Commitment Films

Fall/Winter - 2011/2012

2012-01-29T23:08:00.000-08:00

Theatrical Reviews:

The French Connection (1971) ****

Battle Royale (2000, Japan) ****

The Terminator (1984) ****

True Romance (1993) ****

Poltergeist (1982) ****

Manhattan (1979) ****

Annie Hall (1977) ****

Hugo (3D) ****

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (USA) ***1/2

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol ***1/2

The Adventures of Tintin (3D) ***1/2

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ***1/2

War Horse ***1/2

Drive ***1/2

The Rum Diary ***

Real Steel **1/2

The Thing (2011) **

DVD/Home Video:

Until The End of the World: Director's Cut (1991) ****

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse ****

Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) ****

American Graffiti (1972) ****

Miller's Crossing (1990) ****

Something Wild (1987) ****

Harakiri (Japan, 1962) ****

Ugetsu (Japan, 1953) ****

Midnight Run (1988) ****

1941 (1979) ****

Enter The Void (France) ***1/2

Kwaidan (Japan, 1965) ***1/2

Onibaba (Japan, 1964) ***1/2

Naked Lunch (1991) ***1/2

High Fidelity (2005) ***1/2

Beetlejuice (1988) ***1/2

Insomnia (2002) ***1/2

The American ***1/2

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (HK) ***

Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1983) ***

The Life and Legend of Buffalo Jones (1976) ***

Space Battleship Yamoto (Japan) ***

The Man From Nowhere (Korea) ***

Hide In Plain Sight (1980) ***

Snuff Box (UK, TV Series) ***

Cyborg She (2008, Japan) ***

Winnie The Pooh (2011) ***

The Rain People (1969) ***

Kuroneko (Japan, 1968) ***

We're No Angels (1989) ***

Promised Land (1987) ***

The Town (2010) ***

Shaolin (HK) ***

Southland Tales: The Cannes Cut **1/2

Ghostbusters 2 (1990) **1/2

At the Sinatra Club **12

Countdown (1968) **1/2

Feeding Frenzy **1/2

The Car (1977) **1/2

Slither (1973) **1/2

Woochi: The Taoist Wizard (Korea) **

Lulu on the Bridge (1998) **

Underworld (1997) **

Drive Angry **

Born To Raise Hell *

The Films of Humphrey Bogart:

The Petrified Forest (1936) ****

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) ***

Dark Victory (1939) ***1/2

High Sierra (1941) ****

The Maltese Falcon (1941) ****

Casablanca (1942) ***

To Have and Have Not (1944) ****

The Big Sleep (1946) ***1/2

Dark Passage (1947) ***

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) ****

Key Largo (1948) ****

In A Lonely Place (1950) ***

The African Queen (1951) ***1/2

Beat the Devil (1953) **1/2

We're No Angels (1954) ***

The Desperate Hours (1955) ***1/2

Classic/Noir:

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) ****

The Steel Helmet (1951) ***1/2

Mystery Street (1950) ***1/2

Pickup on South Street (1953) ***

Satan Met A Lady (1936) ***

Out of the Past (1947) ***

Act of Violence (1948) ***

The Hitch-Hiker (1953) ***

Gun Crazy (1949) ***

Murder, My Sweet (1945) **1/2

Lady in the Lake (1947) **1/2

The Maltese Falcon (1931) **

Music/Spoken World:

Miles Davis: Elevator to the Gallows (soundtrack) ****

Tom Waits: Bad As Me (Limited Edition) ****

Scrooged: Danny Elfman (La La Land) ****

Mitch Murder: Burning Chrome ****

Blade Runner: EMS Recombination (soundtrack bootleg) ***1/2

DJ Z-Trip & DJ P: Uneasy Listening, Volume 1 (2000) ***1/2

The Adventures of Tintin (score by John Williams) ***1/2

Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two ***1/2

Michael Ian Black: I Am A Wonderful Man ***1/2

Die Hard: Michael Kamen (La La Land) ***1/2

Explorers: Jerry Goldsmith (Intrada) ***1/2

Michael Ian Black: Very Famous ***1/2

Drive (original score/soundtrack) ***1/2

Dexter Gordon: Gotham City ***1/2

Joe Bargar & the Soul Providers: Two Sides ***

Isaac Hayes: Hot Buttered Soul (1969) ***

The State: Comedy for Gracious Living ***

Chrysta Bell & David Lynch: This Train ***

mc chris: Marshmellow Playground ***

David Lynch: Crazy Clown Time ***

James Hyman: Pulp Mixin' ***

Jeff Bridges (2011) ***

Michael Showalter: Sandwiches & Cats **1/2

mc chris: Race Wars **1/2

Literature/Comics:

Frank Miller's Sin City: The Hard Goodbye ****

Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For ***

Frank Miller's Sin City: The Big Fat Kill ***

Frank Miller's Sin City: That Yellow Bastard ****

Frank Miller's Sin City: Family Values ***1/2

Frank Miller's Sin City: Booze, Broads & Bullets ***

Frank Miller's Sin City: To Hell and Back ***1/2

Woody Allen on Woody Allen (Stig Bjorkman) ***1/2

The Blade Runner Sketchbook (Blue Dolphin) ***1/2

Art to Choke Hearts & Pissing in the Gene Pool (Henry Rollins) ***

Ghostbusters Infestation: #1 & 2 (IDW, miniseries) ***

Ghostbusters #1 & 2 (IDW, monthly) ***

Wolverine Noir (Marvel) ***1/2

X-Men Noir (Marvel) ***

X-Men Noir: Mark of Cain (Marvel) **

Dennis Hopper: A Madness to His Method (Elena Rodriguez) **1/2

Dennis Hopper: Movie Top Ten (Jack Hunter) **

100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call (DC/Vertigo) **

Internet:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review (Red Letter Media) ***1/2

Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut (on youtube) ***1/2

David Wain's Wainy Days (wainydays.com) ***1/2

Black Lodge: "Twin Peaks" Atari 2600 Game ***

2011: The Year's Ten Best Films:

The Tree of Life

13 Assassins

Midnight in Paris

Blank City

Page One: Inside The New York Times

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part Two

Norwegian Wood

Drive

Hugo

The Booth at the End

Sky & Sea, Boston - August/September 2011

2011-09-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

Theatrical Reviews:

The Shining (1980) ****

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) ****

DVD/Home Video:

One False Move (1992) ****
Norwegian Wood (Japan) ***1/2
City of Hope (1991) ***1/2
The Killing (1956) ***1/2
Sexy Beast (2000) ***1/2
Out of the Blue (1980) ***
Dark Passage (1947) ***
Five Corners (1987) ***
Fear City (1984) **

Internet:

The Booth In The Corner (Hulu) ****
Half in the Bag (Red Letter Media) ***1/2

NYC (and a bonus) - August 2011

2011-08-13T20:46:00.001-07:00

Style and Execution

2011-08-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

July 17th, 2011

It's been a few beautiful, dry and cool days lately, during which I had to work. (Of course.) Now the 90 degree heat's come back again... and on my day off. (Naturally.) The humidity wasn't scheduled to arrive again until nightfall though, so I grabbed my notebook, Diet Coke & cookie and went to my spot at the Park. The swelter didn't phase me in the slightest as I started the outline for the story, proper. All the backstory work I'd been doing lately fell right into place. The story was originally going to be a real-time investigation sort of thing, but now I see the value of flashbacks and imagined realities in this particular story and they seem to flowing in their places pretty well. It has to do with what the Hero has grown up thinking is a particular truth or two about his past, only to have the actual truth given to him from two or three other people, even as we suspect that those people might be coloring their own particular meaning of the truth in their own way... Flashbacks and such really are the only way to make this come alive visually. I guess noir films use them for a reason, after all.

The key, if I'm allowed by fate to direct this film, is to differentiate between the actual/real past material and the imagined past material, visually. Soderbergh used color temperature in Traffic to split up his Washington/Mexico/Los Angeles based storyline. I'm thinking "locked-down camera" for the false/imagined past and "handheld but not shaky-cam" as the actual/real past. I've long felt that the great films of the 60's/70's always had that handheld you-are-there news camera sort of realism (Medium Cool, for one). Maybe this is a way to go. Or maybe the other way around would be more interesting, almost turning the convention on it's own ear. Will have to think about that...

At any rate: I felt the first, real sense of accomplishment today. It feels like I've planned out the entire film now, from the opening shot to the closing credits, on paper. After four-plus years, the story is now finally all laid out. The tough part's over. Next is the mostly-easy part. The actual writing of the first draft.

August 7, 2011

Spent my last few days off getting life stuff done. Finally relenting and putting the air conditioner in, paying bills, cleaning the room, seeing the occasional film, house and cat sitting. These all cut into my creativity time a little. I did get around to gathering all my little notes on scraps of paper and color-copying them to 8.5 by 11 inch sheets, so now I have fresh new versions to refer to, should I need them. Maybe I should digitize them and keep them on the laptop and iPod Touch, too. Having them available to me at any given moment sounds like a decent idea.

I've also decided to have another sort of back-up plan. The story I'm working on, you see, is sort of a remake. But not really. That is: there is a terrific old thriller that I've always enjoyed. To film-people it's a classic, however to most average audiences it's largely unknown, which is a tragedy since, at least in my opinion, it really should be as recognized as The Big Sleep, Cape Fear, White Heat and a host of others. The thing that always struck me about it was it's amazing opening scene. Not to give it away but it's a tough and sparse slow-burn of dramatic perfection. Beautifully written, directed, photographed and performed... and it's probably my favorite opening scene of all time.

Some time ago, I figured it would be a great idea to keep that amazing opening scene, line by line and shot by shot, exactly as it is in the original film, then veer off into uncharted and deeply personal (to me) territory, as a way of both paying homage to the classic original, while striking off on my own and telling a story that only I can tell.

Only recently did I consider this: What if I were not able to get the rights to the original material? That could be a huge problem, since I couldn't really start with the Scene Two and expect to have the same dramatic or emotional impact. If you can imagine, say, what Reservoir Dogs might be like without the pre-title sequence with the "Like A Virgin" conversation in the diner where we meet Keitel, Madsen, Buscemi and the rest, you might get the picture. The film would just start with Tim Roth crying in the backseat of a speeding car. You'd miss out on the impact of the moment, the shock and some of Tarantino's most well known dialogue. You'd just jump headlong into screaming and blood. It wouldn't work nearly as well. The same would happen with my story.

I then decided to write a back-up first scene. If I couldn't get the rights to the material I needed, I wanted to cover myself. I kept the same general idea but altered the setting, time of day, the players, moved some of the characters around like chess pieces. I brought in a character, someone who wasn't scheduled to show up for another ten or fifteen pages. I'm trying to keep the same slow-burn feel of the original but bringing it another, more shocking and possibly more contemporary place. The only difficulty is that I can think of at least two other movies that start in a similar way, yet different enough - I think - to be considered separate and unrelated pieces. In a genre story, it's surprisingly difficult not to repeat (or even unintentionally steal from) what you've seen and loved in film before. Tough guy dialogue, familiar settings... I'll have to keep a close eye on this. I'd really love for this to be something wholly original, emotional and special.

At any rate, now I'm on the fence in that I really like the new opening. The way I see it in my mind visually, the way that I imagine it lighted, edited and performed... I think it might actually suit the rest of the story better than that classic scene that inspired it. It seems more of the same world, more fitting. Maybe I'm deluded. Or, maybe that's a sign of some sort of artistic maturity. Something the makers of remakes and reboots should try to feel: that it's all wonderful to pay tribute to those who inspire you, but it takes more courage to go your own way...

I guess we'll see.

Theatrical Reviews
Blue Velvet (1985) ****
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part Two ***1/2
Rise of the Planet of the Apes ***
Captain America ***

DVD/Home Video
To Have and Have Not (1944) ****
High Sierra (1941) ****
Naked (UK, 1993) ****
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (Documentary) ***1/2
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) ***1/2
SubUrbia (1997) ***1/2
Spartan (2004) ***1/2
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part One ***
It Came From Outer Space! - 3D (1953) ***
Outrage (Japan) ***
Blow Out (1981) ***
Judgment Night (1993) **1/2
Times Square (1980) **1/2

Getting Comfortable

2011-07-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

July 9th, 2011

Yesterday was my birthday. Meh. Forty-one and precious little to show for it. The older I get, the less this stuff means to me. Maybe next year I'll manage to get myself a little something useful for my birthday: a screenplay sale for my current project. Another goal to strive for.

After being away for a few days visiting my Mom (which is always nice), I've come home to more heat n' humidity and am finding it impossible to get anything done, I had the suspicion that getting out of the apartment to get some work done might be a good idea. And in that instant, I had a flash: a complete vision, which included all the particulars of where and under what conditions. I felt that I needed to get my notebook -- and a Diet Coke and chocolate chip cookie for the proper caffeine and sugar regimen -- then travel down to this great Park off of Beacon Street, lay down in the grass on said hill and just let the creative spirit take me where it would.

I'd never really done that before, in terms of trying to write, and have typically felt a little awkward whenever I try to relax or "lay out" like "regular people." It's like, sometimes I see people just relaxing and enjoying the day, throwing their Frisbees back and forth and cavorting with their gorgeous friends and significant others, and sometimes I feel sort of uptight, in a way. Exposed or vulnerable or something, as if I were going to be attacked or made fun of for some odd reason. As if the Wolves walking by would see me as the Weak Sheep in the herd and therefore sum me up as an easy target.

Part of it comes from being a local resident working in retail; in that where ever you go, you typically end up seeing someone you know or have regular dealings with when all you really want is some space. Sometimes it's someone you like, someone you enjoy seeing and talking with... but sometimes it's the Douchebag Kid That Comes From Money who, for whatever reason, tried to shoplift from your store and now wants to screw with you to look like a big-shot in front of his friends. Or the Angry Drunk you had to kick out for being a public nuisance who you still see around town giving you the evil eye as if to say, "Someday it'll be your turn, buddy." It's also partially something I (dis)affectionately refer to as Fat Guy Syndrome. Comes from being made fun of a lot as a kid. If you grew up popular or well-adjusted, you probably wouldn't understand. (No worries, though. I came around, eventually.)

Most of the time I can let these feelings go. Between the heat of the previous few days, the feeling that I'd been squandering my vacation time and the hyper-personal nature of the story I'm working on, though, I was surprised that this vision of this particular where-and-when-to-write came to me in the way that it did. So, wanting to be creative no matter what, I got my things together (that is, my supplies and my head), packed my stuff and headed out there.

Turned out, the Park was a great idea. Two Dudes were in the spot on the hill that I wanted to be in, so I found a nearby bench. Not too comfortable, though. After about a half hour the Two Dudes left and I grabbed my things, went over to my originally preferred space and found what seemed like my Optimum Creation Zone. Stretching out on my stomach and facing the field, baseball diamond and tennis courts beneath, I went to work. It went perfectly. I cranked out about six pages of all-new material for the backstory, right on the fly; things I needed to really make the crime plot work. Nothing Earth-shattering in the screenwriting world sense but very valuable to me, personally, and my story structure. Between moments of brainstorming, I smiled as puppies played in the nearby grass. I watched those Frisbees flying between those gorgeous friends and significant others and all those things that gave me pause earlier that day became wondrous and beautiful.

I started to realize just how negative thoughts can kill one's creativity. I almost didn't go out there at all, I almost didn't do anything that day. But once I did and once I decided to let those concerns of mine go, and once the words started flowing, I was able to relax and make progress.

I'd forgotten how good that could feel.

July 14, 2011

My week's vacation ended a few days ago. "Back to the daily grind" means "less time to create." But then again, that makes the time that much more valuable. Today was a day off. Not wanting to waste it all, I decided to get more backstory done and set up how it progresses into the current timeline narrative. Couldn't go back to the park today, though, due to rain. I know now that it's much easier for me to work on the project away from my room. Far too many distractions here amongst the DVDs, vinyl LPs, books, Atari games and Internets. I figured I'd try the local (and air-conditioned!) Library instead, grabbed my notebook and umbrella and headed over.

I'd never looked for the best spot for writing in there before. I made a few laps around the halls, desks and hidden corners. Looking for the perfect combination of relative silence, lighting, solitude and a window view of the outdoors, I settled into a quiet corner near a soothingly-ticking grandfather clock and started in. After about an hour and a half, I'd gotten close to four more pages of the main outline completed. Next will be the real work. The narrative proper. I should get my notes together and Xerox them for easier travel. Might need them in the coming sessions.

Theatrical Reviews
Taxi Driver (1975, 2011 restoration) ****
Down By Law (1986) ****
The African Queen (1951, 2010 restoration) ***1/2
Page One: Inside The New York Times ****1/2
Hobo with a Shotgun **1/2
Jaws 3D (1983) **

DVD/Home Video
Coma (1978) ***
Firefox (1982) ***
Big Rig (Documentary) ***
The Gauntlet (1977) **1/2

Back To Business: Gaining Clarity and Focus and Keeping It

2011-07-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I was fairly creative.
Starting in 1984 until about 2001, I'd been involved with or dabbled in everything from cartooning, photography, high school newspaper journalism and film criticism, local cable access news and entertainment, film school, screenwriting in both personal study and formal classes and video production and linear video editing. I managed to cobble together two full-length scripts -- one, a silly Hollywood action-comedy; the other, a smaller independent crime comedy -- which gathered some kind words but failed to earn me local literary representation. Stepping up to the plate and prepping for something big, I penned a short forty-pager for a video-film that I'd written and planned to direct and perform in.
Sadly, the project failed to get off the ground due to the usual bad luck, poor planning and misunderstandings. Following that and the lamentation of my lack of personal wealth, I concentrated on the writing aspect of film making which made sense as it just doesn't get any cheaper than pens and paper. Then life got in the way, as it often does, and a combination of unpleasant life experiences, emotional depression, lack of personal belief -- and even general laziness -- kept me from creating anything more than than an occasional blog posting for the subsequent few years. But not completely...
About four years ago something clicked and I had the inklings of a new storyline. Something very... no, extremely... personal. It was far from fully-formed, and is still in fact taking shape. Over these recent years, I had to put a few things to bed, so to speak. Feelings, worries, misgivings... Call them what you will. But finally, one thing has led to another and it's pretty much all there in what could finally be considered a workable form. As of this moment, it exists only as fragments. Pieces of notebook paper, storyboard drawings and torn corners of napkins are tacked to a bulletin board above this laptop. MP3s of appropriate pieces of music, effects, photos and memories from my childhood and young adult past pepper my room, my hard drive and my mind. Just recently, a specific piece of information that I was given provided the true necessary spark to get moving again. And now it's time to take it to the next level.
Growth and maturity rarely come easily. And as no less than screenwriting guru William Goldman has said, "The easiest thing on Earth to do is not write." So, this note will hopefully serve as a method of keeping track of myself and the New Project. The goal is to finish at least a first draft by the 2011 holiday season. And they say that if a writer fears that they might not keep focused, they should tell others of their progress in an effort to keep a sort of goal; that the more people who know about it, the more likely the writer is to continue with it. Starting here and now, I'm doing just that. I thank you in-advance for your interest and any encouragements offered.
I'll try not to let any of us down.
-------------------------------------------------------------
2006-2011:
Concepts, theories, investigations and emotional preparations. Studying: in theory and practice, through reading and viewing the lives and works of those who have come to be spiritual and professional influences. These influences on the current project include, but are not limited to...
Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Richard Siodmak, William Shakespeare, Humphrey Bogart, David Mamet, Clint Eastwood, Michael Mann, Kenny Rogers, Haruki Murakami, Kevin Weeks, Jack Kerouac, Andrew Vachss, Elmore Leonard, Carol Reed, Henry Rollins, Toshiro Mifune, Tom Waits, Ernest Hemingway... and my Nephew, Father and Mother.
July 4th, 2011:
Hammered out most of the main backstory at last, which is necessary to continue any further. The narrative is a crime mystery and a large element of the narrative lies in the past. Feels good to see how all these things that have just been concepts for so very long are flowing together in what appears, at least for now, to seem like a natural, organic and believable flow. The idea is to take a genre story and give it an emotional depth usually only seen in our most deep and personal everyday lives. Getting down the protagonists' pre-story lives is crucial and key. Laying the foundations. No fireworks tonight. There's work to be done.

Night & Day, Boston - May, June 2011

2011-06-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

And oh, yeah... Reviews and stuff. It's been a while.

Theatrical
The Tree of Life ****
13 Assassins (Japan) ***1/2
Midnight in Paris ***1/2
Blank City ***1/2
X-Men: First Class ***
Super 8 ***
Thor ***

DVD/Home Video
The Deer Hunter (1978) ****
Unforgiven (1992) ****
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World ***1/2
The Thin Red Line: Criterion Collection ***
Youth of the Beast (1963, Japan) ***
Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981) ***
Another Stakeout (1993) ***
Night and the City (1992) ***
Under Fire (1983) ***
Kick Ass ***
Hero At Large (1978) **1/2
Monsters **1/2
Defendor **1/2

Films of the "1980's"
Smokey and the Bandit (1977) ***1/2
Smokey and the Bandit, Part 2 (1980) **1/2
Smokey and the Bandit, Part 3 (1983) **1/2
Police Academy (1984) ***1/2
Max Headroom: The Complete Series (TV) ***
Porky's (1981) ***
Porky's II: The Next Day (1983) **1/2
Porky's Revenge (1985) **1/2
Wanted: Dead Or Alive (1986) **1/2
American Drive-In (1985) **1/2
The Last Dragon (1985) **1/2
Action Jackson (1988) **1/2
Quicksilver (1986) **1/2
Zapped! (1982) **1/2
Scarface (1983) **1/2

Literature
The Man Who Saw The Future (Edmond Hamilton) ***
City Pier: Above and Below (Paul G. Tremblay) ***
They Live: Deep Focus (Jonathan Lethem) ***
Boy (Takeshi Kitano) ***

Video Games
Team Fortress 2 (PC) ***1/2

NYC - February 2011

2011-02-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

This Is How Greatness Happens

2010-11-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday
November 4, 2010
12:09 p.m.

Luke-at-work and I are at the store, receiving thirty-eight boxes of merchandise from the day's FedEx drop. We pass the moments, talking...

Me: So, last night I saw the coolest little horror movie I've seen in years.

Luke: What was that?

Me: The Mist.

Luke: Ahhh, that was awesome. Can you imagine setting all those people on a ship on fire?

(pause) People... on a ship...?

Am I thinking of the wrong movie?

Maybe The Fog?

Yeah, that's probably it.

Naaaaah, I'm talkin' 'bout The Mist.

You mean that one with the crazy Curse Lady telling everyone that the monsters are all, like, God's will and everybody splitting up into two factions before going totally sacrifice crazy?

Yeah, have you seen it?

No. I just know everything that happens in detail through osmosis and psychic powers.

Did you like it?

Yeah. (pause) Man, it would suck to be cursed.

I used to think I was cursed. I had this seven year stretch of shitty luck. Then I realized that's just the ebb and flow of my particular life. Seven years good, seven years bad...

Where are you in that cycle, now?

(thinking) Second year into cycle of good.

Hooray!

But yeah. Curses suck, probably.

Imagine being an eight year old... and cursing someone... for... stealing a cookie.

My cookie that I baked? Or my cookie that I plan to eat? Or give to someone?

Either. You're a little girl who curses someone.

Am I a witch?

Sure, maybe.

Am I a "good little witch?" Or an "I'm gonna eat your soul witch?"

Dude. You're eight!

It could happen. If her parents were also, like, soul eaters and stuff... and cared how they raised their child.

You're at a picnic and your little brother steals your cookie. So you curse him.

Right. I'm an evil little witch at a picnic at night in the rain. We're eating mice sandwiches... Is this a children's story? I think it has potential. We call it "My First Curse."

(laughs)

Maybe the witch is in her forties and has kids... and one of the kids misbehaves and starts cursing her little brother and the Witch Mom's like "Wait now, honey. Let mommy tell you about her first curse." The brother, like, steals her sandwich.

I thought it was a cookie.

Maybe. Maybe it's a cookie sandwich. Or, maybe it's an ice cream sandwich with cookies on the outside. And the ice cream is cookie ice cream! And the witch's name is Cookie! And she's wearing a Cookie Monster costume!!

That is so deep on so many levels.

Hey. I'm creative.

Coming soon to a theater or children's book shop near you.

Pseudo Review: "The Little Sleep" by Paul Tremblay

2010-10-14T15:16:00.001-07:00

A couple of months back, I had the estimable pleasure of bouncing my wonderous self off the pavement of South Huntington Avenue. I'd been riding my bike for two hours per night after working a full day's shift and thought this might be a great, inexpensive way to both get to know the areas that I wasn't so familiar with and to lose a few pounds. Night One was along the Charles from Allston up to MGH and into Cambridge a little. Night Two took me down toward Boston College and around the Reservoir a few times. Night Three consisted the back streets of Cambridge along the Harvard area; lot of ins and outs and what-have-yous. And then, Night Four: along Jamaica Pond, through JP and down toward Huntington. That's when it happened.

