Charge Shot!!!

At the Mountains of Madness- Part Thirteen: "Shut the Door and Have a Seat"

2009-11-09T19:30:00.000-05:00

There was speculation around the blogosphere this past week that since last Sunday's Mad Men dealt almost exclusively with the JFK assassination, this week's season finale would essentially act as a coda to the season and serve to further deal with any loose ends left after "the Grown Ups". Boy oh boy, did this episode prove us wrong. Instead of another hour of Don Draper and friends moping around being sad about the president being killed, we were treated to some of the biggest movings and shakings of the plot in the series' three seasons. By the hour's end, the status quo has been entirely uprooted for Don both at work and at home and things are never going to be the same.

So what exactly happened and what is in store for us next summer?

The episode opens with Connie essentially firing Don, or "letting him go" to put it in a slightly more cordial way. The reason? Well, the firing has been a long time coming, I'm frankly surprised it took until the season finale to tie this plot line up, because Hilton has been disappointed with his surrogate son's creative output (even though we the viewers know that it's been awesome). He uses the old "it's not what I wanted" excuse. Hey, Connie- who's the advertising genius in this relationship? More than all that though, Connie has caught wind that Sterling Cooper's British overlords Putnam, Powell, and Lowe are being bought by McCann Erickson (the scumbags who tried to lure Don away in Season One) and for this reason he wants to jump ship. Don and Connie initially bonded over being self-made men who rose up from the ranks of the common people to rule over the phonies born into privilege, but now it seems that Connie is no better than any other millionaire hotel tycoon and Don accuses Connie of building him up just to knock him down. He's confirmed my suspicions and now the "Don works for Paris Hilton's great-grandfather" plot line has been resolved. Let's move on, shall we?

Don's been sleeping in baby Gene's room for the past few weeks as Betty doesn't love him anymore. This is of course significant because if you ask Sally, that room is haunted. Betty goes with Henry Francis to discuss divorce proceedings with a lawyer, and since she can't prove Don's numerous infidelities (by all accounts it looks like Don would have more evidence on Betty, going to a divorce lawyer with your adulterous lover is either a sign of stupidity or an utter lack of self-reliance) she's going to have to temporarily move to Reno to get things under way. The kids don't take the announcement of divorce very well, Sally especially though Bobby Draper even gets some good screen time in this episode, and seem to side with Don, but wouldn't you? Don initially seems powerless to stop Betty and resigns himself to letting her have her way, that usually seems to work with her. But soon enough, Don gets some inside information by his once and future bro Roger (more on that later) that Betty has been alleycatting around with Henry Francis. That trollop! He gets liquored up (as one does in such situations) and confronts her about it in the middle of the night. He vows to not give her a penny and to keep the kids; he'll ruin her for this. Maybe if Don hadn't reformed himself (again) as a contented family man when he found out about this he might not have freaked out so much. But on the other hand, this isn't so much about Betty cheating on him as it is about her destroying the tidy little world he's created for himself. Marrying the spoiled little rich girl, churning out a couple of adorable little moppets, and buying a house in Westchester is the cornerstone of Dick Whitman's Don Draper persona and now she's gone and ruined the whole thing. He's been kicked out of the house before and he could probably tolerate Betty having a man on the side, but leaving him for some asshole from the governor's office? Fuck that!

Of course Don comes to let Betty have her way, telling her that he hopes "she gets what she always wanted". Good one, Don! Let her guilt tear her apart!

I for one am sort of intrigued by the way the show has approached the Betty and Don divorce plotline. For a program that effectively acts as a revisionist take on the 1960's, exposing all the un-PC and ugly goings on of American society at the time, I find it odd that a the story of a woman divorcing her cheating husband in a time when divorce was still greatly stigmatized for women is treated so negatively. I'm not against it, I find it a refreshing take for the story and am glad the show hasn't spiraled into "you go girl!" back-slapping. It's also consistent with Betty's character, most importantly of all.

Aside from the fall of the house of Draper, the big big big new development at season's end is of course the goings on around the offices of Sterling Cooper. With the news that PPL is being sold and Sterling Cooper is going to be absorbed into their rivals McCann Erickson (unless they're sacked like old man Cooper is bound to be) the old guard of Don, Coop, and even Roger hit the ground running with a plan to buy the company back from their British oppressors and restore it to its former glory. In their conspiracy they decide to include Lane Pryce who is sick and tired of being kicked around by the home office and is now in full-on good guy mode (I told you it would happen!). In return for his financial wizardry, Lane asks to be made a partner in the new firm- Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce! The tetrarchy decides to get themselves fired (courtesy of Lane) and steal all of Sterling Cooper's best talent and accounts. The first piece that falls into place is the new firm's Head of Accounts and who better to fill that position than another discontent Pete Campbell!

After being passed over for the promotion at the end of the Accounts contest with Ken, Pete is shopping around for new jobs. While at home faking sick, Pete is surprised by a visit from Roger and Don who ask him to climb aboard the defection train to Freedomville. I for one think it's great and extremely satisfying to see Pete finally get his. Every time it's looked like things were going his way, they're snatched away from him. No character has gone from Draper enemy to ally ("heel to face") as often as Pete and because of this I think it makes his final victory all the sweeter. Also, it makes Trudy happy and therefore makes me happy.

Peggy is also being recruited by Don for the revolution and she's initially hesitant to do it. After all, she's been treated like Don's homonculous ever since he elevated her to copywriter status and he's been keen to keep her loyal and subservient to him since then. Peggy's also felt, with plenty of cause, that Don takes credit for her good ideas and punishes her for the ones that don't go anywhere; therefore- why take it anymore? After all, she's got a pretty sweet offer from her sugar daddy Duck. It looks like Peggy will go with the man named for a water fowl until Don shows up and sincerely apologizes for the way he's treated her. He's losing almost everything he values in his life, he can't lose her. As he tells her, he sees her not so much as an extension of himself as he sees himself in her. I would assume that being the spawn of a no-account farmer and a whore with nothing to your name is somewhat equivalent to being a woman in the world of early 60's advertising. And with that, Peggy's on board.

I for one would like to know what ever happened to Duck. I was really hoping that his bring Peggy over to Gray was part of a revenge plot against Don. "You fool, Draper! Now your apprentice has turned against you and are under a three year contract with an agency that doesn't appreciate your talents! At last I have my revenge! Mwahahahahaahaha! Now I will eat your grey flannel suit!"

When the conspirators discover that they don't know where anything is kept at the old office when they plan to steal it, Roger has only one call to make. And with that, Joan is back to work and all is right in the world. I must say that during her big entrance after the "who knows where all the stuff is?" scene, I almost stood up and cheered.

Also, Harry is recruited. I like him. I really thought Sal was going to be back when they needed to break into the art department but it turns out a few good kicks to the door will do. Ken is of course left behind. And poor, poor Paul...

And so with that, the midnight gang's assembled and the new staff of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce takes up in their new hotel room office. Will they still be there next season? I loved that this season ended on something of a high note, with the new agency taking off and Don moving into his own place in the City. If you'll remember, Season One ended with Don alone in his house with Bob Dylan playing, a victim of his own deception. Season Two had Betty telling Don she was pregnant and now they had to stay together. It was refreshing for a sense of triumph to pervade the finale, even as the Draper family fell apart. The cloud of the Kennedy era seems to be lifting and a bright new future seems to be in store for our heroes! What could possibly go wrong?

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next year for more Madness!

The Art of the Album: The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

2009-11-09T13:43:00.001-05:00

What You Need to Know: A Hard Day’s Night the album is the soundtrack to A Hard Day’s Night the movie. The first half is composed of the songs actually in the movie, and the second half is a group of songs in the same vein included to make it a complete album.

A Hard Day’s Night has some notable firsts for the group – it is their first album made up entirely of original songs (no cover songs here), it is their first done on a four-track tape recorder (their earlier albums were recorded on two-track machines, with instruments on one track and vocals on the other), and it is their first to show signs of the experimentation with sound that would later become a driving force in the studio (the jangle of George Harrison’s new twelve-string guitar is all over the place).

