Overall, last night’s radio show didn’t really come together as well as I would have liked, but, at the least, I was able to play a lot of music that I was really excited to spin. New stuff from The Lawrence Arms–seriously Buttsweat and Tears is such a great 7″–, Cheap Girls, Flight Of The Conchords, Coconut Records, Frank Turner, and They Might Be Giants. Along with Monsters of Folk and some of the other stuff I’ve been playing over the past few weeks, there is a lot going on right now from some more well known, at least in the indie scene, bands. It’d be awesome if every week could be like this.
So musically, I really loved last night’s show and I think I had my mic breaks mostly where I wanted them, but I slipped up a bit on my segues between songs. I guess it happens. Oh well.
Flight Of The Conchords
Carol Brown
I Told You I Was Freaky
Coconut Records
Bored To Death
Bored To Death [Single]
Lucky Pineapple
Moment In An Empty Street
The Bubble Has Burst In Sky City
Sea Wolf
Turn The Dirt Over
White Water, White Bloom
Happy Hollows, The
Father Time
Spells
Cheap Girls
I Had A Motorcycle
My Roaring 20s
Swimmers, The
To The Bells
People Are Soft
Headlights
Telephones
Wildlife
Teenage Cool Kids
Reasons Why
Queer Salutations
The Lawrence Arms
The Slowest Drink At The Saddest Bar On The Snowiest Day In The Greatest City
Also, I wanted to post Frank Turner’s new video for Poetry of the Dead because he looks kind of like a cleaned up Brian Graber and I support that. Not the cleaned up part, but the Brian Graber part.
Here are a few new shirts I’ve picked up in the last couple of weeks. The first one, I got at the Threadless store in Chicago. You can’t really tell much in the picture, but it’s a guy on top of a car surrounded by zombies. I don’t even know how many zombie related shirts I have at this point. And the third one, I got at the Lawrence Arms 10th anniversary show.
I had another great show last night and I had a lot of fun doing it. Nice mix of music and a bit more diverse than usual. I’ve been saying that a lot recently, but it’s true!
I’ve been listening to the new albums by Frank Turner and World’s Greatest Ghosts a bit and I have to go ahead and recommend both of them. Frank Turner is becoming one of my favorite British acts and World’s Greatest Ghosts sounds a lot like a mix of The Paper Chase and Jukebox The Ghost. Check them out.
I wanted to get something up about the show sooner, but I haven’t had a chance. I’m going to completely ignore the openers and get to the point, The Lawrence Arms are one of the best bands playing right now. An hour and forty-five minutes was a long time for a punk band to play, but I’m going to be honest, I could have done a lot more. A LOT MORE. Hell, they could have played the set twice and I would have been giddy as hell about it.
The band came out on stage with a nice rockstarry entrance, but after that, it was clear that they were just three dudes having one of the best nights of their collective life. You could tell that they couldn’t take themselves too seriously if they tried. They tore through thirty songs with enough talking to break it up a bit and engage the audience, but never enough for you to want them to shut up. I’ve never seen a band get through that many songs that quickly. They were on a mission.
They played songs from all over their catalog, just like they promised they would. They kept things slightly more to the last couple records, but I’m not complaining about that. They played some stuff that they don’t play often, like A Wishful Puppeteer–they had only played this once before–and left out only a couple other songs I would have liked to hear. I’m starting to accept that I’ll never get to see them play Drunk Mouth Kitchen Smile.
They even had Neil sing a song. According to Brendan, Turnstiles is the best Lawrence Arms song “for your money” and I have to agree, in recent months, it has shot right up to the top of my list.
This was a fun set and seeing this band in Chicago was amazing. I love these guys. This was show number 1000 for them and I swear, the next 1000 better be made up of at least 1001 on the East Coast.
Here’s a list of the songs they played. It’s not in order, but you get the idea…
An Evening of Extraordinary Circumstance
The North Side of the L&L and Any Number of Crappy Apartments
Uptown Free Radio
Smokestacks
16 Hours
Turnstiles
Light Breathing
106 South
Nebraska
Quincentuple Your Money
100 Resolutions
Hey, What Time is “Pensacola: Wings of Gold” On, Anyway?
Your Gravest Words
Boatless Booze Cruise
Brickwall Views
Presenting: The Dancing Machine
Necrotism: Decanting the Insalubrious
Intransit
Raw and Searing Flesh
On With The Show
Alert The Audience
Chapter 13: The Hero Appears
The Ramblin’ Boys of Pleasure
A Wishful Puppeteer
The Disaster March
Cut it Up
Great Lakes/Great Escapes
Recovering the Opposable Thumb
Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, God
Lose Your Illusion 1
Like a Record Player
PS: Chicago really is the best city ever. Every time I go there, I love it more and more. Friendly people, amazing food, awesome vibe, tons of great music.
I went to see The Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones in Philly last night at the Trocadero. It was an all around great show.
The Loved Ones played what was probably the best set I’ve ever seen them play. I can’t really describe why it was so great, but they just felt really on and didn’t talk too much compared to other times that I’ve seen them. Their set list was well chosen and leaning way more to the Keep Your Heart side of things than Build & Burn, which works out great for me since I think Keep Your Heart is a much better record.
Murder By Death was slightly worse than the last time I saw them, but that was also about five years ago. They played well and sounded good, but I think I miss them being a five piece. Having a dedicated keyboardist made them able to keep more of their recorded sound when playing live. Sarah did a great job switching between cello and keyboards, but it wasn’t quite the same. The last time I saw them was before their last two albums came out so they had fewer songs to play. This gave them time to rock out and jam a little more. I’m not into jam bands, but I love when bands that I like just jam out for a little bit during some of the instrumental parts of songs. It adds something extra to the live set that you don’t get from a record. This is something that they seemed to do a lot in the past and it was one of my favorite things about seeing them, but now with all the extra songs that they have, there is a lot less time to do it. Still, they sounded great and picked a good selection of songs to play. I think they covered everything that I wanted to hear.
And then there was Gaslight Anthem. They sounded amazing and were tight as hell with a great stage presence. It may have been the tightest that I’ve ever seen them play out of the six or seven times that I’ve seen them. But the selection of songs that they played was a bit disappointing. The ‘59 Sound is a really great record, one of the best to come out in 2008. However, it lost a lot over the last year for me. Most of my interest in it waned. Sink Or Swim has stuck with me though. That’s what I wanted to hear. I didn’t expect a lot, but the entire first half of their set was from The ‘59 Sound. By the end, we only got a couple Sink Or Swim songs in total. I guess normally it would be expected to hear only a few songs from a band’s first album…if they have more than two, but with only two of them, it’d be nice it at least a third of the set was from the first album. Oh well. At least everything they played sounded great.
