Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I'm writing this from a cozy room here in Bloomfield, CT, where I am preparing to jet off tommorow for LONDON. Yep, it's going to be an adventure. But more on that in a bit.
So first of all, yikes, what a flight I had yesterday from Burbank to Hartford. It was actually pretty smooth sailing for most of the way - I made it to the airport on time (barely), but was good to go on the first leg of my trip, as I got on the Southwest plane at Burbank airport and quickly touched down in Las Vegas, where I grabbed a quick bite to eat and prepared for Part 2 of my journey. Despite it being a busy time of the year in terms of travel, Sin City seemed eerily vacant - I guess Vegas isn't the most popular spot for Thanksgiving dinner? But it was all good, because my flight to Hartford was not full in the least, and everyone had an aisle all to themselves if they so chose, so there was plenty of room to stretch out, relax, and continue to plug away at Stephen King's THE STAND, which I've now officially been reading forever. But yeah, like I said, smooth sailing. That is, until we hit Bradley Airport at around 12 am EST. A heavy fog was obscuring the New England night sky, and therefore, our aircraft was forced to fly in a holding pattern before ultimately being diverted to ... Baltimore, Maryland. Ugh .. So we go to Baltimore, land, refuel, and then head back to whence we came, tired, exhausted, and desperately calling relatives to let them know they'd have to come pick us up at 2:30 am on a dark and foggy night. Suffice to say, I was exhausted by the time I got home, and now I am headed for yet another long flight in only a few short hours ... Good times.
But, we had a nice Thanksgiving meal today at my Uncle Michael's in Longmeadow, MA at which much of the Baram / Wagner clan was gathered for hearty celebration. And yes, the stuffing was well-stuffed.
Anyways, I definitely have to speak for a moment about Tuesday night, in which myself, the G-Man, and L2 hit up yet another epic concert event for some pre-Thanksgiving rockin'. The venue of choice this time around was The Staples Center in downtown LA, and the band was none other than the guitar gods themselves - VAN HALEN.
- I didn't know quite what to expect going in to the show. While VH never earned the same place in my personal rock n' roll cannon as the likes of an Aerosmith or Tom Petty, I've been a fan since I was a kid and first heard "Jump." Back when MTV played videos, I would always pause and watch if I saw Hot For Teacher come on, and then later on I really got into the more guitar-heavy classics like Panama and Ain't Talkin' About Love. Ask me whether I prefer David Lee Roth's stuff or Sammy Hagar's - well, I'd definitely go with Diamond Dave, though I am partial to some choice Van Hagar cuts like Why Can't This Be Love, Poundstone, and Humans Being. Still, if I could only choose one lineup to see live, it'd be original VH all the way, and that's exactly (well, pretty much) what I got on Tuesday. Dave was as cheesy and over the top as ever, the songs sounded good, and it was a really fun show.
Really though, the greatest pleasure of the concert by far was seeing THE guitar hero, Eddie Van Halen, live and cranked to 11. I know the guy's had a number of issues of late, so it was freaking awesome to see him on stage and shredding his axe like a man possessed. I mean, I've been priveleged to see a number of the all-time great rock guitarists in concert - from Joe Perry to Flea - but there's only one Eddie Van Halen, and the things that the man can do with an electric guitar can only be described as sheer magic, baby. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on guitar-playing, but I stood there along with everyone else in the crowd in pure awe of Eddie as he tore up solos left and right, moving his fingers around the strings in ways that only a true master of his art can do.
It's funny to me though how the guy who is a true legend of rock, whose last name is the name of the band, for god's sake, has long been stuck in a group with larger than life singers who tend to overshadow the brothers Van Halen. I mean, someone more knowledgable than I would have to adress this, but it strikes me as odd that Van Halen songs have never been all that guitar-heavy for the most part. I mean, one of the band's most famous songs, Jump, is more well known for its synthesizer chorus than its guitar solos. My point is just that, with a guy like Eddie Van Halen in the band, you almost wish that there were more songs in the repertoire that showcased his ability, and didn't seem like mere extensions of Diamond Dave's traveling vaudville act.