The Songs You’ve Heard: “A Hard Days Night” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” are the two singles from this album, and there’s basically no way you’ve gotten to this point in your life without hearing them at least once.

Any fans of A Hard Day’s Night (the movie) will be familiar with the entire first half of the album. “I Should Have Known Better” is an upbeat rocker, and “If I Fell” is one of the band’s best early ballads with one of their tightest harmonies. Sometimes I’ll listen to it a couple of times back to back and follow a different voice each time.

The Songs You Haven’t: The second half of this album doesn’t get as much exposure. There’s some filler here, but among it is some of my favorite early-Beatles stuff – the forceful “Any Time At All,” the moody “Things We Said Today,” the creepy “You Can’t Do That,” gentle closer “I’ll Be Back.”

Why I Like It: A Hard Day’s Night is The Beatles’ best pre-Rubber Soul album. The original compositions range from good to outstanding, and the album definitely benefits from the absence of the fine-but-mostly-filler cover songs that populate Please Please Me and With The Beatles.

That being said, most of what I wrote about their first two albums applies to this one as well – energetic, fun and the rest. This was their third album in less than a year and a half, to say nothing of the filming of A Hard Day’s Night and their first, historic tour of the United States – the energy still evident on this album is nearly as remarkable as the volume of their output.

Desert Island Tracks: “A Hard Day’s Night,” “If I Fell”

Charge Shot!!! Cranston in: Tattoo You

2009-11-09T11:53:00.001-05:00

Thoughts of An Aspiring Music Snob: Week 33 - The Allman Brothers Band

2009-11-09T07:00:00.004-05:00

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

My initial musical tastes were formed by classical music, and as a result, I had a hard time for a while grasping the concept of a "live" album. In classical music, the notes are notated with such specificity that studio and live recordings end up being pretty much the same thing. Once upon a time, back in the Baroque era, there was room for some improvisation in a work. But as classical music has made its way to the 21st-century, it has shunned such elasticity and improvisatory elements.

So the fact that a musical artist can be a good studio act but not a good live one (or vice-versa) took me a while to grasp. I suppose this is the primary difference between the two traditions - classical music exists first and foremost as a notated score, to be performed with detailed precision. (There is some room for the conductor to make his or her mark in regards to tempo, dynamics, and the styling of musical phrases, but usually one needs some familiarity with the repertoire before one can notice these differences). Popular music, by contrast, usually consists of a chord progression and some lyrics. Not every note is indicated, and there's a lot more room for improvisation within one's performance. Popular music can have "live" versions and cover songs that, while still recognizable as the original song, are substantially different entities. Classical music can not do this.

I've resisted adding live albums to my listening, up until now. Perhaps it was because of my classical music bias, but it was also because I usually had too much listening to do without adding on more albums. However, with my pick this week of band whose live album is not just one of their best albums, but often listed as one of the best albums of all time, I thought it was time to give a live album a listen.

It was awesome.

WEEK 33

Artist of the Week: The Allman Brothers Band

What I Knew Before: My mother raised me on a steady diet of classic rock radio while driving in the car, so "Midnight Rider", "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica" were all pretty familiar to me. As a result, I thought that the Allman Brothers Band was far less blues-inspired than they really are. Those three songs turned out to be three of their poppier endeavors.

My Listening: The band has been active for close to 40 years now, but I chose stuff from their heyday. I listened to Idlewild South (1970), At Fillmore East (1971), Eat a Peach (1972), and Brothers and Sisters (1973). I listened to At Fillmore East every day this week; I listened to each of the other albums at least twice.

What I Liked:

First of all, At Fillmore East is amazing. Why has no one told me about this album before? If you were aware of the existence of this album and never told me about it, I have a bone to pick with you. You are all equally to blame.

As a live band, the Allman Brothers are amazing, especially when they still had Duane Allman playing slide guitar with them. They can play a short, blues-y song with a ton of energy, as evidenced on "Statesboro Blues". Or, they can take another short blues song and extend it into a twenty-three minute masterpiece, as they do with "Whipping Post". These extended jam sessions could easily be showy or tiresome, but they never fail to be exciting all the way through. Every note feels necessary, and most of the jams have an internal structure that leads to some sort of cathartic moment, as when Duane Allman finally sings "Good Lord, I feel like I'm dyin'..." at the end of "Whipping Post".

I like bluesy jam sessions and the display of technical prowess. I even like when Duane Allman can slip into the melody from "Joy to the World" at the end of "You Don't Love Me". I realize that the term "jam band" is sort of anathema among music snobs, the same as "corporate pop" or "smooth jazz". But the coherence is incredible - again, I cite the 23-minute "Whipping Post", in which Duane Allman and Dickey Betts play two guitar parts that mesh together the way the best jazz ensembles do. And these jams never feel directionless or meandering. The song, no matter how long, is always propelling its way forward.

Perhaps this improvisatory energy is due to the Allman Brothers' blues influences, which is another aspect I really liked. As I said earlier, I thought that the band was more southern rock in the vein of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Instead, it turns out that they are an amazing blues-rock outfit. I loved it. Here is blues-rock that doesn't shun its roots in the American south. Duane Allman's guitar lines are dense and heavy, yet simultaneously beautiful and pure. And Gregg Allman has the perfect gritty voice for this sort of music.

Have I talked too much about their live stuff? Quickly, let me add that their studio recordings are just as good. Particularly, pianist Chuck Leavell, who joined the band in 1972, can play a mean piano riff. Rock keyboardists are usually the black sheep of the ensemble, but the songs that feature him manage to integrate the keyboard perfectly.

What I Didn't Like:

I liked nearly all of it, so this category will be rather empty this week. However, there's no denying that the band lost something when Duane Allman died in a motorcycle crash in 1971. With the death of bass player Berry Oakley the following year, the band was without the glue that held its bluesier stuff together. The following albums, Eat a Peach and Brothers and Sisters, while still decent albums, trend towards a softer version of Southern Rock. It's fine stuff, and "Jessica" is a great rock instrumental, but it's a shame that we didn't get more of the heavier, bluesier music.

Other than that, these four albums are pretty unimpeachable. Ha ha! Get it? They're from Georgia!

It's been a long week.

What I Learned:

I learned that Duane Allman plays a mean guitar (in addition to his work with the Allman Brothers, you can hear him play with Clapton on "Layla"). He's a breed you don't see around much anymore - the redneck hippie. Additionally, he named his daughter "Galadrielle", after the elf queen in The Lord of the Rings. It's a very pretty name, but I wonder how she feels about that.

Looking at the bigger picture, I learned that I can totally appreciate and see the merit in live albums. I also learned that I really like southern and blues-influenced music, and I even have an affinity for extended instrumental jams. Perhaps I even like jam bands! (Though Gregg Allman insists that the Allman Brothers Band is not a jam band, but a "band that jams"). Readers beware: The Grateful Dead is now on my list of "Musical Acts to Listen To Someday".

Cool Fact of the Week:

"Whipping Post" was the original lengthy Southern Rock song that audiences annoyingly clamored for at concerts, way before "Freebird". The next time I am at a concert and someone shouts a request for "Freebird!", I'm going to counter by shouting "Whipping Post!" This seems like the sort of thing a music snob would do. Ironically requesting "Freebird" is henceforth only for musical amateurs and Philistines.

Further Exploration Would Entail:

In addition to their first self-titled album from 1969, the Allman Brothers Band has fourteen other album releases. However, I think I'd be more interested in pursuing their live albums and concert bootlegs from the Duane Allman era. If they all have the energy and talent of At Fillmore East, they're definitely worth a listen.

Also, I'd like to explore of this southern blues-rock, but where do I go from here? The Band? Lynyrd Skynyrd? These acts seem less influenced by blues and more influenced by country western. Any other similar acts any of you readers know about? If you give me a decent suggestion, I'll forgive you for hiding At Fillmore East from me for so long.

(Update: Since I first wrote this, I have talked with my mother, an avowed fan of southern rock. She recommended The Marshall Tucker Band, and the Outlaws, among others. Actually, she gave me a list of suggestions that is going to take me months to get through. I think she's happy I'm listening to something besides Beethoven or Kraftwerk).