Trying to move to the right side of South Huntington in order to let cars pass more safely, my front tire got stuck in a Green Line trolley track and I flipped over, head first, to the waiting rubberized street below. I remember velocity, the sudden and winded "HUNNPH!" as I hit the ground, and I recall coming to rest on my left side... almost as if I'd planned to go to sleep there. Three or four seconds later I was getting up onto my feet. I'm a fast recoverer, partially because I'm so damn tough (yeah, right) but moreso because I'm typically embarrassed of such a fall and somewhere, deep down, I want any possible witnesses to know that "I'm just fine, thank you, there's nothing to see here, so move along."

Though there wasn't any pain to speak of, I certainly looked the part of the banged-up bicyclist. Road-rashed knees, arms and face, bloody cuts, newly slightly-chipped tooth... This was nothing I couldn't handle. I've never thought much of my particular look anyway, so I was able to deal with what happened, mostly. I'd broken a wrist in three places but not known it; it was stiff, I felt, but not painful. In short (if it's not already too late to make such an attempt) I felt like a big, mangled dope who was supremely lucky not to have been killed. I limped my way home, having neither my cell phone on me nor enough money to call a cab. After being bandaged up and told to stay off my feet for a few days, I opened "The Little Sleep," a great detective novel with a rich and often tough local flavor by Paul Tremblay.

As a guy who's seen and loved probably a few too many Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade stories, myself, I fell right in with Tremblay's protagonist, Mark Genevich. A South Boston private investigator with a form of narcolepsy that flows from fatigue to hallucinations to full-on cataplexy, he eeks out his existence with a sizable helping of contempt for both others and himself. The novel's opening scene is a grabber: a local female television celebrity reveals her hand, which is missing a few fingers, and asks the dark Detective Genevich to find the people responsible. But soon Genevich "wakes up" and is wondering... Did this meeting just happen? Was anyone just here? And where did this mysterious note in my handwriting come from?

Genevich is referred to as being somewhat facially disfigured following the accident that brought on his narcolepsy in the first place. Though he covers his scars with a growth of beard and the requisite detective raincoat and hat combo, his spirit is just as shattered as his rumpled appearance, if not more so. Hiding in plain sight, he's an imposing figure masking a deeper soul. He's all-there in his interior world with a razor sharp humor that he wields like a weapon, yet often has great difficulty saying the right thing to the right person at the right time. He's the classic underdog hero; one that might seem like - and even consider himself - the perfect loser, but has an inner strength that can, and often does, serve as a sort of salvation.

Genevich's investigation takes him from the streets of Boston to the power offices of Local Government, through a hallucination or two and eventually into his own past. The narrative works brilliantly on its own, but it's the character himself that's the novel's ace in the hole. He's gruff, he's dark, he's often unpleasant. A moralist who's ready to believe the worst. He's the blue collar joe in the white collar corridors. The damaged hero that we love and want to succeed; to solve his crime and to find personal peace. As I mentioned above, I sympathized with this character to a dramatic extent. Not that Genevich would ever accept anyone's sympathy. And as I'd been feeling a little "off" that particular month due to my bicycle wreck, moving through the chapters of "The Little Sleep" I'd thought to myself, "I know this guy." And though I knew I'd be fine in a few days once the wrist healed up, I found myself hoping that Genevich's situation would turn itself around, too. Sometimes a character just clicks with you, you know?

A second novel featuring Genevich, "No Sleep Till Wonderland" is also available and it's quite a ride in its own right. I look forward to what I hope will be many more installments in this local gumshoe's life and times. He, and creator Paul Tremblay, have great things ahead of them.

More info:
http://thelittlesleep.wordpress.com/
http://www.paulgtremblay.com/paulgtremblay/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_G._Tremblay

Little Big Man: A True Story

2010-10-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

Howdy, people. Not much news to report these days. Broke my wrist biking on South Huntington Avenue in Boston. (Healed now, but ligament surgery awaits.) Regressing to my younger days by recalling and playing a lot of classic 80's music and video games, as well as watching lots of 80's movies; wondering if they'd hold up as well as I hoped they might. Some did, some didn't. Got me one o' thems "iPod Touch" deals. Like it a lot, especially for listening to 80's music and playing 80's video games. Still perfecting my homemade chicken soup. Hopefully evolving as a person. And recently, I introduced someone new to this blog. She went all the way back to the first post and reminded me that I'd mentioned early-on that this report would include discussions of film criticism, love, honor and the occasional dirty joke. "But," this new reader commented, "I don't really see any dirty jokes yet."

Well, I hate to disappoint people. So it's time for a kinda-sorta dirty joke, one which some of you might have heard before... but what the hell? The following is a true story.

Back in my post college days, I had a lot of terrible and meaningless temp jobs. Manual labor, mostly. Organizing and moving warehouse merch around, conveyor belt and truck loading gigs. That sort of thing. One such job was at the local Georgia Pacific housewares storage facility, unloading 18-wheeler shipments of window-sashes and door accents and various adornments for McMansions all over the state. Ten hour days, five days a week, starting at 7 o'clock every morning. It wasn't the worst job I'd had in those days, but I have to admit that I would often fantasize about jumping a fork lift off the second story landing and knocking down the first wave of bay window storage shelving to see if I could wipe out row after row of the warehouse's entire capacity like a giant million-dollar set of dominoes... A man can dream.

Some of my coworkers were cool, but one just plain sucked. "Freddie" was about my age. About 24 or so; fairly young for this particular shop. But despite being about a foot shorter than I was and without any sort of education or apparent need or desire for one, you could still refer to him as a blowhard. Talking loudly at every moment, full of sound and fury while signifying nothing, this guy thought of himself as the big man on campus, while some of us enjoyed referring to him as suffering from what we called LGS: Little Guy Syndrome. That is, the affliction under which someone behaves like a loudmouthed braggard of total idiocy in order to make up for being so small in physical stature. Sometimes I find it a pleasure to take people like this down a peg. And just a couple of days after starting this job, I'd decided to test this lame's personal waters.

"Hey assholes," he'd called out. He'd considered "asshole" the group nickname for those of us that were just temps. "I don't care what anybody else says in this place, okay? I gotta lotta shit that's gotta get done around here. When it's quittin' time, I go. Fuck overtime. My nights are mine. So no matter what they give ya' to do in the office... If I need ya' to help me out, ya' help me out. Remember that, fellas. No matter what, I always come first."

I just laughed and joked, "No wonder your girlfriend always looks so disappointed."

Hiyooooooooooo! :)

Theatrical Reviews
Brazil: The Director's Cut (1985) ****
Predators **1/2
Red **1/2

The Films of Akira Kurosawa
Sanshiro Sugata II (1945) ****
Rhapsody in August (1991) ***1/2
Madadayo (1993) ****

Films of the "1980's"
Miracle Mile (1988) ****
Brainstorm (1983) ***1/2
D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) ***1/2
Big Shots (1987) ***
Outland (1981) ***
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) **1/2
The Manhattan Project (1985) **1/2
Cloak & Dagger (1985) **1/2
Weird Science (1986) **1/2
Capricorn One (*1979) **1/2
Runaway (1984) **1/2
Cobra (1986) **1/2
The Philadelphia Experiment (1986) **
Silent Running (*1972) **
Dreamscape (1983) **
Spacecamp (1986) **
Firewalker (1986) *

DVD/Home Video
Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition ****
Midnight Run (1988) ****
The Long Goodbye (1973) ***1/2
Michael Clayton (2008) ***1/2
New York, I Love You ***1/2
K-20 (Japan, 2008) ***1/2
Oleanna (1993) ***1/2
The Girlfriend Experience (2009) ***
Goemon (Japan, 2009) ***
Timeline (2003) ***
Next (2007) ***
The Bogey Man (UK, 1992) **1/2
My Name Is Bruce (2007) **1/2
Deja Vu (2006) **1/2
Bangkok Dangerous (2008, USA) **
Babylon A. D. *1/2
Angel of Death (2009) *

Literature
The Rum Diary (Hunter S. Thompson) ***1/2
No Sleep Till Wonderland (Paul Tremblay) ***
On The Road (Jack Kerouac) ***

Music/Spoken Word
The Social Network (score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross) ***1/2
The Runaways: Music from the Motion Picture ***1/2
Hal Hartley: Soon (Music from the Play) ***1/2
The Blue Note 7: Mosaic ***1/2
Juliana Hatfield: How To Walk Away ***
Edy (score by Nils Petter Molvaer) ***
Bob Dylan: Modern Times ***
Lisa Gerrard: Departum ***
Chris Isaak: Mr. Lucky ***
Eric Clapton: Clapton ***
Assault Girls (score by Kenji Kawai) **1/2
Chris Isaak: Live at the Filmore **1/2

Video Games
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (PS2) ***1/2

Board Games
Back To The Future: The Card Game (Looney Labs) ***
Rory's Story Cubes (Gamewright) ***
Pass The Popcorn ***

Internet
Star Trek (2009) Review (Red Letter Media) ***

Remembering

2010-09-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

On September 11th, I was living outside Boston with my cousin for a brief time and working on Mass Ave & Newbury in the city. Somewhere on the 30 minute walk from my cousin's place to the Commuter Rail Station for work, Flight 11 collided with the North Tower. Everyone at the Station was silently huddled around the coffee & muffin window, where the clerk’s little black & white portable TV was playing the live video feed of the thick bellows of smoke pouring from the wreckage. Whispers of “What happened?” and “Oh my God” began echoing through the station every few moments as more people came in and were hit with the news…

The MBTA commuter rail train finally arrived and the stunned commuters boarded, saddened, but not yet in possession of the rest of the story. At this point only the first flight had hit. Listening to the live radio reports while on the train, I waited for more news. And then Flight 175 hit the South Tower.

I must have shouted something aloud. The others in my train car, without radios of their own to hear what was happening, turned and looked at me... I was the one to inform them that the country was now under attack.

Arriving in the city a few minutes later, everyone was looking up into the sky. Granted, we were hundreds of miles away from Ground Zero, but the news had by then been released that two of the planes had come from Boston and at this time nobody knew what to expect. It had also been released that the F.A.A. had issued a no-fly order across Boston… and it was with shock that as I passed through Copley that I heard a Jet in the sky moving over the city. Thankfully, it was nothing: maybe the last commuter plane to land at Logan or maybe a passing Military plane scrambling to action… But there was a brief moment of fear that the Prudential or John Hancock buildings, between which I happened to have been walking at that moment, could have been next. The next two planes fell, ending scores of lives and compounding fright everywhere... The fear of that morning hit nationwide. And nobody felt safe.

Nine years later, here we are. Last night, I actually had a dream regarding the work now beginning anew at Ground Zero. As often happens with dreams, I recall almost nothing. But I do remember standing on Trinity Place near Liberty Street, looking down to a sub-street level of ground, where a combination of grass and construction were visible. In the dream, there were no skyrise towers but a sort of combination of retail/office space and public parks with trees and fountains. The curious part, to me, was that it was sub-street leveled, the way it would seem now if you were there looking down into the foundation -- as if, in this dream, these new structures were purposefully built this way as a reminder that, although some tall glass-and-steel monolith could have been erected there, it was more important to remember that and those who once lied beneath.

I'll actually be visiting New York City tonight and most of tomorrow on one of the typical walking trips. I'm planning on crossing the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise, walking the streets of Washington Square, the High Line, Central Park, the Strand, maybe Columbia University or Roosevelt Island. I'm not sure if I'll make it to Ground Zero. If I do, though, much of the aforementioned commuter rail trip will probably come back to me again. More so than last night's dream. Sometimes it goes that way, though. Sometimes we more clearly remember the nightmares.

May God, or who-and-whatever you happen to believe in, bless New York City, this whole world of ours… and all of you.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

2010-08-29T21:50:00.001-07:00

Time to lighten up the blog a little, here. Instead of dwelling upon pasts, let's dive into our presents. It occurs to me that in these confusing times there are a few key sensations, objects, moments, concepts... Things that make the world a better place. Things that inhabit us, that drive us, that make us happy. What am I into, these days? Let's have a look...

Music: In All Its Various Styles and Forms
I mentioned some time ago how I've been trying to pay more attention to music lately. Not just passively hearing but actively listening to every subtle lyric written, nuance played and note sung. A good set of headphones can be key, but nothing beats just lying back in a comfortable, outstretched position and hearing a low moaning saxophone, rumbling team of drums or angelic vocal tone. Be it Chicago blues, an orchestral film score, synth with spoken word or totally-awesome 80's, it's all food for the ears. Especially on vinyl. More on that, soon...

Good Readin'
Haruki Murakami (whom I've mentioned plenty, already), Jonathan Lethem, David Mamet, Paul Auster, Takeshi Kitano, Elmore Leonard, John Updike. These are a few of the authors whose work I've accumulated over the last year or so. Though the time of accumulating the above that was required is nothing compared to the time needed to actually complete the task of actually reading them, the work is always worth the wait and effort. No Sleep Till Wonderland by Boston author Paul Tremblay is currently inhabiting my consciousness. The story of Mark Genevich, a narcoleptic PI in South Boston is alternately sad, amusing, dark and experimental. This volume is the second in a series, following the wonderful The Little Sleep. I hope for many more.

Bed, Bath and Beyond
Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and giggle. I'm as surprised as you are. For a guy who has never actually owned a home and is starting to wonder if he ever will, I've become curiously interested in... well, for lack of a better term, "growing up." Tired of living like a college kid, the way I have for so long, I've become more interested in flow and design. From properly purchased clothes hangers (instead of stealing them from laundromats), new pillowcases and pillow covers (the idea of a "cover" under a "case" was new to me), to a magnetic reminder board, cedar blocks and what might be one of the greatest inventions of all-time: a self-frosting drink mug... every journey is a new step into a larger world. No longer embarrassed of my immediate environment (my room, that is), I am currently proud of its seamless organization and emotional comfort. And, as Henry Rollins has said about this very topic, I'm shocked to find that I might actually "have taste." Though I did have to ask my buddy Awesome Jen what the deal was with the skirts and sashes in the new bed set. I mean; pillows I don't necessarily use? Insanity.

omgposters.com
A terrific website, updated often, that offers great work by graphic artists around the world regarding an infinity of subjects. Many of them are short runs of a dozen or two and typically they all feature links to the personal sites of the individual artists. While I have yet to actually buy anything from the site, I consider it a daily necessity to visit this wondrous virtual gallery.

Trader Joe's
Chicken fried rice. Sushi party platters. Yellow corn chips and chunky salsa. Opera Cake. Even the effing ketchup is noticeably great. And it's a nine minute walk away. Awwww yeah.

"Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper
Though I'd unknowingly seen the image and its many parodies over the years, it wasn't until seeing the Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven some time ago that I'd heard the artist's name. Spectacularly designed and shot with his late-period aesthetic cited as a primary influence, the film led me to a marked-down coffee-table book of Hopper's life work. I'd always been in love with night scenes on city streets, both in my own photography and in my travels. Only recently did I reconnect with Nighthawks as I realized that the painting's greatness had permeated so many other facets of art, including the short story The Killers by Ernest Hemingway and the Tom Waits album Nighthawks at the Diner. Finally securing a decent print of the 1942 classic not one week ago, I've also picked up a little tome called Staying Up Much Too Late by Gordon Thiessen, which is said to be "a personal meditation on Hopper's most famous painting." Very much looking forward to losing some sleep with that one. On a related note: I'm also liking Georgia O'Keefe's paintings of New York City. Speaking of which...

Autumn in NYC
I'm counting the days. :)

What about you? What are you into, right now?

Theatrical Reviews
The Big Lebowski (1998) ****
Beverly Hills Cop (1984) ****
Die Hard (1988) ****
The Girl Who Played With Fire ***1/2
Inception ***1/2

DVD/Home Video
Twin Peaks: The Complete Series ****
Ghost in the Shell 2.0 (Japan) ****
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence ****
The Fantastic Mr. Fox ****
Possible Films 2 (Hal Hartley) ***1/2
Wall-E ***1/2
Bitch Slap ***
Bad Guys **1/2
Assault Girls (Japan) **

Literature
The Little Sleep (Paul Tremblay) ***1/2

Music/Spoken Word
Stax: 50th Anniversary Celebration ****
Yoko Kanno: Space Bio Charge ****
Tom Waits: Nighthawks in the Studio (1976, Radio Broadcast) ***1/2
Darker Than Black (score by Yoko Kanno) ***1/2
Inception (score by Hans Zimmer) ***1/2
Henry Rollins: Everything ***1/2
Morphine: At Your Service ***1/2
The Last Airbender (score by James Newton Howard) ***
Bobby Byrd: On The Move ***

New York Noir

2010-05-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

I had no idea what to expect.

Late October in New York can be a beautiful thing. The leaves turning in Central Park. The chill in the air making hot coffee a survival necessity. Sights and sensations like this were taking a backseat on this particular day, as I had more pressing things on my mind as I moved north past Columbus Circle toward one of the more famous museums in the city. I'd arrived in Manhattan an hour or so earlier on one of my typical NYC excursions. Usually on such trips I give myself something specific to accomplish; seeing a film in a certain theater or maybe stopping off at a specific book store or movie location. Something concrete. Tangible. And that would happen later, if time permitted. That day was different. That day I wasn't in the city to see something. It was to see some one.

Flashback a couple of months. It's late summer, and life ain't so good. I'm working a dead-end retail gig for what may have been one of the worst companies to ever corporately pimp a college graduate that was too good for the place to begin with. You've probably heard of them. Chances are you've shopped there at least once. Anyway, twelve-hour shifts that lasted past midnight for wages designed to keep a worker desperate and demoralized were the company norm. Situations like this also tend to lead to loneliness. Ever try to date when your work schedule can change on an hourly basis, with no pocket money to cover neither dinner nor a movie? No? Don't bother. It's not a recommended lifestyle to seek out.

These situations require escape, whenever and however one can find it. New York became my escape. My place to run. To breathe and feel and be in-the-moment. Someone at the store told me about the inexpensive Chinatown bus system from Boston to New York. This was before BoltBus and Megabus started, back when there was only one, single, Chinese owned-and-operated company making such an offer: ten bucks each way. I looked (and continue to look) to most every NYC getaway as an adventure. A good friend had gone so far as to relocate to Brooklyn and found what seemed by most anyone's standards to be a great life with a great lady in a great part of the city. And he very kindly presented to me what sounded like a great opportunity -- a job in a field rather like my preferred own (film & video making) at his well-financed and appointed place of business.

The job sounded great and I started making the right calls, preparing my resume and such. I'd decided when I'd applied for the job that sometime soon I'd have to take a quick day trip into Manhattan and have a look at the place that was hiring; see if I could find it, see how it looked, give myself a little sneak preview of the life I'd hopefully be leading in the not too distant future. The job was far from destined to be mine at this point. I still had to jump through all the hoops of a phone interview, written materials and such. But it felt so good to even be considered for the gig... I was feeling pretty strong. Stronger than I had in months.

That's probably what brought me to the Internet. Working in retail had led to that aforementioned loneliness, and I realized after a string of failed dating scenarios that finding Ms. Right while asking if she'd "please take care of her late fees today" was not going to happen in this all-too-brief lifetime. After hearing about something altogether new to me at the time called Craigslist, I considered my "soon-to-be-in NYC" status and decided to place an ad. A personal ad. In the New York listings.

I'd done this a few other times on a few other sites, more as an experiment than anything that could be likened to a search hoping for results. More to the point, I'd often place ads as a form of amusement. Like fishing. Just to see what kind of responses I'd get. Sometimes I'd place ads "in character" of a maniac, using a bizarre sense of language or in the forms of essays with titles like "Ten Great Reasons to Do It in Public Parks." Totally goofball and totally juvenile. Like performance art. Put the shit out there, see what happens. This time, though, was going to be different. Time to speak from the heart, put myself out there, truthfully and honestly. If nobody responds (and I suspected they wouldn't) it wouldn't be for my lack of trying. I dug deep, described myself in detail, listed my wants, my desires, my perceived weaknesses, my known strengths, what I sought in life and what I thought I could provide. Then I hit "post message" and awaited what I thought would be a whole lot of nothing.

...And then she responded. Let's call her "Layla," not her real name.

Layla was single, a couple of years younger. Not originally from New York, having moved there a few years before with her family and now living with her brother in the Bronx, if I remember it correctly. Her brother was a soldier in the Middle East which left the apartment pretty much hers for months at a time. Layla was Hispanic on her father's side and Japanese on her mother's and had responded as such in her first e-mail to me when I mentioned that I was a big fan of Asian film and interested in Japanese culture. Our first e-mails were about our lives in our respective cities. Shared interests, ideals... Getting to know you simple talk. She worked in retail too but in a higher position than mine. A buyer for a well-known Manhattan museum's gift shop. "You know the one with the giant skeleton in the lobby? That one." she'd told me. I'd never been there but told her it sounded like a sweet world she lived in: a good job, nice place, happy life. A bodega was just downstairs and sometimes she'd run down there barefoot for the occasional treat or instant noodle soup and she was popular with her neighbors who'd watch out for her from time to time -- sweet, single girl alone in the urban jungle that she was.

Layla also introduced to me to the work of Haruki Murakami, famed Japanese novelist and jazz aficionado." His work really speaks to me. He writes a lot about loneliness, about being young in the city, seeking human connections. He's got a supernatural sort of feel, sometimes. Writes a lot about music... But it's the yearning in his work that gets to me." This sounded like the author for me. "I know from yearning," I thought to myself. She gave me his website URL and I checked it out, immediately intrigued by the art design, the text, the colors and sounds. Easily navigated, it even features some creative art by the author himself and has neat little virtual cats strolling about the bottom of the frame, adding a comfy vibe to the electronic communique. It's a simple and elegant site and is still online, today. You should have a look, if you're intrigued. http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/

Layla had a dark streak, though, too. She said that she loved her Mother but that the woman was old=fashioned and as such had very old-fashioned ideas about her daughter's life. She hemmed to the old ways, was very controlling and even considered an arranged marriage to be the proper way to a relationship of longevity. "I don't wish my Mother were dead, but I wouldn't mind if she'd just vanish like my Dad did." I can't recall where his story had lead but I do recall him no longer being in the picture as a patriarchal influence.

Something about the Internet has always given me pause. The fact that when people meet and communicate, you don't really know what you're getting. Someone who seems like a calm, collected, genial sort can often turn out to be as unpredictable and dangerous as the unctuous drunk at the end of the bar. This is true of both sexes. And as I became fond of saying after a couple of meetings with women online, "Nothing counts until the face-to face." That's when a lot of things become clear. The smile, the warmth, the body language, the courtesy, the truth. These things are much harder to fake in-person than online. The Internet, we all know, can be an illusion used to make you who you purport to be rather than who you are. And really, the Internet being what it is, a person can just use their anonymity to vanish into thin air once they tire of the game. Honesty can be hard to come by. So, that in mind, I must admit to keeping a certain amount of emotional distance with Layla. I was always truthful and honest, but I'm often the kind of guy who keeps some more personal things close to the vest until I'm comfortable enough to let it all out. At some point we exchanged photos. She referred to me as "cute" (I can't hear that one often enough, though I don't often feel it's true) and she was quite a knockout, herself. Long black hair, bright eyes, great smile, a street smart combination of cultures and attitudes.

After a few e-mails we began talking on the phone, often late into the night and about anything and everything no matter the context or topic. On one of our first calls, she'd hit a nerve of mine that dug deep...

"This is a tough town. You'd better be ready for it, if the job comes through for you."
"I am," I replied. "I've been training for New York life for a couple of years, now."
"And we women can be harsh. You'd better have a lot to give a woman."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that. Granted, I had almost nothing tangible to offer. Nothing of value, no job just yet, no money, nowhere to live... though I'd looked at Roosevelt Island a little.

"We have our pick of the best here, Matty. The best looking, the best educated, the best finances, the best in bed... Anyone less than perfect, why should we bother?"
"Well, at least I'm a good fella," I offered. "Truthful, warm and genuinely decent."
"Hah! So what? Lots of men are. You'd better get real if you expect to get someone in this city. If you're not perfect you're out the door, honey. What do you have to offer?"

I was (and still am) far from perfect by my own standards and most other people's, I'd assume. And though I'm a lot further along nowadays, I was at rock bottom in the part of my life in which I'd heard these words from Layla. A shell of a man is what I was and those words cut straight through me like knives. I felt my world start closing in on me. What did I have to offer? Not a whole lot, realistically. Everything she said had the terrible ring of unavoidable truth. My depression threw its weight on me right then and there... I remember the sensation of a sudden heat as my temperature rose, my pulse quickening with the deepest sorrow... "I really don't have anything to offer," I thought to myself. "Who am I kidding? This is pointless..." It's amazing how fast the darkness of negativity can leap upon you when it's let out of the cage. "I, uh... Yeah, I'm tired... I'm gonna let you go and head off to bed," I told her.

Suddenly on the turn of a dime, Layla sounded as if she suddenly realized what her words had done to me. Something in my tone, my newly-wavering voice. I think she'd heard how crestfallen I'd become in that moment. "No, no, wait baby... Don't leave me," she cried out. And she sounded different, too. Like a similarly saddened woman who truly didn't want me to disappear after such an exchange. "I didn't mean that sweetness has no value. I'm sorry." We got past it and talked for a while more before whispering to one another more sweetly and suggestively, off to sleep. "Night night, Laylas..." "Nighty night, Matty..."

This went on for a few weeks. We'd discuss the possibility of my coming to stay with her in the city for a long weekend coming up and her coming to Boston for the first time. We'd get under our covers in unison in our beds so many miles apart and... sometimes, yes, we'd get into a little naughty talk. (We were adults and entitled to whatever pleasures we could find on such long nights. Life is short, you know?)

