September 2, 2010

The Expendables movie review

Ah Sylvester Stallone; is there anything he can’t do?  He directs, he writes, he acts – and he’s 64, but still jacked.  Wasn’t his character supposed to be over the hill in Rocky?  This time, he’s
assembled a cast that would strike fear in the heart of any evil do-er in The Expendables.

Oh, spoilers from here on out.

Who are The Expendables?  Only the roughest, toughest actors, former wrestlers, body builders, martial artists, oh, and He-Man, damn it!  I read somewhere that Stallone wanted Jean-Claude Van Dam for this movie, but he had to settle for Dolph Lundgren – settle?  Settle for the real Punisher? Oh hells no.  I don’t play that shiz.  Anyway, rounding out the cast of action stars is Jason Statham, Jet Li, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke and… Terry Crews?  Sorry, Terry; I’m not familiar with your work, but at least I know who you are – as opposed to whoever the other guy was.

As I mentioned before, Stallone leaves nothing to chance as he stars, directs and co-writes, and he delivers exactly what he promised with a movie that reminds me more of Commando than any Stallone movie I can think of.  I won’t bother recounting the plot for you, so check it out here if you desire.  The first and second act have plenty of action, but the third act is just over the top explosions and violence, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.  Stallone isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel here or change the world – in fact, it’d be easier to make an argument that  he’s trying to blow up the world, because the climax of this movie literally shook the theater I saw it in.  The room was shaking, or maybe it was just my head from the surround sound explosions!

I haven’t seen a movie like this in a long time.  The plot wasn’t so dumb that I couldn’t concentrate on the movie, the acting was fun and light hearted (accept Mickey Rourke, he’s the man – his big scene, all shown in close up, maybe one take?  awesome!), and the action just kept coming.  Maybe there was some corny moments, and I could have done without that outro  featuring ‘The Boys are back in town,” but its a solid action movie.

Two things I’m confused about:

First, why was this movie called The Expendables?  None of the expendables die!  I suppose they’re considered expendable by their employers and they have it written all over their motorcycles…  I didn’t get that.

And second, why the hell do I know who the hell Steve Austin is by site?  I checked out his IMDB and I’ve never seen a thing he’s done.  My girlfriend pointed out the high volume of pay per view wrestling commercials we’re seen featuring Stone Cold (again, why do I know that?), and maybe that burned him into my brain.  Whatever, he’s mostly scenery in this movie as he stands around and looks menacing, but he does it well.  And he’s still jacked.  Very, frighteningly jacked.

If you want to relax and enjoy violence for a an hour or so, you’ll like The Expendables.  If you watched the trailer and were appalled, I guess I owe you a new monocle.

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September 1, 2010

Blade Runner movie review

NOTE:  This review of Blade Runner contains spoilers.

When I say, “Blade Runner movie review,” it sounds as though I know exactly which movie I’m reviewing, but I don’t.  Why is that?  Because Blade Runner has been released and re-edited more times than Star Wars…  I mean, “A New Hope.”  Both Harrison Ford movies, that’s interesting…  In any case, there are no less than 7 versions of Blade Runner.

Anyway, Ridley Scott directs a lose adaptation of the the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.  That’s some title, huh?  Can you imagine a punch of producers sitting around at able, having a conversation about the film’s title?  “Hmm, if we keep the original title, maybe that will help bring in the audience from the novel,” on executive says.  Then another says, “You think someone actually purchased and read a book called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And how are we going to fit that on a poster?”  So yeah, they went with Blade Runner…  that’s probably how it happened.

The movie feels a bit like a Stanley Kubrick film.  There are long establishing shots of the locations as the camera moves toward a building, lots of wide shots, stark moments without music, and so on.  I wouldn’t say the movie has a fast pace, but it moves along well enough, aided (especially during those long establishing shots) by a great soundtrack by Vangelis. It’s sort of a Noir movie, but the version I saw includes no narration, which I feel to be an essential requirement of Noir, although I understand there is a version with Noir.

The movie opened in what might be referred to as the ultimate sci-fi summer against The Thing, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and takes place in Los Angeles, circa 2019, which seemed far away in 1982. Harrison Ford stars as Rick Deckard, a retired cop who gets strong armed into going back to his old job; that is, tracking down biologically engineered humans who are banned from earth and killing them.  Deckard must specifically find  Leon (Brion James – trust me, if you’ve seen any action movies in the 80s, you know who this is), Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) and Pris (Daryl Hannah – yep, bet you didn’t see that coming).  To make a long story short, Zhora goes down pretty easily, Leon is only ‘retired’ (that’s what they call killing the ‘replicants’) when Deckard is assisted by Rachael (Sean Young), a replicant who believes she’s human until Deckard tells her the truth, and Pris and Roy’s final moments make up the climax of the movie.  The detective angle to the story is a lot of fun, especially in the first act as Deckard tracks down Zhora.  The futuristic version of LA is gritty and crowded, and extremely culturally diverse in both the ethnic population and the languages heard throughout the city.  Rachael’s story is one of the more interesting parts of the film, as is Leon’s failure of the Voight-Kampff test, or a personality profile that distinguishes humans from replicants.  Leon fails the test in just a few moments, but it takes Deckard over 100 questions to learn that Rachael is a replicant, meaning she is of a much more sophisticated generation of replicant than Leon, Roy, Zhora and Pris.