Even accepting the fact that I’ll never get to hear them play much from Sink Or Swim again, I don’t know that I’ll ever want to see them live again. I’m not sure how to describe it, but they felt very rock starry last night. It was a little too much. They stopped feeling like this band from New Brunswick that used to play basement shows and the Court Tavern to small crowds and more like a band that has their eyes set on stages set in front of thousands and thousands of people. It wasn’t to the point where it was terribly upsetting and bothersome and a lot of it was subtle, but it was enough that I feel as though my love for them will start to decline if I keep on seeing them.
Last night was also the first time that I’ve been to the Troc in about seven years. I’ve generally avoided it as I was never a fan of the place and I was reminded 100% of this last night. The sound is terrible. It might be the worst sounding venue I’ve ever been to. Ugh.
Last night was another fantastic show. Almost perfect all around. Great music, great segues, and the phone was ringing off the hook. Not even just the phone, but the instant messages too. So much so that it was almost stressful trying to keep up. I was actually sweating because of it.
I found out last night that our station streams perfectly fine over an iPhone just by going to www.thecore.fm and clicking to listen. I’m assuming this will work on any other smartphone too, I guess I never thought about it before.
Apparently, we’re supposed to get a Nor’easter this weekend so that’s going to put a damper on my Field of Terror plans, but I’m still excited to see Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones on Sunday in Philly. And it seems that there are still tickets for the Monday night show as well. You may want to check that out. Either way, expect a full report next week.
Last night’s show got off to a bit of a late start, but I still managed to fit in most of what I wanted. Other than that, it was was a relatively average show. Nothing of note to mention.
I think everyone liked Whip It more than I did. I mean, I liked it a lot, but everyone that I’ve heard talk about it loved it. The movie was entertaining and I actually didn’t find Jimmy Fallon to be annoying which was unexpected, but there wasn’t really anything about it that grabbed me like I wanted it to. I feel like for a movie about roller derby with Ellen Page and all the other people that are in this, I want a little more.
Ellen Page is awesome and I love her, but I feel like sometimes that innocent little girl, deer in the headlights look she normally pulls off so well doesn’t always fit. In Whip It, it only felt appropriate about half the time. The look felt overused and Bliss (Ellen Page) seemed like she was more confident than her face was showing in a lot of scenes. I don’t think the problem was Ellen Page so much as it was Drew Barrymore’s directing. Okay fine, I just don’t want to fault Ellen Page. Deal with it.
I don’t know, I really don’t have much else to say about this one.
Rating: B
PS: Andrew Wilson should change his name to Beef Surpreme in real life because that’s all I see when I see him.
You know, if you had asked me a year ago, before I had even heard of Zombieland, if I would have said “yeah, I think Woody Harrelson could wreck some zombies.” Now, ask me this after seeing Zombieland and the answer becomes something more along the line of “why the hell isn’t Woody Harrelson in every zombie movie?” Seriously, it’s a no-brainer. Dude knows how to kill some zombies.
Zombieland is one of those movies where you get so hyped up for and so obsessed with it before seeing it that the day before it comes out, you start to worry that it can’t live up to your expectations. Don’t worry. You will not be disappointed. Zombieland does everything right. It really does. Zombieland actually delivered more than I could have hoped for.
The obvious thing to do here would be to draw comparisons to Shaun Of The Dead. And while that’s not the most inaccurate statement ever, Zombieland isn’t just a U.S. version of Shaun Of The Dead. While both are more romantic comedy than zombie-focused, Zombieland stands on its own without needing a comparison.
Zombieland gives us a lot of great zombie kills, but keeps it light on the flesh eating. In fact, there are actually very few human kills to be seen in the movie. The ones we get are excellent, but like I said, the movie doesn’t focus as much on the zombies, it sticks with good old-fashioned romantic-comedy. This keeps the gore down a bit, but it’s not missed either. It just goes to show, that you don’t need gore for a good zombie flick…and you also don’t need to actually kill any of the characters either.
Bill Murray’s cameo was absolutely wonderful and Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin were all wonderful too, but the start of Zombieland is Woody Harrelson. This dude was born for this role.
Last night’s radio show was another great one. I’m really starting to like the 9pm slot…maybe even better than 10pm. I have more energy and it feels like less of a drag towards the end of the show.
There was a lot of good new stuff to play this week which made it easy to get a nice flow from song to song and from genre to genre. I was able to cover a lot of musical ground and also get in some bigger named bands, something that has been missing for a few weeks. Bands like Yo La Tengo, Echo & The Bunnymen, and Lou Barlow.
The Monsters Of Folk album is pretty awesome if you’re into those guys (M. Ward, Conor Oberst, Jim James, Mike Mogis). It sounds exactly the way I was expecting it to, but in the best of ways. And I think prior to last night, I had never actually heard Imogen Heap before, but they’ve got a new album out and I decided to play a song for my girlfriend who is into them. I kind of always thought I’d hate them, but it wasn’t too bad. I’m not in love with it, but I’d play them again.
Last Friday, I took a trip down to Philly to see forgetters play their fourth show ever at the Barbary. Forgetters is the new band from Blake Schwartzenbach (Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil) and Kevin Malone (the original drummer of Against Me!). Blake used to front my favorite band of all time so when he starts up something new, it’s without a doubt going to be interesting to me. His last band, Thorns Of Life, didn’t last long at all. They broke up a few months ago, having never officially recorded anything. A couple of live bootlegs are all the remain of the band. Anyway, this was the first of Blake’s bands that I’ve seen live. I wasn’t old enough when Jawbreaker broke up to even appreciate good music, let alone go to the shows–okay, I was thirteen, if I was on top of my shit, I might have been there, but I wasn’t. And I didn’t actually start caring about Jets to Brazil until it was too late.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from forgetters. I had heard that they were playing some Thorns Of Life songs, but I wasn’t really sure what that meant in terms of what to expect. They came out and started with a Thorns Of Life song…but it sounded better than what I had heard from the bootlegs. They played two other Thorns Of Life songs throughout the set including a one that was heavily re-worked as their last song. The rest of the songs seemed to be all forgetters original. Think something a little more along the lines of Orange Rhyming Dictionary with some Hum influence.
I was a little surprised to find that I held the unpopular opinion among my friends of loving it. I think it is a very positive step from where Thorns Of Life was. Thorns Of Life was pretty good, but this is a lot more interesting to me.
Good stuff. Here are a few videos from a couple of the shows. They sound horrible, but I’m hoping someone made a decent bootleg that will turn up soon.
Last night was my second show in my new 9pm time slot on Wednesdays. As skeptical as I was at first about moving my show to a new time after being at 10pm for six years, I have to say, it’s going really well. I find that I have a little more energy to do it and I don’t start fading in the second half of the show the way I did at 10pm. And getting home earlier, leaving me with time to watch Glee before bed, is a pretty nice bonus.