Not to say that the songs are bad. On Tuesday, VH breezed through an all-hits lineup that was great for longtime and casual fans alike. Joined by Wolfgang Van Halen (yes, WOLFGANG - how awesome is that?), Son of Eddie (who looked like he might be more at home in Good Charlotte, but did a nice job on bass), the band churned out one VH staple after another. Unfortunately, a late day at work and typically terrible LA traffic caused me to miss the first song or three, but I made it for most of my faves (though I missed Running With the Devil, dammit ...). We got Beautiful Girls, Jamie's Cryin', Hot For Teacher ... with Dave high-kicking and prancing around like he'd just been shot up with adrenaline before the show (and who knows, maybe he was). This was definitely an energetic and lively David Lee Roth though, which was great to see. I love Dave's classic little asides in his songs - so cheesy but so awesome. In Hot For Teacher there's a ton of 'em ("I brought my pencil!"), but my fav is definitely in Unchained, where Wolfgang got to deliver the setup line ("Aw c'mon, gimme a break, Dave.") to which we get "One break - coming up!"). Gotta love it.
But despite DLR being on his game (even if he tended to ramble a bit at times, and perhaps delivered one spinning roundhouse kick too many?), the highlight for me, as mentioned, was the stuff that showcased Alex and most especially Eddie. Panama - still one of the catchiest rock songs ever and perhaps the one VH song that perfectly blends Eddie's licks at their most awesome with Dave's vocals at their cheesy best ("Ease the seat back ..."). Suffice to say, it rocked to hear Panama, one of my all-time faves, live. Same goes for Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love, which benefited from an epic build-up in the form of a long and oh-so-suh-weet Eddie guitar clinic that culminated in Eruption and led right into the song.
The crowd at Staples was on fire all night, and on their feet for everything, giving huge ovations to Eddie and Alex especially. I think people were just happy to see such a classic band back and looking so good. Sure, the guys are a little worse for wear, but they still put on a clinic about how to rock and how to work a crowd. Extremely glad I got to see Van Halen live and in concert - it's not often that you witness a legend of rock performing at the peak of his powers. Once again, Van Halen had 'em dancing in the streets.
- Okay, time for some movie reviews. I've actually been chomping at the bit to write these up, but it's been a crazy week as I tried to wrap things up at work, took in Van Halen, and prepared for my upcoming voyage to the UK. But last weekend, I took in two much-anticipated flicks, both of which I now find myself deeply torn in terms of what, exactly, I think of them. Read on, and I shall explain all ...
BEOWULF Review:
- Like it or not, Beowulf might just be the future of cinema as we know it. Because regardless of what you think of the film in and of itself, the fact is that the technology behind the movie is unquestionably game-changing. I saw this one over at Universal Citywalk in IMAX 3-D, and the experience as a whole was pretty mind-blowing. And from the sound of things, it seems like all across the country, the word is spreading that you've gotta see this one in 3D, and people are coming out of the thing raving about what they've seen - and rightfully so. Beowulf is one of the coolest mass-market film technology showcases ever made. Forget those old blue and red glasses. Forget gimmicky 3-D in which a baseball will fly towards your head or a snake will jump out at you. Beowulf, the WHOLE movie, is in three dimensions, with an X, Y, and Z axis. Sure, there are moments that have that reach out and touch me effect, but the larger implication is a movie in which the world is all-encompassing - it really is quite something to behold. Now, the other technology at work here is the CGI motion-capture, the same stuff used in Robert Zemeckis' Polar Express, but here refined to photo-realistic levels of detail and movement.
Now, here is where some of the criticism out there for this movie tends to annoy me. Yes, the movie is supposed to look REALISTIC, and it does, moreso than any other "animated" movie to date. But is it supossed to look REAL? I think not - despite all of its painstakingly motion-aptured animation, Beowulf is more a comic book brought to life than an attempt to mimic reality. Despite the realism, there is still a stylization going on here, and to me, it 100% works, and I don't get complains about the eyes looking strange or particular shots where movement seemed jerky. Yes, some of this stuff is a result of a technology still in its infancy that is going through growing pains. But for what it is, this is a beautifully-crafted film, with some of the most amazing visuals ever seen on a screen. It's just that amazing from a visual standpoint.
Now, will it hold up on DVD, or even Blu-Ray or whatever? That remains to be seen, but I think the answer is clearly "no." Beowulf is as much theme-park roller-coaster ride as anything, and a large, maybe HUGE part of why it works as a film is the unique and stunning visual novelty of it all, a novelty which can only be appreciated in a theater with a giant screen and 3-D glasses.