It turned out the job I'd wanted was soon no longer available, the manager having decided to promote from-within rather than hire someone from the outside. My friend in Brooklyn was very apologetic that things didn't end up coming together, explaining that I was probably better off considering the particular person I'd be working for and all. "No hard feelings," I assured him. "Something else will come up. I'll get to NYC someday, don't you worry." Not long after that, the scenario that I foresaw came to be... Layla disappeared.

No more e-mails, no more calls. I'd tried calling her a few times, left a few messages that went unreturned. But I'd sort of thought this might happen... again, the nature of the Internet being what it was. In the coming days I found myself in a bookstore and decided to check something out by this author Layla had recommended to me, this Haruki Murakami. Looking over the write-ups on the book jackets, I'd decided that the novel Dance Dance Dance sounded the most promising...

"In this propulsive novel by the author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and The Elephant Vanishes, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work in any language fuses science fiction, the hard-boiled thriller, and white-hot satire into a new element of the literary periodic table. As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Haruki Murakami's protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls; plays chaperone to a lovely teenaged psychic; and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man. Dance Dance Dance is a tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through the cultural Cuisinart that is contemporary Japan, a place where everything that is not up for sale is up for grabs."

This all sounded intriguing. I bought a copy and ended up loving it, eventually going on to read every English-translated Murakami book and essay I could get my hands on. The surreality, the pop art, lit and music references, the window into another culture that I so respected, the humanity... I was hooked from Dance Dance Dance, on. Much of Murakami's work involves people appearing and vanishing from other people's lives, and the searches for closure of the protagonists. And that got me thinking. I had no sense of closure from my time knowing Layla. She, too, just disappeared. That was her right, certainly. Life holds no promises and one must learn to let go when things don't go their particular way. And yet, I did think about trying to find her on one of my trips to New York. Not to bother her in any way, but to thank her. To thank her for her time, to thank her for introducing me to the author who's work had such a profound effect upon me, and to let her know that all was well. Maybe I'd get to see her smile that great smile, in-person. That would be fine. That would be a silver lining on a cloudy day.

Flashforward back to Late October. She'd told me she was a buyer at that museum gift shop. I figured if I got into NYC at about 11:00 am, it'd take me an hour or so to get uptown and maybe I'd see her when she wasn't too busy at work. I got off the subway and moved north past Columbus Circle toward the aforementioned famous museum. There were helicopters all through the sky over Central Park and a slight terror of confusion as people on the street whispered things like "airplane" and "crashed on the East Side." It turned out this was the day a few years back where a professional baseball player had lost control of his private plane and collided with an apartment building in the East 80's. Overcast clouds gave the moment a surreal quality as the dozen or so news choppers hovered all over the area. A little dark, a little ominous.

I found my way to the museum and entered the gift shop where people were talking about what had happened outside. I checked myself out in a window reflection, making sure I wasn't too unpresentable.

"Can I help you?" asked the nearby gift shop employee. She approached me with a helpful smile. Bright haired, probably in her late 40's or early 50's, stylish and sincere.
"Hi, just looking around... I was wondering, Is Layla working today?"
"Who?"
"Layla. One of your buyers?"
"We don't have a Layla working here."

She went on the say that she'd been working at the gift shop for the last four years and knew the buyers well, who were men. As far as she knew, there had never been any Laylas working there, ever.

Walking outside again a few minutes later, a few of the helicopters were still doing their laps high above the park. A heavy rain began pouring almost immediately and I didn't have an umbrella on me. A passing street vendor was selling them for five dollars apiece. I paid him a fiver and opened one up, crossing into Central Park as others hid under eaves and doorways trying not to get soaked in the falling showers. A few dozen yards into my walk through the park, I realized that I was fine with how things had just gone. I'd always considered the possibility that it would all go down that way. My mind works in a way that tries to see various conceivable outcomes to various situations, so I knew that the possibility that Layla wasn't being truthful about something was in fact a distinct possibility. And in the end, it didn't matter so much...

I didn't hold a grudge, I didn't much feel used or abandoned. After all, I had my guard up to a certain extent as well. In fact, if there was any sorrow in my heart, it was more for her. For not being able to let someone in as I had prepared to be. I was sorry that I couldn't thank her. For whatever moments we'd shared, for introducing me to a great author whom I'm still a fan of to this day... I have no idea what she was truthful about and what she wasn't. Did she really live in the Bronx? Were the photos she sent me really of her? Did she have a brother? Or was she maybe married? With kids? Was she a little nutty? Or just lonely? How much was reality and how much was fantasy? What was the truth? Well... the truth was, I'd never know.

And truthfully, I was pretty much fine with it. There might have been a darkening sky above me that day and heavy rain falling from above. And maybe the hero of this New York Noir didn't get the girl in the end. But then again Noir heroes rarely do get the girl in the end, do they? Lies were told. But some truths were told, too. And a connection was made, be it however brief, and a life was changed through a connected experience through literature. Possibly for the better. Hopefully two lives were changed, possibly for the better... if only for a little while.

That's a sort of a silver lining on a cloudy day, right there.

Theatrical Reviews
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ****
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ****
Metropolis (1927, Germany) ****
Back to the Future (1985) ****
Rashomon (1950, Japan) ****
Hubble 3D (IMAX) ***1/2
The Lost Skeleton Returns Again ***
Breathless (1950, France) ***
Knight and Day ***
The Runaways ***
Iron Man 2 ***
Splice ***
Salt ***
Kick Ass **1/2
The Last Airbender **

The Films of Akira Kurosawa
High and Low (1963) ****
Red Beard (1964) ***
Dodes'Ka-Den (1970) ***
Dersu Uzala (1975) ****
Kagemusha (1980) ****
Ran (1985) ****
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) ****

DVD/Home Video
Mystery Train: The Criterion Collection ****
North By Northwest (1959) ****
On The Waterfront (1954) ****
Carlito's Way (1993) ****
Key Largo (1948) ****
Smoke (1995) ****
Blue In The Face (1995) ****
Bodyguards and Assassins (Hong Kong) ***1/2
Miami Vice: The Prodigal Son (1985) ***1/2
Synecdoche, New York (2008) ***1/2
The Road Warrior (1981) ***1/2
The Big Sleep (1946) ***1/2
The Verdict (1982) ***1/2
Manhunter (1985) ***1/2
Kikujiro (Japan) ***1/2
Bird (1988) ***1/2
Iron Man ***1/2
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) ***
Big Bang Love: Juvenile A (Japan, 2005) ***
Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder ***
Henry Rollins: You Saw Me Up There! ***
Henry Rollins: San Francisco 1990 ***
Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) ***
The Night of the Hunter (1955) ***
Shanghai Triad (1994, China) ***
Kaiju Big Battel: All Out War ***
Lust, Caution (2008, China) ***
Cassandra's Dream (2007) ***
The Last Starfighter (1984) ***
Time (2006, South Korea) ***
X-Men Origins: Wolverine ***
Prince of the City (1981) ***
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) ***
44 Minutes (TV, 2002) ***
Little Big Soldier (HK) ***
Kids Return (Japan) ***
The Big Heat (1953) ***
Sea of Love (1989) ***
Shakedown (1988) ***
Public Enemies ***
Dark City (1998) ***
14 Blades (HK) ***
Trucker (2008) ***
Ip Man 2 (HK) ***
Killshot (2008) ***
24: Season 7 ***
Kaiju Big Battel: More Better Fighto! **1/2
A Scene at the Sea (Japan) **1/2
The Storm Warriors (HK) **1/2
Miami Vice: Season 5 **1/2
Night Moves (1976) **1/2
Nighthawks (1981) **1/2
Predator 2 (1990) **1/2
Sunshine (2007) **1/2
Dune (1984) **1/2
Julia (2008) **1/2
Deception **
Hell Ride **
Killing Me Softly *1/2
Bodyguard Kiba 2 (2005, Japan) *1/2

IMAX NASA Films
Hail Columbia (1981) ***1/2
The Dream Is Alive (1985) ****
Blue Planet (1990) ***
Destiny In Space (1994) ***1/2
Mission To Mir (1997) ***
Space Station 3D (2002) ***1/2
Magnificent Desolation (2007) ***

Rifftrax
The Dark Knight **1/2

Literature
How To Go To Hell (Matt Groening) ****
Boston Noir (Dennis Lehane, Editor) ***1/2
Will & Abe's Guide to the Universe (Matt Groening) ***
Perchance To Dream (Robert B. Parker) ***
Hear The Wind Sing (Haruki Murakami) ***
Pinball, 1973 (Haruki Murakami) ***
Tales From The Scriptorium (Paul Auster) **

Music/Spoken Word
Dexter Gordon: Round Midnight Original Soundtrack (1986) ****
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - 2010 Remasters ****
Sam & Dave: The Best of Sam & Dave (1969) ****
Eric Clapton: Crossroads Box Set (1988) ****
Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique (1989) ****
Henry Rollins: Get in the Van (1999) ****
John Lee Hooker: The Healer (1989) ****
John Coltrane: Blue Train (1957) ****
Henry Rollins: Live At McCabe's ****
Jim Morrison and The Doors: An American Prayer (1978) ***1/2
Jimmy Vaughan: Plays Blues, Ballads and Favorites ***1/2
Tony Schwartz: The New York Taxi Driver (1962) ***1/2
Henry Rollins: Live at the Westbeth Theater ***1/2
The Jeff Healey Band: See The Light (1988) ***1/2
MC Chris: Part Six; Parts 1, 2 & 3 (2009) ***1/2
Henry Rollins: Spoken Word Guy (2010) ***1/2
The Best of The Doors (1985) ***1/2
Eric Clapton: August (1987) ***1/2
Henry Rollins: Sweatbox ***1/2
Bobby "Blue" Bland: Blues You Can Use (1987) ***
Henry Rollins: Short Walk On A Long Pier ***
Rufus Thomas: Did You Heard Me? (1972) ***
Bobby Bland: Blues You Can USe (1979) ***
David Lynch Presents: Fox Bat Strategy ***
Mark Knopfler: Comfort and Joy (1985) ***
Eric Clapton: Behind the Sun (1985) ***
Bob Dylan: Street Legal (1978) ***
Henry Rollins: Big Ugly Mouth ***
MC Chris: Is Dead (2008) ***
MC Chris: Apple Tummy (2009) **1/2
MC Chris: Goes To Hell (2010) **1/2
Liz Phair: Funstyle (2010) **1/2

Internet
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (redlettermedia.com) ****
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones Review (redlettermedia.com) ***
Avatar Review (redlettermedia.com) ***
Baby's Day Out Review (redlettermedia.com) ***1/2

The Times, It's Been A Changin'.

2010-03-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting my favorite city on this big blue/green marble of ours... New York. The City of Manhattan. NYC. The Big Apple. 'Twas time for the New York Toy Fair -- pictures hopefully coming soon -- and some of my work buddies and I got to hang in the city for the shortest of time. A little running around had to be done, as all work and no play makes Matty a dull boy.

I stopped into Kinokuniya Books over at Bryant Park; an amazing Japanese bookshop that special-ordered me a pair of rare Haruki Murakami novels, making the transaction the single best customer service experience I've ever had. (Thanks, Mitzi!) Picked up some Paul Auster and David Mamet, nice n' cheap, at the Strand Bookstore; the biggest and best new and used bookstore I've ever visited. And I snuck in just enough time at my absolute favorite place to eat in NYC, the Tick-Tock Diner on 34th, where I devoured a cheeseburger so happily and audibly that the people in the next booth heard me groan in what was, by all accounts, practically a burgergasm.

One spot I didn't have time to visit, though, was Times Square. No biggie, I felt. I've been there on more than a few occasions and had some other targets in mind with what few hours I had left before the 11pm Boston bus. Getting back home the next day, I spoke to some of the coworkers who did have time to see the famous commercial tourism district for their first time... and we got to talking about what they felt was it's relative "smallness" or "pretty-okay-but-not-as-awesome-as-they-expected-ness." For whatever reason, they weren't blown away like I was my first time under the lights and in the midst of the traffic.

Never having gotten the chance to visit NYC until the early 1990's, it occurred to me that most of the Times Square images that I'd had in my mind from before that point came from watching TV and movies over the years. That got me thinking about all the changes Times Square has been through over time. And that got me started on looking around online for shots of the area over the last 40 years or so...

So, after an hour or so of searching around Flickr, Yahoo Images and the like, I submit to you this small collection of photos taken -- by others -- during my lifetime, 1970-present. Nothing too deep for you, this bloggy time around. Just a collection of images I like looking at that also might lend the viewer some historical significance regarding one of New York's most illuminating landmarks... as well as a little bonus music video that I just discovered this week with some really great shots of the city. And Alicia Keys playing piano under the lights of NYC is pretty much the definition of "great shot," innit? :)

Theatrical Film Reviews
The Fantastic Mr. Fox ****
Black Dynamite ***1/2
Shutter Island ***1/2
Up In The Air ***1/2
The Road ***
Avatar ***
Where The Wild Things Are **1/2
Cop Out *1/2

The Films of Akira Kurosawa
Seven Samurai (1954) ****
Throne of Blood (1957) ****
The Lower Depths (1957) ****
The Hidden Fortress (1958) ***1/2
The Bad Sleep Well (1960) ****
Yojimbo ***1/2
Sanjuro ****

DVD/Home Video
This Is Spinal Tap (1981) ****
Bad Lieutenant (1993) ****
Grindhouse (2009) ****
Get Shorty (1995) ****
Zodiac (2007) ****
Watchmen ****
Gran Torino ***1/2
Steven Seagal: Lawman (Season One) ***
The Monster Squad (1987) ***
Johnny Handsome (1989) ***
Terminator Salvation ***
Bitch Slap (2009) ***
Kaiju Big Battel: Brooklyn Double Danger **1/2
Kaiju Big Battel: Danger Strikes Back! **1/2
Glory To The Filmmaker! (Japan) **1/2
Confucius (Hong Kong) **1/2
Yatterman (Japan) **1/2
Vengeance (HK) **1/2
Righteous Kill **1/2
The Achievers **1/2
I Come With The Rain (France) **
A Dangerous Man **
Mulberry Street **
Be Cool (2005) **
The Keeper **
Captivity *
The Happening (2008) 1/2 star

Rifftrax
The Happening ***

Video Games
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (PS2) **1/2

Literature
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) ***
Kafka on the Shore (Karuki Murakami) ***
Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing ***
Make-Believe Town (David Mamet) ***

Good, Bad and Ugly

2009-12-13T00:39:00.000-08:00

Keepin' busy... Sharin' the wealth...

Theatrical
Alien: The Director's Cut ****
The Thing (1982) ****
Prince of Darkness (1986) ***1/2
Halloween (1978) ***1/2
They Live (1988) ***1/2
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans ***
A Christmas Carol: Disney 3D (2009) ***
Inglourious Basterds ***
The Box ***
Thirst (Korea) ***
A Serious Man **1/2
Surrogates **1/2
The House of the Devil *1/2

The Films of Akira Kurosawa
Sanshiro Sugata (1943) ****
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945) ***
No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) ***1/2
One Wonderful Sunday (1947) ****
Drunken Angel (1948) ****
The Quiet Duel (1949) **1/2
Stray Dog (1949) ****
Scandal (1950) **1/2
Rashomon (1950) ***1/2
The Idiot (1951) ***
Ikuru ***1/2
I Live In Fear ***

DVD/Home Video
L.A. Confidential: 2-Disc Special Edition (1997) ****
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) ****
Homicide: Criterion Collection (1991) ****
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie: Criterion Collection (1976) ***1/2
Samurai Rebellion: Criterion Collection (1967, Japan) ***1/2
Withnail & I: Criterion Collection (1986, UK) ***1/2
Life On Mars: The Complete Series (BBC) ***1/2
I Am So Proud Of You (Don Hertzfeldt) ***1/2
Kill!: Criterion Collection (1968, Japan) ***1/2
Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (1980) ***1/2
Cloverfield ***1/2
Ashes To Ashes: Series 1 & 2 (BBC) ***
The Boat That Rocked (UK, 2009) ***
Broadway Danny Rose (1984) ***
Stardust Memories (1980) ***
Vicky Christina Barcelona ***
The Sky Crawlers (Japan) ***
Stella: Live In Boston ***
Sword of the Beast: Criterion Collection (1965, Japan) **1/2
Samurai Spy: Criterion Collection (1965, Japan) **1/2
Castaway on the Moon (Korea) **1/2
Kung Fu Chefs (Hong Kong) **1/2
Flesh and Bone (1993) **1/2
The Detective (1968) **1/2
Max Payne: Unrated **1/2
Som Tum (Thai) **1/2
Blood: The Last Vampire (2009, Japan) **
West 32nd (Korea) **
Bandidas (2006) **
Lady Cop and Papa Crook (HK) *1/2

Rifftrax
The Bourne Identity **1/2

Music
Miles Davis: The Complete "In A Silent Way" Sessions ****
Miles Davis: The Columbia Years (Vol. 1-4) ****
Big Trouble in Little China (score by Carpenter/Howarth) ****
The Detective (score by Jerry Goldsmith) ****
The Third Man (score by Anton Karas) ****
The Killers (score by Miklos Rozsa) ****
The Beatles: 2009 Remasters Box ****
The Vanishing (score by Jerry Goldsmith) ***1/2
The Sky Crawlers (score by Kenji Kawai) ***1/2
John Coltrane: Live at Birdland (1963) ***1/2
The 'Burbs (score by Jerry Goldsmith) ***1/2
Tom Waits: Glitter and Doom Live ***1/2
Alien 3 (score by Elliot Goldenthal) ***
Mark Knopfler: Get Lucky ***
Colin James Hay: Looking For Jack (1987) **1/2
Clarence Clemons: Hero (1985) **1/2

Literature
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories (Ernest Hemingway) ****
Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem) ****
Chinatown Beat (Henry Chang) ***1/2
Downtown (Ed McBain) ***1/2
The Hunted (Elmore Leonard) ***
Riding The Rap (Elmore Leonard) ***

Comics
Die Hard: Year One - #1&2 (Boom!) ***
Predator - #1&2 (Dark Horse) **1/2
Ghostbusters: Displaced Aggression - #1&2 (IDW) **

Finding Strength

2009-11-24T19:56:00.000-08:00

An Occasional Blogger's Journey
After A Rough Few Years,
Toward Feeling Like a Person Again.

Part Two: The New Religion
(please scroll down for "Part One: The Old Days")

Those were the old days. The days of healthy promise and lifelong dreams that threatened to never come true. Twelve hour shifts of grunt work in a hair net and heavy, non-slip boots. But then, as they often do, things got better.

I earned myself a position as a video editor at a nationwide press-clipping agency in the big city of Boston. It actually paid less money per-hour than the labor gigs, but it was work that was somewhat related to my field (I'd been adept at editing video since my high-school cable-access days) and it was city work. All my life, I'd been attracted to the urban life. Having grown up in a small Massachusetts town -- and on the dirt-driveway-and-swamp end of it, at that -- the concrete canyons and neon-soaked nights were always the spots my heart called home. That's natural, I suppose. They say the dream of Born Metropolitans is often the quiet little house on the tree-lined street in the country. So it seems human to me that where ever we're from and whatever we have, we often want to be somewhere and have something else.

And so it was that at the age of 24, I was going to become a Young Commuter. The lifeblood of the Metro Machine. Taking the train into the city in the morning, coming home late at night. I remember speeding my way onto Boston on the commuter rail train every morning in the beginning days, staring out the window with the wonder of a child, watching all the local towns whizzing by, excited, and shocked that none of the people around me seemed interested enough to be doing the same. I'd wonder, "How can they just bury their faces in their newspapers? How does someone ever get used to this?" A year later, some friends and I got found a tiny, cheap apartment in Boston's North End and the dream continued. I was no longer a commuter, but a Young Urbanite. The original Pizzaria Regina was my front yard. Haymarket Square and Government Center were my backyard. Boston Common was my playground. There was a rough patch at the job... Having come from a blue collar background, I was still fairly inexperienced in certain behaviors needed to survive in the office-work world, and they hadn't quite gotten used to my often out-there sense of humor, though we all warmed to each other's ways and everything got very well smoothed out. Having performed one above-and-beyond assignment after another (so conscientious was I), my raises were always top-level... and I was given the title of Evening Shift Supervisor, even though my "staff" was composed of three people, myself included.

I started making what was, to me, real money. I was never late with bills, school loans or rent, spending very little on food and night life. My best friend was a manager at the city's largest cinema at the time, so I was happily awarded free admission to pretty much any movie I liked for the better part of three years. Then I did the next logical thing. I applied for a few extra credit cards and lived the high life for a while. Paying for meals, traveling a little, buying three or four new DVDs every payday at $20.00 a pop, going on the occasional date whenever fortune smiled upon me enough. I wasn't an extreme spender, by any stretch. I didn't buy or lease any new cars. I didn't go to Las Vegas one birthday when I'd hoped to... I always made my minimum payments and on-time, behaving, in short, just like the good little consumer everyone said "kept this world going strong."

And then, one morning in August 2002, the General Manager called two of my three-person department -- that is, my direct boss Mary Anne and myself -- into the break room. With no warning and completely out-of-the-blue, the GM told us we were being laid off. Not next month or next week, either... Right now.

"Sign this form accepting this severance agreement and please be out by noon," was the overall tone. We were stunned. Mary Anne had given this company something in the neighborhood of fifteen years... and I, seven of my own. We'd become very close friends over my time in the office. After my aforementioned rough patch at the start of my employment there, we'd often joke about how many times I'd either nearly been fired or had wanted to quit. And we'd gotten past all that to become each other's friendly shoulder to lean on. There was a recession going on, if you recall, and she had just made the decision to sell her city property and try to find something less pricey. I'd left my North End apartment after a couple of years, myself, for a better but further-away residence just outside the city. Now, both our lives were effectively in limbo. We cleaned out our cubicles, jumped in her Jeep, found a beach-comber seafood tavern somewhere North of Boston and proceeded to get pretty drunk. Toasting one another for our abilities and what would surely be a new freedom of some kind, we ate and laughed until later that night... when the sadness of being chucked aside and effectively being told you weren't as necessary as you thought set in.

I'd never been let go before. Never been fired, laid off, or even reprimanded for anything very serious. Ever been laid off? If not, I don't recommend the sensation. In my case, I became sort of defiant. I knew I had to find work but I felt I wouldn't be out of work for long. Not someone of my stature and ability. A local television station or something would come along and snatch me right up, tout de suite! I signed up for unemployment right away at pretty much everyone's direction. That allotment, added to my savings (a few thousand) and so-called severance package (another couple of thousand) would be plenty to keep my bills paid and living well for the short time it would take me to find work. Like the Tom Waits song said, I was "sleepin' 'til the crack of noon, midnight howlin' at the moon." And I'd often joke that I was living the life of "Kramer" on TV's Seinfeld -- I'd just wake up and take the day's adventures however they rolled in, catching a lot of movies, not writing as often as I should have... Pretty much just being lazy. I'd never really had any kind of extended holiday as a kid or working adult, having gone from high school straight into college and working full time. I was 32 and thought I'd take it easy for a while. A few weeks, maybe. Enjoy myself.

My few months of unemployment stretched out to eighteen months. That's one and a half years of being told "thanks for stopping by" and "we'll be in-touch" by pretty much every television, radio and print organization in Boston. The recession had begun hitting everyone and nationwide hiring began to fall off.

And it's true... Rejection is a hard thing to deal with if it's all you hear. You begin to feel worthless and unnecessary... and you start to believe it. You spend your money far less freely (which is something we've all come to understand, lately). You spend a lot of time alone. You feel isolated. You spend more time in bed in the winter months, because you figure it's cold outside so why bother even getting up today? You start putting on weight again, as a body with no daily purpose simply eats and sleeps and starts caring less about itself, since nobody who's hiring seems very keen to see it, anyway. There's nobody out there who wants to see you, it feels... Nobody out there who cares. Sure you've got family, some friends, but you don't want to trouble them with what's going on, don't want anyone to know the toll this whole thing's taking upon you. You smile and say "everything's fine," hoping people don't suspect what you're really feeling... Fear and loneliness.

Then the money starts to vanish. What savings you had start to dry up. You've gone through your allowance of unemployment benefit. All the time you're out of work, you're able to keep up with bills and loans... but now it's all run out. You start looking around your room, wondering how much you could get for your personal possessions. How many CDs or books it might take for you to buy some food this week (maybe something extravagant, like hamburgers!) or cover some of the month's gas bill or rent.

Then one day you're offered a job, the only job you can get, it seems. The only job that will have you. It's at the local video store. It's for half the money you were making before, and your pay is sporadic at best since you just started and they're trying you out as a part-timer to see if you're worth keeping around in this market. The Store Manager seems a decent guy, having offered you the job sensing that you'd be a good fit there, being educated and knowledgeable. In fact, nobody there even knows a third of what you know about the business, having followed it as a hobby for the previous ten years or more, just for fun. So you're hired, for better or worse. And the real chaos begins almost immediately.