Opportunities for Extra Credit:

The original Allman Brothers Band lineup used to rehearse in a cemetery in Macon, Georgia. Here, a certain tombstone inspired the title of "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed". Later, Duane Allman and Berry Oakley were buried here. As it turns out, I will be driving through Macon on the trek north to my parents' house for the holidays. I might take a stop and pay my tributes to the original stomping ground of the band. I might even eat a peach, while I'm there.

Best Song You've Heard: "Jessica"

Best Song You Haven't Heard: The 18-minute live version of "You Don't Love Me", which is so long that YouTube has it in two parts.

Next Week's Artist: The Talking Heads

Writer’s Jukebox – Editorial Summit Edition

2009-11-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

This past weekend saw a convergence of personalities so epic it could only be described as Bigger Than Jesus. Rob and I embarked on an eight-hour (Rob did it in seven) car ride to visit our beloved Andrew, listening to classic rock, hard rock, and a bunch of Ryan Adams along the way.

Upon arrival in Ohio, the weekend became an 48-hour Beatles Rock Band binge session. Given how many times we attempted to five-star “Dig a Pony,” I’m surprised none of us included it in our write-ups. Just know that that song is ten times better than you think it is.

Hit the jump to find out what we’ve been listening to when not singing “Pick a moondog” or “Do a roadhog.”

Rob – Floored by The Kills

If ever you need a soundtrack for your 2 a.m. coke-fueled breakup, consider “Last Day of Magic” by The Kills. The chugging two-chord riff howls at you from the end of a tunnel, and front lady Allison Mosshart croons and growls: “Last day of magic, and where were you?”

Mosshart is part pixie and all tempest. Just watch the video for “Magic” in which she squares off with guitaurist Jamie Hince. She circles him, snaps and shoves, sharpening the already razor edge to her vocals. For his part, Hince looks like a cross between Lou Reed and Robert Downey Jr., constantly on the rebound from a hangover. There’s enough crunch and anarchy in his guitar to make punk devotees happy, but ample hooks and melodies for the casual listener.

Midnight Boom is their latest and most poppiest album, laying Hince’s guitar over canned beats and dabbling in electronica (“U R a Fever,” somewhat cheesily, samples bits from a dial tone”). Go back a step further to No Wow, a punkier, scuzzier and more substantive album than Boom. But to really know what The Kills are all about, check out their live act. The sexual tension between Mosshart and Hince is so intense it verges on violence – realized with teeth-clenchingly great results in “Last Day of Magic.”

Craig – Can’t Resist The Resistance

In the weeks since my last Jukebox entry, my iPod’s been reduced to playing nothing but NPR podcasts and Muse’s The Resistance. It’s a fascinating, bombastic album that alternates between artful, melodious nods to Queen and riff-heavy politically-charged mayhem. As a whole, it paints a picture of an oppressive regime and its requisite resistance movement of the 1984/Children of Men variety. Is it a coincidence these are all British creations? I think not.

After the rallying cry that is “Uprising,” the title track “Resistance” shrinks the focus down to a more personal level. What happens to love in a time of war?, it asks. Out of options, Matthew Bellamy cries over thundering guitars, “Love is our resistance.” I appreciate this off-center take on the classic political uprising scenario. It’s humanizing, and the album format allows for such variety.

Further channeling Orwell’s dystopian influence is “United States of Eurasia.” This song is all over the place. During a recent car ride with Robert L. Kunzig III (see above), I played this track for him and the absurd theatricality made him laugh so hard he nearly drove us off a bridge. I, for one, thoroughly enjoy just how far over the top it goes. Each verse ends with a two-bar flourish that sounds like it was ripped right out of “We Are The Champions,” which then kicks off a weighty piano/strings/drum passage that would be perfect for a Soviet propaganda film. Oh yeah, it then ends with a segment titled “Collateral Damage” – a rendition of Chopin’s Nocturne Opus 9 No. 2 plays amidst sounds of children laughing and jets streak across the sky.

Subtlety may not be one of Muse’s strengths, but I’m liking them all the same.

Andrew – Cover Songs and the BBC

By necessity, I’m listening to a ton of The Beatles, but I won’t write about that twice. Instead, allow me to present you with the latest out-of-genre cover song that I’ve discovered – Jenny Owen Youngs doing Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.” Out-of-genre cover songs are among my favorite things in this world – of course you’ve seen Alanis Morisette’s “My Humps” or That One Guy’s acoustic version of “Hey Ya.” I love this shit. “Hot in Herre” has the added benefit of featuring a girl who is pretty easy on the eyes.

I’ve also had the Pixies on again. If you’ve never tried the Pixies, Surfer Rosa and Doolittle are the definitive albums, but I also recommend Pixies at the BBC, which in spite of having a picture of balls on the cover is pretty good for listening. It’s got a raw, ass-kicking sound, and the versions of “Dead” and “There Goes My Gun” on this album (in my opinion) far outdo the album versions of the same songs.

Some of the (relative) hits are here, but the other reason I like this album is that it goes into a lot of the band’s less-heard material. Stuff like “Wave of Mutilation” and “Hey” is here, but also featured are relative obscurities like Doolittle-era B-side “Manta Ray” and Trompe Le Monde standout “Letter to Memphis.” Pixies at the BBC isn’t going to change your mind about this band if you already have opinions about them, but if you like them this album is definitely a recommended listen.

A Decade of Dreck #5: Dragonfly

2009-11-07T20:30:00.000-05:00

I think I learned – or at least re-learned – an important lesson today: expectations do not just influence, they often completely dictate my critical response to nearly all media.

I braced myself for something awful when I began this movie. The top critics of Rotten Tomatoes were universally unkind in their reviews (a resounding 3%), except for one who I will paraphrase as saying, “If you love movies of this genre, you’ll sort of like this one a little!” So naturally my eyeballs were ready to roll and my hand was poised and ready to smack my forehead.

I was foiled, and I blame preconception.

The movie opens with flashy, fifteen-second scenes of beautiful doctor Emily Darrow (Susanna Thompson) caught in a storm in a remote Venezuelan jungle where she’s been working for the Red Cross. Floods are coming and the village is being evacuated. One might wonder why the only available escape vehicle is a decrepit yellow school bus, but the scene-changes and dramatic music try to confuse you into forgetting your doubt. There’s action going on!

Tragically, the bus slips over muddy cliffs, gets stuck, gets struck by a rockslide and then falls into a swollen river. All of the passengers are found dead except Emily, but with the still-raging monsoon, she is presumed dead, washed away in the white-water, all within three minutes of the opening.

Distraught, her husband, Dr. Joe Darrow (Kevin Costner), attempts to push forward in his life as an ER doctor. On the same day of the memorial service he shows up to work, a move that draws concern from his supervisors, and he makes decisions that the staff disagree with.

Does the plot feel contrived yet? Of course it does, but the movie wasn’t that bad so far.

Late that night Joe stays in the ER alone, wallowing in darkness. From flashbacks we learn that Emily was pregnant (“I thought we were going to teach our kids our values, Joe!”). We also learn that she had an obsession with dragonflies because of a resembling birthmark. Suddenly Joe is jerked back to the present by a voice calling his name, growing louder as doctors rush a dying boy past him. When the boy is pronounced dead, Joe peaks into the room. When he approaches the bed, the boy wakes up!

This marked the first time where I screamed and jumped. It happened a total of four times. Maybe it was because I was watching it alone and it’s stormy outside. Maybe it’s because I’m a total wiener when it comes to lame scary music and things jumping out of closets. But I can’t deny the evidence. I was clearly invested enough to be scared when the movie wanted me to be scared, even if it was ham-fisted about it. That counted for something.

We learn that the near-dead boy was a patient of Emily’s and that he has flat-lined many times (and apparently his father thinks this is just hilarious, and teases his terminally ill son about his ridiculous fantasies of what death is like…). But this time he has come back with a message for Joe: Dr. Emily saved him, and she’s trying to contact her husband.