So that begs the question - if you were to strip away all of the movie's visual oomph, are you still left with a great film? That's where things get a bit more complicated. I think that Beowulf deserves credit for having a smart script by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, but it's also a bit of a messy script. On one hand, we get a lot of vintage Gaiman flourishes - some surprisingly complex religious discussion, some really fun off-color humor, and a hero who is refreshingly painted in shades of grey. It really is amazing how much was packed into this script for what is essentially an action movie and technology showcase. And also, I really do think that the movie is funny - and there are a lot of great, over the top, even satirical moments here that are MEANT to be laughed at, and are quite funny when recognized. From racy double entrendres to Beowulf's bloated ego, there is some really fun stuff going on. Where a lot of the movie comes apart though is simply a lack of compelling characters. Angelina Jolie's CGI'd seductress is as visually stunning as promised - but what is her character's deal, exactly? Gaiman and Avery spend a lot of time on Beowulf's soap-opera-ish relationship with his queen, but it comes at the expense of compelling villains or plot. The idea that the monster Grendel is in fact the product of an ageless demon who lures unwitting warriors into her lair, mates with them, then sics their demonic spawn to raise some hell - well, it's an interesting twist on the Beowulf legend, but it's never explored here in a very compelling way. The final action scene, for example, is stunningly choreographed, but there's never any real impact on our EMOTIONS, no moment of "holy crap, Beowulf is being forced to fight and kill his own half-demon son!" Instead, we just get caught up in the fact that there's a kickass, giant dragon coming at us in glorious IMAX 3D, but the lasting effect is a bit hollow and empty. There's little of the great character or emotion or real sense of epic drama of, say, a Lord of the Rings. Even compared to this year's 300, I'd say Beowulf falls a bit short in terms of storytelling. While 300 knew exactly what it was - a balls to the wall action movie - and delivered exactly what is was supposed to, Beowulf teases us with some deeper themes and a real sense of literary intelligence that is classic Gaiman - but it never follows through on that initial promise. You can tell that there were likely some behind-the-scenes shennigans here, as Beowulf feels like a cut-up version of a better movie, perhaps the one that originally existed on Gaiman and Avery's page. Whatever the case, there is a lot of fun to be had with the movie, but without giving us a lot to chew on, I question whether or not this one will eventually be regarded in the same breath as other grade-A fantasy-action flicks.
Overall though, Beowulf is simply a must-see. As a movie-going experience, its spectacular visuals raise the bar for what is to come, and I couldn't help but wonder at what other movies might look like in the future if they were to use this same technology. I mean, the possibilities are limitless - imagine an adaptation of Jack Kirby's Fourth World saga, rendered in Kirby's trademark art style, in stunning 3D. Or a new Star Wars with mo-capped Harrison Ford reprising his role as Han Solo. What about a whacked-out 60's style James Bond with Sean Connery de-aged and CGI'd. Things are about to get very, very interesting, folks. I mean look at what they did with Ray Winstone here - took a kinda tubby guy, but a great actor, and made him into a six-packed hero of legend. Winstone is part of a great cast that includes the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, and Crispin Glover - but frankly, all are outshined by the technology at work here, though certainly having such a pedigreed cast lends the necessary class and gravitas to the production. So yes, Beowulf is a must-see, and a fascinating movie from Robert Zemeckis and co. It may not hold up as well over time - I mean, this may very well be the Pong of motion-captured movies - but for now, it's a pretty good movie, (though a very good action movie), benefitting from the best whiz-bang tech in the biz.