The Bill Collectors start calling. There is a special circle in hell set aside for Bill Collectors, I hope. For they are the most ruthless and despicable people I've ever had the misfortune to run across. Having had next-to-no-money for the previous two months before being hired at the Video Store, I missed two months' worth payments on each of my credit cards. Some one the minimums were only $30.00 a month, where others had skyrocketed up to $230.00 per month, which was now completely impossible amount to reach. Never mind that you've never had a problem making payments until this point. Never mind that you've been able to keep paying, mostly on-time, even though you've been out of work for nearly two years. "We don't care," is their apparent motto.

Collection agencies, I'd read somewhere during my experiences, often intentionally hire ex-convicts to work their phones, since these men have rougher, more threatening voices and can just skirt the edge of being threatening by reading from a prepared script laying out your problems and their plans for you but doing it in a scary-sounding way, as if you'd better listen up here, Charlie, or something bad might happen.

One phone call from a Collection Agency had said to me, "If you don't pay up soon, you'll have to face the Man in the Black Robe." Fearful in my naivete, I blurted out, "Who? Death ?!" The Collector quickly corrected me with, "No, stupid!! The judge!!" It may be the the only time I've ever been relieved to be called stupid.

And not long after, I got the Summons. I was being hauled into Court for refusal to live up to my credit agreement. Even though I'd worked things out with four of my five credit card companies, and even though I'd, once, again, showed my desire to keep current by keeping up with all my bills while being unemployed, I was being "brought to justice" by the powerful and the elite. Me. Someone who'd never had so much as a parking ticket as an adult. I was now The Defendant. The Criminal. This, added to the depression of feeling like a useless citizen, a lonely and undesirable male with no financial stability and unable to find romance, was beginning to really take it's toll. I went in and the court clerks and such could see almost immediately that I didn't belong there, as if they were looking at a lost child or foreign vacationer who didn't quite grasp the language or enormity of the situation. One thing lead to another and an agreement was struck... one that I stuck to, to the letter, happily paying things off as I was able. It's not that I'd ever claimed to not owe anyone any money. I did owe. And I acknowledged that. I just needed a proper schedule with which to set things right. Try telling that to a multinational organization who wants it all up front, right now. But things went as well as could be expected and were settled. Until that Collection Agency sold my case off to yet another Collection Agency, who then summoned me to court... again.

There were days when I would have to force myself out of bed and leave my room, just to feel as if I were alive. And on those days, as there was nothing else to do, I'd think. A mind with nothing to occupy it but introspection can be a dangerous thing.

How alone have you ever really felt? How long could you say it lasted? Have you ever spent a Saturday afternoon aimlessly walking though your town and the surrounding ones, hour after hour, with no destination in mind? I'd walk through neighborhoods of wealth and privilege, past million dollar homes, seeing people younger than I with families and children and wealth and privilege. I'd look at these people... and I'd seethe with jealousy. I'd see them through their windows as I shuffled down their sidewalks, seeing them have their parties with their cultured, wealthy, good-looking friends. I'd actually begrudge them their success. "Must be family money," I'd rationalize. "They look so stupid and soulless and without a single creative thought, no way they earned any of that good life on their own." And I'd realize that the last few dates I'd had were decent, but they never led to second or third dates... I'd rarely get the invite back to their place... Maybe because I was too boring for someone, since I only have a few dollars and can't afford to take anyone out to more than a film and maybe, if fate smiled upon my paycheck that week, a coffee afterwards. I'd realize I couldn't go on vacations with someone if I'd like to, or to rent a car and go out for a drive anywhere... I couldn't even visit my college friends without having one of them meet my lame ass at a train station halfway there. I'd become very solitary over this time. I'd even skipped family holidays because I'd had no ability to buy any of my nieces or nephew any presents.

I thought to myself almost daily, for nearly four years, "You're a god damn loser."

And on a few particular nights, when the moon was high and the wind was cold, I'd be walking along, alone... and I'd be crying, quietly. Not out loud, as I wouldn't want to be noticed, but on those here-and-there empty streets, it would come out. My breathing would get heavier, I'd feel my blood pressure rising, heart pounding... These are the moments it takes years to tell people about. These are the moments of feelings of worthlessness so deep and of loneliness so complete, my spirit would break down completely. There comes a point where you can't hide from it anymore. And it just takes you. Maybe for a few minutes, maybe the whole afternoon. And every sad moment that you felt before feels as if it were nothing more than a preparatory session, a dry run, for the darkness you feel now.

But then...

Something... I didn't know what. But something... kept me going.

Maybe it was that same blind, stupid hope that I felt back in the factories in The Old Days, that thing that kept me from going out on that icy lake or standing too long on the train tracks in the winter snow. That thing, that hope, that doesn't quite let you give up. And only recently did I figure out what that thing was. That thing that kills the anger, the sorrow, the depression and the hate of everything in one's dark world.

It is... yes... love. The love of friends. The love of family. The love of strangers. The fact that in these times of need, people can step up. They do step up. They do come out in force.

When I was at the Video Store, the chain itself was folding up for good. You probably read about it. We weren't a Blockbuster, but were were a close second. And every day we wondered if it would be the last. We really expected to be closed up at any time. And when it finally came down and my sadness was at a fever pitch, an all-time high... Someone came out of nowhere and offered me a new job. A customer whom I'd connected with on personal level. Someone who appreciated me at the right place and the right time. He offered me a job in another store, this time a store of wonder and intelligence and warmth and of family. And in his kindness, he helped lead the way to another person of warmth, and another, and before I knew it, my financial issues were on the turnaround back to recovery (that's a whole other story for another time). And I no longer felt like quite the loser I had been, for so very long. And at about the same time, more things in this life began coming into focus for me. I'd begun experiencing things on a whole new level again.

Sorrow and depression can filter the way one experiences their world in a huge way, and once that black curtain of fear is lifted, especially after years of that fear, it's like seeing the sun again, for the first time in forever. You smile more. You can actually feel yourself smiling more. The little things bounce off you, they don't even register. You hear music differently, suddenly for the first time really talking in the nuances of artists you took for granted. People like David Bowie and the Beatles, Miles Davis and John Coltrane... who's work has been around for decades, but you now don't simply hear it, you feel it. You walk through those neighborhoods with the million dollar homes no longer filled with hate, but with happiness.

This is not an exaggeration. As I passed down one familiar street last spring, I actually stopped for a moment in my tracks, smiled and nearly wept for a short second. It occurred to me that... the hate was gone. For everything. And for myself. That feeling I'd had almost every day for the last few years was lifted. Vanished. And I was feeling like "me" again. I'm not sure how many of you out there follow this particular statement. But I sincerely hope that none of you... and all of you... can feel it someday -- none of you, in that I wouldn't wish such a path of sorrow on anyone... and all of you, in that we should all feel this sense of the purest happiness washing over you like a warm, soothing breeze atop a high, grassy hill under the summer sun.

Driving with a close college friend one afternoon earlier this year, I remarked, "You know what? This moment, in this car, in this blue sky, on this road, on this day, driving around with you like this, dude... I'm pretty happy." He laughed it off, maybe a little uncomfortable with the emotional honesty of that moment. I helped him out and laughed a little, too. But it was real. And I think maybe he could sort of sense that. I won't say who it was, but I want to thank him for that moment.

We go through our lives in these times of sorrow, of uncertainty. We don't know if we're safe, or how long we'll be healthy, or capable of supporting ourselves. We don't tell people how we feel, We're all guilty of it, every day. Life is too short, too fragile, too precious to let fall away in silence. It's come to my attention, more and more, that there are others in my life who might be going through a similar process. Loneliness and sadness are terrible killers of the spirit. And maybe your first instinct is to keep it all down, to bury it deep inside you. But that's a mistake. You need to open up, to share it, no matter how painful it might seem. There's strength in sharing, in finding out you're not alone. I have a few friends and they're going through, or seem to be going through, their own hard times. I've been there and I can see the signs. And if there comes a time when they need to talk, to be heard, I just hope I can do for someone what some have been able to do for me. To help, to heal...

And I want to take the time to thank the following people out there in my life, all through the years, who have helped make life worth living. In no particular order: Anne, Christopher, Chris, Shawn, Maggie, Jeannie, Mark, Cricket, Tim, Tom, Barbara, Melinda, Peter, Steven, Stephen, Marg, Meagan, Mary Anne, Michael, Alvaro, Mike, Jess, Maureen, Ailis, Martin, Lara, Peter, Ellie, Lily, Scott, Amy, Rick, Lis, Michelle, Matty, David, Deborah, Brittany, Christine, Mark, Becca, Akiko, Milo, Kristin, Fok, Jess, Joan, Danielle, Andrea, Jennifer, Stacey... If I forgot your name, I'm sorry... It's 2:45 am and I've been sitting here for hours... but be assured... If, when we see each other, I smile and seem genuinely happy to see you, you're up there, too.

You are all my friends. Thanksgiving is tomorrow. When I sit and think about all the things I am thankful for, you people top the list.

Thank you for being my friends.

Thank you for saving my life.

Thank you for helping me find strength.

--Matt

Finding Strength

2009-11-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

An Occasional Blogger's Journey
After A Rough Few Years,
Toward Feeling Like a Person Again.

Part One: The Old Days

Do you know who you are? Do you really know who you are?

It's human nature for someone to think they have all the answers, to think they know everything there is to know - or need to know - about themselves, their lives, their potential, their worlds. In this life, as we grow from infancy through childhood and young adulthood, we are bombarded with the great Societal Messages. Virtue is its own reward. College is the key to prosperity and success. A penny saved is a penny earned. Good is stronger than evil. Over the last few years, the gradual disintegration of our collective perception of safety and soundness - after the events of 9/11 and the War on Terror, the economic recession, Ponzi investment fraud and many other such events - has made it become more clear to the people of our world that there are, in fact, no promises in life. No guarantees. No answers.

The last ten years have been a fairly dark time for us all. The 1980's were an interesting time to grow into adulthood, around here. We were all fed the lines that "this is America and we deserve the best!" We grew up with a perceived sense of entitlement, as if we were (or are) due nothing but good fortune, if we work hard and live right. A few years later, we leased cars and bought McMansions and flat-screen televisions because we felt we deserved them. We cheated on our lovers or got divorces because this is the land of opportunity, damn it, and if our loved ones don't agree with us on some slight non-issue when placed against the grand scheme of things then we'll find someone who will.

None of this is meant to be any sort of essay about politics, not about assigning blame nor pointing fingers. Terrible things happen all the time, but how often do they happen to you? Loss, unemployment, financial difficulty... these are facts of life. We read every day of tragedy, sickness and fear in the lives of others and we say "how terrible." What are the effects of such tragedies? How have the last few years affected you? What have been the tolls upon our souls? And how have we changed?

Some time ago, my own particular collegiate and post-collegiate employment world consisted of nothing but labor gigs in warehouses and factories. This lasted for a year or two, all after spending nearly six years in college -- an institution I was told would guarantee me a better life, and being considered a fairly decent writer, filmmaker, creative-artist, even being told by one professor that he thought I was destined to make "lasting contributions in the industry." Powerful was my sense of entitlement. And the only job I could get in my podunk town, where I had no car and no money and no family contacts to make any sort of career or life for myself, was in Manual Labor. Sweeping loading zones, running conveyor belts on assembly lines, washing buckets in warm water and bleach, illegally driving fork lifts at the direction of my bosses, being surrounded by the "lifers," people who had been stuck in this same situation for years, sometimes decades, often drunk on the job, stealing from the employers, joking about their "stupid" spouses...

One morning after working my typical overnight 7pm-to-7am shift, I arrived home, sat in a chair, looked out the window and had a very strong nervous breakdown. Shaking, laughing and crying, unable to think about anything but what seemed to be a very dark future, I collapsed into hysteria.

This had been coming for quite some time. When one is depressed -- in this case due to the unfairness of my life direction given my hard work in college and perceived so-called talent as an artist, which is fairly self-aggrandizing in a certain respect -- one's relation to his or her world can snap in a heartbeat.

People often talk and often hear about that great monster, Clinical Depression. Every day can feel like a stay in hell. Simply waking up and getting out of bed in the morning can be a torture. Many get diagnosed, receive pills and move through their lives in a medicated haze. While I've never been diagnosed with such an affliction, nor taken extended meds, I do believe I have a sense of what said people often go through. Case in point: on my way to working that overnight shift, I'd pass by a lake and over a set of railroad tracks both to and from work every day. And there were a few times when I'd thought to myself during a sub-freezing winter's moment, "I wonder how far out on that lake I could walk before the ice breaks under my feet." Or while crossing the tracks, perhaps hearing the whistle of an approaching commuter rail train, "it would be so easy to just stay on these tracks and not move."

These are the thoughts of someone who's had enough. And, in a retrospective way, they feel very... I don't want to use the term "over-dramatic" so I'll say... "childish," which isn't to say that they're not serious or terrible, but perhaps lacking in knowledge or being of a world view, at that time. When you're a kid with very limited life-experience, all you know is your own life. Your own pain. Something as seemingly minute as being unhappy in your job can seem like the end of all things. "Why go on, if this is to be my life?" I would think to myself. And I'd joke about such thoughts with certain close friends that I thought (and hoped) could handle the gallows humor of it. When you're in dispair, sometimes it helps, however briefly, to have the right people around you to help laugh it off. Not that I would have ever done anything like end it all... I might have wondered about it, but never could do it. Why? A few reasons, really.

One: The whole Catholic concept of suicide leading to an immortal soul's eternal damnation. It might sound trite but even though I've never been the regularly church-going type and I'm not sure I'd consider myself overly religious, I've always - to put it simply - appreciated the Big Man and the Big Rules. And I've always felt that some pain in-the-now was nothing compared to the possible never ending darkness of the purgatorial void.

Two: My Mom and My Friends. She, my Mother, would truly be devastated if I'd ever gone and done anything so horrible. Never mind whatever pain I might've thought I was feeling. This is a woman who's had what I think many would agree to be -- if they knew all the facts -- a very hard life, one with doubt and fear and pain and some loneliness and the occasional ray of hope and sunshine. When things were bad, and they often were, it was us against the world. I know what I mean to her... And then my Friends... There was a time when I didn't have many friends. All through high school I considered maybe three people close enough to call friends -- and one of them was an adult, a teacher who saw something of value in my artwork. In those situations where your peers just don't seem to care - if you're a heavy kid, picked on, living in State-assisted housing and a form of Federal Assistance - loneliness is the greatest potential killer that I can think of. I knew about this as a child and high-schooler here and there, but this moment of Labor Work wasn't one of those times. This moment instead, the point of my college and post-college years between 1988 and 1994, brought me many of the friends I would consider my lifetime ones. Friends I still love and cherish to this day who I hope know this as fact... Friends that might just be reading these words right now... Friends I can't do without.

Three: Blind hope. If someone removes themselves from life, they could miss something better down the line. It could be anything... Love. Art. Career. Riches. Family. Sunlight. Music. Good books and films. People. Animals... How could one know things could get better if they weren't there to see it?

Some truly unfortunate people spend their lives in famine, disease, sorrow... What right did I have to consider such an end if I simply didn't like my current situation? And yet, some do just that. My cousin did. And my step brother. Boys I played with as a child, boys I saw movies with, exchanged birthday presents with, joked about girls with. My cousin was the athlete, the talented musician, had the girlfriend, the bright future... He seemed to have it all in ways I never had and in some ways still haven't. My step brother went the other way, I'd heard; alcohol and drug addiction. Another two people in my life got into their respective cars and drove themselves into trees. One drank himself to death and died alone over a Christmas holiday. What brought them to their last breaths? What sadness made them give up?

An hour or so later after my aforementioned breakdown, I finally calmed down enough to take some medication (given to me me by someone with several other issues that required such medication) and fell asleep. The sadness of what I perceived to be a wasted life in front of me hit me hard. Not long later, I got my first adult employment opportunity , a video/audio editing job at a nationwide press clips agency, lost a little physical and emotional weight -- no small feat for someone who grew up poor, heavy and never got a date until his twenties -- and moved into adulthood and into the city of Boston with college friends. So yes, things got better for the next, oh seven years or so... (More on that, later.)

This is all backstory, though. None of this is any sort of cry for help, any sort of "poor me" attempt at attention-grabbing. I only bring it up to place a few things in context.

Sadness, fear and sorrow all take a huge toll on the human spirit. You see, much of this was all between 1993 and 1995. Years before the World Trade Center, the Taliban, Bernie Madoff, George Bush, the Failing Dollar, Ten Percent Unemployment... All the above, all that seemed so sad and harsh and important, was "only a test," compared to what would eventually come to town in all our lives. You really never know who you are -- or what you're capable of -- until the time comes. When you're feeling strong, the phrase "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" might come to mind. And maybe, for a time, you feel like you can handle anything life can throw at you. "That other stuff, that was kid stuff. I'm an adult now," you might think in such moments. "I can take anything."

We were all about to find out just what we could take. Just who we were. And just what we were made of.

To be continued...

Finding Strength

2009-09-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

An Occasional Blogger's Journey
After A Rough Few Years,
Toward Feeling Like a Person Again.

Coming Soon.

Midnight Passage

2009-08-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the window
under the cover of night
he fantasizes about love.

He knows not her face
nor the color of her eyes, her hair...
but he imagines she's there.
He knows she's there somewhere.

She comes to him at the window
and whispers "move over"
as she takes a seat next to him
and leans her body back into his.

Her hair spills across his chest
and he can feel her breathing
as the cool, night air passes over them.
He feels as if he's going to fall
asleep right then and there,
and he wonders why
he always feels this way with her.

He realizes why, after a moment.
He's been searching for this, for her,
for this feeling of being needed,
of contentment, for so many years,
of course he needs a rest, by now.

"But fear not," he whispers
into her perfectly shaped ear.
"I won't sleep forever
and once I wake up again,
I'll make you happier than you've ever been."

She smiles as their eyes slowly close
in mutual contentment... He knows
once he opens his eyes again she'll be gone,
into the night,
taking this wondrous feeling
of being needed by someone
with her.

He tries not to think about it
and silently looks forward
to their next midnight rendezvous,
sitting in the window
under the cover of night.

The Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid

2009-08-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

Looking through the past via my e-mail inbox, I'm struck with the amount of notes and passages I've never gotten around to deleting. Many are rather personal. Many are quite random. The one I'm going to present to you here, though, has something interesting in there, I think. (Maybe.) It's all in good jest, naturally, as if written by a drunken cross between Andy Kaufman and Hunter S. Thompson. But if it were real... Oh, man. What a world this could be...

A few of my friends take part in public readings of their personal childhood diaries and journals, sharing in the nostalgia of young adulthood and poking light fun at all of the things that seemed so important back then when they really weren't. Posting the following scribble might be as close to doing that as I'm likely to get. So, that said... have a seat, put your feet up, and enjoy my rambling insanity. Please excuse the ridiculous amount of all-caps text, and try to remember... Some ideas are just ahead of their time.

Sent: Thu 10/13/05 - 5:01 PM

I had an idea today for what might just be the most experimental film of all time. "Experimental" in that it follows absolutely none of the rules of natural film making or storytelling. In fact, there will BE no story. Not in a SEINFELD way. In a NO STORY OF ANY KIND way. There will be NO actors. Perhaps, right now, you're saying to yourself "No actors?" No. None. There will be PEOPLE, maybe. Or parts of people. But no actors playing characters. And no dialogue. Words, spoken. But not written.

There will also be NO DIRECTOR. The footage will have an editor (necessary, I think, considering how random the footage will be). But there will be NO rhyme or reason in the cutting, nor artistic intent. There will be no mise-en-scene, no subtext of the linking of images, and no points will be deducted for mistakes. Because if there is no plan, there can be no mistakes.

There WILL be music. But it will be random, and performed without musical instruments by non-musicians. And it will be rendered unintelligible. For instance: the "opening theme," if there is to be one, will be interrupted a great deal by other sounds from later in the film.

Imagine a film with a Hate Index that's off the charts. Rottentomatoes.com should destroy itself trying to measure how hated the film will be. The confusion and negativity surrounding it should rival the that of Vincent Gallo's THE BROWN BUNNY. Cripsin Glover's WHAT IS IT?, all the UWE BOLL movies, FAT GUY GOES NUTZOID and BIRTH OF A NATION... COMBINED.

Despite the theoretical impossibility, imagine watching a nine hour version of Jamie Lee Curtis's VIRUS, but somehow watching it ten times in a row... and ALL AT ONCE. Audiences should not only demand their money back but should demand SEVEN TIMES their money back and be crying and/or yelling and/or shaking their fists while they do so. The idea, I think, is to make THE MOST UNIVERSALLY DESPISED MOTION PICTURE OF ALL TIME

There's a certain timelessness in that. Ed Wood's been dead for years and it's about time someone knocked his lame ghost's ass off that slimy post it's been perched on. Besides, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE maybe be awful, but it's gloried and almost beloved by millions (or thousands, anyway). And if SOMEONE likes it, then to me it fails as a TRULY bad film. It must be HATED. It must be spoken of ONLY IN WHISPER. It must be the VOLDEMORT of the film industry, to borrow from Rowling -- but even MORE evil. If Voldemort is "The One Who Cannot Be Named," then that is a name of a kind, itself.

Our film, our Bastard Film (and no, that's not it's name) will have NO TITLE and NO TITLE will never be referred to. If, somehow, society deems to name it someday (like they did with Prince when he changed his handle to that SYMBOL THINGY), then that title will be refuted. Even something as simple as THE UNTITLED MOVIE or THAT MOVIE WITH NO NAME will be tarred and feathered and fed to Satan's Dogs before they ever appear on any kind of posters for the film.

Which brings me to advertising. There WILL be a campaign. Posters and a website will promote this thing, whatever it is, to the masses. I was thinking something very simple for the one sheet, like black text on black letters, or white on white, or... NO! I HAVE IT! TRANSPARENT ONE SHEETS! Nothing more than THICK CELLOPHANE! PERFECT! For text: the posters should read something like DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE and that's all. Though how one reads transparent text on a transparent poster is up for discussion. I'm leaving the content and design of the website up to XXXXX. Nobody is more suited for this task than you, XXXXX -- after all, it doesn't matter how crazy the site is. It will never be crazy ENOUGH.

Perhaps the idea behind all this would be of interest to some people out there in the world. TOUGH SHIT, WORLD! Only five people will EVER know. They are: names removed by request. And that is all. We'll have to assume new identities or at least use fake names making this thing in order to shield our loved ones from the backlash... although these loved ones will probably excommunicate us during production, anyway. No matter, pop stars and supermodels will likely offer us pleasures on an hourly basis for the sole purpose of sexing the secret out of us and releasing it the world on MTV's TRL Live or something. Hotties love bad boys. And nobody will be badder than us once the film is released. Not Manson. Not nobody.

I've concocted a cover story for the press, as follows...

"Two hundred and seventeen years from now, Earth will be visited by marauding Aliens from a distant star system, Hellbent on destroying Mankind. They will arrive in the night under silence, The word "genocide" is not strong enough for what they have in their Alien minds. They will invade, contact and destroy. And that the last possible second, one Under-Alien will discover... OUR FILM. It will advise its betters of the film. And Earth will be spared. Why? Will they love it? Will they fear it? That is uncertain. The above is all the information we have."

...As far as society goes, that's all they'll GET, too.

WE will know DIFFERENT. Here's the skinny: Maybe ALL OF THE ABOVE is a ruse. Maybe our intent SHOULD BE simply to spread the RUMOR that we're out to make THE MOST UNIVERSALLY DESPISED MOTION PICTURE OF ALL TIME. Start the website up, quietly let it worm it's way through the internet, wait for people to hear more, hit us up with questions and all, let some sort of Media Circus Swarm create itself over the film. This smacks of INTENT, though, and while I love the idea of it, I'm not sure. I'm torn between creating this GIGANTIC HOAX of a film and shooting a documentary about it (the easy, real-life application of the above theories) and doing it for REAL. Maybe we can do both. Will the Film Industry, the World and Valhalla forgive us for our trespasses? Who knows?

There is one more secret I have on the project. I want the final shot of the movie to be an image of film critic Richard Roeper, sitting in a cinema moments after watching the preceding film. I want him to utter one simple line. "Fuck!" for example. (Swearing is encouraged). And then I want him to pull out a revolver and blow his brains out. END OF FILM.

Yeah, I know... that bit above smacks of planning and "creating." It wouldn't be real, though -- I envision it to be pulled off via optical effects like that fire extinguisher scene in IRREVERSIBLE. No... It's not the central idea of the movie to get Roeper to commit suicide on film as some sort of wish fulfillment, nor a comment on the concept of film criticism in any way. It would just be a great final shot, is all. Right? Um.... thoughts? :)

Producers are encouraged to contact me here, with offers. My people are standing by. :)

Theatrical Reviews:

Ghostbusters (1984) ****
District 9 ***

DVD/Home Video
The Royal Tenenbaums: Criterion Collection ****
Rushmore: Criterion Collection ****
Bottle Rocket: Criterion Collection ***
Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) ***
Howl's Moving Castle (2004) ***
The Darjeeling Limited ***
Alien Vs. Predator: Unrated Edition (2004) *1/2

Facing The Music: A Film Score Geek Session

2009-08-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

Soundtrack: 1) The physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded sound. 2) Recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, television program or video game. 3) A commercially released album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show. -- from Wikipedia (paraphrased)

Yes, as a great fan of all-things-cinema, my admiration also crosses into my personal appreciation of music. Way back when I was about seven years old or so, I stumbled across one of those classic "12 albums, cassettes or 8-track tapes for a penny" ads Columbia Records & Tapes Club ran in TV Guide every week and my young eyes trained on the two most important words a kid growing up in the late 70's ever came across: STAR WARS.