From here the ghost story takes over. Joe is haunted by hospitalized children who draw squiggly cross-symbols and pass along messages from Emily who may or may not be beyond the grave. As a pediatric oncology doctor, she prefers to haunt children with cancer, break light bulbs, cause creepy dragonflies to ram into windows, inhabit the bodies of organ donors, and scare the crap out of the couple’s pet parrot. One night she appears in the window (time number two that I screamed) and when Joe returns in the morning he finds this same curvy cross drawn into the condensation on every window in the house.

Joe’s buddies and his sweet lesbian neighbor (Kathy Bates) are concerned. Everyone thinks he’s crazy, and evidence suggests he could be. He’s finally convinced to sell his house and go on a white-water rafting trip with his old college buddies, but when he scans through the river maps he sees the wavy-cross symbol, and all the pieces fall together. Joe drops everything (following ghost-scene number three where I screamed) and flies down to South America to find her.

I won’t describe the ending, but I was once again pleasantly surprised, even though it was a bit ridiculous, sappy, and overly spiritual. I’m absolutely awful at predicting the outcomes of movies, even when everyone else thinks it’s obvious, so it might not mean much when I say I didn’t see this one coming. Nevertheless, I thought the movie did a decent job of dropping hints and wrong turns, enough that I could respect the crude attempt at foreshadowing. It’s like the director and the screenplay writer had some understanding of what would take to make a good movie, but they were unpracticed at it.

Of course the plot was tired and overdone, the dialogue dull and over-dramatic, and the acting mediocre at best, awful at worst. The plot path between Costner getting on the plane to Venezuela and the ending was goofy, involving a tribe of isolated natives with giant feathers pierced through their ears and a young South American pilot who is happy to help out some random white guy hell-bent on getting himself killed in the jungle.

But I’m a sucker for the one-role-man Kevin Costner, in part because I never get tired of seeing his character recycled in baseball movies. Every time he was caught in a rushing river or a torrential downpour I couldn’t help but shout, “Dry land is not a myth!”

I liked this movie more than Congo, and I would have stayed to watch it in a theater if I had already paid. I probably wouldn’t have rented it on my own, but I might have watched it on TV. To me, this is clear evidence that there is a considerable difference between rank 90 out of 100 and the higher ups.

And you know what? I liked it a hell of a lot better than The Watchmen, and it was a hell of a lot shorter, too. For many of you, I realize that that’s reason enough to dismiss my opinions in this review.

Dragonfly is ranked #90 on the Rotten Tomatoes Worst 100 list with 7% freshness. Its RT page can be found here.

The Local Film Critic: Week of 11/7/2009

2009-11-07T18:22:00.013-05:00

Local film critics are a treasure trove of bad taste. Every weekend, we'll find some of the best reviews of the weekend's movies from newspapers around the country and reprint them here for your enjoyment/hatred.*

*Apologies to Patton Oswalt for joke-stealing.

By Robert Guiscard
Hopkins Municipal Newspaper

A Christmas Carol

Audiences won't be saying "humbug" to this delightful holiday romp! Funnyman Jim Carrey (the Number 23), funnyman Jim Carrey (Yes Man), and funnyman Jim Carrey (Fun WIth Dick and Jane) portrays multiple roles as miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge and the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future! I mean, that's funny right there! Have you seen the Nutty Professor movies? Those are great! This one isn't quite as funny (but I guess that isn't the point, it's a very serious story, you see) but has the added benefit of being completely computer-generated! Now, I know what you're thinking: are the graphics as good as Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within? The answer is a resounding YES!

This one is directed by Robert Zemeckis who also made the holiday classic Polar Express (another tour-de-force performance in multiple parts, this time by Tom Hanks!) and the Lord of the Rings-inspired Beowulf. The mix of actual performance and computer animation is really amazing: the characters look real! I hope they start doing this with all movies! A lot is accomplished in this one that I don't think you'd be able to do with actual actors! Just look at all the different characters funnyman Jim Carrey portrays! There's no way you could make him look so convincing as an old man with makeup!

I was getting a little bored during this movie at first, the only thing that initially kept me going was all the funny (and authentic!) English accents (it should be called a "Christmas Car-owh!" Pip pip! Cheerio! Shine ya shoes, guv'na!) but that was before the amazing rocket ride sequence (which if I remember correctly, was in Dickens' original story, glad to see more faithful literary adaptations are popping up in Hollywood!) which really sold me on this movie. They should have more of these in movies! A rocket ride makes everything better! The movie also includes some great supporting performances by Gary Coleman and Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy!), though you wouldn't recognize them using their real English accents!

All in all, don't be like Tiny Tim and hobble and limp to this one, RUN! You and your whole family will be Caroling all the way home!

3 AND A HALF STARS!

The Men Who Stare At Goats

George Clooney! When did you go so wrong? I was expecting another comedy caper like the Ocean's movies when I stepped into the theater for this one, but all the advertising is wrong! This movie isn't that funny. The ads say that these men who stare at goats have psychic powers but it turns out that they don't! What a bunch of baloney! I can normally depend on America's bachelor-in-chief to give me a good night at the movies but this one falls flat on all counts. There's a whole lot of talk about military mumbo-jumbo which I really didn't understand. They should have provided some sort of background on how the Army works. I don't know all these terms! Why are the "Special Forces" so "special" anyway? I can do everything they do by the look of it!

Also, for a movie that talks so much about "Jedi warriors" and has Ewan McGregor in it, I was disappointed by the utter lack of "using the force" that happens. Also, I was under the assumption that Ewan would be playing Obi Wan Kenobi again. I love, love, loved him in the Star Wars Trilogy. I was also disappointed by Kevin Spacey who displays none of the charm he exhibited as Lex Luther in Superman Returns.

All in all, this one was a let down. And I was expecting so much better from director Grant Heslov after his performance in Congo as Steve Gutenberg's assistant "Screech". Stay away from this one if you're easily confused.

1 STAR!

The Fourth Kind

Hey Hollywood, Halloween was last week! Even though the Day of the Dead has come and gone, we're still getting scary movies! And if you thought Paranormal Activity was scary, wait'll you see this one!

Based on actual case studies, this half-documentary, half-story movie is about a real psychologist (played by Milla Jovovich, clearly not letting the cruddy Fifth Element get to her) who is studying people who claim to have been abducted by aliens (scary!). It turns out they really have been abducted! Whoa! The director puts real footage of the studies next to re-enactments done by actors which really adds to the effect and shows you how real this is! Just like Paranormal Activity, this one had me really scared. I couldn't fall asleep until 11:30 the night I saw this.

All in all, this is a far superior sequel to Steven Spielberg's Third Kind, which had far less action than War of the Worlds. Check this one out if you're ready to be scared silly! I can't wait until they come out with the sequel, the Fifth Kind!

3 STARS!

The Box

This movie confused me. I should have known since it's by Richard Kelly, the guy who made the flop Donnie Darko. I was going to walk out but my editor wouldn't let me so I had to watch the whole thing. It's about a couple who recieve a box with a shiny, candy-like button in it. A creepy guy who's missing part of his face tells them that if they press it they get a million dollars. Uh, do it! At least Cameron Diaz was pretty! Also, this features the hunky James Marsden as Diaz's husband. He was great in Superman Returns, I'm glad to see him getting more work. Frank Langella was in Superman Returns, too! When's the next Brandon Routh movie going to come out?

That being said, they should call this one the Box of Bad Movies! Because that would warn you right off the bat that this is a bad movie.

ZERO STARS!

Indie watch: An Education

If you feel so inclined to drive downtown to go and see an art film, don't see An Education. This is the story of a girl from London who wants to go to Cambridge University and needs to study hard but then she meets a handsome devil (played by Stellan Skarsgaard) who shows her that there's more to life than books, but not much more. Really? I really didn't like this one because it was really obvious. I get it: the "education" from the title was about love and life and stuff. Booooooring! This movie's probably not good for young girls to watch because they might stop going to school and run off to fall in love with good-looking criminals. I'm keeping my niece away from this bad "Education" (if that made you think of that awful gay Mexican movie, I'm sorry).

ZERO STARS!