I felt on again last night. Everything came together really well with some of the best segues from one song into another that I’ve ever put together. The only flaw in the show was playing a band called The Sexy Accident. I needed something with a poppy-ish indie-rock sound (almost older Weezerish) and it fit in perfectly, but the lyrics are pretty terrible and the name is even worse. I like the singer’s voice a lot though and musically, they sound alright, but I can’t get past the lyrics.
So I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of days. It’s not the first time, not by a long shot, but yesterday involved a seriously in-depth conversation about the topic, putting it firmly into my consciousness.
Let’s think about this, what exactly would a zombie vampire be? And we need to make the distinction between a zombie vampire and a vampire zombie. The former being first and foremost a vampire that became zombified and the latter being a zombie that got turned into a vampire. I’m going to say that while the second scenario would work out quite well for the zombie, this is rather unlikely.
It’s also important to note that the relationship between zombies and vampires must be a bit awkward. They have no direct reason to interact with each other. Neither is any good to the other. Zombies need the flesh of the living and vampires need the blood of the living. Since both are technically dead, a vampire is no good to a zombie and a zombie is no good to a vampire. However, since they both seek out the living as a food source, they are in competition. Once either of them get a hold of a living human, that’s about it. There is no sharing.
But this isn’t about zombies vs. vampires and their relationship with one another, this is about a hybrid.
Let’s say that a human were to get bit by a zombie and thus become infected. But let’s say that this human wasn’t killed right away and was living for a while still. Now at this point, he/she is still perfectly alive and therefore still a potential vampire target. If a vampire were to take a delicius little sip of this human’s blood and decide to turn the human, then the human would become a vampire that is still infected with the zombie virus. And the first vampire would have sucked infected blood. We could have two zombie vampires here!
Well, maybe not so fast. If a zombie is a re-animated corpse, that would require the vampire to die to become a zombie. This isn’t too likely, seeing as how a vampire is the living dead. So how would the vampire be affected by the zombie virus? Would it be infected at all? Would the vampire take on some of the zombie’s qualities? There are a lot of questions here.
What qualities could a zombie vampire have? One of a zombie’s biggest weaknesses is that its flesh is rotting and it therefore won’t be around forever before it simply falls apart. But it is pretty reasonable to say that a zombie vampire’s flesh would not rot at all. A vampire is not living and has no trouble with rotting flesh, there is no reason to believe that a zombie vampire would be any different. Now, we have a zombie that has no expiration date.
One of the zombie’s biggest weaknesses after the rotting is the fact that rigor mortis has set in. This is possibly the main reason why zombies are traditionally so slow. But in our case, with the zombie vampire, rigor mortis may not be an issue. There is no dying here and that means there is no rigor mortis. This zombie isn’t going to be a stiffy. Vampires are known for their incredible speed so now we may have a zombie that retains it’s full speed. Even in a worst case scenario, a zombie vampire would be faster than a human.
What if the vampire is of the bat-turning-into variety? Does the zombified version of this vampire retain this ability? If so, a flying zombie is second in scariness only to a shark that can walk on land.
What kind of brain power does a zombie vampire have? If there is no death process and no rotting, it is likely that a zombie vampire retains a fully functioning brain as opposed to just the brain-stem.
What does a zombie vampire need to survive? Suddenly, both blood and flesh are consumables. A living human is now both a meal and a beverage. Much less of the human is wasted. Now you’ve got a green zombie!
How is a zombie vampire killed or at least neutralized? Is destroying the brain or removing the head enough? Does the brain need to be destroyed with a silver bullet?
There are a lot of important questions here and not a lot of answers. Clearly, a lot more (scientific) research will need to be done. At this point, it seems as though a zombie vampire may either not even be possible at all or take on very few zombie traits.
Take a look at the center of these two pictures. That’s a rainbow that was peering down through a hole in the clouds this morning. I was pulling into the work parking lot when I saw it so I could only snap a picture with my phone, but it was so beautiful. No rain or anything, just a hole in the clouds with a rainbow shining through.
These three are from Woot’s random deal last week. The first and third ones are pretty awesome, but I’m not really sure how I feel about the second one.
Last night was my first show at my new 9pm slot on Wednesdays. For the last six years, I’ve been at 10pm, but alas it was time to make a move. It was a little hard to remember to say the right times while I was talking on the mic and I actually signed in at the wrong time at first, but other than that, this was one of my best shows in the past few months. I was really happy with everything about it and I think I picked up a few new listeners who were tuning in expecting to hear Now Airing Dirty Laundry with Miss Lisa, the show that had been at 9 for the past couple years.
Just a heads up that, starting tonight, The Playlist will now be airing at 9pm instead of 10! This will be the first time in six years that I’ll be broadcasting from a different time, but I look forward to the change. Maybe I’ll even be able to pick up some new listeners.
Take Meet The Robinsons, The Matrix, Tim Burton’s entire filmography, and everything Steampunk and you get 9. It’s a visually awesome film, no doubt. It’s as beautiful and stunning as the trailers will have you believe. But the story is melded together from so many other ideas in other films that you feel like you’ve seen it all before. Twice. No, three times. No, more.
For as entertained as I was, I feel like I should have walked out of the theater with more. I’m not sure what exactly, but there’s something missing here. 9 is creative, yet at the same time, full of stolen ideas and this isn’t hidden at all. I felt myself going back and forth between loving it and saying to myself “hey…wait…”
Last night ended up being a pretty decent show. I wasn’t really feeling it much beforehand and I got to the station late because I was watching Obama’s speech, but I pulled it together nicely. There’s been somewhat of a lack of bigger names on the Playlist lately, but I don’t think the show has suffered from it. I hope I’m not the only one that feels that way.
I think the highlight of last night was getting a call from an angry listener after saying that I thought Obama nailed his speech to Congress about healthcare. The caller did not agree at all. He even went so far as to suggest that maybe I just liked the sound of his voice. Oh well.
I don’t think I’ve met anyone that has ever said they don’t like Mike Judge. I know a few people that don’t get or like Idiocracy–I feel sorry for them–but everyone likes Office Space and most people in their mid to late twenties enjoyed Beavis And Butthead growing up. With all that in mind, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone that thinks Extract was bad. It’s not going to blow you away in any way, but it’s far from bad or boring. It’s not a great movie. It’s good movie.
Extract is pretty much exactly what you expect it to be. If you saw the trailer, you already know how the movie plays out. It’s nothing special and nothing you aren’t expecting. But that isn’t to say that it’s not an entertaining movie. Maybe it was because my expectations weren’t super high so I couldn’t be disappointed, but the only reason why I was waiting for it to end was because I had to pee.