Not that I knew anything about music when I was seven... but as far as I was concerned, I knew the hell out of everything about Star Wars. I also didn't understand the concept of joining a music club through the mail, but from what I'd gathered... for a penny I would own Star Wars... somehow. And that was all that mattered. I sent in the order form and six-to-eight weeks later my pile of tapes arrived and I popped the one I'd wanted most into my trusty Panasonic one-speakered, mono recorder and got my first taste of John Williams' greatness...

"What is this, old-people music?" I remember thinking. :)

And of course, years later, this "old-people music" makes up about 80% of my listening. John Williams (still a hero of mine), Elmer Bernstein, James Horner, Alan Silvestri, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone, and later the synth stylings of Harold Faltermeyer, Jan Hammer and Hans Zimmer... Over time I grew to appreciate more and more, becoming quite the aficionado of the contemporary motion picture score. And of course, soundtracks and scores are the rhythms that the characters of a movie live and breathe to...

But what about people? If people had soundtracks, what might they sound like? Often, you're walking down the street, maybe a song will float into your head and you'll bounce to the beat. You're the only one that can hear it. But it's there, and you're loving it. If you were a character in a movie, what would that track be? A soul classic? A bit of bebop? A country twang? Or a fully orchestrated symphony? Most soundtrack fans have pieces they feel they identify with personally. Maybe the character the music underscores resonates with you. Maybe they remind you... of you. Whatever the reason, it's possible that some film scores or songs stick to you more than others. Maybe you consider them your soundtracks, too. I realized I have a few...

"The Man In Me"
Bob Dylan
from The Big Lebowski

Lebowski came along for me at just the right time. In my old uptight world of office politics and career non-advancement, this classic track ushered in the epic story of an unemployed bowling leaguer who knew how to relax. The film taught me to just relax; to be the Dude and abide... and this song sets the stage for peaceful easy vibes, every time.

"Main Title" and "Sneakers Theme"
James Horner with Branford Marsalis
from Sneakers

Maybe it's the mix of Horner's chorus/piano combo and Marsalis' jazzy solos. Maybe it's because I first saw this very-influential-to-me film having just arrived at KSC for film school -- the movie's concept of a group of surveillance experts working together always reminded me of my friends and I shooting each other's projects. The lightness and playfulness of these two tracks always enlighten the mood... and they go well with a cool fall day (college season) or snowy winter's night (holidays). Very impressionable, I seem to be.

"A Different Drum"
Peter Gabriel
from The Last Temptation of Christ

"Opening Titles"
Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle (Hal Hartley)
from Amateur

"An Ending (Ascent)"
Brian Eno
from For All Mankind

There's a soulfulness and spirit to these songs that I always respond to. "Drum" is rather like arriving somewhere new and a feeling great promise, like crossing a bridge into New York City and feeling the first wave of anticipation. "Ending" and the track from Amateur, conversely, feel like the end of a long, perfect day, with the sun setting ahead of you, heading home to relax, smiling and falling asleep while someone else is doing the driving... or maybe the musical representation of a soul at complete happiness or peace. Sometimes, you just need to hear something like that.

"End Theme"
Eric Clapton
from Homeboy

This country-blues influenced track has a quiet, dependable beat coupled with the greatness of EC's guitar work. Coming from a little-known Mickey Rourke film about a small time boxer in a corrupt sports organization, it's one of those songs that resonates homespun decency and quiet dignity. (Also along these lines, but more orchestral: Randy Newman's The Natural and John Barry's Dances With Wolves.)

"Main Title/Love Theme"
Jerry Goldsmith
from Chinatown

"Blade Runner Blues"
Vangelis
from Blade Runner

Sometimes you need a little of the old slow-and-low. Some warm trumpet over a sad bit of strings for after a hard day at work or a lonely night where you feel isolated in your environs. Or a synthesized clarinet and organ combo sounding off into the night sky. Both tracks are perfect for a hot summer night walking or biking through town, or a rainy night in the big city. Perfect for when you could really use a soothing caress or a whipsered word of kindness, but there's nobody there to deliver them... (Also, but occasionally more up-tempo, Goldsmith's music for The Detective and Dave Grusin's score tracks from The Fabulous Baker Boys.)

"Prelude and Main Title March"
John Williams
from Superman

This one's easy. It's all about hope and desire. The soft beginning of the track, all flutes and strings, recall a youth spent on the farm (Smallville, perhaps) and looking out at the stars dreaming of something more... and then the tuba and cellos come in... and you're there, growing up... evolving, making your way out on your own... and then the trumpets blare, the violins sound, and you're where you want to be and who you want to be... And your future is assured... and you, like Kal-El himself, feel like you can do anything. Pure empowerment, personified.

There are just a few personal examples. How about you? What's on your soundtrack?

Theatrical
Watchmen: The Director's Cut ***1/2
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ***
Public Enemies ***
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra **

DVD/Home Video
Annie Hall (1977) ****
The Double Life of Veronique: Criterion Collection (1991) ****
Chungking Express: Criterion Collection (1994) ****
For All Mankind: Criterion Collection (1989) ****
In the Realm of the Senses: Criterion Collection (1976) ***1/2
Man Stroke Woman: Season Two (BBC-TV) ***1/2
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) ***1/2
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (1991) ***
White Dog: Criterion Collection (1982) ***
The Shinjuku Incident (Hong Kong) ***
Hyperdrive: Season Two (BBC-TV) ***
Lynch (one): (Documentary, 2007) ***
The Hit: Criterion Collection (1984) ***
Bullets Over Broadway (1994) ***
Roving Mars (IMAX, 2006) ***
Mighty Aphrodite (1985) ***
Family Business (1989) ***
Radio Days (1987) ***
Celebrity (1988) ***
Everyone Says I Love You **1/2
Small Time Crooks (2000) **1/2
Shadows and Fog (1991) **1/2
Hollywood Ending (2002) **1/2
Anything Else (2003) **
Predator 2 (1990) **
Push (2009) *

Rifftrax
Tommy Wiseau's The Room ***

Music
Tom Waits: Nighthawks at the Diner (1975) ****
Makoto Ozone: Wizard of Ozone (2000) ***

Art... and Commerce

2009-07-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

Anybody who knows me knows my love for movie poster art. Let me rephrase that. Anyone who knows me knows not only my love for movie poster art, but knows and probably agrees that the old one-sheet, she ain't what she used to be.

Growing up a short walk away from the one-screen theater in my small Massachusetts town, seeing a Saturday matinee was often the highlight of the week for my grade school friends and I. We'd line up for almost anything that was playing in our 1970's and 80's early youths. Herbie Goes Bananas, Tootsie, T.A.P.S., Lady and the Tramp, Twilight Zone: The Movie... It just didn't matter what was on the screen that week. If was was "rated PG" or below, we'd be there. And waiting in line, often one wrapping around the front of the building way back when that happened on a regular basis, we'd study the "now playing" and "coming soon" movie posters hanging on the walls of that theater, inside and out.

I still recall being amazed by the Close Encounters one, and scared by the one for The Shining, and wowed by the now-classic Star Wars ones. But we always looked on these posters as simple advertising. It hadn't hit our young minds that these prints with cool looking imagery along the top two-thirds and all these strange names at the bottom could actually be hung on your wall at home and admired as art. Not until VCRs took over and every Video Hut in the area would hang up posters on their front windows, later taking them down and tossing them in trash tins with hastily-labeled "$5.00 each" signs taped to the front.

That was where it started for me. The Terminator was my first one. Many, many more followed. I started working at a movie theater when I was 17 and began to grab as many as I could get my hands on... and would sometimes make the journey from my small town world to the Big City (Boston) to the old Pix Posters shop in Cambridge where I picked up what was then the pride of my movie poster collection, the original one-sheet for Back to the Future, by the great Drew Struzan... the last real artist in the movie poster business.

Posters nowadays, though... They've not continued in the footsteps of their forerunners, sadly. Streamline-centric advertising agencies operating during the home video boom started to change things. Suddenly, advertising art wasn't all that important, they seemed to feel, and thus began the now-common practice of utilizing nothing more than simple photos of a film's star players (often half-obscured by darkness to give the viewer a sort of a feeling of menace) to take up most of the art-space.

Take, for example, the 2002 teaser poster for Reese Witherspoon's pseudo-comedy, Sweet Home Alabama. It's her face. That's it. Just a big, huge close-up. What is this image telling us about the film? Nothing. Is she a single girl in a turtle neck, making her way in the world today? A sassy housewife and mother? A maniac Stepford Wife preparing to wipe out every non-comformist in the deep south? Who knows? Who cares? Never saw it, never will. My college pals and I looked upon this abomination at a local mall and realized that as far as some are concerned, art is no longer necessary in film advertising. Dumb It Down was taking over. And by that rationale... why even bother with clever or catchy titles? With a poster like that, why not just call the film something like Reese Witherspoon #7 and save the ad people all kinds of cocaine time and money?

But all's not lost just yet. Greats like Drew Struzan are still around (although it was reported that he's given up illustration to concentrate on his also-great painted works). And filmmakers are getting more hip to the cause. Steven Spielberg even went on-record to say that if Struzan didn't create the poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, he wouldn't make the film. A mixed blessing as it turned out; the poster was arguably more well-realized than the film. But whatever keeps Struzan's paintbrushes in action is good enough for me.

And as recent posters have proven now and again, even simple photography can work with elegance and style. Here are a few recent ones that caught my eye. What movie posters have you seen lately that caught yours?

Duncan Jones's Moon

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse

Zack Snyder's Watchmen (Comedian Teaser Version)

Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York

Armando Iannucci's In the Loop

And now, a buncha quick reviews. It's been a busy couple of months... :)

Theatrical
Pulp Fiction (1994) ***1/2
Whatever Works ***1/2
Moon ***1/2
Terminator: Salvation ***
Observe and Report ***
Wolverine ***
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen **1/2
The Limits of Control **1/2

DVD/Home Video
The Friends of Eddie Coyle: Criterion Collection ****
The Witches of Eastwick (1987) ****
Escape From New York (1984) ****
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) ****
This Is Spinal Tap (1983) ****
The Conversation (1972) ****
Mean Streets (1972) ****
Goodfellas (1990) ****
Oldboy (Korean) ****
The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974 ) ***1/2
Who's That Knocking At My Door? (1968) ***1/2
Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic ***1/2
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) ***1/2
Ashes of Time: Redux (Hong Kong) ***1/2
White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) ***1/2
Rent: The Theatrical Experience ***1/2
Over New England (PBS, 1990) ***1/2
IMAX: Fires of Kuwait (1992) ***1/2
Futurama: Bender's Game ***1/2
King of New York (1990) ***1/2
Solaris (2002) ***1/2
The Wrestler ***1/2
Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (HK) ***
Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs ***
Fantastic Four: Extended Director's Cut ***
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within ***
Homestar Runner: Sbemails Volume 6 ***
Kaiju Big Battel: More Better Fighto! ***
Spinal Tap: Back From The Dead ***
24: Redemption ***
Colors (1988) ***
Homestar Runner: The 50 Best Sbemails **1/2
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer **1/2
An Empress and the Warrior (HK) **1/2
Achilles and the Tortoise (Japan) **1/2
Driven To Kill (aka Ruslan) **1/2
Legendary Assassin (HK) **1/2
While She Was Out **1/2
LoveDeath (Japan) **1/2
Transporter 3 **1/2
Sniper (HK) **1/2
Melinda and Melinda (2004) **
Against The Dark **
Ong Bak 2 (Thai) **
The Grudge 3 **
Mirrors **
Chambara Beauty (Japan) *

Abbott and Costello
Keep 'Em Flying (1941) ***1/2
Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942) ***
Pardon My Sarong (1942) **1/2
Who Done It? (1942) ****

CD/Music
The Alan Parsons Project: Ammonia Avenue (remastered) ***1/2
Ghost in the Shell 2.0 (score by Kenji Kawai) ***1/2
Terminator: Salvation (score by Danny Elfman) ***
Spinal Tap: Back From The Dead ***

Literature
Wrong About Japan (Peter Carey, 2004) **1/2
Sayonara Bar (Susan Barker, 2005) **

Video Games
Ghostbusters: The Game (PS2) ***1/2
Yakuza 2 (PS2) ***1/2

The Naked City

2009-04-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Taking advantage of a two-day-off stretch from work over the weekend, I made one of my famous one-day excursions to NYC. Stopped into the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, finally walked the Brooklyn Bridge, grabbed some cheesecake at Junior's at Grand Central, caught up with the awesome Brooklyn Mike (of Jungle Transmissions blog fame, linked here just to the right). Had a pretty decent & inexpensive day of fun and discovery... and even managed to squeeze in a little moment with two of the locals.

On my way to Movie Star News, the only still-operating (and legit) "theatrical one-sheet" movie poster shop that I know of, I found myself moving north up 6th Avenue to the 18th Street area when I passed by one of NY's famous "adult entertainment" establishments... the kind with glowing neon signs reading "peep show" and "novelites" in the front window masked displays. These places are common in some stretches of the 6th-7th-8th Avenue area and nothing particularly unusual makes this particular "den of sin" stand out. Except this day. Two ladies of the evening were holding court at the front door. Author's Note: I placed "ladies of the evening" in the preceding sentence in red italics not to emphasise the phrase, itself, but to point out that (1) this happened at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and (2) I'm not entirely convinced that these ladies have, shall we say... always been ladies. Regardless, they they were and there I was.

"Hey, honey..." one of the smiling, buxom, low-cut top wearing creatures purred out to me. "Wanna come watch a movie with me?"

Normally, that would be an opening line dream for a guy like me. But like the Dyl-man says, I don't need a weathervane to know which way the wind blows. So, being me... A guy who loves to spread confusion and have fun with the masses... I just perked up, bulged my eyes, doing my best "functional but definately goofball bumpkin" voice and saying to the two aforementioned trick-turners... "Oh-boy-I-loves-movies-is-we-gonna-watch-that Watchmen-movie-I-loves-dat-movie-I-seen-it-twice-can-we-get-ice-cream-after-I-loves-me-some-ice-creams!!"

They just rolled their eyes and disappeared back into the store, presumably until I walked away.

People say there are a lot of weirdos in Manhattan.
I say... were just tourists. :)

DVD/Home Video Reviews:
No Country For Old Men: 3-Disc Collector's Edition ****
X2: X-Men United ****
Chinatown (1974) ****
Abbott & Costello: Buck Privates (1941) ***1/2
Man Stroke Woman: Series One (BBC) ***1/2 (see video below)
Keane (2004) ***1/2
Abbott & Costello: In The Navy (1941) ***
X-Men: The Last Stand ***
Ichi (2008, Japan) **1/2
Wanted (2008) **1/2

You Never Forget Your "First"

2009-03-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Venturing through Boston's Chinatown yesterday on the search for the Hong Kong import DVD of the recent John Woo movie, Red Cliff, I walked by an old haunt: Kneeland Electronics.

I say old haunt, but that's not quite accurate. It's a spot I've stopped by a number of times, perusing their DVDs and admiring their various posters, doo-dads and appliances. It's one of those places -- a neighborhood shop that seems like it's always been there. Never touristy or overdone in it's decor, bright, clean and well-operated by the same people; friendly folks who enjoy making suggestions and helping the consumer decide what's right for them.

Kneeland also has a special significance for me, as well. It's the store where I bought my very first Asian DVD, something I've become quite practiced in over the years. The movie was Dream Of A Warrior, a not-great Korean action flick with Leon Li. The film wasn't a classic by any means but I was intrigued enough to continue seeking out cinematic fare of the like -- a Jackie Chan film or two, works by Zhang Yimou (Hero), Steven Chow (Shaolin Soccer), Johnnie To (A Hero Never Dies) and how many others I can't recall. My purchasing has waned a bit recently, but I always stop into the store for a brief moment whenever I'm in the neighborhood, if not to buy then to just enjoy it's presence.

But sadly, those days are over. Kneeland Electronics is gone. Showroom empty, shudders down, window posters removed. This is nothing new in our current economy, of course. Lots of our favorite stores, coffee shops and such have vanished in recent times, be it due to changes in customer needs or the difficulties of business operations. Walking by, I stopped in my tracks almost disbelieving what I was seeing. I was struck with a sadness at the sight of the place being locked up. I find myself thinking of those who ran Kneeland, hoping that they're okay and provided for. With all the changes happening to the downtown Boston area, especially in Chinatown with the arrival of several incongruous, new high-rise luxury condo towers, I couldn't help but wonder how much longer the neighborhood has...

Moments later I found the Red Cliff disc I was looking for at another nearby shop that I frequent and purchased it, along with three or four more DVDs. I didn't really need them, and in the end I might have to skip a meal or two in order to afford them. But I guess it's my small way of making sure that another local merchant can stick around a little while longer. The next time you get a chance, and if you have the extra time and money to spare, think about doing the same. And feel free to discuss a shop that means or meant something to you in the comments below. :)

Dedicated to other cool spots from the past: Disc Diggers (Davis Square), Mystery Train (Newbury Street), Flipside (Brookline), CD Spins (Newbury Street), Fuddrucker's (Boston), Oasis Video (Lechmere), City Video (Boston), Cinemasmith (Brookline), Sony Theaters Nickelodeon and Cheri (Boston), Gary's '50's Diner (Keene, NH), Luke's Record Exchange (Pawtucket, RI), Tri-Boro Cinemas (North Attleboro, MA), Mon Kou (Attleboro, MA).

Theatrical:
Knowing **1/2

DVD/Home Video:
Contact (1997) ****
Space Ghost: Coast To Coast Season Five ***1/2
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) ***1/2
Under the Volcano (1984) ***1/2
Red Cliff II (Hong Kong) ***1/2
Red Cliff (HK) ***
Once Upon A Time in Corea (Korea) ***
One Night in the Tropics (Abbott & Costello, 1940) **1/2
National Treasure: Book of Secrets **1/2
Aliens Versus Predator: Requiem **1/2
The Producers (2005) **1/2

Your Friendly Neighborhood Crazy Man

2009-03-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was walking around Boston on a particularly snowy Saturday, which probably didn't help my oncoming bout with bronchitis any. Returning from Micro Center over on the Charles, I took a shortcut through a large-quad sort of park over by Boston University, just off Comm Ave.

On this particularly snowy Saturday, though, the cold and wind and snow/freezing rain combo was a bit much, so I made my usual move. I wrapped my scarf all the way around my head and neck about four times (it's long, like "Doctor Who" long), slipped on my 'round-the-back-of-the-head-style earmuffs and pulled by faux-wool winter hat down over my head.

When I do this, naturally, heat is the main concern -- not fashion sense, which I don't have anyway -- and as a result my head is completely bundled up aside from the eyes. At times like this, as friends can vouch for, I sort of look like a large-economy version of Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story crossed with your garden variety convenience store robber. This day, though, I seemed to remind someone else of someone else...

Passing through the aforementioned park, I spotted, a few yards up in the pathway before me, a woman and child, possibly baby and babysitter but more likely mother and son, playing in the snow... or, more accurately, kicking a ball back and forth in the cold, miserable slush storm. My oncoming bronchitis must've been making me irritable as my first thought as I saw them ahead of me on the pathway was, "Way to take your kid out in the crappy weather. Nice momming, Mom!!" Then I remembered what I must look like -- a large, masked man approaching silently in the near dark of the otherwise-empty park. Not wanting to appear as some sort of troublemaker, I slowed my pace until there was a decent enough moment for me to pass through. As the kickball reached the little boy and he bent down to pick it up, he looked my way. And froze.

"Uh oh," I thought. "I've scared him, now."

I waved, unthreateningly and uber-friendlily, and suddenly his eyes widened. He excitedly announced... "Wow! You look like Spider-Man!"

This was probably the most flattering thing I'd heard in a while. (Me and Spidey go way back.) I didn't really look like Spider-Man at all; dressed in grey and pushing 220 pounds on a good day. But I went with it.

"That's right, kid! I am Spider-Man! This is what I wear in winter!"

The mom starts laughing nearby, so I turn it into some sort of stand-up routine for them both.

"Yep, have you ever noticed in my movies that it's never winter when I'm fighting the Green Goblin and all them? That's 'cause my other suit is freezing in this cold. And the ice makes it impossible for me to stick to the buildings and I can't shoot webs with my gloves on. So I come to Boston and hang out until New York warms up again. Spidey hates catching the flu."

The kid's mouth just hangs open, eyes wide.

"So, bundle up, be good and I'll see ya' later. Let me know if you see Doc Ock... I heard he was around here somewhere."

The mom giggles. The kid twitches, looking all around the park like a squirrel evading a german shepherd. I wave them both a happy goodbye and move along my way. So, long story short... Apparently, I'm Spider-Man. Which is cool enough for me...

But... if Gwen, Mary Jane and Betty Brant were here... Then we'd be on to something. :)

"Blogspot is afraid of me. I've seen it's true face."

2009-03-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

Hell yes.

**** stars.

More later...

Theatrical
The Third Man (1949) ****
The Dark Knight (IMAX) ***1/2
Gran Torino ***1/2
The Spirit **1/2
Quantum of Solace **

DVD/Home Video
The Godfather (1972) ****
The Godfather Part II (1974) ****
The Godfather Part III (1990) ***
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Criterion) ****
The Sugarland Express (1974) ****
Get Carter (1971) ****
Bullitt (1963) ****
Charade (1963) ****
M*A*S*H (1969) ****
Duel (1971) ****
Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom (1984) ***1/2
The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Korea) ***1/2
Henry Rollins: Talking From The Box ***1/2
The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976) ***1/2
Wet Hot American Summer ***1/2
Batman Returns (1992) ***1/2
Legal Eagles (1986) ***1/2
An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder ***
Zatoichi and the Fugitives (1968, Japan) ***
The Truth About Charlie (2002) ***
Henry Rollins Goes To London ***
Public Enemy Returns (Korea) ***
The Living Daylights (1987) ***
Happy Times (China) ***
Silverado (1985) ***
Backdraft (1991) ***
Scrooged (1988) ***
Sparrow (HK) ***
Ip Man (HK) ***
Speed Racer ***
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life **1/2
Be A Man! Samurai School (Japan) **1/2
Joe Strummer: Let's Rock Again **1/2
Crows: Episode Zero (Japan) **1/2
Dangerous Game (1993) **1/2
Blue Remains (Japan) **1/2
Chocolate (Thai) **1/2
Batman (1989) **1/2
G.P. 506 aka Guard Point (Korea) **
Painted Skin (HK) **
The House Bunny **
Max Payne **
Bolero (1984) *1/2
Tarzan: The Ape Man (1981) *
Malice@Doll (Japan) *

Television
Moonlighting: Seasons One & Two ****
Moonlighting: Season Three ***1/2
Moonlighting: Season Four ***
Moonlighting: Season Five ***
Miami Vice: Season Two **1/2
Miami Vice: Season Three **1/2
Miami Vice: Season Four ***
Heroes: Season Two ***1/2
The Henry Rollins Show: Seasons One & Two ***
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume Six ***
Henry Rollins Uncut In Isreal ***

Hope

2008-11-05T09:44:00.000-08:00

My new favorite color... is blue.

Barack Obama 364 - John McCain 163 - Ties 11

This country just got a lot smarter. Well done, voters.
Congrats to our new President. Congrats to America.

And my pal Timmy gets my vote for Secretary of Awesome.

Theatrical Reviews
Police Story ****

DVD/Home Video
Ghostbusters (1984) ****
Ocean's 11 (2001) ****
Face/Off (1997) ****
Frost & Pegg's Perfect Night In (2007, UK TV) ***1/2
Star Wars: Deleted Magic (2005) ***1/2
Angel Heart (1986) ***1/2
Bob & Doug McKenzie's Two-Four Anniversary (2007, Canadian TV) ***
Billy Joel: The Stranger Tour (1978, German TV) ***
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ***
Building Empire ***
Returning To Jedi ***
The Big Easy (1987) ***
Top Gun (1986) ***
The Seven Minutes (1971) **1/2
Desperate Hours (1990) **1/2
Angel Guts (5 Film Series) **1/2
Kill Switch **
Legends of the Superheroes (1979, TV) "0" stars

Literature

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Haruki Murakami) ***1/2
After Dark (Haruki Murakami) ***1/2
After The Quake (Haruki Murakami) ***
Gone To New York (Ian Frazier) **1/2

Midnight Caller

2008-10-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

Nearly Four Months Later...

Where have I been? I, friends, have been traveling the lands of commerce and communication, enjoying the thrills of many hunts and the viewings of priceless objet d'art -- meaning I've been catching up on work, reading, scouring the internet for rare film soundtracks and seeing a few movies. One recent Saturday night, though, found me making my "professional" radio debut as a guest on a popular Boston AM radio talk show.

A little backstory: For a few years now, some people -- friends, family, even complete strangers -- have been telling me I have "a great voice." Granted, as a film/media fan I've been "doing voices" for years; acting silly as a general form of communication and trying on various accents, ever the hopeful-yet-under-the-radar actor, I suppose. I mentioned these random compliments one day to my employer, DL. A short time later yet another unsolicited compliment was paid me, this time in DL's presence, when a client asked me if I'd ever done any voice-over work. This had to be the twentieth such kind word paid to me in three years or so, I joked.