My Grade: B+
SOUTHLAND TALES Review:
- I feel like I've been waiting for this one to come out for years. Oh wait, I HAVE, actually, been waiting for it to come out for years. This is, afterall, the long, loooong-awaited second directorial effort from Richard Kelly, who wowed many people back in 2001 with DONNIE DARKO, the little flick that became a cult sensation and the favorite movie of goth kids everywhere.For my part, I distinctly remember watching the trailer for Donnie Darko on the 'net in 2001, and calling over my roommates to come take a look. I had no idea what the movie was actually ABOUT, but damn, it looked cool as hell. I never did get to see it in the theaters when it first came out, but I eagerly waited for the DVD and watched it as soon as I could get my hads on it. I remember watching it one late night with Chris A in my dorm at BU, and both of us IMMEDIATELY wanted to watch it again, to see if we could figure out what it all meant. Sure, the movie has been criticized by some for being a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing - but that's part of the fun. To me, Darko does a brilliant job of creating this dark, mysterious vibe that just totally compels you to obsess over it. Maybe I just saw it at the right age, or maybe the movie's 80's nostalgia thing just appealed to all the right sensibilities, but I still love Donnie Darko and it's one of those movies I'll happily watch again and again. I even saw the VERY limited director's cut theatrical release while in NYC in 2004 (with fellow Darko fan Erica C.).
So what I'm getting at is - I was dyin' to see Southland Tales, and curious as hell to see what else Richard Kelly could conjure up for us. Well, the man's been relatively quiet since Darko - he penned Domino (underrated, IMO) for Tony Scott - but, that's about it. So the man has obviously been saving up a lot of ideas and creative energy, and I get that. I suspect that me and Mr. Kelly may even have simialr artistic impulses - we like to do things big, messy, epic in scope. And I respect that. But while Donnie Darko was a clinic in controlled chaos - with just the right amount of logic to make the ambiguity work - Southland Tales is something else entirely.
The fact is, as much as I wanted to like or even love this movie, I have to say it: Southland Tales is one of the biggest cluster#$%&s of a film ever produced.
That's not to say that it's a movie with no redeeming value. In fact, the opposite is true - Southland is a film littered with flashes of brilliance. Certain moments, scenes, lines of dialogue, prove that Kelly is really a pretty brilliant guy, with a real knack for dark satire in particular, and an ability to shoot one hell of a visually-stunning sequence. There's a satirical TV car commercial in the midst of the movie, for example, that is a slice of sheer, mad genius.But holy hell, these moments live in a film that is simply a mess - a sometimes glorious, awe-inspiring mess, but a giant mess nonetheless.
Essentially, Southland is a satirical sci-fi film about an Americathat has, in 2008, fallen into World War III. In response, the government has moved ever closer to becoming a totalitarian regime, taking control of the internet and becoming ever more experimental in devloping strange technoligies that could help to supress the enemy. Meanwhile, an underground neo-Marxist movement has sprung up to revolt against the government, and included in its ranks are a number of celebrities / weekend warriors. Meanwhile, the public is less interested that the world around the mis going to hell, and mostly transfixed on an increasingly garish pop-cultural landscape, where porn stars host daytime talk shows and fight for the cause of "teen horniness,"and people check the news not for politics, but for news of Jericho Kane - an action movie star with political ties who's gone missing in the California desert.
Like I said - this movie deserves all the credit in the world for creating a wholly original vision of the future (or the present day that could be). For its first few minutes, as Justin Timberlake's narration lays out this world and how it came to be, well - it's pretty fascinating. Wait, you say - Justin Timberlake? Yep, there's a red flag right there. Because wow, Southland Tales has perhaps the strangest cast EVER assembeled for a feature film ...
I mean, I have to think that Richard Kelly was trying to make SOME kind of meta-textual statement with his oddball casting choices here. Maybe he's trying to say that comedians are our society's true revolutionaries, or he's trying to equate Saturday Night Live with modern social revolution ... How else to explain the abundance of random SNL ex-cast members who pop up in Southland, many of them in roles that contain some dark humor but are often quite serious. I mean, Jon Lovitz, JON LOVITZ, as a silver-haired badass cop with a homicidal streak? Three letters - W.T.F. Sure, the odd casting gives some under-used talents like Cheri O'Terri a chance to shine, but still, it's just WEIRD seeing a woman best known for imitating Barbara Walters cast as a bad-girl post-punk neo-Marxist ass-kicker on roller skates. Yep, pretty weird. Same can be said for Amy Poehler as a neo-Marxist lackey, John Larquette as the scheming vice-president, the dad from Donnie Darko as the bumbling Commander in Chief, Kevin Smith as a grey-haired old dude, the badguy from the Princess Bride as an over-sexed government-employed mad-scientist, Bai Ling as a random femme fatale, Mandy Moore as the President's snotty daughter, or director Eli Roth in a random cameo where we see him killed while on the can. Yes, this movie is one giant WTF moment nearly from start to finish.