To compare it to Judge’s other films, Extract is much more Office Space with a focus on banality, but not a notch or two down. Jason Bateman’s character is a rather likeable and easy to relate to guy, but I couldn’t decide if I really felt bad for him or not. I think I may have been rooting against him slightly. Casting-wise, Judge got it right on…even down to the generally easy-to-hate Ben Affleck who may have given the acting performance of his life in Extract. Okay, maybe that’s a bit overboard, but come on, even though he’s been in some good movies and hasn’t really ruined anything for me, he’s not that great of an actor. But he got the part exactly right for this film.
Overall, I’d say check it out if you’re looking for something to see, but if you’re not already dying to see it or desperate for something to do one night in the upcoming weeks, just wait for the DVD…and Netflix it.
Here’s the playlist for last night’s edition of The Playlist. There isn’t really too much to say about the show other than the fact that I was able to squeeze a couple local bands in this week. Other than that, pretty standard affair.
I wasn’t a fan of his music, but as far as his film making goes, holy crap do I love what Rob Zombie does. He seemed to always get it right, but this time around, I think he may have slipped a little. As far as making a brutal horror flick goes, yeah, he pulled that off with Halloween 2, however it is his weakest movie so far.
This movie had a much different feel than the first. Zombie tried to keep the violence, but also tried to get more psychological and weird than he ever has before and while I get what he was going for by trying to connect Laurie and Michael as both suffering from similar pyschological problems, it felt a bit forced. Both Loomis and Laurie came back in this movie feeling like completely different characters. Obviously, the events from the first movie would have changed them, but this didn’t quite feel right. Michael was the only one that felt similar to what he was before, though he was much more intense with his stabbing. A lot more so than in the first film…almost out of character, actually. Also, possibly because the actor looks too old now, Zombie uses a different kid to play Michael as a child. This kid sucked. He was a little too sweet and personable compared to the kid from the first Halloween.
This film is entertaining, but it doesn’t feel entirely like what it should have been. If you want to see an awkward and somewhat failed attempt at being both a psychological horror flick and a brutal stab-a-thon, check this out, but don’t expect the level of greatness that Rob Zombie has been giving us up to this point.
While we were eating lunch outside today, a bee kept bothering us. I’m not very afraid of bees, but some of my co-workers freak out when they fly by and wanted me to kill it. He landed on my hand while I was holding a zip-lock bag and I was able to coax him into the bag. I closed it up with just enough of an opening for air to get in, but so that he couldn’t get out. At the end of lunch, I opened it up all the way and dropped it in a trash can so he could fly safely away. After about 30 seconds, he found his way out and took off.
I finally got my hands on this Patterson Hood record! It’s been out for a little while, but I’ve been completely slacking on getting a copy of it. I’m liking it a lot so far, but it pretty much sounds just like what I would expect from the next Drive-By Truckers album. I guess it’s because his voice is responsible for half their sound. If you’re a fan of the Truckers and liked Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, you’ll like this one. Check it out!
But as far as last night’s show goes, it was a great one. Perfect mix of genres. Perfect flow from song to song. Good mic breaks. It had it all!
I made the mistake of seeing District 9 a couple days after seeing Inglourious Basterds. As good as District 9 was, all I could think about the whole time was how good Inglourious Basterds was. But anyway, Peter Jackson has yet to let me down, and his ability to be involved with movies that are a bit weird seems to always pay off for him.
This one takes a little while to get going, but once it does, it sucks you right in. While the story was inspired by the actual events of District 6 in Cape Town in South Africa, it’s kind of a mess. I mean, it gets you there and serves its purpose, but it’s full of holes and things that just don’t make sense. You won’t care though. Once the humans start getting exploded by the alien guns, you won’t care about anything else at all. However, even though the story is a bit of a mess, I think it gets across the point that it was going for and the intended message is definitely there.
The film is presented as a documentary type thing which is a little different from what you’d expect an alien movie like this to be, but it works out really well throughout everything except for the last third or so of the movie where it kind of forgets that it was supposed to be documentary like and goes straight action movie. I guess it worked out though because I didn’t even realize this until after I walked out of the theater.
Think Cloverfield meets Transformers if Transformers had aliens instead of robots and was better.
If you want to see a movie that mixes the exact right amounts of everything you want it to, do yourself a favor and go see Inglourious Basterds…now. At just over two and a half hours, it’s not a short movie, but it flies by. It only feels like an hour and a half and there are only a couple scenes that are a little slow moving, but these scenes have more than enough tension building to keep you engaged and not bored at all. At the end of the two and a half hours, I actually wanted more.
Despite all of the humor in this film, Inglourious Basterds is still very powerful and even difficult to watch at points. Starting right away in the opening scene, Tarantino sets the tone and makes you very uncomfortable as Col. Hans Landa visits a French family suspected of hiding Jews. I actually found this scene a little hard to watch. It was almost too much. Almost. After that, we get some pretty graphic violence that is more than enough, even for seasoned horror and action movie fans. From there, Tarantino very perfectly molds together two different stories that start off very unrelated, but come together quite well.
I won’t say much else because I want to leave the spoilers out of this one. I think much of what makes this film so great when you see it is not really knowing what’s going to happen next. Sometimes, you’re right and other times you’re not. And sometimes, what you want to happen, doesn’t.
Besides a couple of questions I have about some of the characters’ decisions toward the end of the movie (not actually gripes, but just a little interested in why), the only thing I’m torn about was the use of BJ Novak. Part of me thinks that his character may have been a little bit of a waste for him until the end, but part of me feels like it might have been a stretch to use him more. There was already a lot going on as it was and using him more probably would have felt a bit forced an overdone. So, I guess I’m happy with the way it was.
Rating: A+
PS: Eli Roth should stick to making movies like Cabin Fever and do less acting.
This first shirt, I got from RIPT Apparel. It’s the first I’ve ordered from them, but apparently, they work similarly to shirt.woot.com, doing the whole one shirt a day kind of thing.
This second shirt is one that I’ve wanted from Threadless for a really long time. I have no idea why I never bought it, probably because it was always like $18 or so. But my girlfriend was making a purchase from there and decided to throw it in as a surprise for me. I probably could have taken a better picture, but as per the norm, I’m lazy. If you can’t make it out, it’s called The Communist Party.
Last night’s show was definitely one of the most mellow ones I’ve ever done. It wasn’t really on purpose, it just kind of happened. Still a good one though.
The last month or two have been a little light on good new albums coming out. There have been a few that stood out, but mostly, it’s been a quiet summer. I think, at least. Maybe I’m wrong?