I have narrowed down the version I’ve seen to be either 6 or 7, given that it features the unicorn scene.  Yep, the unicorn scene:  because the movie just wasn’t trippy enough with J.F. Sebastian’s (William Sanderson) weird apartment full of little fake people walking around.  If you’ve only seen the version without the unicorn scene, then Deckard is simply a gritty ex-detective with one last job to do (killing 4 replicants) before he runs away with a replicant.  You see, Deckard’s old partner, Gaff (Edward James Olmos) gives him an origami unicorn, which could mean that Gaff is aware of Deckard’s dreams, because Deckard himself is a replicant.  He dreams of a unicorn galloping in a field; is this because there are genetically engineered unicorns running around in 2019 and this is someone else’s memory implanted in Deckard (the movie does relay that it is common practice to implant human’s memories in replacants) OR would he only dream about unicorns because they’re not real and neither is Deckard?  Or maybe because his old partner used to constantly gives him origami unicorns?  Based on what information the movie provides, I have no idea what the answer is.

There it is – Blade Runner, in all it’s cult classic, 7 version glory.  It’s an fun movie, despite anyone’s feelings on the pacing issues and subject matter.  And you can’t go wrong with Harrison Ford and a strong supporting cast, so check it out if you haven’t already, and if you have, there’s bound to be a version of the film you’ve never seen that completely changes your perception of Ford’s character.

Solo shot first!

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August 27, 2010

Attention Must be Paid: Stereo Telescope

stereo telescope

Welcome back to the journey into under appreciated creativity.  This feature, Attention Must be Paid, will shine my (however brief and dull) spotlight on something that needs props.  Mad props.  Today, I’d like to shine the light on Stereo Telescope, an electronic pop band that’s the cat’s pajamas – or whatever the kids are saying these days.

Kurt Schneider and Nikki Dessingue are the duo behind Stereo Telescope, combining their vocals with electronic and traditional instruments.  I’d first like to applaud the idea of combining male and female vocals – this isn’t done enough in pop music.  (Does Lady Antebellum do this?  Whatever.)  Secondly, the keyboard effects are hot – that’s an Atari you’re hearing – Atari 2600, I believe.  I had corresponded with Kurt in March and he’d mentioned having an Atari, but no games – he was using the synth card for music, and this must be the result.  It’s awesome; the layering is great, especially when you listen with headphones.  Combine some keys, guitar, and some layered vocals, and you get a rich, powerful sound; that last chorus is hot. I guess that’s a xylophone over the chorus, but whatever it is, it’s awesome.

But enough of my yackin; let’s rock:

Although Kurt and Nikki are veterans of the Boston music scene, a song like Geography deserves a bigger audience, because that’s what the song is:  big.  And as the song goes on, it only gets bigger.  Check out their live performances on You Tube, check ‘em out on Facebook – look, just make sure you check ‘em out.  They’re more than worthy of your attention.  Pay it up!

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August 26, 2010

Dinner for Schmucks movie review

NOTE:  My Dinner for Schmucks movie review contains spoilers.

Dinner for Schmucks is a remake of a French film of the same name – or so I’ve read.  While the American version has a soft side to it, my understanding is that the French version is brutal.  Paul Rudd stares as Tim, who is trapped in middle management but sees an opportunity to move up, but playing with the big guys upstairs means going to a dinner.  For schmucks.  Oh, and its BYOS, by the way.

It’s not that simple – and Ron Livingston is in this movie, who I’m a big fan of; but he’s not in it that much…  Anyway, Tim meats Barry, portrayed by Steve Carell, while he’s driving and texting and hits Barry with his car.  Good message for the kids:  don’t text and drive.  I like a little message with my silly comedy.

If you didn’t see it coming, Barry quickly reeks havoc on Tim’s life by instant messaging with his ex Darla (Lucy Punch) and inviting her over (which leads to a ridiculous sequence of Barry and Darla chasing each other around Tim’s apartment and destroying it in the processes) and then mistaking his current girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) for his ex, and essentially ruining their relationship and Tim’s business lunch set for the following afternoon, which leads to additional hilarious circumstances.  OK, not really.  But when crazy ex girlfriend Darla (posing as current girlfriend as per Barry’s instructions) hands Tim a napkin that reads, “I’m wet,” at the the table, I had to laugh.  That was good stuff.