DL, a genuinely good person and always ready to lend someone a hand, offered to put me in touch with a certain well known Boston radio personality. As a follower of certain spoken word and vocal performers (we miss you, Don LaFontaine) I've long been interested in their world and work. I wouldn't want to be an on-air personality, necessarily... but movie trailers, animated programs, books-on-tape... those in particular interest me. So I took DL up on his offer and spoke to the Radio Professional. He was kind, instructive and complimetary to the utmost, even going so far as to asking me to read from a few sample scripts in order to get a feel for my performance range and comfortability with the mic.

Old superbuddy and audio engineer extrordinaire Tim Hulsizer answered the call to arms, arriving with his trusty hi-tech digital recording device, and we recorded a few takes from the sample scripts. Later, after giving them a listen, the Radio Pro was again very complimentary, but it seemed that my recordings must have lacked whatever specific magic touch necessary to be considered pro-level work. Suggesting I take a class or two, which I couldn't do in my present situation even if I had the time, I thanked him for giving me a listen and that was that.

Cut to a month later, give or take. It's a rainy Saturday night and big boss man DL is scheduled to make a recurring appearance on said Radio Pro's nationally-heard late night chat show. I offered to tag along. It'd been a very long time since I'd been in a television/radio broadcast station of any kind and I'd said it would be a real treat for me to join him, help carry some props and such for his appearance, listen to the show from a quiet, out-of-the-way spot in some remote green room, and in general just perform as a sort of overgrown helper monkey. He accepted, and off we went that night into the wind and rain to the nearby radio broadcast station.

As he parked the car, I went inside with the closed cardboard box of props and stopped off at the Security Desk to sign in. "Hello," I offered. "I'm here for the live show tonight." The Guard picked up the phone, calling to the host and saying fairly obliviously, "Hey, the dinner delivery kid's here."

Nice. Nothing boosts one's self confidence in the den of one's peers more than being mistaken for a 38 year old sandwich "kid."

Anyway, once all that was cleared up, DL and I were greeted by the Radio Pro and we went to the studio. As I walked through the atrium and into the broadcasting area, soaking from the rain, arms loaded with the box of props, I was hit by that Old Feeling. The one minor league baseball players must get when they walk the grass at Fenway Park... The one budding concert pianists must feel when they grace the stage of Symphony Hall. The cameras, the sets, the desks of seasoned broadcast professionals, the wired and rigged grids above my head leading to various booths and control rooms. I'd felt it before a few times -- touring the local cable access studio when I was 14, visiting the various levels of the film studies building in college at 22, waiting for a job interview at The Boston Globe at 30. It was a feeling I was well acquainted with and here I was feeling it again. I'm a thirty eight year old child in more ways then I'd care to admit.

With about three minutes to go, we set things up in the performance studio. The round table, the microphones, the warm glow eminated from the panel readouts of the recording equipment nearby, it all gave me a palpable sense of belonging and brought me back to my college radio days where I was not only a DJ but a news program writer and producer as part of my pre-Keene State College 2-year media communications studies. The Engineer signaled to the radio Pro that magic time was approaching. And as I turned to excuse myself... I was told to pull up a chair and have a seat. I was being invited to join the broadcast.

In a split second, my wistful comfort was transformed into nervousness. "I'm not ready for this," I shuddered to myself. "I don't belong here tonight... I'm supposed to be outside listening to the show, not in here being part of it... I'm no expert in anything that could be part of this discussion... I'll frig this up... I'm going to crash and burn." As the show's opening theme began, the Radio Pro asked me to remind him of my full name for the necessary introductions. I gave it, adding (and requesting, in nervousness) "...but you don't have to use my last name." DL and the Radio Pro chuckled at what they thought was my little joke. I later told DL that I wasn't actually kidding. The intro theme faded down, the ON AIR light came on, and off we went...

And I was... not great. Where DL and I work, the business is a good one, full of life and knowledge and wonder and happiness. It's a great place to be and it's DL's labor of lifelong love. And I enjoy it fully, myself. I'm just not an expert in the field, is all. I can't tell yout the history of any of our products nor the origins of the methods used in creating them. In fact -- as anyone who really knows me can tell you -- if the subject of a particular conversation isn't film, screenplay writing, original film scores or somehow cinema related in even a slight sense, I'm pretty much useless in said conversation. Imagine you're a lifelong sports nut, the kind who can name the batting average of every pro ball player since the Ted Williams days, who happens to shelf books at the library, and you're asked to co-chair a symposium concerning the use of subjective narrative structure in eighteenth century Russian poetry. The sensation of being a fraud whilst being beamed out to thousands of listeners is really quite something. At least now I know what it must feel like to be a Republican.

As the show went on, though, I got a bit more comfortable. Granted, I was still a relative no-nothing. I had only the slightest on-air-banter ability, I confused Bob Dole for Al Gore (yikes) and the one time a movie trivia question was lobbed, I didn't know the answer. (The film was nearly sixty years old and one I'd never seen, in my own defense.) But the Callers were fun as they phoned in to answer logic and trivia questions, the night was lively and in the end a good time was pretty much had by all. Afterwards, the Radio Pro and I shook hands and DL and I left the station, venturing back out into the chilly, stormy night after our two shared hours of national media exposure.

So what did we learn, Charlie Brown? In the end, I'm not really sure. These radio appearances happen quite often and if I'm asked to join in again sometime, I'm not sure what I'll say. While it's great to be helpful and give DL, the Radio Pro and the Callers someone else to play off, I'm just not sure what I have to offer. I know a second chance could yield a certain feeling of further confidence and maybe even ability but I'm not sure what I'd get out of it personally or professionally. It's best to go into certain situations with absolutely no expectations, I think. That way, if something doesn't go your way it's no big loss. While I'm confident I could host the hell out of a certain, specific kind of film/cinema related talk radio situation -- and while it's always nice to be asked to step up to the plate -- not everybody hits a homer their first time up to bat. I still think I could be a fairly decent to actually quite talented voice performer. And we'll see what happens with that, if anything.

And who knows? Perhaps it will. Perhaps... Someday, somehow... In a world... Where Silence Rules... One Man... Will Rise... And Awaken the Hero... Within Himself! This Summer! VOX HUMANA! Rated "R." Children Under 17 Not Admitted Without Parent Or Guardian...

...Or at least a 38 Year Old Sandwich Kid.

Theatrical Reviews
Raiders Of The Lost Ark ****
The Big Lebowski ****
Mongol ****
Jaws ****
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson ***1/2
The Dark Knight ***1/2
Iron Monkey (HK) ***1/2
Burn After Reading ***
Hancock ***
Choke ***
Star Wars: The Clone Wars **1/2
Hellboy II: The Golden Army **1/2
The X-Files: I Want To Believe **

DVD/Home Video
Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982) ****
Hyperdrive: Series One (BBC-TV) ****
Akira (Japan) ****
Hot Fuzz (UK) ****
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) ***1/2
Commando: Director's Cut (1985) ***1/2
Futurama: Bender's Big Score ***1/2
The Warlords (Hong Kong) ***1/2
Batman Begins (2005) ***1/2
The Doors (1991) ***1/2
The Jerk (1979) ***1/2
Closer (2004) ***1/2
Sharkskin Man and Peach Hip Girl (Japan) ***
Warm Water Under A Red Bridge (Japan) ***
Amazing Stories: Season One (TV) ***
Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) ***
Battlefield Baseball (Japan) ***
SF: Short Films (Japan) ***
Hold Up Down (Japan) ***
Love And Honor (Japan) ***
Three Businessmen (UK) ***
Demon Pond (Japan) ***
Dead Run (Japan) ***
Shinobi (Japan) ***
Be Kind, Rewind ***
Hellboy (2001) ***
Ashura (Japan) ***
The Ten ***
Redbelt ***
Around The World In 80 Days (2005) **1/2
The Submersion Of Japan (Japan) **1/2
Windtalkers: Director's Cut **1/2
May 18th (South Korea) **1/2
Another Battle (Japan) **1/2
Explorers (1986) **1/2
Izo (Japan) **1/2
The Postmodern Life Of My Aunt (China) **
Everyone Sinks But Japan (Japan) **
The Go-Master (China) **
Pistol Whipped **
Kichiku Dai Enkai (Banquet of the Beasts) *

Rifftrax
Star Wars: Episode III ***1/2
The Martix: Reloaded **1/2
Cloverfield **1/2
Daredevil **1/2

Strange World

2008-06-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

"There may, in fact, be no such thing as coincidence." --Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks)

This morning was the first of two consecutive days off from work. I'd requested these two particular days off so that I could go to New York to attend a special screening of the film Ryu Ga Gotoku (Like A Dragon), a film by Japanese director Takashi Miike. I'd seen the film before once on DVD but always feel it's a great opportunity to be able to see a Miike film on the big screen with an audience. Once, in a fifteen-viewer screening of Ichi The Killer, I counted at least five walkouts... so as a fan it's always interesting to me how an audience reacts to Miike's work.

But many things can happen just before a trip that can sometimes make the trip more tricky than others. The bus I usually travel from Boston to New York on -- usually a bus from the Fung-Wah company, an inexpensive travel option -- typically departs Boston at 6:30am. I usually try for this one, as it gives me the maximum amount of time in the city after the four-hour-or-so trip, which means I have to be out my door by 5:30am in order to plan on subway and walking time from my house to the bus station on the other side of Boston. Also, I rarely enjoy going on these trips by myself. It's far more fun sharing the big city moments with a friend. I've gone with college pals and roommates on many occasions and unfortunately on this particular occasion (this morning) nobody could join me. Also, lastly, there are the issues of weather and money. Hitting the Big Apple can be a pricey time when done correctly, and since I rarely step onto a subway, heat and humidity (and this morning's forecast of thunderstorms across the New York area) can be a large factor in my walkabout enjoyment of Manhattan Isle. This is all to say, there are many things that can happen that might make me, at the last possible moment, decide not to make the trip after all. Many rather mundane things. Today, though, a new one cropped up...

Having woken up a wee bit late at 5:20am, I saw I had a few moments before my fail-safe must-leave time for that first morning bus. So I layed my head back down for another quick couple of zzzz's before getting out of bed. And when I fell under, back to sleep, I had this strange dream... This dream that I'll do my best to relay to you now.

Firstly, time in the dream was abstract, as it often can be in dreams. I don't remember how it started, but the dream representation of myself -- I call it this because it felt both like me and unlike me -- was on a bus. I recall the sense that I was heading either to or from a large city. There were others on the bus, and my seat was on the right hand side, about eight or ten rows back on the side opposite the driver. Nobody sat next to me. I can't remember if I had the aisle seat or the one by the window, but either way I could see outside just fine. All seemed normal.

Then, at some point, I noticed that the bus was surrounded by darkness. The inside of the bus was visible, not lighted by interior bulbs or anything... just visible. But there was pitch black darkness outside, as if surrounded by a midnight fog inside which distance and proximity were unintelligible. And just as suddenly, I was alone. There were no other passengers. And no driver. But the bus and I were moving. There was no engine noise and no sound of the road passing beneath us.. just silent motion. I wasn't afraid. There was no fear. Only interest. As if my dream-self had noticed all this and thought "how weird this is." I had a sense of concern, certainly, but it was a calm concern.

After a moment of not knowing what was going on, I saw something out in the dark approaching the window of the bus, but not in the normal way. Normally in a moving vehicle you'd be approaching something head-on and would see it coming from the front window toward you. But this thing, this whatever, this shape, approaching through the darkness, was coming at me, at the side window, as if I and the bus were moving sideways toward it. It became more visible as it got closer (or as the bus and I got closer to it), as if coming into focus like a newly taken Polaroid.

What was approaching us was a depot of some sort. The bus and I got closer to it, sideways mind you, and I could see that there were people there a few rows deep looking as if they were waiting to board once the bus and I arrived. We (the bus and I) got closer and closer and eventually I got a good look at them. There were at least 30 people there, three rows deep and maybe more. They were all standing there, immobile, like statues. They were gray; their faces and skin and clothes were all the same shade of gray, and their hands were clasped at their waists. They were dressed in some sort of uniform I didn't quite recognize - -vaguely military. And they were at a level of height that was higher than I was, meaning I was looking up at them as the bus and I finally slowed to a stop... right before them, underneath them.

A brief moment passed, three seconds or so it felt like. I looked at them all. They remained still. Lifeless. Immobile. Grey. In the dark. Outside the bus. I got closer to the window... and without warning... the people I was looking at... all opened their eyes at once... and stared straight at me... into me.

And then I woke up.

Now, I'd hasten to call this some sort of nightmare. I didn't wake with a start. There were no cold sweats, nor hot sweats. No shriek of alarm. I simply opened my eyes, still comfy on my pillow. As the real world came into focus, I looked again at my clock. Roughly ten minutes had passed since I last looked at the clock at 5:20am. I was surprised at this, my grogginess and the level of detail made me feel as if it had been hours. But I saw that I was running late for my trip to New York and so I got up, showered, brushed my teeth, get dressed and took a look in the mirror before heading out for the train to the bus station. And, just as strangely, as I looked in the mirror, my eyes looking back at me, I suddenly decided not to go on the trip.

"Ugghh, this isn't going to be as much fun as I'd need it to be," I thought to myself, mentally remembering all the walking, the racing around, the money, the heat, the probable rainstorms forecast for the day. Thinking that I might as well hold off on a New York trip until better circumstances, I quickly undressed, lied back down in bed in front of my fan and fell back to sleep until close to 1:30pm that afternoon. I woke up rested, got out of bed, put the tea kettle on the boil and tuned in to my usual WBZ-AM Newsradio daily wake-up routine. And then I heard about this...

Local Woman Killed In NYC Fung Wah Bus Crash

New York (WBZ) ― A local woman was killed and four others were injured in an accident involving a Boston-bound Fung Wah bus and a dump truck in New York City Monday morning. Fung Wah is well known in the Boston area for its low fare Boston to New York routes. The dump truck, from CPQ Freight in East Rutherford, N.J., apparently lost control after crossing the Manhattan Bridge. The truck crashed into a delivery van, a fire hydrant and a light pole before slamming into the Fung Wah bus. The bus in turn crashed into the United Commercial Bank building in Chinatown, striking and killing a 57-year-old woman who was getting ready to board the bus. The driver of the dump truck and two people inside the Fung Wah bus were taken to Beekman Hospital in stable condition. A fourth person was pulled from the scene and is listed in stable condition at Beekman Hospital. Investigators are trying to figure out how the dump truck lost control. There are reports the driver told police his brakes failed.

Now, I'm not saying anything here. I'm not suggesting I'm a psychic. I'm not saying I'm lucky to be alive, since the bus I would've been on wouldn't have been anywhere near the accident scene for at least another two hours. In fact, I'm not really sure what I'm saying.

I just can't shake the fact that I had... this dream... in which time and detail were at odds with one another... in which I was on a bus... heading toward a major city... alone... moving sideways, as if being pushed... to a spot in which several people were waiting... who were motionless and grey, as if they were dead... and opened their eyes, seemingly to wake me up as if giving me some sort of warning... I don't know...

It's a strange world we live in, folks.

Please say a prayer tonight for the family of the woman who passed away in this morning's accident. Thank you.

"We All Need Another Heeeeeero!"

2008-06-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that as far as the cinema goes, superheroes are the new hotness. When once we had buddy cops (1980's), troubled inner city teens (1990's) or man-child savants (the Bush administration) we now have a shiny, new, superpowered, big-screen extravaganza on our silver screens for every month of the summer plus a few leftovers into the fall. Now, I'm not complaining, but these titanic stories of heroes and villains are starting to get... I don't know... a little bit "samey." Though Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk got a lot of mileage out of their stars and their fellow actors, they still managed to wrap up their climaxes in pretty much the same way: a full-CGI or primarily-full-CGI special effects slugfest where said heroes and villains are tossed about over and over until someone either dies or gets a TKO. Granted, such superfights are the essence of the comic book world they are derived from. But we can do better, cant we?

Perhaps the key is in the characters. Maybe the first step to creating an original superhero storyline is in creating an original supercharacter. Will Smith's upcoming Hancock looks to be a step in the right direction even if it does seem to be a tougher, edgier take on the 80's television classic The Greatest American Hero.

Recently, my good friend Tim Hulsizer and I were talking about a comic experiment he's working on -- he's creating a legion of humorous superheroes and villains for a series of illustrations. The sight gags will come from the ridiculousness of the names and outfits with details about origins and powers to possibly to follow at a later time. I jumped on board with a few suggestions, seen below.

Feel free to have a look, offer up some of your own, and -- if you happen to be a producer looking for movie material -- everything here is already copywritten 2008 by Tim and/or myself, all rights reserved. (But feel free to make us an offer. Our people are standing by.)

Assault and The Battery (a tag team)
General Warington
Megafist
The Eye-Scream Man
Quarterhack
The Dahli Slamma
Zygomator
Pac-Mangler (in conjunction with Namco/Midway)
Spaceshot
Republicon (or Robopublican)
R.E.O. Bleedwagon
Boulder Holder
Eskimonster
Orange Krushh
Trouser Pilot
Vomitron
The Frequent Frier (a pyromaniac)
The Marlboro Manster
Helicopper
Cream and Sugar (two pixie-like little girls)
Husker-Dude
Czechmate
Heart Breaker (played by Scarlett Johannson)
Japanimal
Brain Tomber
Tunnel Bunny
The Handicapturer (uses a wheelchair but actually has three times the limbs that we do)
The Gaffer and The Gripper (primary weapons: gloves and tape)
Pregnatron
Mason Dixon: The Northern Southerner
Chef Boyardoom
Fudge Packer (he's like Magneto, but can control sweets)
Scotch Guardian
Son Of Samurai
Alien McBeal
Predatori Spelling

Our apologies if you found any of the above offensive.
But then again, some were sort of supposed to be.

Theatrical Reviews:
The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (1973) ***1/2
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ***
The Incredible Hulk **1/2

DVD/Home Video
Chungking Express (Hong Kong) ****
Scars Of The Sun (Japan) ***1/2
Bitter Films: Volume One ***1/2
Mad Detective (HK) ***1/2
9 Souls (Japan) ***1/2
Hamlet (2002) ***1/2
Blast Of Silence: Criterion Collection (1961) ***
Space Ghost Coast To Coast: 1988 Episodes ***
Sukiyaki Western Django (Japan) ***
Ambition Without Honor (Japan) ***
Days Of Being Wild (HK) ***
The Long Good Friday (1979) ***
Everything Will Be Okay ***
Flash Point (Hong Kong) ***
Bullet Ballet (Japan) ***
Runaway Train (1985) ***
Hysterical (1983) ***
Dead Run (Japan) ***
24: Season Six ***
The Lookout ***
Suture ***
Ryu Ga Gokuto aka: Like A Dragon (Japan) **1/2
The Third Yakuza (Japan) **1/2
Waru (Japan) **1/2
Blood From The Mummy's Tomb (UK) **

Rifftrax
Jurassic Park ***
Spider-Man ***
Spider-Man 3 **1/2
Fanatastic Four **

Good Guys Finish Fir$t

2008-05-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Maybe you've already heard...

There's a little film directed by Jon Favreau...
starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jeff Bridges...
featuring a character that isn't (wasn't) necessarily a household name...
that just made over two hundred million dollars in just under four days, across the globe.

In an industry in which mediocrity hits our theaters week in and week out, it's nice to have proof-positive that there's still fun and wonder to be had at the movies.

Iron Man ***1/2

I Know Art... and I Know What I Like.

2008-04-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

As far back as I can remember I'd always wanted to be a cartoonist.

This was before the advent of the VCR, laserdisc, DVD and digital sound, stadium style cinemas. Back when my main forms of entertainment were Marvel Comics and the $2.50 paperback digests of Peanuts and Popeye I'd grab at the local King's Department Store. Back when at the age of nine I'd figured out how to write a fan letter to Charles Schulz, to which he kindly responded by sending me a couple of sketches... and back when at the age of ten I'd called up the Boston Globe myself and asked if I could be their new daily comic strip artist. (Naturally, it didn't work, but I did get my 5th grade homeroom into the Sunday "Fun Pages.")

I still like sketching here and there, but realized a long time ago I couldn't make it my adult career choice. Call it lack of discipline, call it moving on to other interests. But... If I had to do it every day to survive, if I was enforced to do so -- not as simple entertainment, but as a vocation -- it wouldn't be as much fun. Still, I often have a look at the work of some artists and smile, as if feeling some sort of kindred connection; these people, the ones that continue and grow and thrive as artists, they are people to look up to. The ones that never fell out of love with what they do. They are the lucky, the skilled, the few and the wonderful. And here are a few of my favorites...

Homestar Runner (Mike and Matt Chapman)
This internet Flash-animation cartoon success story needs no introduction or kudos from me... It's been going strong for more than six years and continues to grow by leaps and bounds, self-releasing DVDs, a music CD, figurines and soon a Wii-ware game. The amiable Homestar Runner, the lovable-but-dim hero, might be the title star, but cantankerous troublemaker Strong Bad is the breakout star who's weekly e-mail segments continue to bring in millions of hits per week and have gone on to make "Trogdor," "Thnikkaman" and "Dangeresque" household names. (Don't know them? Ask around.) It's a weekly-visit necessity for those who want to remember what it was like to be a kid, or just those who want to laugh their heads off.
homestarrunner.com

Megatokyo (Fred Gallagher)
Three times a week (give or take), Megatokyo brings us the epic adventures of Largo and Piro, two American videogamers stuck in Japan, the women they each love (whether they can admit it or not)... and the ninjas, magical girls and Rent-A-Zillas they encounter in their lives. Part slapstick action and part introspective drama, Gallagher's strip (co-created by Rodney Caston) is widely beloved by internet travellers worldwide, and for good reason. A favorite feature is the site's "console" section below the comic itself where Gallagher and his fellow megatokyo.com personnel blog about their creative processes and daily lives. Something this good that's been running this long is proof that sometimes the good guys can finish first.

Odd Todd (Todd Rosenberg)
Some time ago, I, like many others, had a well-paid job that sadly came to an end due to recessionary cutbacks. So did Todd, a dot-commer in New York. But where I didn't do much with my time off, Todd created a one-man, web-cartoon empire based on his experiences with being out of work. Very much an R-Rated series featuring adult language ("f-bombs") and sexual situations ("boobs in the face" is a great recurring motif), oddtodd.com offers more than just cartoons. There are hilarious movie reviews, amusing photo collections from Rosenberg's travels and a lot more. The site has so many fans that Todd's even done original animations for ABC News and had a few offers from Hollywood. Good vibes, all around.

Chemical Comics (Tim Hulsizer)
A close friend from my Keene State College days, Timmy keeps his daily cartooning requirements filled with his 5-day-a-week entry into the Daily Grind webcomic contest entry. Whether blogging about his day or exploring recurring characters like Caska the Cat, Warhare and Sandwichbot5000 (my personal favorite), Tim's posted a comic every weekday since February 2005 in competition for comics greatness. However the contest turns out, he's already a winner as far as we're all concerned. http://ignatz.brinkster.net/daily.html

Bellen (Boxbrown/Brian Brown)
With his daily webcomic that features with more heart and emotion than is even fathomable, Brian's work never fails, and I mean never fails, to raise a smile and lighten one's day. His main characters, Ben and Ellen, share those sweet, romantic, silly moments that those in love know so well. And for the many of us not currently in love... well, for us this comic is the next best thing. http://boxbrown.livejournal.com/

Goodbye, Foom! (John Campbell)
Updated sporadically but always worth the look, this webcomic features simple but elegant line drawn figures with a sharp, wicked sense of humor. Recurring storyline strips intersperse with satirical slams on everything from life to language and are often full of the type of wild cynicism that keeps one coming back for more. His "hourly comic" experiments even inspired me to try my own, once. Unlike my attempt, though, his work never gets dull. Adult themes, on occassion. http://stereotypist.livejournal.com/

Theatrical Reviews:
The Last Emporer (1987) ****
There Will Be Blood ***1/2
The Forbidden Kingdom ***
My Blueberry Nights ***
Semi-Pro **1/2
Superhero Movie *1/2

DVD/Home Video:
The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988) ****
An American Werewolf In London (1981) ****
Super Troopers ****
The Shining (1982) ****
Heat (1995) ****
Samurai I ****
Samurai II ***1/2
Samurai III ***
Voice Of A Murderer (Korea) ***1/2
Bicycle Thieves (Italy) ***1/2
Le Samourai (France) ***1/2
Snake Eyes (1998) ***1/2
Manhunter (1986) ***1/2
Children Of Men ***1/2
Thief (1982) ***1/2
Crime Story: Season Two (TV) ***
Arthur and the Incredibles ***
Eye In The Sky (Hong Kong) ***
Natural City (Korea) ***
The Monster (Italy) ***
Retribution (Japan) ***
Thunderbolt (HK) ***
Big Bang (Korea) ***
Apocalypto ***
Borat ***
Yangtze River 7 aka "CJ7" (HK) **1/2
The Sea Is Watching **1/2
Eraserhead **1/2
Hunter (TV Pilot) **1/2
Big Bang (Korea) **1/2
Mulholland Falls **1/2
Southland Tales **1/2
Shoot 'Em Up **1/2
Loft (Japan) **1/2
Diggers **1/2
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift **
Tokyo Drifter (Japan, 1966) **
Paradise Murdered (Korea) **
Princess Raccoon (Japan) **
L.A. Takedown (1986) **
M (Korea) **
Saw II **
M (Korea) **
Branded To Kill (Japan, 1967) *1/2
Saw III *1/2
Turistas *

Rifftrax:
Raiders of the Lost Ark ***
Aeon Flux **1/2
X-Men **

Quick Reviews Now & More Stuff Later

2008-02-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

Theatrical:
Cloverfield ***1/2
Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different ***
Beowulf ***
In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale **

DVD/Home Video:
Blade Runner: Five-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition ****
Sin City: Recut-Extended-Unrated Edition ****
Drunken Master 2 (1994, Hong Kong) ****
Night On Earth (1991) ****
Hard Boiled (1992, HK) ****
Day For Night (1979) ****
Manhattan (1979) ****
Magnolia (1991) ****
The Ultimate Matrix Collection ***1/2
*The Matrix (1999) ****
*The Matrix Reloaded (2003) ***1/2
*The Matrix Revolutions (2003) ***
*The Animatrix (2003) ***1/2
Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection (TV) ***1/2
Homestar Runner: Everything Else Vol. 2 ***1/2
Homestar Runner: Everything Else Vol. 3 ***1/2
Angel-A (France, 2005) ***1/2
Triangle (Hong Kong) ***1/2
Ronin (1998) ***1/2
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Season Five ***
Drunken Master (1978, HK) ***
New York, New York (1977) ***
No Blood No Tears (Korea) ***
A Dirty Carnival (Korea) ***
Security Unlimited (HK) ***
Invisible Target (HK) ***
Dark City (1998) ***
Die Bad (Korea) ***
The Brave One ***
Se7en (1995) ***
Wo Hu (HK) ***
Master Of The Flying Guillotine (HK, 1975) **1/2
The January Man (1989) **1/2
A Bloody Aria (Korea) **1/2
The A-Team (TV Pilot) **1/2
Tokyo Zombie (Japan) **1/2
Blood Brothers (HK) **1/2
The Restless (HK) **1/2
Urban Justice **1/2
Soo (Korea) **1/2
Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance *1/2
Invaders From Mars (1986) *

Rifftrax (from rifftrax.com)
Star Wars Episode One **1/2
Star Wars Episode Two ***1/2
Predator ***
Terminator 3 ***
The Fifth Element **1/2
The Grudge **1/2
The Matrix **1/2

"We now return to our regularly scheduled life, already in progress."