Since I tend to go see the silliest musicals that exist, it should be of no surprise that I went to see the I Can Has Cheezburger MusicLOL. I don’t even know how to describe this. I really don’t. It was complete silliness. The story is the adventure of one lolcat in pursuit of a delicious cheezburg.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect of this. I thought maybe they were puppets, but nope, regular actors…with cat ears. No make up, just cat or mouse ears. Oh, and lolcat pictures projected on a screen behind them. This all sounds silly, I know. And it is silly, but it was a lot of fun actually! The songs have been stuck in my head since I saw the show and I was thoroughly entertained the entire time.
I’d say to go check it out, but I think all the rest of the shows are sold out. Sucker.
Decent show last night! Good song flow, decent enough banter. Not bad!
I grabbed a copy of the Jukebox The Ghost album, one of the openers at the Harvey Danger show, and I gotta say, it’s pretty awesome. It kind of sounds like Ben Folds (Five) meets Queen. Check it out!
Of the new stuff I played this week, I think Owl City and Christina Courtin stood out the most. Owl City sounds kind of like Death Cab For Cutie except not quite as boring. And Christina Courtin reminds me a lot of New Jersey’s Amanda Duncan. Once I get a chance to check these two out more, I’ll let you know if they hold up.
I’m not at all happy with how long it took for me to see this flick, but it was a weird release. Though it opened in NYC about a month ago, I’ve been unable to make it in to see it. Since then, the general release has seemed to be a bit sporadic.
Based on the trailers, you’d expect this to be a cute, romantic comedy. It is not. I mean, it’s cute and there are some laughs, but it’s not really a comedy. It’s not really a drama either. It just kind of takes the best elements of indie film and uses them to make not-quite-what-you’d-expect love story. Doesn’t really matter what you call it, it’s a fun movie.
I had been told and read that the movie goes out of order and gives you a day at a time from their relationship. But really, it doesn’t feel like it’s presented non-chronologically so much as it feels like it’s actually telling two separate stories at the same time. One story is of Tom and Summer getting together and Tom falling in love with Summer. The other story is of them breaking up and Tom dealing with the breakup. However, the two stories are given to you in an alternating fashion. A day of one and then a day of the other. For the the most, each story is chronological within itself. For the most part. It’s a different way to present a story rather than how almost every single other movie is done, but it works. Well.
(500) Days Of Summer chooses not to give you the Hollywood style love story, but instead to focus on something more realistic, falling in love with someone and fooling yourself into thinking that they’re “the one.” It’s the kind of relationship where it starts out with a crush and you tell yourself that there is no one better out there for you, that this is the girl you’re meant to be with. Eventually, you get that girl and you think your life is perfect, your feet never touch the ground. The reality is, this relationship isn’t perfect. Even from the start it’s not, but you’re choosing only to see the good. You’re so blind to reality that you miss all the warning signs that the relationship is doomed and this girl doesn’t feel the same way. Then you’re shocked when it’s over and you try to justify all those problems as being normal and fixable instead of just accepting that it really wasn’t right and you were wrong. We’ve all been there. Girls, you too, but probably with a dude.
Choosing this over a true love story is what makes this film work and stand out rather than being just another romantic movie.
To top it off, add in a great soundtrack with songs by Regina Spektor, Fiest, The Smiths, and of course She & Him. I’d highly recommend this film. Even though you may be able to predict the last scene of the movie from the first couple of minutes, it’s pretty much perfect.
Last night, Harvey Danger played their last show ever in NYC at The Bell House in Brooklyn as part of their farewell tour. I’m really sad to see the band go, but at the same time, I’m not surprised either. The band had never really been profitable, nor do they really fit in anywhere.
I had never been to The Bell House before and no one I talked to about it had ever heard of it before. It turned out to be a really nice venue. There’s a swanky-ish bar when you first walk in that has a decent beer and wine selection for a venue. The room that the bands play in is big enough to hold maybe 400 people, but still maintains the ability to be relatively intimate at the same time. My only real gripe was that the sound was a little louder than it needed to be. Outside, there was a sweet stenciled sign that said “Beware of ‘dog.’”
I didn’t really watch the first opener much, but Jukebox The Ghost was pretty awesome. They’re from Philly, though I’d never heard of them before. They have a pretty sweet indie sound with a piano and make enough funny faces while playing that even if they had sucked, it would have been entertaining to watch.
Harvey Danger somehow–I’m really not sure of the back story for this one–got John Hodgeman to introduce them. It was hilarious, watch…
Once they came out on stage, they were incredible. They played for about 2 hours and 40 minutes, longer than I’ve ever seen any band play for before in my life. By the end, there wasn’t really too much left that they hadn’t played. It was really awesome and didn’t get boring at all…even if we were all insanely tired by almost 2AM when we finally walked out.
For the encore, they came out and did a lot of Q&A and took requests. A bunch of them.
They sounded really on all night too, even towards the end of the set, they were still playing well and having a great time on stage. Here’s a video of them playing Cream And Bastards Rise…
If you didn’t make this show, you messed up, big time. Below is the full set list so that you can kick yourself for missing the show…
Humility On Parade
Wine, Women & Song
Moral Centralia
Meetings With Remarkable Men (Show Me The Hero)
Cream & Bastards Rise
Problems & Bigger Ones
Sad Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
Little Round Mirrors
War Buddies
Jack The Lion
Defrocked
The Show Must Not Go On (new song)
Flagpole Sitta
The Ballad Of The Tragic Hero (Pity & Fear)
Authentic
(Theme From) Carjack Fever
Encore 1:
Pike Street/Park Slope
*Loyalty Bldg.
*Underground
*Happiness Writes White
*Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas (Sometimes)
*Wrecking Ball
*Why I’m Lonely
*Private Helicopter
*Carlotta Valdez
*Terminal Annex
Radio Silence
Last night was a really great show! The music selection I went with was awesome and there was a ton of instant message love from listeners. It’s rare to get more than one or two IMs or calls during a show (how often do you call radio stations when you’re listening? Huh?), but there were a ton last night.
I’ve been really excited this week about the albums by The Builders And The Butchers, God Help The Girl, Sean Walsh and the National Reserve, and Deer Tick. Deer Tick, The Builders And The Butchers, and Sean Walsh… are all a bit more Southern in nature and God Help The Girl has a nice 60s pop thing going on. Check this stuff out.
If you haven’t checked out Math The Band yet, they sound kind of like what I would expect if Atom from Atom And His Package was the front man for The Anniversary. Unfortunately, I missed seeing them at Death Valley in New Brunswick this weekend. Got there just a little too late.
Oh and here’s a new song by Teenage Bottlerock…click me!
A nerdy group of friends tries to break into the Skywalker Ranch in an attempt to see Star Wars: Episode 1 before its release date. Sound nerdy? Don’t worry, it is.