In the middle of all this is Tim’s insecurity about Julie’s relationship with her crazy and famous client, Kieran (Jemaine Clement), which is completely groundless and impossible to take seriously.  It just makes Tim look crazy, which doesn’t fit with his character.  He’s constantly trying to do the right thing and have it all at the same time, not be crazy… I guess you could argue that this is making him crazy, but he’s jealous of Kieran from the start, despite that he’s clearly a freak and Julie isn’t interested in him.  At all.  Kieran is a less interesting, less funny version of Russell Brand‘s hilarious Aldous Snow of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek fame.  Tim’s conflict with Kieran is similar to Barry’s conflict with Therman (Zach Galifianakis, who I’m already sick of – he has a beard, I get it; I liked him better when he was conducting his all ex girlfriend choir), except their conflict is not imaginary as Barry’s wife left him for Therman.

The climax of the movie is, of course, the BYOS dinner, which also features the final showdown between Barry and Therman, which is mildly amusing…  the blind fencer was pretty funny.  He also enjoys painting.  Someone asked him, “Are you any good?” and he answered, “I don’t know.”  That was also good stuff.  But for a scene you wait the entire movie for, it’s not that great.

There are some laughs in here, and the movie doesn’t drag.  The cast delivers fine performances, but there just isn’t much to work with here.  Paul Rudd, as always, does a great job of making you care about his character, but we’ve seen this sort of movie before; we know it’ll be OK in the end, and we never get a sense that it won’t be, which the second act is lacking.

The Take Away: I’m not sorry I saw this movie, but I wouldn’t watch it again.

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August 25, 2010

Attention Must Be Paid: Rattrap Bumpkin

Rattrap Bumpkin

Welcome back to the journey into under appreciated creativity.  This feature, Attention Must be Paid, will shine my (however brief and dull) spotlight on something that needs props.  Mad props.  Today, I’d like to shine the light on Rattrap Bumpkin, a band that rocks in their socks.

While I don’t condone the trapping of rats, I do condone Rattrap Bumpkin.  In fact, you might say I condone the shiz out of ‘em.  Bumpkin’s press kit says that their goal is to make refreshing music, and that’s as good a way to describe their writing style as any.  Bumpkin brings something new to the table, yet it’s not a bunch of eclectic noise; you won’t go to a bumpkin show and find singer/lyricist/guitarist Michael Benedetto crammed into a chicken costume and banging away on a tambourine while he chants in Sumerian about the plight of North American hot dog vendors.  Their music is smooth, progressive and addictive; one might say its the Kool of crack.  But don’t smoke either of those, they’ve both bad for you.  Besides, Mike will weave a spell you’ll enjoy more than a quick fix inhalant.

Bassist/singer/lyricist Bryan Fraser and drummer Christ Stanis round out the rhythm section.  While Mike is tied to his microphone as the lead vocalist and Chris is at his kit with a fixed look of concentration on his face (because he’s busy blowing your mind), Bryan makes up for any lack of movement by giving you 100% of his performance.  He can’t be stopped, he won’t be stopped; Bryan is a force up there.  I almost want to give him something else to do; as long as he’s got all that energy, why not put together that new desk I got from IKEA?  Everything I’ve ever bought from the Swedes always takes me a year to finish… like trying to learn one of Chris’ drum charts.  Forget it.  It’s too hard.  Don’t try.  The interesting thing is, Chris’ drumming isn’t… I don’t know, overly busy like Neil Pert (who I love, by the way, but the dude is super busy to a fault – which doesn’t mean he isn’t my favorite drummer, because he is), yet there is plenty going on, enough to keep you not just listening, but re-listening.

I could go on, but I’ll let the music speak for itself.

Be sure to check out Rattrap Bumpkin’s website for show dates.  They create and play excellent music and are more than worthy of your attention.  Pay it up.

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August 24, 2010

Vegan Cheetos

vegan cheetosYeah, these Cheetos are Vegan.  I need these.

I know this seems crazy, but if you’re vegan and you like to snack, then you know what I’m saying.  I’m vegan.  I like to snack.  I need these Cheetos.

So far, I haven’t found them yet.  I’ve been looking for over a year,  not very strenuously, but still looking, and I haven’t found them yet.  Well, I’ve had enough.  It’s time to stop fucking around.  Please help me find these Cheetos!