2007-12-17T18:27:00.000-08:00

As some of you might already know, a sizable part of my life has recently changed. Nothing spectacular, mind you. I haven't sold a screenplay nor been offered a film production deal. I haven't hit the lottery. And I haven't just gotten fed up, moved to Los Angeles and jumped headfirst into the porn industry. (Yet.)

But, I did finally leave my post at our local, beloved video store. Maybe you've read about the myriad of changes befalling the home video industry, from the death of VHS to the explosion in internet retail and shipping brought about by various well known movie-delivery services. After a spectacularly insane final few months that included everything from store closings, in-house detective work and surveillance, transfers, legal proceedings, random sketchy threats and fulfilling the local area's insatiable need for The Bourne Ultimatum and Harry Potter 5... I have moved on from this particular realm of the entertainment world.

It was time, really. Four years on the frontlines of video store work is plenty. In many ways, it felt like a repeat of high school complete with well-wishings and even some graduation jitters. Now that I'm moving into a larger world (also retail, but in a much different environment and in a more intellectual field), I look forward to seeing what opportunities lie ahead. Corporate gigs have their ups and downs but a homegrown business gives you a sense of community and accomplishment that I am, even now, experiencing on a daily basis.

Having made some great friends over the last four years ("Hi, Lilyplush!") I'll always appreciate my time at the videostore. Time marches on, though. The new spot feels like a great fit: a warm n' happy place to be and one with real possibility. As always, more about this later. You know, as the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

In other news, you might remember a few posts back when I mentioned that I was beginning my next creative endeavor in the screenplay form. I'd mentioned moving some things around in my workspace environment in an attempt to alleviate the visual chaos of my workspace and to suffer far less distraction from writing. Excellent theory, yes? I think so too. Except, it didn't work.

This isn't to say my excellent theory isn't a sound one. It didn't have a chance to take effect, really. Life got in the way, work went crazy and due to long hours, stress and other factors that would definitely sound like whining if I didn't know them to all be true, nothing of much substance got done. But I continue to come up with other, small ways to keep focused. I recently purchased a blank, faux-leather bound journal to write in. My thinking is that I need to get off the computer more often, to write in other places, to keep away from the distraction of technology and the internet, to get out of my room once in a while, in order to clear my head and get creatively cracking. The journal's cover has that time-worn look, like an old manuscript, and carries some weight to it. I'm hoping this combination of low-tech heart and personal connection inspires me on at least some sort of deeper level, even if it's not immediately detectable. If "clothes make the man," then maybe "the journal can make the script." We'll see. I love looking at it, at any rate... That, and my simple-yet-awesome new coffee cup (seen above).

Otherwise, tomorrow signals the Special Edition DVD, HD and Blu-Ray release of one of the most important and influential motion pictures of the 1980's -- Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Featuring fine performances, superb screenwriting, dazzling special effects and wonderous cinematography, music scoring, production design and direction, the film is the thinking person's action/sci-fi/noir classic. Blade Runner -- in any version you see (and there are at least four) -- ranks amongst what I consider to be the best movies of our time. If you haven't seen it yet, please do. You owe it to yourself.

Theatrical:
Blade Runner: The Final Cut ****
No Country For Old Men ***1/2
I Am Legend ***

DVD/Home Video:
2001: A Space Odyssey 2-Disc Special Edition ****
Tekkonkinkreet (Japan/Anime) ***
The Chronicles Of Riddick ***
Heroes: Season One ***
Sasquatch (1978) ***
Immortality (aka The Wisdom Of Crocodiles) **1/2
Masked And Anonymous **1/2
Reincarnation (Japan) **1/2
The Odd One Dies (Hong Kong) **
The Golden Child (1987) **
Jam Films 2 (Japan) **
Feast **
Novel Romance *

Stop... Hey... What's That Sound?

2007-10-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

Not much new to report these days... At least nothing I can report, just yet. Lots of work stress. A great 4-day weekend with the best buncha friends a guy could ask for. And a quick listing of some of the audio I've been listening to when I have the time...

Wizard People, Dear Readers by Brad Neely
The cartoonist/humorist offers up an alternate take on the film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by recording, in-character, an alternate audio commentary track which brings out Harry's dark side in a big, big way. A must for fans of the Potter books and clever, potty mouth humor. (Look it up on YouTube for some great samples.)

Catching The Big Fish by David Lynch
Everyone's favorite abstract filmmaker (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive) discusses his work, his life and examines how the practice of transcendental meditation relates to one's ability to create. A wonderful experience.

Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way by Bruce Campbell
The beloved B-movie actor/writer/director narrates this fully dramatized "audio movie" based on his fictional account of landing a role in a film starring Richard Gere and directed by Mike Nichols. Goofball slapstick and knowing satire.

And The Fantastic Four (Radio Series)
A radio drama from the 1970's about the popular superheroes -- starring a then-unknown Bill Murray as the Human Torch! Interesting, but Bill's the main draw here.

More later, but for now a few quick reviews...

Theatrical
Michael Clayton ***
The Darjeeling Limited ***
D-War/Dragon Wars (Korea) **

DVD/Home Video
House Of Games: Criterion Collection ****
Battle Royale (Japan) ****
12 oz. Mouse: Season One ***1/2
The Spanish Prisoner ***
Trouble In Mind ***
Vengeance Is Mine (Japan) ***
TMNT (2007) ***
Hell Up In Harlem ***
The Hard Way ***
Blue Swallow (Korea) ***
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride **1/2
Don't Come Knocking **1/2
Green Snake (Hong Kong) **1/2
China Girl **1/2
Rampo Noir (Japan) **
Welcome To L.A. *1/2

The Fugitive II: Hard Target Search

2007-08-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

A former female roommate of mine who'd known me a little while used to give me a hard time whenever I'd get all Grizzly Adams around the house and grow out a beard. Usually in winter, but often just for more supreme facial structure definition (meaning "I think it looks better, sometimes"), I'd let the chin hairs get a little long... and she'd be merciless about it.

"My mother always said not ever to trust a man with a beard," she'd remark.

"Feh!! Yer mom don't know nuthin'!" I'd respond mock-angrily.

My recent days have been bearded ones, me being too tired/lazy/or some such, to shave. The other night at the job, I was in the not altogether unusual situation where I was forced to have a few words with a particularly rude woman at the store who had the unfortunate but similarly not altogether unusual luck of having her three night's DVD rental choices already taken out by other customers in the previous few days. She huffed her way out of the store and that was that. Not long after, I finally got it together to shave and took the razor my facial whiska'z. The next day after that, this happens...

INT - VIDEO STORE - DAY.

A sizable male Customer enters the store. He's composed, but his Tommy Lee Jones-like eyes show that he has some purpose here this day. He approaches the clean-shaven Associate, counterside.

CUSTOMER
Hey bud, you got some guy in here with
a beard?

ASSOCIATE
Uh... Sometimes.

CUSTOMER
My wife says she came in here the other night
and said some bearded guy was bein' rude.

ASSOCIATE
Well, I was here for that actually and to tell you
the truth she was the one raising her voice and
getting testy in the store, all angry that the movies
she wanted were already checked out.

CUSTOMER
(shrugs a little)
That does sound a little more right. She's my lady
and all, but... She can be a little... Y'know.

ASSOCIATE
Heh... I hear ya.'

CUSTOMER
Alright then. No big deal. Thanks.
And sorry 'bout whatever happened.

ASSOCIATE
No problem. Glad to help. And I'll tell the bearded
guy you stopped by.

CUSTOMER
Cool, thanks again.

Maybe my former roommate's mom knew something, after all. :)

Warning Shots

2007-08-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

Something is happening. Something horrible. There is a plague in our midst, movie fans. It is reportedly happening everywhere and if it's not too late it must be stopped. I have my doubts. I think it's already too late. In our complacency and our fear, we've let them take so very much already. They roam our places of enjoyment and are taking over our cities like a dreaded zombie horde. I'm referring to one of the most vile creatures ever to walk our streets. I'm referring, of course, to people in movie theater audiences who won't shut the hell up .

It's to be expected that whenever a populace gets together there will be a select group of idiots who will -- without care for the rules of society and common decency -- have a little too much fun and ruin things for others. Be they schoolyard bullies, family barbecue drunkards, soccer hooligans or Lindsay Lohan... the right to free speech is forever locked in battle with the right to behave like a blithering fool. Things seem to be coming to a boil, at least in the city of Boston. And not just at the movies.

Back in May, fisticuffs famously broke out in, of all places, an orchestral performance by Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall -- not the sort of place you'd expect to encounter a battle royale. But it happened and it was in fact stirred by one patron's refusal to deal with another patron's refusal to stop talking during the performance. Onlookers were shocked... including Lockhart, who reportedly "stood there quietly" for a moment. Which is a pity, really. I like to think that if John Williams were still there, he might've had the orchestra begin playing a few bars from Episode One's "Duel Of The Fates."

At a recent screening at Davis Square's Somerville Theater of the Chuck Norris 80's actioner, The Delta Force, those of us who went to have a great old time watching Chuck kick ass for God and Country were forced to deal with five, gel-haired, polo-shirted, receding hairlined, aging frat boy, pseudo accountants who seemed to think they were hosting their own private episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Now sure, something as cheesy/fun as a Norris flick should be enjoyed by all and one can understand the desire to poke fun at the jingoism in the politically charged but unabashed-entertainment film. But post 9/11 there's a lot of the film that just isn't really very funny these days and even more that wasn't meant to get laughs to begin with, such as the uncomfortable sequence where an airplane in Greece is hijacked by Lebanese terrorists and they begin to call out a list of Jewish-American and Israeli passengers to be used as hostages. The aforementioned social misfits in the theater audience a few feet away from us had been snickering and howling inappropriately since the opening credits but it was at this point that I couldn't take any more. I walked up behind them and had to grit my teeth at the fact that I was living in a world where I had to say to five people, "Excuse me boys, I'm gonna have to ask you not to laugh out loud during the parts of the movie where they're rounding up the Jews."

Does the behavior of these people come from upbringing? From theater management's refusal to get involved and police their own patrons? I worked in a suburban cineplex (just out of high school) from 1988 to 1994 and we would regularly throw out troublemakers -- once, the first two rows of people who were acting up during the opening night of a Halloween sequel. Granted, that was some time ago. Nowadays you're likely to suffer an after-work beatdown (or worse) in the parking garage if you reprimand someone with a "crew."

Perhaps it's technology. We humans have become so dependent on our gizmos that we can watch a movie wherever we like -- on our phones, our game systems, even our goddamn refrigerators -- that maybe we feel that we're owed something if we deign to pay for a full price theater ticket. And with our HDTV/digital surround home theater systems, we're used to being in charge of our own theaters and saying whatever we like as loudly we like. Are we (reminder: by we I mean they) becoming so comfortable and so used to the world being our entertainment oyster that we no longer give a damn about the person next to us if they're not our bud, our kid or our sexual conquest?

I mean... friends of mine just told me about a midnight showing of another 80's classic, Tron, coming up in a week or two. But I can't imagine it going anything but badly as the wonder and delight of those who love the film will most likely be drowned out by beer-drunk tools who will yuk it up to one another and moistly shout things like, "Hey look, it's "Dude" from Lebowski!" and "Videogames sucked back in the day, bruh."

I'm starting to think that film attendance should be as difficult as buying a handgun. There should be a five-day waiting period for movie tickets. We've gotta take back the night and I'm gonna use a golf club if I have to. The zombies must be stopped. "Kill the head and the body will die," someone once said. But then again, that smacks of violent overthrow and that's no good for anybody. Not when you can just as easily bring an extra twenty dollars with you to the theater for after the show in the parking lot. Some crackheads will urinate on anybody for twenty dollars...

...Or so I've heard.

Now please rise for our new National Anthem...

Before & After: Rush Hour 3

2007-08-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

In this blog's continual search for ways to enliven what passes for film criticism these days, we now take a look at the recently released third entry in the Rush Hour series, starring Jackie Chan & Chris Tucker and directed by Brett Ratner. Today, we'll examine the film from a "before and after" approach, in which a few misgivings about the films are discussed, pre-screening and a few insights are concluded with, post-screening.
Some Spoilers Follow!

BEFORE (August 11, 2007)
How strange it is to see, as a Jackie Chan fan since 1992 (the day being the one when my good friend Mark showed me the first 5 minutes of Armour Of God), that I'm pretty much the target audience for a movie like Rush Hour 3 and even I can't muster much enthusiasm for it.

Rush Hour 2 had a dramatic drop in quality from it's predecessor, so I'm imagining this third entry will too. Whereas the original Rush Hour was solid pretty much all the way through, somewhere along the line the creators of RH2 forgot the thing that made us appreciate Chris Tucker's "Carter" character in the first place: he was a great cop. Sure he was occasionally obnoxious but his police instincts and his desire to get in good with the Federal Agents on the case (the kidnapping of the daughter of a prominent Ambassador) made him sort of endearing... and when it came down to action-time toward the film's climax he dispatched his opponent capably and with a touch of humor. In RH2, he was reduced to a boorish, running and screaming buffoon and his character weakened the entire film. (He was barely even a cop, really.) I hope Ratner and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson at least restore his character to some small measure of dignity in RH3.

At least there's no new "Shanghai" sequel with Jackie and Owen Wilson on the way (Knights was similarly a major letdown after the fun of Noon), so that's something of a blessing. That said, I'm always ready for some new Hong Kong Jackie films. I very much enjoyed New Police Story and Rob-B-Hood, and even The Myth to a certain extent. Still, I'll get out to the theater to catch Rush Hour 3. As a movie fan, sometimes you've just gotta support the greatness of Jackie Chan, no matter what.

AFTER (August 12, 2007)
The verdict is: "Genial but weak." I was reasonably entertained but they could do so much more with this series.

For instance, take the Young Martial Arts Students... Why not have them all bust out like crazy in their own action scene? Imagine them going after Chan & Tucker on their own and giving them a comical beatdown. That's what might've happened if this were a movie that really cared about being innovative. Hell, then they could've brought the gang back at the climax of the film as back-up and we could've had a dozen screaming Kung Fu Kids running around the Eiffel Tower, too (and calling back in theme to an earlier scene in which Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom plays on a nearby television while Tucker gets Chinese food.) As much fun as the French taxi driver "George" was (and he truly was a real highlight), I wondered what might have been had Ratner had the foresight to cast, say, Sami Naceri (of France's own infamous Taxi film series) in the part. And what is it that these films have for blue-screen/CGI gags involving heights and huge pieces of fabric? After the Rush Hour movies and Shanghai Knights (which "borrowed" it's last stunt from Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies), it seems that there's at least one pair of stunt people who like to recycle their tarp and flag gags.

Though it seemed that the narrative might have been tipping a hat to Johnnie To's Election films with it's use of Triad Elections as a plot device, I read somewhere that an earlier installment had a story sending Lee and Carter to Japan. They should've stuck with that, I think, for all the Parisian flavor this film had and all it's talk of Yakuza and such. Hiroyuki Sanada made an engaging villain and Jingchu Zhang was a fine damsel in distress -- but what these kind of films need is more scenes featuring characters like them and their own internal struggles. (What do they do when they're not in the room with Lee and Carter? Showing us would make them more interesting and well-rounded characters.) And while I've loved Youki Kudoh ever since Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, her part was no more than your standard kung-fu hitwoman and she's barely given a chance to shine. Chan and Tucker get more laughs than wows... But someone needs to butch up Tucker's film work once and for all. With his straining voice and aging swagger, Tucker is -- to quote fellow buddy coppers Riggs & Murtaugh -- "too old for this shit." Be that all as it may... the Chan/Tucker chemistry is still there, the car stunts and set pieces are still relatively impressive, the Eiffel Tower sequence has its moments and as the femme fatale, Noemie Lenoir can accurately be referred to as "the new hotness." Catching this at one's local cinema is still a decent enough way to beat the August heat for a couple of hours. **1/2 stars out of four ("good/not great")

Theatrical Reviews

The Simpsons Movie ****
The Host (Korea) ***1/2
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ***1/2
The Delta Force (1986) **1/2
Transformers **
Hero and the Terror (1988) *

DVD/Home Video:
Jaws (1975) ****
Zodiac ****
Jigoku: Criterion Collection (Japan) ***
Welcome To Collinwood (2002) ***
Dog Bite Dog (Hong Kong) ***
The Negotiator (Japan) ***
I'm A Cyborg But That's Okay (Korea) **1/2
Renaissance (France) **1/2
Yo Yo Girl Cop (Japan) *

Never Say Die: The Return of The Action Hero

2007-06-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

And now, a discussion of the latest entry into our beloved Die Hard film series. The following is a detailed examination of Live Free or Die Hard (2007) including details of various scenes and the film's narrative construction. In short, big huge spoilers follow. Reader discretion is advised...

If it seems that Live Free Or Die Hard has some literary weakness (and it does), this perhaps can be blamed on source material. The first two Die Hard films we based on pre-existing novels (Nothing Lasts Forever and 58 Minutes -- both fairly enjoyable works). Die Hard easily had the best writing going for it, being adapted by Jeb Stuart (48 HRS., The Fugitive, the upcoming John Rambo) and Steven E. de Souza (48 HRS., Commando). Die Hard 2 was adapted by de Souza and Doug Richardson (Bad Boys, Money Train). Die Hard With a Vengeance was written directly for the screen (though was reportedly cobbled together from a screenplay intended for the Lethal Weapon series) by Jonathan Hensleigh (who went on to Armegeddon). Live Free Or Die Hard was based on a 1997 Wired magazine article called "A Farewell To Arms" by John Carlin and written by Mark Bomback (Godsend) and David Marconi (Enemy Of The State).

This isn't to say that films not-based on novels are weaker entities. It's notable, perhaps, when considering a film's origins and how they're built upon to envision the finished project. My thinking is that -- in the translation of page-to-screen of first novel, from Nothing Lasts Forever into Die Hard -- the adapting screenwriters had much to work with from the original novel and are allowed (or borrow) some additional background and character inspiration regarding the heroic lead figure. Joe Leland (the novel's hero) is an older, more Clint Eastwood type who's saving his daughter from the invading villains within a metropolitan skyscraper. The heroic lead of 58 Minutes is also trying to save his particular daughter, this time in a hijack/airport situation over Christmas holiday that found its way straight into Die Hard 2. The makers of the first two films simply changed "daughter" to "wife," cast the wonderful Bonnie Bedelia as the newly christened Holly Gennero McClane, and voila! A cinematic family is born.

What I wonder about is Die Hard 3 and 4 -- do they suffer from not having this literary basis, this pre-existing history and from-the-novel background? It could be said that DH3 suffers from not following its predecessors in the "preserve the family unit at all costs" subtext of DH1 & DH2. The relationship between John (Willis) and Holly (Bedelia) was the emotional anchor that gave the first two films their strength and character. McClane was never an unstoppable superhero like so many Stallones and Schwarzeneggers. He was a man with a family, fighting to keep his wife safe. DH3 misses out on this completely, but it is buoyed by the buddy chemistry of McClane and Zeus Carver (a terrific Samuel L. Jackson). DH4 tries to fill the emotional slots with a cantankerous relationship between McClane and his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who appeared in Grindhouse). The attempt gets minor points for trying but loses a few more later. More on this in a moment...

Certainly DH4's villains suffer in comparison. Our new head baddie, Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) may be the weakest antagonist of the series (he'd be nothing without his laptop) and has none of the menace nor the charisma of his predecessors. Regarding Gabriel's reason for doing what he does -- how silly is it that his criminal scheme is mainly born not out of simple greed or political anger or even revenge, but of a bruised ego? In the world of responsible, get-the-job-done front-liners like McClane, this villain is a strutting, delusional, Derek Zoolanderish, techno-punk whiner who's all up in a tizzy because he didn't get the credit he feels he deserves after designing a flawed National Security protection system and then pointing it's flaws out to his superiors. This is rather like getting a bad coffee at Starbucks, then having the Barista come out to your table to point out his shabby brewing work and then asking for a hefty tip. He's more up-to-date but not much of a character. Gabriel might be McClane's superior in the digital world of telecom technology, but -- as Gabriel soon discovers -- McClane is easily his superior in the analog world of "ripping people a new one" technology.

Gabriel's henchmen have little charisma compared earlier Die Hard "teams of evil." Maggie Q is certainly pleasing but is never given much of a character to play. She's capable of entertaining work as can be seen in the Hong Kong actioner Naked Weapon and the more recent Mission: Impossible III. And the "unstoppable" Cyril Raffaeli of District B-13 fame might be a good fighter and acrobat, but he has none of the danger, edge or mystery of Alexander Gudonov in Die Hard and pales by comparison. These aren't characters, they're character types -- empty cyphers that might as well be wearing t-shirts that read "Hot Evil Girlfriend" or "Bad Guy #2." It's not the actors' fault they don't make a dent -- it's the screenplay's for not giving them more rounded, defined people to play. Nearly twenty years later we still remember "Karl" and "Theo" from Die Hard. One day after seeing Live Free, I need to pay a visit to IMDB to even remember anyone's names.

For Live Free's climax, we are given a scene that is nearly a direct lift from the ending of the first, best Die Hard. Gabriel and a light load of Henchmen have Lucy McClane and Matt Farrell (Justin Long) under gunpoint -- just as Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his fellow baddies had Holly (Bedelia) under gunpoint in Die Hard. There, McClane had only two bullets left, came up with a genius plan, calmly walked (or "limped") into the room and expertly ended their lives with little more than a joke and some deadly marksmanship. Here, in the same situation presented in Live Free or Die Hard, do the writers pay tribute somehow with their final act cribbed so closely from the original? Do they actually sit and come up with something equally as clever or exciting or even original? No. They have McClane just march straight into the room like a mad bull, guns blazing, with no strategy or plan whatsoever. That's some lazy writing... as well as a major error that McClane would never likely make, despite being caught in the heat of anger or revenge. This goes against McClane's established character and the scene suffers greatly for it. Similarly, the ensuing standoff and punishment of Gabriel a moment later seems that much less potent and leaves us wanting something more grand, operatic... or maybe just a little cooler. Gabriel deserves a far more vicious beatdown (and a far longer, more satisfying comeuppance) for all the terror he's wrought across the country and across the lives of our heroes.

Speaking of which (as mentioned earlier), the "Lucy McClane in peril" portions of the storyline are so perfunctory in their construction that they make an already ridiculous narrative that much more silly. The first scene with Lucy & John arguing outside her that parked car was genuinely human and amusing. It was soon less so when it became obvious that it was mere set-up for the third act's kidnapping plotline. Lucy exists only to get abducted and to toss around a few humorous lines. She's not as organic to the plotline of DH4 as Holly is in DH1 (or even DH2 to a lesser extent). Holly is the reason McClane visits Los Angeles in Die Hard in the first place. For all her integral-to-plotness, Lucy might as well be some random that McClane buys the Daily News from every morning.

