to earn a living and to maintain the integrity of their work. Grah, my son, takes the opposite view. He tells me I’m hopelessly caught in my own past (which is true), and that today sharing music, print material, almost anything, is a common, accepted method of doing things. He insists the recording companies and publishing houses are going to have to radically change the way they do business so as to reflect the new solid-state and digital age. He is as honest as the day is long, but tells me he is consciously engaging in civil disobedience by sharing everything with everybody, in order to force the government and the private sector to get off their butts and solve the problems—which he sees as challenges and opportunity.
But that’s not why I called you here today. I wanted to review the Eagles CD, even though I haven’t quite heard it all yet. (There’s a reason for that, which I will get to.) Let’s spend a moment in Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine. The last studio album the Eagles made was The Long Run, and that was 28 years ago. Most artists would be so forgotten by now, they’d have already been buried, dead or not. But somewhere in that nearly thirty year hiatus, they got back together, went on the famous Hell Freezes Over tour, and released a CD and DVD of it—kind of a best of. That grossed (according to 60 Minutes) a quarter of a billion dollars, which got them thinking along the lines of “hey, maybe there’s still some milk left in this cash cow.” And they decided that any new project had to be a studio piece, of new material. Woo-Hoo!
So my brother and I go fishing on his birthday, November 11, which is an annual thing for us, and I mention I have the new Eagles CD with me, and since he is the second biggest Eagles fan in the known universe, he got out the kit and put the first CD on. It’s about 5:30 in the morning, the sky is glowing with pre-dawn light, the freeway is nearly empty, and Newell has a killer stereo in his Yukon. So we sit there listening, lost in the bliss, until the last song is finished, and I suggest, naturally enough, that he put on the second disc.
“I think we’d better listen to this one again,” he tells me. I’m driving, what can I do? (He always makes me drive.) So we listen again. And again. And again. I’m lovin’ it, he’s lovin’ it, and then he plays the last song again, right after we’d just heard it. It’s called Waiting in the Weeds. As it begins with this sweet mandolin, or possibly tenor guitar, Newell says “this is the one.” Meaning, this is the song, the best one on the album, the best on since Hotel California or The Last Resort. I know this is what he’s saying because we’re brothers and because musically, that’s the way we both think. Weeds stands out. He plays the disc a dozen more times, over and over, and every time it gets better, we hear a little more, find some new thematic nuance, figure out some metaphor or oblique reference. Which is why we listen a hundred times to new stuff. If we like it. Because, you know, we never listened to say, Smells Like Teen Spirit at all, because we didn’t like it.
Eventually we stop and decide to fish, although we could have easily just sat there all day, listening to that song and talking about it. Next best thing; we fished streams all day and talked about it, while playing dirty tricks on each other in order to win the coveted Masters Cup in the International Free-Style Trout Fishing Exposition. But that’s another story. Great day by the way, we caught about 20 apiece—including some lunkers—and put them all back.
Then we get back into the Yukon and I’m thinking surely he’s going to play disc 2 now. But he says “I don’t think I’m quite done with this one yet, and don’t call me Shirley.” So he plays the whole disc again and again and—well, you get the picture. By the time we get back to Vegas, we’ve heard disc 1 at least 30 times, and Weeds at least fifty. Yep, that’s definitely the one. And I’ve been playing that song again and again at home, following with the lyrics in the little booklet thingy, playing it for Nita, for my daughters (for whom this has been a way of life), everyone going nuts over this powerful, beautiful, surprising song. Anyway, disc 1 is awesome, as good as anything they’ve ever done, (with the possible exception of Hotel California) and Weeds is a masterpiece. I still haven’t heard 2 all the way through yet so I’ll have to get back to you on that.
(Some of you of course will be scratching your heads, wondering why I’m bothering to even mention the Eagles, or wondering who they are, maybe some third-party political party, or a social organization, or some new addition to the Boy Scouts, or even a misspelled Snoopy fan club. If you fit into any of those categories, please take a step forward. You guys in the front are all philistines. Barbarians. Unworthy of the air we breathe and the lives you are currently squandering.)
These old pros sound better than ever. The arrangements are mature yet bold, taking us to unexpected places, both melodic and harmonic, blending voices with absolute perfection and tone. It is full of songs about remorse and the bitter aftertaste of lost love. There is a scathing indictment of our consumer society and what some believe to be our nation’s recent Imperialistic machinations. The first song, No More Walks in the Woods is adapted from a poem and is mostly a-capella with very tight, four-part harmony. It is beautiful, poignant and achingly sad, as it mourns the loss of our pristine landscapes. The guys know how to turn a phrase, paint a picture, set a mood, and go for the jugular (think of Get Over It). But Waiting in the Weeds is a song apart. On a par with the best they’ve ever done and as good as Henley’s The Last Resort or his solo Über-Lied, Talking to the Moon. Listen to it fifty times on a really good stereo or with headphones, and you’ll see what I mean. Unless you’re a philistine.
