oatmealblizzard

Oh well, sounds like I won't be hassling with this. Warsaw would be fun and all, but I'm not camping out for it. I'll just take my Hammerstein Ballroom ticket and enjoy it.

matt mays - matt mays & el torpedo

Nice. Was listening to that earlier.

NP:

Day Night Day Night, Director: Julia Loktev

I caught this yesterday. It was a frustrating, but powerful and worthwhile "indie film" about a 19 year old girl and her preparation for a suicide bombing in Times Square. Frightening stuff. I wrote a little review on my half-assed blog if anyone's interested.

Half-way through, I remember thinking, "this is great....fun, entertaining, funny..."

 

Then, yes, it fell apart under the weight of too damn many characters and stories.

 

But, c'mon...I've seen a TON of summer blockbusters worse than Spiderman 3. My opinion is that Raimi needed another 6 months to get the movie where it could have been.

Raimi is generally pretty great, yes. I really like most of his films, but this was not one of them. And yes, it had some exciting moments. But in the end it all added up to a big pile of nonsense. The acting was stiff, though this may have just been the result of the generally painful dialogue. There were way too many plots going on, none of which was developed very well. And, in none of them did the payoffs feel earned. The character's motivations were pretty unbelievable and their decisions inconsistent as we moved from scene to scene. And the bits that were meant to be jokes were just sad. Peter Parker/Spiderman dancing on multiple occasions? The whole secretary buzzing the editor's desk thing? And what was up with the Conor Oberst hairdo, as someone already mentioned? I dunno. This is obviously just my opinion, and you are certainly more than welcome to disagree ... although you even admit the flick fell apart at least a little. I do agree, though, that there are worse summer blockbusters out there. But this one was only minimally better. Maybe it was the 350+million dollar budget that got them over the hump?

Oh well, it just felt like they poured more and more money into this thing in an effort to make it bigger and better, when it only ended up making it more and more messy.

Yeah, why see a mediocre-good movie, when you can see masterpieces like....

 

28 Weeks Later

300

Are We Done Yet

Delta Farce

Disturbia

Georgia Rule

Fracture

Grindhouse

Lucky You

Meet the Robinsons

Next

Shooter

Wild Hogs

Yeah, those are mostly pretty awful. 28 Weeks Later looks like it could be interesting, though. And you didn't mention Hot Fuzz, which I think is at most of the Spiderman-playing multiplexes and is fantastic.

And Grindhouse was a much better film than Spiderman 3, I thought. I genuinely enjoyed that flick, especially the Death Proof portion. Planet Terror's merits are definitely debatable, but Tarantino's half was one of the best things I've seen this year so far. I know people who would disagree with me, though.

Not as weird at the Huskers being on ...who was it? Joan Rivers. That was a good one.

 

This is kind of genius. Dinosaur Jr. on Jenny Jones Wrong CD cover and Jenny gets the song title wrong. "Out of There!"

awesome.

Yeah, Sky Blue Sky is a really, really good album in my opinion. But I am fully expecting more than a fair number of poor reviews as the album is not as overtly "daring" or "experimental" as some of their more recent work has been perceived. Thus it is an obvious target for critical backlash. It is a good album, though, and I love it. That's all that really matters to me.

But yeah ... this bitch is annoying. I could hardly finish that. Painful....

That was some great Jazz-Warriors action earlier tonight. Had to love Derek Fisher's Willis Reed-like arrival. Classic.

Saw this today. And...ummm...just thought it was really bad. Rarely do I thoroughly dislike a movie, but ... well ... I thoroughly disliked this one. Overlong, overcrowded, poorly acted, poorly written. The motivations for the characters' actions made zero sense almost uniformly and thus the story grew increasingly ridiculous as this mess moved forward. In fact, the story was really little more than a LONG series of big action set pieces interspersed with badly acted (and just plain bad) exposition.

I know it's based on a comic book ... but that is no excuse for the massive amounts of pure cheese this flick contains. I mean, the first 2 Spidermans did a fairly nice job of capturing the look and feel of a comic book in its images, tone, dialogue, and general sense of excitement and fun. This new one, though, was a big steamy turd of a summer Hollywood blockbuster ... with a few cool special effects.

Thumbs down.

Centro-matic - Operation Motorcide EP

Hot Fuzz was indeed great!

I liked the first 20 minutes or so of Planet Terror, but then I grew weary... the experience as a whole never lived up to the highs of a few select fragments or gags. The problem I have with Rodriguez is that while he has boundless enthusiasm for the nuts-and-bolts of filmmaking, he's just not a very strong storyteller. All of Planet Terror is told at precisely the same pitch, and for me that grew repetitive. The fact that he's reviving old junk tropes doesn't forgive it, either, especially in light of how Tarantino, by contrast, skillfully avoided the pitfall of producing juvenile crap when paying homage to juvenile crap. In fact, I was thankful to need a restroom break near the end of Planet Terror; I was happy to kill a few minutes while waiting for Tarantino's segment to arrive.

 

I really enjoyed the oddball structure of Death Proof. The opening stretch is, perhaps, a bit demanding, but there are many admirable things going on during it. The conversation is perfectly calibrated and acted; while I never liked those girls, I believed in them as individuals and enjoyed watching the characterizations. Plus, the opening stretch is loaded with fantastic ideas and imagery. Remember when Poitier dances to the jukebox and finally, at the end of an unnaturally long take, spins her hair for the amusement of everyone else in the bar? The way that scene was done, in terms of tone, composition, speed, and affection for human movement, reminded me of the dancing scene in Band of Outsiders. (I know it's cliche to compare Tarantino to Godard, but I can't help it... that's what I thought of while watching.) Once the first killings occur, the movie becomes an inspired mashup of the slasher and gearhead genres, and I was hooked. I especially enjoyed hanging out with the second group of girls. And of course the centerpiece stunt is riveting; it captures a very real sense of speed and physical vulnerability and probably ranks among the best stunt scenes I've ever seen. Plus, for my money, Tarantino's revenge punchline is far wittier than anything in Planet Terror.

Only have a minute to throw some thoughts down, but you totally hit the nail on the head here, I think. I was a bit disappointed in Planet Terror, though maybe "disappointed" is the wrong term seeing as I've never really been too incredibly fond of a Rodriguez flick, save the first segment (the Mickey Rourke bit) of Sin City. But it was still good fun.

I really, really enjoyed Death Proof, though. I loved the dialogue, which was typical Tarantino. It kind of felt like Tarantino was using the vehicle of the girls-in-distress flick/slasher film to riff on Tarantino films themselves, in a way. If that makes any sense. Especially in the scene where the second group of girls are sitting around the table talking it up while we get a fantastic rotating 360 degree tracking shot that really seems to echo the beginning of Reservoir Dogs ... but with chicks. I also got a kick out of the odd structure of Death Proof, which can be seen as either two films in one or as one story with a terrific fake-out, false start that leaves you untrusting of the filmmaker and where he's taking us. Also, the crash mid way through was horrifying but wonderfully staged. And the stunt scene at the end is with very few equals. And...I always really enjoy when Tarantino lets a shot linger quite a few beats longer than almost any other filmmaker out there would. It serves to lull you into the moment/story in a really powerful way. Oh, and Kurt breaking down the fourth wall was awesome. I laughed out loud. Gotta run....

Never seen Will solo either. Seen Centro-matic quite a few times, but would love to catch a solo show.

How was this? Anyone?

Oh, man. That really is some bad news.

I got myself two tickets!

Centro-matic - Operation Motorcide EP

It is great.

This sucks. Lots of crappy music news today...