I liked this flick a lot. I thought the cast was pretty well picked and the cameos were fun. It’s a silly movie and if you aren’t a Star Wars fan, you probably won’t enjoy it that much, but if you’re a little bit nerdy this will definitely be worth your time. The story is very predictable and everything feels very familiar, like you’ve seen this movie before almost, but the laughs (more like chuckles, actually) are more than enough to make up for it.
Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Aziz Ansari, Judd Apatow, and a list of cameos longer than pretty much any other movie ever, how could this be bad right? Well, the list of cameos wasn’t the only thing that was long, this movie just refused to end! Two hours and sixteen minutes is way too long for a comedy. The first half to two thirds of the movie was really funny, but it just kept going and ended up getting kind of sad. It almost felt like it could have been two separate movies. There were scenes that could have been cut and scenes that should have been shorter, but for some reason they were still there. I think that had this movie been cut to an hour and half it would have been much, much better.
Honestly, the length of the movie and the depth of which they explored the arc with Leslie Mann’s character were the only things I didn’t like about Funny People. Everyone acted well and there was a lot of funny stuff going on, but after a while, I really just wanted out of that theater.
First of all, Rita’s now has Swedish Fish flavored ice. It is amazing. I’m not sure how, but they somehow got the taste exactly right. Plus, they give a pack of Swedish Fish with it! This is probably not standard, but just something they are doing while the flavor is new. Either way, try the damn thing! It’s no secret that I am slightly obsessed with Rita’s, but this just upped the ante a bit.
And second, I saw this car yesterday on the way home from New Hope. Now, I’m glad that the person voted for Obama and all, but why wouldn’t they take that W sticker off the back of their car? I mean, I just don’t get it. If you voted for Obama, wasn’t that saying that you wanted something different than the last eight years? Wouldn’t you want to not advertise that you were pro-Bush in the previous election? Come on, the two stand for completely different things. Regardless of what you think of Obama after his first six months in office and despite the fact that on more than one issue he’s following in Bush’s footsteps, liking Bush enough to have a sticker on your car does not at all fit with the idea of putting an Obama sticker on your car. Just doesn’t make sense.
It always sucks when you have a week off and come back to do a radio show that doesn’t go as smoothly as normal. It was a little rough last night on the mic break front, but at least it was a strong show musically. I don’t really think I’m digging the new Placebo record that much which is a shame, but I really want to check out the rest of this The Builders And The Butchers album. I really liked the song I played last night, I think the record has some serious potential. I’ll have to give it some time.
Retardead is…special. So very special. It’s like a low-budget Troma flick. I mean, low-budget for Troma, not in general. I didn’t know at the time, but apparently, this flick is actually a sequel to a movie called Monsturd. I’ve never seen it, but just finding out that it’s not only a sequel, but that the original was called Monsturd instantly made this movie make a lot more sense. If you don’t know this or haven’t seen Monsturd, the beginning is a little confusing because it feels like it picked up in the middle of something. Turns out that it did!
This was pretty awful. It was fun and definitely entertaining, but damn was it bad. The acting was terrible, the story was terrible, the gore was really fake as hell, but it was hilarious! While it was cheesily hilarious in that it’s so bad it’s entertaining way, I think that the makers of the flick were in on the joke. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really stick with the namesake for as long as you would like, but it kind of gets the point across…in the most un-PC of ways. Mentally challenged kids being turned into zombies. It makes sense, if you think about it. I think. I guess actually, it’s probably better that it didn’t stick with that too long.
If you can get a good group of friends to come by and watch this with you, do it! You won’t regret it…much.
The show two weeks ago turned out to be pretty decent. I had a decent selection of music and some good flow from song to song. Unfortunately though, I haven’t really had much time recently to check out new music. I feel like I’m in one of those phases I go through from time to time where I lose interest in checking out new stuff. It should be due to end soon though, these phases rarely last long.
Whatever Works is absolutely fantastic. I truly believe this is the perfect role for Larry David, even better than Curb Your Enthusiasm. His character Boris is as articulate as he is cynical…or maybe as cynical as he is articulate? Either one. It doesn’t matter. It’s hilarious. His pessimism is actually almost uplifting and refreshing. Rather than bring you down, it makes you want to appreciate the happiness in life more. I’m not quite sure that that’s what Woody Allen was going for, but hey, whatever works, right? And Evan Rachel Wood pulls off an incredibly loveable Southern girl and the accent becomes more of a turn on than an annoyance.
Whatever Works is different than most comedies being made today…at least the mainstream releases anyway. Larry David’s character, Boris, talks to the camera and it’s great. It works. The humor is smart and references physics theories like String Theory and such, but without requiring a previous understanding of them. These references are applied to everyday life and to love, but in a rather relatable way. While I only found myself actually laughing out loud a handful of times, Whatever Works rarely has a dull or even unfunny moment. I do, however, find it a bit scary as I’m afraid that I may one day turn out to be a much less articulate version of Boris, myself. Oh well.
Despite the more negative-than-positive reviews of this flick, I loved it. It was fun. It was smart. It was cute. And through an endless barrage of cynicism, it made me love life.
Brüno will probably incite a wide range of emotions for you. Crying. Gagging. Laughing. Disgust. Sexual excitement? I think this is partially why the reviews are so mixed. Sacha Baron Cohen goes more than a little too far for some people and crosses a lot of lines, but I have no lines so I think it was absolutely great.
Brüno follows along a path very similar, but much more outrageous, to Borat, albeit much less cohesively and feeling more like he just had a bunch of smaller ideas and slapped them together rather than a working with a bigger picture. A lot of people seem to think that his attempt to expose homophobia in America is a bit much and instead displays homosexuality in a cartoonish way. While he is a bit over the top, most of the people that are going to see this movie are in on the joke and he’s really just kind of preaching to the choir. The people that are the problem are not really the type to want to see this anyway. Though, if they did see it, I can’t fathom any way in which their negative feelings towards homosexuals would be anything but increased. But like I said, those kind of people probably are not going to see this, so I say relax and have a good time. Don’t get crabby it.
Overall, it’s a decent movie. If you liked Borat and don’t mind a lot of dong right up in your face or some dude-on-dude action, then check it out. If not, you’ll probably want to steer clear.
Last night’s show was fun to do. I think I got the mix just the way I wanted it to be. The only thing lacking really was anything to talk about in my mic breaks so I kept them all very short.
In other news, the posts here have been light as of late, but there hasn’t been too much to write about. I’m planning on seeing a couple movies this weekend so I’ll try to post about them when I can. The real highlight of this week was getting to expose my girlfriend to Star Wars for the first time. We only watched A New Hope so far, but we’ll get through the trilogy soon. I think she liked it, but I felt like Ted on the episode of How I Met Your Mother where he makes Stella watch Star Wars for the first time. I was nervous and watching her more than the movie.