A Decade of Dreck #4: Strange Wilderness

2009-11-06T19:30:00.003-05:00

Strange Wilderness is a movie from Adam Sandler's production company Happy Madison, the same people responsible for bringing you Joe Dirt, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, and Paul Blartt: Mall Cop. Even worse, the movie is brought to you by Allen Covert, who is responsible for the 2006 cinematic atrocity known as Grandma's Boy. My friends and I watched Grandma's Boy in college, and the sheer inhumanity of that film put our apartment in a funk for days. That night, the campus experienced a power outage, as if God had seen our sin and revoked our privilege to use electricity.

Grandma's Boy, unfortunately, is at least ten times as good as Strange Wilderness.

I am not a comedy snob. It doesn't take much to entertain me. I have seen EuroTrip more times than I can count, and I actually spent money to see She's the Man. I had mildly optimistic hopes for Strange Wilderness. It's a stoner comedy about a film crew trying to find Bigfoot. Read that sentence again. That's right. Stoners. Bigfoot. By all rights, this should be hilarious. So where does it go so horribly horribly wrong?

Well, for one thing, the characters are cruel and inherently unlikeable. The best stoner comedies of the decade - Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Pineapple Express - feature protagonists that, while baked out of their minds, approach life with a carefree attitude. In the Cheech and Chong tradition, they seem like fun guys to hang out with. But the characters in Strange Wilderness don't have this inherent likability. While puffing on joints and drinking beer, they sit around and laugh at the unemployed, at women, at Hispanics, at a man getting eaten by an alligator. I'm not a prude. If offensive jokes are funny, you can get away with a lot. Unfortunately, these jokes are not funny. Stoners (on film, at least) are supposed to be laid back, apathetic dudes. These stoners are manic, hyperactive, and tragically lacking in any sense of humor.

Strange Wilderness centers around Peter, the host of a late night nature show which is in danger of cancellation. In a last ditch effort to save the show, he decides to take his crew to drive down to Ecuador(?), to capture footage the elusive Bigfoot. Naturally, shenanigans ensue.

There are several plot holes that I really shouldn't even bring up, but I can't resist. For one, why would a nature show hosted by stoners get such abysmal ratings? I would watch a show like this all the time, and I don't think I'm alone. Secondly, why is Bigfoot in Ecuador?

I legitimately laughed twice during Strange Wilderness. The first joke involved a man named "Dick", with no last name, at which point a character inquires, "Like Cher? But Dick?" This is not funny, per se, but was at least nonsensical enough to merit a chuckle from me. The second time is a joke already ruined by the trailer, but is honestly hilarious. Go to 0:33 in this video to experience the funniest gag in the movie.

The only other laughter I found in his movie comes from the casting. Chronic masturbator and Charge Shot!!! favorite Ernest Borgnine, plays a supporting character who is pretty funny. This is not due to any comic writing, but simply because I find the concept of a nonagenarian actor saying "Numb nuts" and making bong jokes hilarious, and it looks like Borgnine is having more fun than any other actor in this movie. Jeff Garlin, by contrast, looks to be eying for an escape hatch in every scene he's in, which is funny in its own right. And the presence of Joe Don Baker in any movie merits a laugh from me.

But that's the best Strange Wilderness has to offer - real actors looking confused as to how they ended up at this point. With the exception of Borgnine hamming it up, it's a chore to watch. According to Rotten Tomatoes, not a single critic gave this movie a positive review. Let me add my thumbs down to the list.

Strange Wilderness is ranked #7 on the Rotten Tomatoes Worst 100 list with 0% freshness. Its RT page can be found here.

Film Review: A Serious Man

2009-11-06T15:00:00.005-05:00

You find yourself thrust into a world as funny as it is cruel. At first, you have no idea what is going on. But gradually, you learn to cope with this new reality. You learn to laugh because the alternative is to give up and weep in despair. Things happen, random for the most part, with no hint of a pattern. Every so often, however, you find yourself wondering if there is more to this existence than a seemingly meaningless series of events. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is some sort of plan to the whole endeavor, a divine roadmap that brings unity and coherence to everything you experience. You don't have any direct evidence to support this theory, but there is a certain inner satisfaction to be had from this simple faith that all the chaos and madness taking place are part of a larger scheme that is simply beyond your understanding. Perhaps all the suffering and pain that surrounds you serves some greater purpose. The alternative, perhaps too grim to bear, is that all this anarchic turmoil means absolutely nothing.

Pop Quiz: What did I just describe?

a) Your life

b) The average Coen Brothers movie

Trick question, of course. The answer is "c) All of the above". The Coen Brothers have the sneaky ability to make a film that suggests it might be incredibly deep, but, at the same time, it might just be a bunch of quirky scenes tied together by a thin, gloomy excuse for a plot. You just don't know. Is there some sort of deep symbolic message to The Big Lebowski, for example, or is it just some Dude hanging out in LA?

The Coen Brothers' new movie, A Serious Man, is not necessarily any more transparent than the the duo's previous works, as they seem to thrive on this cinematic obliqueness. But it seems to be asking the question that has only been hinted at in previous films: Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there a meaning to this chaotic, violent world in which we live?

Find out, after the jump.

A Serious Man centers around Larry Gopnik, a midwestern Jewish college professor in the 1960s, a married man and father of two. His students are trying to take advantage of him. His children ignore him. His wife wants to marry another man. His penniless brother-in-law acts as a parasite, taking advantage of Larry's good nature to live under the Gopnik's roof, not even trying to find a job. The anti-Semitic next-door neighbor treats Larry like crap. The list goes on.

Larry takes his faith very seriously. As his life falls apart around him, he speaks with a series of rabbis, hoping that perhaps religion will provide him some guidance through these hard times. In contrast, the movie gives us Larry's son Danny, an unloving ingrate of a son who spends the bulk of his time smoking pot, watching F-Troop, and whining. Danny's bar mitzvah is in a few days, but he couldn't care less about his faith.

If this sounds like bleak, depressing stuff, then you've never seen a Coen Brothers movie. The directorial duo has the ability to find a laugh in the uncanniest of places. But the audience is never laughing at Larry's misfortunes. Rather, the laughs come from the sheer absurdity of the situation. It is the very definition of a black comedy - laughter is the only alternative to breaking into tears at Larry's horrible predicament.

The Coen Brothers have been described as nihilistic, even misanthropic. Their previous two films did nothing to dispel this notion - No Country for Old Men perfectly adapted the violent wasteland of Cormac McCarthy's novel to the big screen. But where No Country was bleak, serious stuff, last year's underrated Burn After Reading was instead an exercise in madcap anarchy - a screwball version of nihilism, if you will. I am sure there will be critics who dismiss A Serious Man as a similarly depressing exercise. They will be wrong. A Serious Man takes the sense of hopelessness from the previous two movies, and puts a great big question mark after it.

As Larry talks with his rabbis, and his friends in the faith, he struggles with the question of why these horrible things are happening to him. He tries to be a good man, resisting the temptation of his sexy female neighbor, refusing to accept a bribe from a student, caring for his children even when they show him no love in return. In this respect, A Serious Man functions as a modern day Book of Job. Is there a divine plan to Larry's existence? Or is it, in the end, meaningless?

The Coen Brothers leave this question ambiguous. One almost might be tempted to say that they don't even attempt to answer the question, that A Serious Man is a film that delights in torturing its main character without providing any kind of solace or catharsis. But, while scenes may seem irrelevant, opaque or downright weird, I believe that the Coen Brothers do have a method to their madness. Larry teaches physics, and there are plenty of allusions in the film to Schrödinger's Paradox, or the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle, indicating that perhaps there is a limit to our knowledge and understanding about the world.

Yet there are certain coincidences in Larry's life that suggest that events might be related, that there is a causal relation between Larry's actions and the events that happen to him. Can we ever know if our actions directly influence what sort of luck we receive? Is there a divine being looking out for us, or is the world nothing but chaos, death and evil? In both the cryptic opening scene and the film's powerful final shot, the audience is left to reflect on that very question. (Though the recurring lyrics of a certain song suggest that the answer may not be as complicated as we might think.)