But that’s not why I called you here today. I wanted to review the Eagles CD, even though I haven’t quite heard it all yet. (There’s a reason for that, which I will get to.) Let’s spend a moment in Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine. The last studio album the Eagles made was The Long Run, and that was 28 years ago. Most artists would be so forgotten by now, they’d have already been buried, dead or not. But somewhere in that nearly thirty year hiatus, they got back together, went on the famous Hell Freezes Over tour, and released a CD and DVD of it—kind of a best of. That grossed (according to 60 Minutes) a quarter of a billion dollars, which got them thinking along the lines of “hey, maybe there’s still some milk left in this cash cow.” And they decided that any new project had to be a studio piece, of new material. Woo-Hoo!
So my brother and I go fishing on his birthday, November 11, which is an annual thing for us, and I mention I have the new Eagles CD with me, and since he is the second biggest Eagles fan in the known universe, he got out the kit and put the first CD on. It’s about 5:30 in the morning, the sky is glowing with pre-dawn light, the freeway is nearly empty, and Newell has a killer stereo in his Yukon. So we sit there listening, lost in the bliss, until the last song is finished, and I suggest, naturally enough, that he put on the second disc.
“I think we’d better listen to this one again,” he tells me. I’m driving, what can I do? (He always makes me drive.) So we listen again. And again. And again. I’m lovin’ it, he’s lovin’ it, and then he plays the last song again, right after we’d just heard it. It’s called Waiting in the Weeds. As it begins with this sweet mandolin, or possibly tenor guitar, Newell says “this is the one.” Meaning, this is the song, the best one on the album, the best on since Hotel California or The Last Resort. I know this is what he’s saying because we’re brothers and because musically, that’s the way we both think. Weeds stands out. He plays the disc a dozen more times, over and over, and every time it gets better, we hear a little more, find some new thematic nuance, figure out some metaphor or oblique reference. Which is why we listen a hundred times to new stuff. If we like it. Because, you know, we never listened to say, Smells Like Teen Spirit at all, because we didn’t like it.
Eventually we stop and decide to fish, although we could have easily just sat there all day, listening to that song and talking about it. Next best thing; we fished streams all day and talked about it, while playing dirty tricks on each other in order to win the coveted Masters Cup in the International Free-Style Trout Fishing Exposition. But that’s another story. Great day by the way, we caught about 20 apiece—including some lunkers—and put them all back.
Then we get back into the Yukon and I’m thinking surely he’s going to play disc 2 now. But he says “I don’t think I’m quite done with this one yet, and don’t call me Shirley.” So he plays the whole disc again and again and—well, you get the picture. By the time we get back to Vegas, we’ve heard disc 1 at least 30 times, and Weeds at least fifty. Yep, that’s definitely the one. And I’ve been playing that song again and again at home, following with the lyrics in the little booklet thingy, playing it for Nita, for my daughters (for whom this has been a way of life), everyone going nuts over this powerful, beautiful, surprising song. Anyway, disc 1 is awesome, as good as anything they’ve ever done, (with the possible exception of Hotel California) and Weeds is a masterpiece. I still haven’t heard 2 all the way through yet so I’ll have to get back to you on that.
(Some of you of course will be scratching your heads, wondering why I’m bothering to even mention the Eagles, or wondering who they are, maybe some third-party political party, or a social organization, or some new addition to the Boy Scouts, or even a misspelled Snoopy fan club. If you fit into any of those categories, please take a step forward. You guys in the front are all philistines. Barbarians. Unworthy of the air we breathe and the lives you are currently squandering.)
These old pros sound better than ever. The arrangements are mature yet bold, taking us to unexpected places, both melodic and harmonic, blending voices with absolute perfection and tone. It is full of songs about remorse and the bitter aftertaste of lost love. There is a scathing indictment of our consumer society and what some believe to be our nation’s recent Imperialistic machinations. The first song, No More Walks in the Woods is adapted from a poem and is mostly a-capella with very tight, four-part harmony. It is beautiful, poignant and achingly sad, as it mourns the loss of our pristine landscapes. The guys know how to turn a phrase, paint a picture, set a mood, and go for the jugular (think of Get Over It). But Waiting in the Weeds is a song apart. On a par with the best they’ve ever done and as good as Henley’s The Last Resort or his solo Über-Lied, Talking to the Moon. Listen to it fifty times on a really good stereo or with headphones, and you’ll see what I mean. Unless you’re a philistine.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Transformers
Here it is summer again and the blockbusters are coming out. This is Michael Bey’s newest effort, produced by Bey and Steven Spielberg, and is based on the Saturday morning cartoon about the nefarious Megatron, and the benevolent (but tough) Optimus Prime.
This is not, however, a cartoon. Remember when we were kids (or when I was . . .) and those wonderful monster movies were coming out of Japan? Godzilla and Rodan, Mothra and the Mysterions? We loved those movies, largely because of an ability we had as kids, and of which we have retained little or nothing as adults, which allowed us to extrapolate what we saw and heard, and expand it into what we wanted to see and hear. We watched monsters on visible strings, monsters which were obviously actors in poorly made costumes, live actors with no ability to act whatsoever, bad production quality, the worst models and miniatures in history (most of the military hardware was literally toys purchased retail) and special effects so bad even ten-year olds weren’t fooled. But that was enough. Our imaginations took over and transformed what was on the screen into what we wished to see and through some kind of inner eye, we did see it. We were able to transcend the primitive attempts and turn them into hearts desires. A start was all we needed. The recent Godzilla is a perfect example.