Last night’s show was another mellow one. I kind of feel like I phoned it in a bit. I actually forgot about a large stack of good stuff that I wanted to play, I had it sitting on the counter on the other side of the console and didn’t see it until I was cleaning up at the end of my show. Oh well. Next week!
I’m not going to go into too much detail, but over the weekend, I took a trip down to Baltimore for Insubordination Fest. It’s a pop punk fest that’s been going on for a few years now. Including the pre-show, it was three straight days of pop punk. It was way more awesome than it sounds, I swear.
I think the best band turned out to be The Copyrights, but Cloak/Dagger, House Boat, Lemuria, Dillinger 4, and Dear Landloard were really awesome as well. The Steinways were very good, but a bit messy. It was supposed to be their last show for real this time, so I’m glad that I got to see them since I never had before.
Last night’s show turned out to be pretty good, definitely better than last week’s. There was some pretty decent musical variety, but I opted for some longer songs which I normally don’t do.
“Night Guard” is the only song that I’ve heard from this Post Honeymoon record so far, but I was really into it so I’ll have to report back about the whole album next week.
Here’s the playlist…
Elvis Costello
Complicated Shadows
Secret, Profane, And Sugarcane
Fresh And Onlys
Shattered Moon
The Fresh And Onlys
Hands And Knees
Do You Really Need A Drummer?
Et Tu, Fluffy?
Post Honeymoon
Night Guard
Post Honeymoon
Legends, The
You Won
Over And Over
Jarvis Cocker
Further Complications
Further Complications
Dirty Projectors
Stillness Is The Move
Bitte Orca
Vincent Minor
Friday The Thirteenth
Born In The Wrong Era
Grizzly Bear
Southern Point
Veckatimest
Snowglobe
Ms. June (Remastered)
No Need To Light A Night Light On A Night Like Tonight
Without question, jumping out of a plane for fun has to be in the top five craziest things anyone can do. So naturally, I’ve wanted to do it since I was a kid. For various reasons I never had been able to do it until just recently. I don’t think I can actually describe the feeling of it either. You’re falling, but that’s not even what it feels like. You actually feel more like you’re floating than anything else. Floating with a whole lot of wind coming at you.
The whole experience was pretty crazy. They took us up in this tiny little plane that barely felt like it should be able to get off the ground. Including the pilot, there were six of us packed into it and that didn’t any room to move at all. It takes a while to get fully up to altitude and the sky was starting to cloud over to the point where they weren’t sure if we’d be able to jump or not. This wasn’t really a plane I wanted to land in. I think I felt safer jumping out of it.
We got lucky though and the pilot was able to get us up high enough to jump and even though it was a raining a little bit, the instructors felt like it was safe to jump so we did. My friend went first. They opened up the door and I nearly crapped my pants. That’s actually the moment it really hits you that you’ve about to do probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. At this point, there wasn’t really much backing out, I was all connected up the instructor and we started scooching over to the door. We got in position and before I could really even prepare myself, all say that I may have had in the situation was taking away from me and he pushed us out. This is the point were I’m pretty sure that I just started yelling “holy shit” over and over, but once you’re out the plane and doing free-fall, it’s not as scary. In fact, this was probably the least scary part of the entire experience.
The first few seconds of free-fall were through the rain. This wasn’t really the best feeling in the world. I mean, the falling thing was absolutely the most incredible feeling I’ve ever felt with my pants on, but the rain felt like getting shot with hundreds of paintballs. The good thing was that this only lasted a few seconds and then we were out of the rain. I’m actually not sure how that worked, but it did.
We continued to free-fall for a little bit longer. I couldn’t tell you how long it was, maybe 10 or 15 seconds? I really don’t know. Then the instructor pulled the chute. I had kind of expected this to feel a lot more intense as the air caught it. I thought it would be much more of a jolt, but it really wasn’t.
This is the point that I stopped yelling “holy shit” over and over.
From there, we did a couple turns with the parachute and made our way safely down to the ground with a perfect landing.
It was intense. I don’t even know how else to describe this. For anyone that even remotely thinks they might want to do, go for it. It’s one of the most terrifying things ever, but you’ll be so glad that you did.
Here’s the video, which is a little (read: one metric asston) embarrassing, but I’m glad that I got it. You may notice that on the certificate, they put my last name as “Capin” instead of Gapin. Oh well.
I’ll get right to it, Dead Snow was simply amazing. It was incredibly well done from start to finish. I got the joy of seeing this in a small theater with a screen not much bigger than the one I use at home for my projector and in the audience was the director, Tommy Wirkola, who did a nice Q&A afterwards.
I feel like the whole Nazi zombie sub-sub-genre had been a bit neglected lately, so it was great to see someone bring it back in the most awesome of ways. When Tommy introduced the film, he said that he was trying to return to the gory, but comedic horror of years back. He accomplished this perfectly. The gore was great and there were guts everywhere. Most of the time, this was hilarious like having a dude’s head got ripped apart and his brain dropped to the floor. Think Evil Dead, Dead Alive, Bad Taste, and Shaun of the Dead all rolled up in one in a Norwegian flick with a lot of intestines, but don’t get the impression that this was a total ripoff either, there was more than enough originality to make this movie stand out within the zombie genre and possibly even put it at the top of all Nazi zombie flicks.
Tommy decided to go with fast zombies that could think and organize themselves which I usually don’t like too much, but it really fit with the movie. The zombies were bad ass, but then again, so were some of the characters towards the end. Everything fit together really well.
During the Q&A session, Tommy mentioned that there might be a sequel and even went into a little detail about what he envisions for the beginning of the film. He’s got some good ideas. Not only should you make sure that you see this movie, but you should also keep an eye on Tommy Wirkola. He’s been talking to some people around Hollywood and it seems like this could be just the first of many great things from him.
Caramel Apple Smoothie and Wise Guy Burger from Red Robin. Tonight will be delicious. 1 day ago
Ugh. Christmas is already taking over. It's only the beginning of November! Not yet! Not yet! Please, one month of Xmas is enough! 1 day ago
The mayor of my city in SimCity is Admiral Poopypants. 2 days ago
@sohayda Pride And Prejudice And Zombies has been out for a few months. My girlfriend (@dcheffernan) has it, but neither of us have read yet 2 days ago
The Casualties are still a band?! How? I don't even understand how they're still alive? 2 days ago
@sohayda That'd be nice, but I'm trying to work with hardware I already have! :-) 2 days ago
@sohayda Still XP. I was copying to externals so I can install WHS. I have backups of everything but video so that's all I'm worried about 2 days ago
Remotely checked in on some file transfers on my server and my RAID disappeared. Tried to restart and now it won't come back up. Awesome. 2 days ago
I wanted to get something up about the show sooner, but I haven’t had a chance. I’m going to completely ignore the openers and get to the point, The Lawrence Arms are one of the best bands playing right now. An hour and forty-five minutes was a long time for a punk band to play, but I’m going to be honest, I could have done a lot more. A LOT MORE. Hell, they could have played the set twice and I would have been giddy as hell about it.