If you haven't figured out by now, I loved this movie. It's in competition with The Hurt Locker as the best movie I've seen this year. I would even go so far to place it in the top ranks of the Coen Canon, alongside such masterpieces as The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. The dialogue is snappy, the satire right on target, and the Coens can pull off the the integration of the comic and the tragic like no one else. Most of the actors are relatively unknown, but there isn't a weak link in the cast. Michael Stuhlbarg is especially convincing as Larry, the naive but earnest protagonist. But Aaron Wolf steals the show as Larry's ungrateful son Danny, who makes portraying an apathetic stoner 14-year old look easy. This is a movie that is as much about Larry's faith as it is Danny's lack of it, and both principal actors deliver performances that are comically memorable without being overstated, tragic without being pitiful.

Frankly, the most impressive thing for me was the deft juggling act that the film managed to pull off, as more and more crises are added to poor Larry's life. Larry's brother-in-law is arrested. The neighbors are building a boat shed that comes close to the property line. Larry is up for tenure, and the tenure committee is receiving anonymous letters about his character. Larry's son owes money to a bully at school. In the hands of a lesser director, this sort of movie could fall apart, splitting into thousands of unrelated tangents. But the Coen Brothers are very effective storytellers, and they manage to tie it altogether somehow. The film never feels messy or fragmented. It's a remarkable piece of work.

The humor only fell flat in a few places. There were a bit too many dream sequences for my liking, and I have a feeling a lot of the Jewish humor went straight over my goy head. I'm sure the movie will have its detractors, people who continue to accuse the Coen Brothers of shallow cynicism, or even meaninglessness. But this movie easily has the most warmth and humanity out of any Coen Brothers film since O Brother Where Art Thou, and some of the scenes are downright touching. There's also a healthy dose of pessimism, of course, but for once the Coen Brothers are investigating the conflict between spiritual idealism and world-weary disenchantment. If you want a movie that's neither completely a comedy nor completely a tragedy, but instead a piece of art that acknowledges that one's life is made up of both elements, go see A Serious Man.

Final Rating: 89 Congos.

The Art of the Album: The Beatles – With The Beatles

2009-11-06T14:00:00.000-05:00

What You Need to Know: Bands have it easy these days. They release an album, and then go on a leisurely tour, and then maybe like two or three years later they meander into the studio to do another album. With The Beatles was recorded four months after Please Please Me.

This speed is impressive given the quality of the music here, though to be fair it is as close as they came to repeating themselves musically – the material here is very similar to that on Please Please Me, which certainly isn’t a bad thing, but it does get a little repetitive after multiple listens.

The Songs You’ve Heard: Another impressive thing about With The Beatles is that none of its fourteen tracks were ever issued as singles, the theory being that the band wanted to give the people who were snapping up everything they recorded more for their money – why charge for the single, and then again for the same song on an album? This philosophy was one that didn’t catch on in the music business.

Anyway, since none of these songs were singles, you might not be familiar with many of them. “All My Loving” was their first number on their first legendary Sullivan Show performance, so you’ve probably heard that. “Please Mister Postman,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” and “Money (That’s What I Want)” are three covers that you’ve probably heard in one form or another, though unlike “Twist and Shout” none of them have completely obliterated the originals from our cultural consciousness.

The Songs You Haven’t: If you haven’t heard “It Won’t Be Long,” the album’s opener, you should remedy that immediately. Equally strong is the next song, “All I’ve Got To Do,” and “Hold Me Tight” is good clean fun. “Don’t Bother Me” has the distinction of being the first George Harrison-penned song – he gets much better, don’t worry. While the originals and the covers sort of blended together on Please Please Me, I find the original songs on With The Beatles to be preferable – this is a theme that continues as their career progresses.

Why I Like It: The vocal harmonies on With The Beatles will kick your ass. To an extent, that’s true of most of their catalogue, but rarely are the harmonies so intricate and tight as they are on this album.

Otherwise, pretty much everything I said of Please Please Me can be said of With The Beatles – it’s high-energy, well-performed rock music. I’m really glad that their music evolved, of course – listening to Please Please Me and then this multiple times over the course of two days means I’ve officially overdosed on their earliest music – but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a really fun listen every once in awhile.

Desert Island Tracks: “It Won’t Be Long,” “All My Loving”

A Decade of Dreck #3: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li

2009-11-06T12:00:00.002-05:00

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

Editors' note: This piece, originally posted in March of 2009, is about a movie that happens to be on RT's Worst 100 list. It has been reposted for your benefit.

A couple of months ago, in the chaotic era of Charge Shot!!!'s ascendancy, I did a little experiment in liveblogging the Spike Video Game Awards: it was a horrible experience. I was subjected to nearly 2 hours of the worst the world of video gaming has to offer: every stereotype and slur of the gamer was made manifest before my very eyes. This past Thursday, I endured another 2 hour torture session in the name of this little blog of ours: I went and saw Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun-Li.

I have a theory: Josef Stalin clearly traveled into the future and produced this movie for the purposes of showing it to Soviet political prisoners and class enemies in the gulags. There's just no other explanation for its existence. If that is indeed the case, please consider me Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Well, there is one that doesn't involve time-traveling Communists, but it's not nearly as fun. Clearly some Hollywood big wig thought that they could make some money off of the release of Street Fighter IV and assumed that the bad taste of the first Street Fighter movie was out of the world's collective mouth after 15 years. If anything, this new movie fills me with all sorts of nostalgia and fond memories of 1994 (hey, remember Bill Clinton?) and the Street Fighter film from that golden age gone by.

I guess any review of a Street Fighter movie in the context of this blog requires some disclosure of personal history. I've never been a huge Street Fighter fan, the Boivin household is a Mortal Kombat household, but as one of the more important pop culture phenomena of the mid-90's, I have a more-than-passing familiarity with it. Growing up, my friend Ben Reynolds owned Super Street Fighter II Turbo for the SNES and we spent many a Friday night beating the crap out of each other on that. Recently, my apartment has rediscovered the game via the "HD Remix" available for download over XBox Live and we play that on the regular. So there: not a fan, but an admirer.

I decided to see this movie out of a perverse curiosity, I guess. Over Christimas break, friend of the blog/Washington fat cat Ben Peterson purchased a copy of the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie used for $4.00 on a whim. We promptly got drunk and watched it. I had seen the movie before, years before as a child, but hadn't seen it sense I had reached the age where I could properly understand its crappiness. I've been an avid fan of the Mortal Kombat movie (and even its horrible sequel, I own both of them on DVD) since I was 9, so I weigh the original Street Fighter movie against that one I guess. The JCVD film is an odd creature indeed: it features every character from Street Fighter II with the exception of Fei Long, who I guess could only be played by Bruce Lee, in a major part. The movie even has T. Hawk in a somewhat prominent role and serves mostly as an extended in-joke for hardcore fans of the Street Fighter game series. In that sense, it's kind of a success, full of "hey, there's Zangieff!"s and "I can't believe Kylie Minogue is playing Cammy!"s and the like. 1994's Street Fighter apsires to be nothing but a giant reach-around for Street Fighter fans, its example was completely lost on the people behind the Legend of Chun-Li.

TLOC-L seems like someone decided to make a C-grade action movie about a girl who wants to avenge her father's death and then heard from a friend that the rights to the name "Street Fighter" would only cost another $2,000.00 to use. There are some streets, there is some fighting, but there is very little resemblance to any popular game franchise whatsoever. The plot (from what I can tell) consists of concert pianist (changed from the much cooler supercop of the games) Chun-Li (played by the girl who has sex with that guy who looks like but is definetly not Matt Damon in Eurotrip, Kristin Kreuk) tracking down the man who kidnapped her father when she was a child. That man is, because the title of this movie is "Street Fighter", M. Bison.

Bison, who was never really given an ethnicity in the video games, is Irish in this movie and played by Buck Compton from Band of Brothers (Neal McDonough). In 1994's movie, Bison was played by the late great Raul Julia, whose Puerto Rican-ness gave Bison a sort of Pinochet-esque vibe that was kind of cool in its own way. Despite the fact that Julia was dying of cancer during production, his over-the-top, seemingly miscast performance is one of the highlights of the first film. M. Bison in this film, it is explained, is the child of Irish missionairies who died in Thailand shortly after his birth. The orphanage then left him for dead (which is what they do in Thailand, a character explains), leaving him to grow up in the slums of Bangkok alone, which does nothing to explain why he has an Irish accent if his parents died when he was a baby.