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August 23, 2010

When Zelda is in trouble, Send Link

legend of zelda link
Ha, that’s awesome.  You’re a funny one, person who created this.  That shot is from Ocarina of Time, right?

Continue to kick ass, internet.  You’re OK in my book.

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August 20, 2010

Attention Must Be Paid: Air

airWelcome back to the journey into under appreciated creativity.  This feature, Attention Must be Paid, will shine my (however brief and dull) spotlight on something that needs props.  Mad props.  Today, I’d like to shine the light on Air, published by Vertigo Comics, a subsidiary of DC Comics.

Air is great.  It’s well written and the characters are vibrant.  Now, what’s Air all about?  Uhm, I’ll take some picks from Wikipedia and let them explain:

Blythe follows [Zayn] to Narimar, where she is designated by the Etesian Front a “hyperpract”, that is, someone with the power to move into different dimensions or realities.
As the story progresses, the ambiguous concept of ‘hyperpraxis’ is introduced, as what seems to be a supernatural form of teleportation. The story develops more eccentric and fantasy elements, introducing Amelia Earhart and Quetzacoatl as supporting characters.

Follow all that?  And yes, I am openly praising a comic book that features Amelia Earhart as a character, not to mention Quetzacoatl.  Air is a great example of a book that shows you how you can do whatever you want, just as long as it’s done well.  Blythe is an excellent character.  She’s smart, powerful and vulnerable all at once – not to mention other things.

The author of Air was G. Willow Wilson, making this one of the only comic books I’ve read that was written by a woman.  Unfortunately, the book has been canceled after 24 issues.  =(  Why, I don’t know – it always sells out at my local retailers.  Wilson should obviously move to Bergen County, NJ, where her genius will be appreciated.  Air is getting the graphic novel treatment, though – the first volume is available at Amazon.

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August 19, 2010

Attention Must Be Paid: House of Mystery

hosue of mysteryToday begins the journey into under appreciated creativity.  This feature, Attention Must be Paid, will shine my (however brief and dull) spotlight on something that needs props.  Mad props.  Today, I’d like to shine the light on House of Mystery.

House of Mystery has been around for a long time, first published under DC Comics and currently under their subsidiary, Vertigo, which will be the subject of today’s Attention Must Be Paid.  Beginning in 2008, House of Mystery returned after an absence from the scene since the early eighties, and frankly, they’re kicking ass left and right.

While House of Mystery is always running an A and B story (and even a C story), the book also features framed tales, for the House of Mystery has a house bar, and patrons must pay for their drinks with stories, so you are always guaranteed an extra bit of wackiness.  (How awesome would it be if you could pay for your drinks with stories?)

I don’t want to ruin it for you, because it’s worth reading.  Sure, it’s a little occult, but the book’s goal isn’t to scare you, if you know what I’m saying – but it might freak you out a bit.  Volume 1 is available on Amazon.  I highly recommend it.

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August 18, 2010

Star Wars Trilogies coming to Blu-ray disc in fall 2011

I was reading about this in the New York Times and I thought, “OK, get your HD on, I’m with that,” because the Star Wars movies have been released a zillion times, but a full HD version is a worthy excuse. I myself have the original trilogy on VHS, VCD (import) and DVD formats – the DVD format is ‘Special Edition,’ but whatcha gonna do? Buy the unaltered version, I suppose… but I can’t be bothered to plop down another $40 bucks just to see Han shoot first.

Then I read the caption under this picture:
A deleted scene from “Star Wars,” the first of the series’ live-action films, coming to Blu-ray.

A deleted scene from “Star Wars,” the first of the series’ live-action films, coming to Blu-ray.

Sorry, come again? Deleted scene, you say? Nice! I don’t think it’s from “Star Wars,” though; that seems to be Luke holding a green light saber, so any fool geek could tell you that this scene must be from “Return of the Jedi.” MUST BE. Suck it, Dave Itzkoff. I assume this scene takes place before or after Luke kicks ass at Jaba’s Palace, presumably when R2-D2 made a comment referencing Luck being a whiny bitch about his power converters in “A New Hope.” Yeah, I know I’m supposed to call that one “Star Wars,” but aside from above, I haven’t done that in like 11 years, so let it go. You can’t say “Star Wars” anymore and expect people to know you’re talking about one specific movie that came out in 1977. Hell, you can’t even say “Clone Wars” without confusing the crap out of people.  I mean geeks.

The Blu-ray version is not going to include the unaltered (or rather, less altered – no one screws around more with his past work than George Lucas) versions of the original trilogy, so ‘Han shot first’ enthusiasts are screwed – at least for a while. At some point, Lucas will want more money and get around to releasing that version, so  just be patient; “for the Jedi it is time to eat as well,” or something.

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