Now, a few directors understand that technology is catching up to imagination. A few. People like Bey and Peter Jackson.
Transformers is the movie kids saw when they watched the cartoons. It is wonderful. The plot (with the proviso that we accept technologically advanced, sentient robots) is extremely well thought-out. The characters are believable and, more to the point, likable; people we can root for, without their being reduced to being caricatures. The side stories are perfect, the romance is kept at its proper level for this kind of movie, and everyone turns in a great performance. John Turturro and John Voight are especially good.
The movie manages to maintain a high level of suspense, with a sense of realism I wasn’t expecting, i.e. a very real, serious emergency with adults reacting just as seriously, and behaving intelligently for the most part, while it gives us moments to breath with humor that is so well timed and placed it is absolutely seamless.
Making the main characters teen-agers was brilliant. Not only does it increase our empathy, but it will draw lots more people to the theaters. Kids like movies about themselves.
But the star of the show is it’s special effects. Perfect, seamless CGI—and lot’s of it. The Transformers and brilliant, “grown-up” versions of their cartoon predecessors. They have emotions, they give us comical moments as they try to interact with humans, and they make us want them to succeed against the bad guys (evil Transformers led by Megatron).
It is edge-of-your-seat fun from beginning to end. I believe it will be too intense for little kids, say under eight or so, but other than that almost anyone can go and find something to like. Not that it matters, but the two female leads (neither of which I’ve seen before) are drop-dead gorgeous. The Army captain is, I have it on good authority, smokin’ as well.
The movie is rated PG-13. There isn’t a cussword in sight, no sexual innuendo at all, much less sex scenes (although there is some romantic innuendo—remember, it’s teenagers), no graphic up-close, personal violence and no gore or blood at all. There is lots of the other kind of violence—the explosive, action-dense, mayhem kind—and no death, other than the bad Robots. A few humans might be presumed to die but only peripherally and at a distance. I highly recommend it to people of all ages. It is as good an action-adventure movie as I have ever seen, and a very pleasant surprise.
This is not, however, a cartoon. Remember when we were kids (or when I was . . .) and those wonderful monster movies were coming out of Japan? Godzilla and Rodan, Mothra and the Mysterions? We loved those movies, largely because of an ability we had as kids, and of which we have retained little or nothing as adults, which allowed us to extrapolate what we saw and heard, and expand it into what we wanted to see and hear. We watched monsters on visible strings, monsters which were obviously actors in poorly made costumes, live actors with no ability to act whatsoever, bad production quality, the worst models and miniatures in history (most of the military hardware was literally toys purchased retail) and special effects so bad even ten-year olds weren’t fooled. But that was enough. Our imaginations took over and transformed what was on the screen into what we wished to see and through some kind of inner eye, we did see it. We were able to transcend the primitive attempts and turn them into hearts desires. A start was all we needed. The recent Godzilla is a perfect example.
Now, a few directors understand that technology is catching up to imagination. A few. People like Bey and Peter Jackson.
Transformers is the movie kids saw when they watched the cartoons. It is wonderful. The plot (with the proviso that we accept technologically advanced, sentient robots) is extremely well thought-out. The characters are believable and, more to the point, likable; people we can root for, without their being reduced to being caricatures. The side stories are perfect, the romance is kept at its proper level for this kind of movie, and everyone turns in a great performance. John Turturro and John Voight are especially good.
The movie manages to maintain a high level of suspense, with a sense of realism I wasn’t expecting, i.e. a very real, serious emergency with adults reacting just as seriously, and behaving intelligently for the most part, while it gives us moments to breath with humor that is so well timed and placed it is absolutely seamless.
Making the main characters teen-agers was brilliant. Not only does it increase our empathy, but it will draw lots more people to the theaters. Kids like movies about themselves.
But the star of the show is it’s special effects. Perfect, seamless CGI—and lot’s of it. The Transformers and brilliant, “grown-up” versions of their cartoon predecessors. They have emotions, they give us comical moments as they try to interact with humans, and they make us want them to succeed against the bad guys (evil Transformers led by Megatron).
It is edge-of-your-seat fun from beginning to end. I believe it will be too intense for little kids, say under eight or so, but other than that almost anyone can go and find something to like. Not that it matters, but the two female leads (neither of which I’ve seen before) are drop-dead gorgeous. The Army captain is, I have it on good authority, smokin’ as well.
The movie is rated PG-13. There isn’t a cussword in sight, no sexual innuendo at all, much less sex scenes (although there is some romantic innuendo—remember, it’s teenagers), no graphic up-close, personal violence and no gore or blood at all. There is lots of the other kind of violence—the explosive, action-dense, mayhem kind—and no death, other than the bad Robots. A few humans might be presumed to die but only peripherally and at a distance. I highly recommend it to people of all ages. It is as good an action-adventure movie as I have ever seen, and a very pleasant surprise.
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