M. O'Bison is an evil criminal overlord who wants to buy all of Bangkok's slums and convert them into luxury condos which places him squarely in the Lex Luthor school of lame supervillainy. One day, Chun-Li finds an ancient Chinese scroll that literally reads "Go to Bangkok and look for Gen" (which begs the question: why does an ancient Chinese scroll contains instructions so specific to the actions of individuals in the 21st century?). Our heroine promptly does so and meets Gen (Robin Shou, Liu Kang of Mortal Kombat fame) who sports a gross 'stache that makes him look like a 14-year-old Mexican kid and tattoos that I swear have white supremacist connotations. There he instructs her in Wushu and teaches her how to throw fireballs for some reason. This is all so she can fight Seamus McBison and his army of stupid henchman which include Balrog (unfortunately not of Morgoth) played by Michael Clarke Duncan at his Michael Clarke Duncaniest and Vega played by that other asshole from the Black Eyed Peas: the one who isn't Bob Dylan (*shudder*) and who didn't pee his pants.

MCD does okay, I mean can you really go wrong with him? If a character is huge and black, MCD can play him. "Taboo" as this Vega-playing guy is called doesn't fair as well. Vega is built up to be really threatening, decapitating a bunch of Bison's rivals with his famous Wolverine claw in his first scene, but goes down like a bitch when Chun-Li fights him. Vega, who if I remember correctly is some sort of Spanish nobleman (a hidalgo, if you will) in the games, yells at Chun-Li when she knocks his stupid-looking mask off, and I quote, "I'm gunna cut you!" which seems both out of character and ridiculous. This is not the only instance of people threatening to cut our heroine: at one point Chun-Li is captured by Bison's goons and is to be killed while hanging from the ceiling suspended by a rope. One of her would-be murderers asks her, brandishing a knife in her face "Would you like us to cut you before or after we kill you?". WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT? WHAT'S WITH ALL THE CUTTING?

Also, we are assured that Bison is so evil because when he was a young man, in order to make himself completely and totally evil, he ritualisticly murdered his wife an imbued his newborn daughter with all that remained of his goodness. He literally goes to a cave in a flashback to do this. That's stupid. You sell your soul to the devil to play guitar, not to become evil; that's just part of the deal. He couldn't get his trademark "psycho power"? I hate this movie.

Did I mention that M.Bison's second-in-command is a lesbian cougar who Chun-Li lures into a nightclub bathroom with promises of hot lavatory scissoring? After Chun-Li beats her up, Bison punches her to death. I hate this movie.

But all of this is nothing compared to the "good guys". Chris "my acting career's too good for me to be featured in American Wedding" Klein appears as Charlie, who I forgot was a Street Fighter character but apparently was Guile's war buddy in the games. Klein was what made me okay with the fact that I paid $6.50 to see this movie, but not in a good way. All of his lines are attempts at snappy one-liners or sexy puns. He spends the entire movie throwing innuendos at Thai detective Moon Bloodgood (too weird a name to really be hot) and attempting to score, at which he fails miserably. His first line in the film is, upon seeing the buxom Ms. Bloodgood, "I love this job." or something to that effect. The movie is much better if you imagine Charlie as an awkward virgin, trying his best to have sex with every woman he lays eyes on because he's on the wrong side of 30 and hasn't touched a boob yet. Basically, he's kind of like me my freshman year of college...and sophomore year...and junior year. His anti-chemistry is then mostly spent with a lot of whining about the amount of time he's spent as an INTERPOL agent trying to bust Bison's criminal organization and running away from explosions. Look for his performance to become a Wicker Man-style Youtube meme by the year's end.

The whole experience seems kind of pointless, as if the movie is trying to ignore or actively fight against the fact that it's based off a video game of any sort of reknown. At the end of the movie, with all the baddies killed and the day saved, Gen proposes that he and Chun-Li go to a street fighting tournament in Japan to see "some guy named Ryu" and recruit him in their continuing fight against evil, to which Chun-Li responds (literally) "No, I think I'll just stay home." (good advice, Chun-Li). This movie feels like Street Fighter in name only, as if there are enough rabid Street Fighter fans these days to fill a multiplex. It uses character names and the idea of martial arts and then goes haywire from there, seeing no reason to create an adaptation of any sort of video game. If this had been called "the Legend of Some Asian Girl Who Fights People", it would lose NOTHING. From concert pianist Chun-Li, to Irish Satanist M. Bison there is nary a trace of Street Fighter to be found in this film.

One of the major complaints about video game film adaptations is that they are slavishly devoted to their source material and can't capture the essence of the original. In this case, the video game has been ignored. There were very few nods to the game series, the best I can think of is a necklace of a "spinning bird" that Chun-Li gets from her father; Chun-Li never once says "Yup yup!" And the thighs! Kristin Kreuk does not have the thighs to play Chun-Li (though I suppose no woman on Earth does)! I don't think it's even possible to call this a video game adaptation; appropriation, maybe. Even Super Mario Bros. (which I consider an inspired attempt to realize Mario in a Blade Runner-esque enviroment) had more respect for the source material than this.

All in all, I think you're better off seeing Watchmen this weekend.

P.S. Thanks for the opportunity to hyperlink to "Scotty Doesn't Know"!

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is ranked #44 on the Rotten Tomatoes Worst 100 list with 4% freshness. Its RT page can be found here.

Bearing the Mark of the Devil

2009-11-06T07:04:00.004-05:00

The term “spiritual successor” is thrown around a lot in gaming these days. Previews of New Super Mario Bros. Wii are hailing it as a spiritual successor to Super Mario Bros. 3 (prompting discussions of Nintendo’s verbose naming practices - “Why not just call it SMB 4?”). Any time someone makes a scrolling shoot-em-up, someone calls it a spiritual successor to Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga. With rare exceptions, “spiritual successor” is code for “We’re kind of copying an older game that we’re pretty sure you like a lot.”

A franchise seeing lots of successors these days is Blizzard’s Diablo series. The first Diablo hit PCs in 1996, with a sequel arriving in 2000. These games fall into the nebulous Action RPG genre – usually defined by having players directly control an upgradeable character, often in a fantasy setting. In Diablo, players explore dungeons, clicking on hordes of enemies to attack them with weapons or spells. The series prominently features loot – equipment and items that greatly increase a character’s statistics – and lots of quests that the player can complete to obtain even more loot.

With Diablo III idling on Blizzard’s “We’ll Release It When We Want To” calendar, a number of spiritual successors are out to fill the void.

Fleshing Out a World

Though not new by any means, probably the most successful of Diablo’s descendants is Blizzard’s MMO-cum-cash-cow World of Warcraft. Though it's based in Azeroth and builds upon the Hero unit mechanics of Warcraft III, Blizzard’s history with Diablo that paved the way for the most popular MMO of all time.

Streamlined quests, extensive loot, a variety of character classes, multiplayer dungeon raiding. Sure, none of this stuff is new to the MMO genre, but it was all there in Diablo 2. And its worth nothing that WoW is Blizzard’s first and only MMO. They got it mostly right very quickly and have been patching the thing like mad ever since. They’ve also launched a full-scale assault on the main game world, scorching the earth and ravaging earlier areas to keep things interesting for their core audience.

You know you’re at the top when anyone else making an MMO is immediately asked, “So…how is this different from World of Warcraft?”

Carrying a Torch

Staying truer to the Diablo form is Torchlight from Runic Games. Runic’s chock full of developers from Flagship studios, which was comprised of people from the original Diablo team. The experience and proximity to the source material is readily apparent. Players guide a single character though a nigh-bottomless dungeon beneath a small hub world. Sounds like Diablo to me.