The casting is no less strange with the leads. Sean William Scott, aka Stiffler, in a 95% non-comedic role, playing two twins who switch places and may hold the key to saving and / or destroying the universe. Scott actually does a pretty good job here, I mean the guy's surely got charisma - but again, was he really the best man for this role? I give Scott credit though, this is the most serious and challenging stuff I've ever seen him do, by a longshot.
Much more at home is Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn-star / celeb / talk-show host / neo-Marxist freedom fighter. Gellar's character provides some of the movie's most inspired satire, and she does a great job with the role.
Justin Timberlake has proven himself a pretty competent actor this year, with a great turn in Black Snake Moan among other things. He's good here as well, but his character is one of the film's most random in a movie filled with utterly random characters (it features ominous old-lady midgets from the future, for crying out loud). Timberlake serves as our narrator, but his narration often kills the movie's momentum, filled with tedious and usually irrelevant passages from the Book of Revelations and serving only to make things even more confusing than they have to be. However, JT takes center stage in a totally bizarre yet awesome sequence, in which he and a troupe of drugged-out dancers sing along to The Killer's (that "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" song). That scene to me completely exemplifies how Southland Tales is capable of these trippy, amazingly-filmed, far-out little moments, but is often unable to combine them into anything resebling a coherant film ...
But back to the cast for a second, the real star of this movie is most certainly The Rock, Dwayne Johnson. The Rock's larger than life persona translates perfectly into this movie, and his penchant for delivering lines with comic-bookish flair is a huge asset, since The Rock is given some very memorable lines to utter (an instant classic: "I'm a pimp. And pimps don't commit suicide!"). I really enjoyed The Rock here, and one thing I'm definitely taking away from this film is that I want to see Rocky tackle more crazy sci-fi and action movies that really allow his funny and charismatic personality to shine. Belive it or don't - but The Rock delivers, by far, his best acting performance to date in Southland Tales.
Like I was saying though, Southland Tales has all of these characters, storylines, and themes running through it - and they're simply too much for the film to contain. By the movie's halfway mark, we've already flashed from The Rock to Cheri O'Terri to Justin Timberlake to that Princess Bride guy and back again so many times that it simply becomes too much to process, and the film's ability to tell its story simply breaks down. While Donnie Darko had one foot in the real world, and one compelling central character, Southland Tales has no anchor to keep it in any way grounded, no real footholds for the audience to grab on to. You WILL become lost while watching this movie, and it's so overstuffed and all-over-the-place that I don't know if anything less that an encyclopedia could ever hope to explain its mysteries.
Still, there is a certain sense of glee that comes when, towards the latter part of the movie, The Rock starts opining about a rift in the fourth dimension. It's the type of matter-of-fact absurdity that makes other famous sci-fi cluster#$%#s like BUCKAROO BANZAI so amusingly memorable. One one hand you wonder what the hell is actually going on. On the other, you just want to hear The Rock as Jericho Kane talk some more about the space/time continuum collapsing in on itself. If that kind of stuff makes you giddy as it does me, then it's worth navigating through Southland Tale's impeneterable fortress of a plot just to take in all of the craziness.
In the end, this one has to be looked at as something of a disappointment for Richard Kelly fans. For all of its potential, the movie simply doesn't come together, doesn't work as a 2 1/2 hour film. Like I said, it's a total mess in many ways, and because of that, it's hard to really call it a "good" movie and easy to call it a bad one. But man, part of me wants to make sure that the parts of this film that ARE genius get their due. Because there is a real spark of brilliance here, an awesome jolt of originality, vision, and humor. You want to reward that, you want to praise it, and you wish that more movies would be made that had half of the creative spark present in Southland Tales. That's why it's such a shame, in a way, that this didn't come together like it should have, that Richard Kelly couldn't find a way to streamline his ideas and share his vision in a way that didn't come off like a feverish acid trip that sounds great to the one describing it but doesn't translate to the listener in its telling. This movie deserves to be seen, but also deserves its share of criticism. But to Kelly's credit, despite this mess of a movie, I'm even more curious than ever to see what he comes up with next.
My Grade: B -
- Alright folks - it's late, I'm tired, and tommorow I'm off to LONDON, baby. London is calling, so good day, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
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