I went to see The Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones in Philly last night at the Trocadero. It was an all around great show.
I think everyone liked Whip It more than I did. I mean, I liked it a lot, but everyone that I’ve heard talk about it loved it. The movie was entertaining and I actually didn’t find Jimmy Fallon to be annoying which was unexpected, but there wasn’t really anything about it that grabbed me like I wanted it to. I feel like for a movie about roller derby with Ellen Page and all the other people that are in this, I want a little more.
You know, if you had asked me a year ago, before I had even heard of Zombieland, if I would have said “yeah, I think Woody Harrelson could wreck some zombies.” Now, ask me this after seeing Zombieland and the answer becomes something more along the line of “why the hell isn’t Woody Harrelson in every zombie movie?” Seriously, it’s a no-brainer. Dude knows how to kill some zombies.
Last Friday, I took a trip down to Philly to see forgetters play their fourth show ever at the Barbary. Forgetters is the new band from Blake Schwartzenbach (Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil) and Kevin Malone (the original drummer of Against Me!). Blake used to front my favorite band of all time so when he starts up something new, it’s without a doubt going to be interesting to me. His last band, Thorns Of Life, didn’t last long at all. They broke up a few months ago, having never officially recorded anything. A couple of live bootlegs are all the remain of the band. Anyway, this was the first of Blake’s bands that I’ve seen live. I wasn’t old enough when Jawbreaker broke up to even appreciate good music, let alone go to the shows–okay, I was thirteen, if I was on top of my shit, I might have been there, but I wasn’t. And I didn’t actually start caring about Jets to Brazil until it was too late.
So I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of days. It’s not the first time, not by a long shot, but yesterday involved a seriously in-depth conversation about the topic, putting it firmly into my consciousness.
Take Meet The Robinsons, The Matrix, Tim Burton’s entire filmography, and everything Steampunk and you get 9. It’s a visually awesome film, no doubt. It’s as beautiful and stunning as the trailers will have you believe. But the story is melded together from so many other ideas in other films that you feel like you’ve seen it all before. Twice. No, three times. No, more.
I don’t think I’ve met anyone that has ever said they don’t like Mike Judge. I know a few people that don’t get or like Idiocracy–I feel sorry for them–but everyone likes Office Space and most people in their mid to late twenties enjoyed Beavis And Butthead growing up. With all that in mind, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone that thinks Extract was bad. It’s not going to blow you away in any way, but it’s far from bad or boring. It’s not a great movie. It’s good movie.
I wasn’t a fan of his music, but as far as his film making goes, holy crap do I love what Rob Zombie does. He seemed to always get it right, but this time around, I think he may have slipped a little. As far as making a brutal horror flick goes, yeah, he pulled that off with Halloween 2, however it is his weakest movie so far.
I made the mistake of seeing District 9 a couple days after seeing 
If you want to see a movie that mixes the exact right amounts of everything you want it to, do yourself a favor and go see Inglourious Basterds…now. At just over two and a half hours, it’s not a short movie, but it flies by. It only feels like an hour and a half and there are only a couple scenes that are a little slow moving, but these scenes have more than enough tension building to keep you engaged and not bored at all. At the end of the two and a half hours, I actually wanted more.
Since I tend to go see the silliest musicals that exist, it should be of no surprise that I went to see the 
I’m not at all happy with how long it took for me to see this flick, but it was a weird release. Though it opened in NYC about a month ago, I’ve been unable to make it in to see it. Since then, the general release has seemed to be a bit sporadic.
I had never been to The Bell House before and no one I talked to about it had ever heard of it before. It turned out to be a really nice venue. There’s a swanky-ish bar when you first walk in that has a decent beer and wine selection for a venue. The room that the bands play in is big enough to hold maybe 400 people, but still maintains the ability to be relatively intimate at the same time. My only real gripe was that the sound was a little louder than it needed to be. Outside, there was a sweet stenciled sign that said “Beware of ‘dog.’”
A nerdy group of friends tries to break into the Skywalker Ranch in an attempt to see Star Wars: Episode 1 before its release date. Sound nerdy? Don’t worry, it is.
Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Aziz Ansari, Judd Apatow, and a list of cameos longer than pretty much any other movie ever, how could this be bad right? Well, the list of cameos wasn’t the only thing that was long, this movie just refused to end! Two hours and sixteen minutes is way too long for a comedy. The first half to two thirds of the movie was really funny, but it just kept going and ended up getting kind of sad. It almost felt like it could have been two separate movies. There were scenes that could have been cut and scenes that should have been shorter, but for some reason they were still there. I think that had this movie been cut to an hour and half it would have been much, much better.
Retardead is…special. So very special. It’s like a low-budget Troma flick. I mean, low-budget for Troma, not in general. I didn’t know at the time, but apparently, this flick is actually a sequel to a movie called Monsturd. I’ve never seen it, but just finding out that it’s not only a sequel, but that the original was called Monsturd instantly made this movie make a lot more sense. If you don’t know this or haven’t seen Monsturd, the beginning is a little confusing because it feels like it picked up in the middle of something. Turns out that it did!
Whatever Works is absolutely fantastic. I truly believe this is the perfect role for Larry David, even better than Curb Your Enthusiasm. His character Boris is as articulate as he is cynical…or maybe as cynical as he is articulate? Either one. It doesn’t matter. It’s hilarious. His pessimism is actually almost uplifting and refreshing. Rather than bring you down, it makes you want to appreciate the happiness in life more. I’m not quite sure that that’s what Woody Allen was going for, but hey, whatever works, right? And Evan Rachel Wood pulls off an incredibly loveable Southern girl and the accent becomes more of a turn on than an annoyance.
Brüno will probably incite a wide range of emotions for you. Crying. Gagging. Laughing. Disgust. Sexual excitement? I think this is partially why the reviews are so mixed. Sacha Baron Cohen goes more than a little too far for some people and crosses a lot of lines, but I have no lines so I think it was absolutely great.
I’ll get right to it, Dead Snow was simply amazing. It was incredibly well done from start to finish. I got the joy of seeing this in a small theater with a screen not much bigger than the one I use at home for my projector and in the audience was the director, Tommy Wirkola, who did a nice Q&A afterwards.