Sadly, director Len Wiseman drops the ball in several ways. By current filmmaking standards, Live Free is a decent ride. But compared to Die Hard and the first half of Die Hard With A Vengeance, both directed by the great but suddenly unfavored John McTiernan, a great deal of Live Free feels as unreal as a cartoon. Nothing in Wiseman's previous work in the Underworld films would seem to suggest a mind capable of helming something as important as a Die Hard film. (Yes, I said important.) Something about the way McTiernan shoots a film -- the you-are-there aesthetic, the sweat, the impending danger, the realism -- makes the drama and fear of his earlier Die Hard films that much more satisfying. (Not so much Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2.) Wiseman is a fairly decent chaos-director... I quite enjoyed the car chases and a little of the "jetfighter versus truck" stuff. But his action rarely feels emotionally involving. Sure, action films have regrettably "evolved" to a point of intensity that's way over the top and far too computer generated, these days. But they can also be streamlined and reality-based, as can be seen every week on television's 24, a series that owes much to McClane and his methods. In fact, in many ways Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) pretty much is McClane without a sense of humor. I like to think they'd get along fairly well if they ever bumped into each other at their local pub.

There's a bit more in Live Free that one could pick apart. The Gas Explosion sequence could've been removed entirely. The sequence in which McClane dispatches an opponent by driving through a dozen concrete walls with an SUV and pinning said opponent under said exploding SUV (at the bottom an elevator shaft, mind you) is so stupidly conceived it's embarrassing. (Just how did he get from the parking garage inside the building, anyway? That's one tough SUV.) There's far too much shabby dialogue looping and ADR work, likely done in haste in order to cover the edited-down-to-PG-13 aspect of the film you're all aware of. No doubt an extended-cut of the film will be released to DVD in the near future, crassly capitalizing on our desire to hear our beloved "yippee-ki-yay" line in all it's well-deserved glory

And yet... Despite all it's weak points... And it's weak points are many...

Live Free Or Die Hard still works as simple summer entertainment. It's a testament to Bruce Willis and his work as John McClane that even with the film's many shortcomings, we still have a great time watching it unfold. There are other pleasures... Justin Long's techno-geek character wasn't nearly as rote nor as annoying as he could've been. In fact, I wanted to know more about his background, who his parents are and how he's so technologically gifted. He and McClane strike an initially uneasy partnership and eventually seem very father/son, on occassion. The helicopter chase material is a lot of fun and the film's musical score by Marco Beltrami even has a few Michael Kamen tributes in there with several loving callbacks to the late composer's earlier Die Hard scores. Like The Last Boy Scout and Hudson Hawk before it, Live Free Or Die Hard is miraculously more than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps the character of John McClane, the cop with the attitude who never gives up and never backs down, is script-and-situation proof. Perhaps we will always love the guy no matter what. More so than Indiana Jones, more than James Bond, more than Neo, more than near anyone else in current cinema, John McClane is the funny, blue-collar, get-it-done man that we all not only want to be but could be if given the same circumstances. He can't stick to walls, shoot webs, turn back time or stop bullets. He's just one of the guys. One of our friends. One of us...

And may he Live Free forever.

*** stars (out of four).

The New Brat Pack

2007-06-24T23:41:00.000-07:00

And now, a tale of terror from the front lines of Video Retail...

INT - THE STORE - DAY.

A group of four pre-teen girls enters the shop. With their iPods, cell phones and high-volume conversational banter, they are clearly the masters of their existences. They break off from their discussion of the relative "hotness" of actor Chris Evans long enough for one of them (the leader, it seems) to approach the in-his-thirties Associate at the sales counter. The Associate makes eye contact with this creature, the apparent Future of Our World.

ASSOCIATE
Hi? Can I help you find something?

THE FUTURE
"Yah," can you recommend something for
a group of eleven year old girls?

ASSOCIATE
(fumbling a little)
We have... some Barbie movies.

The Future gives the Associate the deepest look of contempt her eleven year old face can muster.

ASSOCIATE
How about Dora The Explorer? Or Barnyard?
That's got cows! Do you like cows?

THE FUTURE
Where's John Tucker Must Die?

ASSOCIATE
That's rated PG-13 for "sexual content and
language." You're eleven. That's two years of
life experience you can't handle yet.

THE FUTURE
(getting testy)
What's a really funny movie, then?

Anyone who knows the Associate, geek or not, knows his answer to this one.

ASSOCIATE
How about Ghostbusters? That's about the
funniest movie ever.

THE FUTURE
Pfft! More like the oldest movie ever.

All four girls start laughing like it's the last minute of the last day of school.

The Associate silently wonders if it's technically illegal to slap someone else's kids.

FADE OUT.

Recent Theatrical Reviews:
Spider-Man 3 ***1/2
Ocean's Thirteen ***1/2
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ***
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End **1/2

DVD/Home Video:
The Third Man: Criterion Collection ****
The Naked City: Criterion Collection ****
Europa (aka Zentropa) ****
The Hitcher (1986) ****
Protege (Hong Kong) ***1/2
Truck Rascals: No One Can Stop Me (Japan, 1975) ***
New York Stories (1989) ***
The Money Pit (1986) ***
Dragnet (1987) ***
The 'Burbs (1989) **1/2
Confession Of Pain (HK) **1/2
Ghost Rider (2007) **1/2
Pulse (2006) **
The Woman Chaser (1999) **
The Hitcher (2007) *1/2
Transmorphers (2007) (zero stars)

"Banzai Hard"

2007-04-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

To combat the negativity of the last blog entry, here's two little pieces of awesome ness to brighten your day.

Firstly, allow me to introduce you to Puchi Bruce.

Anyone who knows me knows of my admiration of the work of Bruce Willis, the Die Hard film series -- even the third one which starts off great but goes as haywire as an old Batman TV rerun -- and for Japanese cinema, as well. Hell, I've even got both of Bruce's pop/blues albums (yep) and a T-shirt from his Boston show during his 2002 Tour with Ivan Neville (double-yep). But... there's a certain man somewhere in Japan who puts my fanboy-ness to shame. And I now have a new hero to add to the ranks. His name is Akihiro Suzuki, and he must be seen to be believed.

Japansugoi.com reports that "This 47 year old actor from Yokohama was a former Japanese salaryman who dreamed of acting while working for the Supermarket chain Daiei. During this time he worked as a TV/movie extra and participated in Mono-mane (impersonator) programs for Japanese TV station TBS where he became “Puchibruce." His name derives from the French word ‘Petite Bruce’, meaning a mini-version of Bruce Willis due to his diminutive stature compared to the real Bruce. The Japanese word for Petite is pronounced ‘Puchi.'"

For me it all began with some youtube clips from Japanese game shows featuring Suzuki-san. Then a friend of mine showed me this fella's myspace page. And from there I found this site, which I've been watching over and over again for the last day or so. You've just gotta love this guy.

http://www.puchi-diehard.com/

If anyone can help, I have a few questions. Just how big is this guy in Japan right now? Could Akihiro Suzuki be this year's "Star Wars Kid?" On that last site, there appears to be a date of 2007 -- I can't read Japanese but is this site advertising a movie or v-cinema offering to be released? Imagine him working with Takashi Miike, Sho Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi. Total bliss, right there. Enjoy some more Puchi Action...

A game show clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LNoQKHlCHs
A myspace link: http://blog.myspace.com/puchibruce

On a non-related note, those of you in the New York area can currently see two of the best crime drama films to come out of Asia since the Infernal Affairs trilogy at the Film Forum in Manhattan -- Election and Election 2 (aka Triad Election).

Directed by master filmmaker Johnnie To, director of Running Out Of Time, The Mission, Throwdown and Exiled, the Election films are about the ever changing levels of power within the Chinese Mafia. In the films' large and powerful Triad (crime organization), the leader is elected by those who serve and operate within theTriad's structure. Election (Part One) is a detailed examination of the hunt for power between two opposing candidates -- a brash wildman (Tony Leung Ka Fai) and a more subdued man of the people (Simon Yam) -- and their various subordinates. Election 2/Triad Election deals with the desire to maintain one's power when a conflicted, young, new candidate from within the ranks pops up to challenge a Boss in the next leader election. If you enjoy Chinese cinema, mob politics and the occasional bit of ultraviolence, these are for you. Johnnie To's films don't typically get a lot of play in theaters around the USA (at least not yet) so take the time if you can. Very, very worth the trip.

Recent Theatrical Reviews:
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters ***

DVD/Home Video:
Spider-Man 2.1 (Extended Cut) ****
Miami Vice: Season One ***1/2
Masters Of Horror: Homecoming ***1/2
Payback: 1999 Theatrical Cut ***1/2
Payback (Straight Up) : 2007 Director's Cut ***1/2
Criterion Collection: Border Radio (1987) ***
Criterion Collection: Atomic Submarine (1959) **1/2
Masters Of Horror: Pick Me Up **
Hurricane Smith (1992) **

The Customer Is Always... What?

2007-04-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

Ever worked retail? Sucks, doesn't it? I mean it realllly sucks, sometimes. You can be as respectful and courteous behind that counter as you like but there's just no accounting for those people who just seem to come into your establishment for the sole cause of venting the issues they have in their so-called personal lives. A word of advice for those who fit that description: "Don't." We of the Retail Force don't need your anger nor your attitude. We're not your punching bags nor your understanding family members. We're at work. You're in our place of business. Unless you'd like to leave us the address of where you spend your days and critique your work style, feel free to stay home. Or better yet, stay home... and start drinking. It'll make all your problems go away. Trust me. You'll feel better. Give it a shot. ;)

Why the sudden nastiness in blogging? Three recent run-in's at my job with customers who just don't seem to get the finer points of human interaction and interpersonal communication. Let's look back, shall we?

DAY ONE:

MAN #1 comes us to the counter. He's normally an okay type; a regular. A bit of a wiseguy but no worries. He comes in tonight seeming a little off. World weary, maybe a little loaded. He comes up to the counter on a busy night and starts telling a story at top-volume...

Me: Hey! How ya' doing tonight?

Man #1: Lemme ask you... What kind of a fuckin' name for a poodle...

Me: (interrupting, smiling) Wait, wait! C'mon, shhhh! There's kids right behind you, man. Please, no swearing out loud... It's a "PG" store... (laughing) Okay, so what's this about a poodle?

Man #1: (dramatic, angry pause) Look... I'm sorry I used a word... that you found personally objectionable, but... (he leans in, to my face) Don't ever correct me again.

Me: (keeping my cool) I'm sorry, but like I said there are children not ten feet from us and we can't have swearing in the store. Okay? Please try to understand.

Man #1 (intense) I hope... you're hearing me.

Me: (intense back) That's the problem, Sir. I am hearing you.

DAY TWO:

MAN #2 enters the store and begins speaking heatedly at a NEW HIRE about the outside video drop-box being locked. About a month ago we began locking the box during the daytime in order to get customers to drop their movies inside the store and to help ensure quicker DVD check-ins and more efficient service, which we always point out to every customer during every transaction. Most appreciate the forward leap in service... but not all. The New Hire isn't yet equipped to handle surly customers yet, so I step in...

Man #2: That drop box is supposed to be open all day! You want me to leave my car running outside where it'll get stolen??

Me: Well, you block a fire lane when you drop off movies from your car at the box, Sir. And there are more than a dozen empty parking spaces in our lot out there. The drop box is pretty much for when the store's closed, only.

Man #2: Why doesn't it say that? (This argument has always made me laugh. As if everything in the world needs labels for those without common sense. This man is the type of mouth breather who sues McDonald's when their coffee is served too hot.)

Me: (joking) Well, it doesn't say a lot of things.

Man #2: (walking toward me, now) Are you getting snide with me?

Me: (walking toward him, now) No. I'm making a joke with you.

He takes my name. I give it. He leaves. We of the Retail Force are happy.

DAY THREE:

MAN #3 would like to do some renting but he hasn't been into the store for about two years and the credit card (or bank card) on his account has expired. Cards are required to back up member accounts so that the company has a way to get their money back if a customer never returns what they rent. This happens all day every day and is standard operating procedure. This fella just isn't having it.

Man #3: This is stupid! I'm not giving you my credit card! I'm paying cash!

Me: Well, I can save your movies for you until you can come back with one...

Man #3: Forget it. Just gimme the Coke. (The soft drink. Not the drug. He seems to be on enough of them, already.)

Me: That's $1.41 then, please.

Man #3 throws (yes, throws) a giftcard at me across the counter. I ring up his purchase and try giving back his giftcard, which still has quite a bit of money stored on it.

Man#3: Throw it away! I'm not coming back.

Me: Well... there's still close to $20.00 left on this gift card. You could always give it to someone... Otherwise you're throwing away close to twenty dollars, here.

Man#3: I don't care! You guys are assholes! (He leaves.)

Sure. He throws money at me, shouts obscenities in public and storms away. And I'm the asshole.

"Who's next, please?" :)

Bumping... and Grinding.

2007-04-07T19:13:00.000-07:00

Having grown up in the New England sticks, I never had the chance to see proper "grindhouse" cinema in its legendary habitat. Oh sure, the Union Theater in Attleboro had a certain low-rent squalor and the Plainville Drive-In would occasionally show an awkward double feature along the lines of The Rescuers and Porky's -- but there were no real experiences to be had of this type in my formative moviegoing years. The Home Video wars (that is, VHS versus Beta) finished fairly quickly and many of the exploitation world's finest offerings began spilling into living rooms across the country in their hard plastic shells labeled "be kind, rewind." Of course, my film interests were more middle of the road back then (Spielberg, John Hughes and the like) but I'd grab the occasional Cannon Films or Vestron Video offering to mix things up a bit. I say this because I feel... well... saddened and dismayed that I missed out on what many would consider the true and proper Grindhouse Experience.

Which is probably just one of the reasons I enjoyed the new Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino film, Grindhouse... and why it's such an important movie for this particular generation at this particular time. Grindhouse isn't just a slick, thoughtful, bloody, twisted, hilarious and exciting movie. It could serve as a torchlight illuminating the genre and could lead the viewer to seek out and experience the films it pays homage to -- and is therefore better bang-for-the-buck movie goodness than anything released in quite some time. The youth of today are being lulled into a safe, green, motion picture pasture in which there's a computer-animated talking or singing animal movie being released pretty much every week on some format or another. These people could use a wake-up call -- and a film that features Disney's "Captain Ron" driving a black, crossboned, high-octane deathbeast over someone's face might just be what they need.

Rodriguez's Planet Terror is pitch perfect, if a little too highly competently made -- few zombie/action flicks of the old days are this smartly paced, sleekly sexual, self-aware or technically polished -- and Rose McGowan earns her new star status with humor and intensity. Tarantino's Death Proof achieves a neat trick with its indulgently lengthy set-up by delivering a visceral and hysterical punchline while giving Kurt Russell his best role in decades and delivering actress/stuntperson Zoe Bell into the hearts and fantasies of audiences everywhere. The icing on the cake is/are the "fake trailers" that appear throughout the film from the likes of Rob Zombie, Eli Roth and Edgar Wright. Hell, I could've watched ninety minutes of them, if they were all as good as Don't! and Machete. One can only hope that even a few theaters and cinema pubs across America will take a cue from the film and start programming similar double features in the spirit of recapturing the craziness and abandon of these howling, insane, often so-bad-they're-beautiful works of art. C'mon, people. Do it... for the kids.

I caught Grindhouse at the Boston sneak on Thursday night with a few hundred screaming movie fans; the type that will happily stay up until after 3:00am on a weeknight -- and just as happily go into work and/or school, bleary-eyed and sleep deprived the next morning -- if a good cinema experience is to be had the night before. And ever since then, whenever I found myself talking to someone at work or around the apartment, I'd find myself asking them a couple of quick questions.

"What are you doing here, right now?"
"Why aren't you at the movies right now seeing Grindhouse?"
And... "Are you a movie fan or not?"

Theatrical Reviews:
Grindhouse ****
Hot Fuzz ****
Roman ***1/2
300 ***

Home Video:
Masters Of Horror: Cigarette Burns: ***1/2
Masters Of Horror: Sick Girl: ***
Wild Side (1995) ***
The Dangerous Brothers/World Of Danger (UK, 1991) ***
Cross My Heart (1987) ***
Hellboy: Sword Of Storms **1/2

The Night of A Thousand Stars

2007-03-26T11:52:00.001-07:00

Hey there, all. Yesterday was a pretty decent day and a fair representation of the way I'd like a great deal of my days to be.

Firstly, as you might guess, it was a day off from work -- which is always appreciated. The college pals Mark and Tom came down from Keene and we all headed off to Harvard Square in Cambridge to the historic Brattle Theater to attend the area premiere of Hot Fuzz, the new action-comedy from the team behind the UK's television and film wonders Spaced and Shawn of the Dead. Stars Simon Pegg & Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright were all to be in attendance, so missing the event was simply not an option. In order to gain attendance to said event, one had to catch a screening of a previous film in a series of presentations of classic action/cop movies such as The French Connection, Lethal Weapon, Hard Boiled and such. I'd made the trip out a while ago -- during a blizzard that shut down most of the city -- to catch Dirty Harry, in order to get my Fuzz ticket. It was freezing out there waiting for the amazingly undependable MBTA bus line ride home and I nearly jumpstarted my cold/flu again in doing so... but in hindsight, it was definitely worth it.

After grabbing a bite at Charlie's -- truly the "double cheeseburger king," just as the sign says -- we recaptured our spots in line thanks to another chance run-in with friend and fellow cinemaniac Wendee (see the "Lebowski" post on this blog). We all filed in and basked in the warming, comic glow of Hot Fuzz's warm, comic glow. No spoilers on the film, here. But anyone who loved Shawn of the Dead or can appreciate a great mix of character comedy and "shite blowing up" won't be disappointed. After the screening, a 30 minute Q&A commenced with Pegg, Frost & Wright. Many fine questions and many silly and informative answers were lobbed about. Pegg jokingly confirmed for me his hopes that a series of action figures featuring the Fuzz cast might be released -- especially ones in the classic Star Wars figure style where one could take his "Nicholas Angel" figure and place it in a series of playsets and vehicles. Autographs were signed, hands were shaken and a great time was had by all. But wait: there was more...

Immediately after the Fuzztival, another screening was to be held as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival. This screening was of a new horror/comedy/romance called Roman and to be presented in attendance by cinematographer Kevin Ford, star Lucky Mckee and director Angela Bettis. McKee (also well known director) and Bettis (also an acclaimed actress) previously collaborated on the great horror comedy May, and switched filmmaking positions on Roman, a DV-film regarding another lonely, dangerous soul trying to connect with his particular world with sweet and deadly results.

The film hits all the right marks and is exceedingly well shot by director of photography Ford. The post-screening Q&A was an intimate, down-to-earth session with McKee, Bettis and Ford lending advice and sharing filmmaking stories with warmth and humor. After a quick meet-and-greet, I asked Ford about the DVD release of the film and let him know that in the realm of DV features, I thought that Roman looked great and better, in fact, than David Lynch's Inland Empire. Very cool work was displayed by three very talented filmmakers, indeed.

After the thank you's were exchanged and the crowd split up, Mark, Tom and I headed out into the streets, parted company and I caught a nearby bus back to the pad to enjoy some of the David Lynch Signature Cup Organic House Roast Coffee (!) that I grabbed at the theater's concession stand. Quite good, actually. Mellow, not bitter. If you're ever out by the Brattle, the Lynch coffee's definitely worth the stop. Just be sure to keep the fish out of your percolator...

And if you get that reference, you're my kind of reader. ;)

"Prepare For Glory!"

2007-03-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

A quick word about Frank Miller's 300.

I caught this thing with the pals in New Hampshire last week. It ended up a split decision. Some of us hated it, some appreciated the flick despite its lunkheadedness. I think Ridley Scott's Academy Award winner Gladiator does the "ancient epic" thing a bit better -- but there is a savage charge in some of 300's battle scenes and spiritual carnage. As we left the screening room and moved into the theater lobby, some of us began yelling at the tops of our lungs such battlecries as "Wheaaaah is the baaaah-throom?! Let no man stand in our way!! These toilets... are for Spartaaaaaaaa!!!"

My good friend Tim Hulsizer and I joked awhile about the film, realizing that all of these recent, huge, swaggering, muscle-bound warrior pictures like Gladiator, Troy, Alexander and such all seem comfy enough to solely deal with European historical conquests. We joked that some studio with a few hundred million to burn needs to man-up some July 4th weekend with a similarly noisy, overwrought, meatheaded, testosterone-historical (or "testostorical") production centered on good ol' American history.

We imagined an unproven, schizo music-video director at the helm, directing a 70% slow-motion CGI extravaganza about George Washington's crossing of the Delaware in 1776 -- only the Delaware would be 500 miles across, there would be a thousand ship armada, the entire film would take place at night in the rain, there would be pirates, Washington would be a bent, uber-buffed, stripped-naked, homicidal maniac with an impossibly hot Betsy Ross awaiting his return... and since Hollywood's historical epics are primarily cast with actors from the UK or Austrailia, all of our American characters would be played by Brits -- which would make things even more surreal.

Hundred million opening weekend. Guaranteed.

Check out Tim's blog for similar concept art and more. ;)
http://ignatz.brinkster.net/timages/daily/daily0372.gif
http://ignatz.brinkster.net/daily.html

BLOG: THE RETURN

2007-03-20T01:12:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are again...

As always, my apologies for the delays in between bloggerations. It's the usual reasons/excuses -- "work, sleep, the occasional day-off." Besides the winter season hitting the videostore like a suburban tsunami, I've been whiling away much of the spare time discovering the amazing world of online film soundtrack hunting (and rediscovering the greatness of Ennio Morricone), getting a roommate hooked on Fox-TV's 24, making a few new close friends, tearing up the crime-ridden streets of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, becoming one with all-things-Kryptonian with the Superman Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD set (all fourteen discs' worth)... and gearing up to do some "serious" writing again for the first time in years.

Project #1 is a sci-fi sort of thing. It's going to be very short and intended for a specific market (more details will follow, perhaps) and should also help me train for Project #2, an adventure drama inspired by a classic piece of literature and a film noir masterpiece. Though I've already completed two full-length screenplays (between 105 and 140 pages) and one short one (60 pages), it's been a daunting task getting to this stage. It's psychological, really. I'm never at a loss of material or inspiration. For me, the prepping is the hardest part. Between restlessness, the internet, movies, music and such, there are a thousand things out there that can distract one's attention from creativity. Like an athlete training for an Olympic event, one has to become very zen, very focused... and force the distractions away.

Step one was simplifying my environment visually. Too many posters and objects and such in my direct creative vicinity can throw me off, so I started packing some things up and storing them away. Now, the room is a bit more spartan in decor but could/should probably become more so. In addition, keeping the right things around can help to inspire. Off the walls came the Ghostbusters theatrical one-sheet and the rare Eric Clapton album cover. A painting by my mother (an unfulfilled artist, herself) and another that hung in the living room of the house I grew up in as a child stayed in their spots, though. This concept of mine has already had a sort of "cleansing" effect upon me in a way, I feel. I'm looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

At any rate, it's time to catch some Zzzz's for the time being, so until next blog here's a few reviews to keep things rolling. More soon. :)

Theatrical
Dirty Harry (1971) ***1/2
300 ***
Volver **1/2

DVD/Home Video
The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) ****
24: Season Five ***1/2
Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation (1989) ***
Mulholland Drive: TV Series Pilot Version ***
Night of the Comet (1984) ***
Casino Royale (2006) ***
Rocky Balboa ***
Confession Of Pain (Hong Kong) **1/2
Scary Movie 4 **1/2
The Last Man On Earth (1964) **
Attack Force * 1/2
Flight Of Fury * 1/2
The Suicide Manual (Japan) *
The Suicide Manual 2 (Japan) *

New Zoo Reviews...

2007-01-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

Just a few additions for now, more soonish...

Theatrical
The Curse Of The Golden Flower (Hong Kong) **1/2
Inland Empire **1/2

DVD/Home Video (Domestic)
Once Upon A Time In America: Director's Cut (1984) ****
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One - Criterion Collection (Documentary) ****
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2 - Criterion **1/2
The Superman "Ultimate Collector's Edition" DVD Set ****
Superman ****
Superman II (Theatrical) ****
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006) ****
Superman III ***
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace **
Superman Returns (2006) ***
Look! Up In The Sky! (Documentary) ***
You Will Believe (Documentary) ***1/2
South Park: Season 7 ***
Snakes On A Plane ***
Hard Candy ***
Idiocracy ***
Slither ***
Edmond ***
The Black Dahlia **1/2
The Quiet **1/2
Altered **1/2
Scoop **1/2
Dynamic 1: The Best Of DavidLynch.com **1/2
The Saddest Music In The World **
The First $20 Million **
The Wicker Man (2006) **
Clean, Shaven **
The Marine **
7 Mummies *

DVD/Home Video (Foreign)
The Banquet (Hong Kong) ***1/2
G.I. Samurai (Japan, 1979) ***
Gwendoline (France, 1984) ***
Kamikaze Girls (Japan) ***
Invisible Waves (Thai) ***
Rob-B-Hood (HK) ***
Exiled (HK) ***
Bloody Tie (Korea) **1/2
Typhoon (Korea) **1/2
Puzzle (Korea) **1/2
Cello (Korea) **1/2