The adjustments it makes to the original formula are subtle yet revelatory. As in Diablo 2, some weapons are customizable by socketing gemstones into the item. Previously, it was impossible to recover said stones when you wanted to move on to a better item. Torchlight solves this problem, making the gems recoverable. You might have a magic glass eyeball that you want to put in your new Wondrous Blunderbuss of the Bear (I made that up but there’s a good chance it’s in the game somewhere). Torchlight is totally cool with that.

Torchlight’s standout improvement upon Diablo is the implementation of a pet companion. In the action RPG genre, minions are generally relegated to a specific class: Hunter, Beastmaster, Necromancer, etc. Torchlight gives every character, regardless of class, an animal buddy. You can choose between a dog and a cat, both more feral than your average domesticated critter. Not only will your animal run around and maul foes for your, s/he can equip magical trinkets and spells – which it will unleash at will (mine currently shoots fireballs). Pets may also be used as pack mules and will gladly hoof it back to town to pawn all your goods. I do feel kind of lonely whenever he leaves, though.

Diablo with Guns

Gearbox’s Borderlands has been marketed as the result of a one-night stand between an RPG and a first-person shooter. The result: an RPS, or role-playing shooter. Leading up to its release, developers and enthusiast press alike referred to it as “Diablo with guns,” a moniker previously given to the failed Flagship Studios title Hellgate: London.

I never played H: L, and I’m happy about that. Because it sounds like it did everything wrong. Borderlands, however, does a lot of things right. (Don’t be mislead. This is not a review. Our editors’ review is forthcoming).

Like Diablo, it has you scurrying from area to area offing beasts and acquiring loot. In fact, the skeletal plot isn’t much more than “Search out this mysterious location where I bet there’s some sweetass loot.” Also, Diablo sort of established a color-coded hierarchy of item rarity, something that Borderlands has no problem using. A more slightly more subtle nod to Blizzard’s dungeon-crawler is the way loot flies out of fallen monsters like candy from a piñata.

Why Diablo?

Loot heavy dungeon-crawlers tap generally employ a Carrot-and-Stick system of item and character progression that’s starting to permeate a variety of genres as developers strive to make their games increasingly Compelling. While Diablo’s certainly not the first, it and games in its lineage urge the player on by dangling new items and abilities just inches from his nose. The phrase “Just one more quest” seems like a cliché in a world where World of Warcraft is popular enough to be mocked on South Park, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t uttered those words more than a few times in the past month.

These are games to be played simply for the sake of advancement. Learn that new skill. Find that new item. Discover that new area. And they wear it (and their heritage) on their sleeves. If only other titles were so forthcoming.

Funnest Virus Ever: Mac OS Game Deletes Files As You Play

2009-11-05T19:39:00.001-05:00

Making the rounds on the Internet is the word about a game called Lose/Lose.

Lose/Lose was developed by one Zach Gage as part of a thesis project, and borrows from top-down shooters like Space Invaders and Galaga – aliens come at you from the top of the screen, and you shoot them. Thing is, each one of the aliens represents one of the files on your hard drive, and said files are deleted forever when you kill aliens – the perfect game to play on your arch nemesis’s computer.

Gage says that his creation is “a video-game with real life consequences,” and has labeled it a work of art. Computer security magnate Symantec says that “there’s nothing stopping someone with more malicious intentions from modifying [the game] slightly and then passing it on to unsuspecting users, causing significant damage to a computer” and has labeled it Trojan OSX.Loosemaque. See Symantec’s video below

The Art of the Album: The Beatles - Please Please Me

2009-11-05T07:15:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, after weeks and weeks of waiting, I finally received my remastered Beatles box set from Amazon. Finally. I had pre-ordered it a few weeks before release, thinking that I’d write about them for the site and get Mad Hits from people scouring the Internet for Beatles-related news.

And now it’s November, and my thunder has been stolen not only by my fellow writers but also by the entirety of the Internet.

My conundrum: How to write about these albums, thus getting my money’s worth, without writing about something that happened two months ago and being a lame jerk? The solution was simple! Spin it off into another new music-based post series where I wax poetic about albums I like! The first batch of these pieces will just happen to be the collected discography of The Beatles.

Think we write about this band too much? Well, you picked the wrong blog to read today, buddy.

What You Need to Know: The bulk of the Beatles’ first album was recorded in early 1963 – ten songs from a day-long marathon session plus the A- and B-sides from the already-released “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me” singles. Most of their early albums were a mix of original material and covers, which was odd for its day – bands did not typically produce their own material in this era, and The Beatles were so prolific in their early days that they inspired many a singer/songwriter to pen his or her own material.

Plenty has been said of The Beatles’ experimental and breakup phases over the last forty years, but Please Please Me and With The Beatles are (relatively speaking, of course) sometimes overlooked by more casual fans. It’s true that these early albums are not the pop music landmarks that dominate the second half of their career, but the early stuff is nevertheless fun, catchy, excellent music.

The Songs You’ve Heard: Most everyone has heard “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me” at one point or another – the latter, at least, deserves its reputation. Thanks to one Ferris Bueller (if no one else), you’re probably aware of “Twist and Shout” – this song is one of the covers, though it has so far overshadowed the original that you’ve probably never heard it.

The Songs You Haven’t: Let’s not kid ourselves, most of these tracks are as obscure as Lennon/McCartney songs can be. “I Saw Her Standing There” is one I almost considered listing as a Song You’ve Heard, but while it’s just as good as their early singles (and better than “Love Me Do”), it doesn’t get a ton of exposure outside of this album. “Misery,” “There’s a Place,” and “P.S. I Love You” round out the best of the original numbers, while of the covers “Chains” is sort of a funny, twangy number, and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Ringo-sung “Boys” (though my girlfriend will forever disagree with me about that one).

Why I Like It: Please Please Me has an infectious energy to it – the deftness of their performances (they were a relentless live band, and this was back before the screams drowned out the sound and made musicianship impossible) combined with their obvious enthusiasm (they had two hit singles under their belts going into the studio) mix to make something that’s just fun to listen to, even if it’s not their best or most technically proficient album.

It also helps that, of the fourteen on the album, none of the songs here are truly bad. Some whinge over Paul’s syrupy “A Taste of Honey,” and even that one really comes down to musical taste (pun maybe intended).

The recent remastering of this album does bring a new, sorely needed cleanliness to the sound – you can hear individual instruments and voices much better than before, and the sound of John Lennon forgetting the words of “Please Please Me” has never been so clearly audible. That being said, this album was recorded on a two-track tape recorder that was a little primitive even for the time – the sound quality can only get so good, and casual listeners (or people who only listen to things with their iPod earbuds) probably won’t hear much of a difference.

Desert Island Tracks: “Please Please Me,” “I Saw Her Standing There”

Mopping Up Culture Vomit: I'm Jordan Pedersen, and James Cameron is my favorite director

2009-11-04T16:00:00.004-05:00

I get tired of "style."

That's not a fair stance, I realize. It's also not entirely accurate, considering that every movie (nay, every work of art) is a product of stylistic decisions, good or bad.

But whenever "style" gets mentioned specifically in a movie's writeup, I switch off immediately. Any critic who can't come up with a better descriptor than "stylish" is an idiot, anyway. That's like saying your favorite food is "tasteish."

Maybe I'm being unfair. After all, if this hypothetical movie had anything more than "style" going for it, it wouldn't be the only thing the (bad) critic noticed.

Nah, stylishness still pisses me off.

I saw Snatch for the first time last week. And, more than its (allegedly) memorable characters or its (sorta) intricate plot, I noticed its (actually) obnoxious director.

True, Snatch is singular. There are some gorgeous sequences (the fights are all wonderful), and it's funny as hell. And, most importantly for Guy Ritchie, there's no mistaking that it's a Guy Ritchie movie.

And that's what I found so annoying. Ritchie's got talent, but he's so insecure with it. Why else would he spend every available moment trying to prove his talent with trick photography? Slo-mo, fast-mo, montage, montage, montage. It's like hanging out with a hyperactive teenager who keeps namedropping all the "cool" bands he listens to.

"We get it, Jordan, you think you're cool. Now stop talking about AFI."

I've started to respect filmmakers with less to prove. I've started to prize movies that don't shove technique or their "radical" philosophical/moral/social agenda in my face (2008's Wanted being heinously guilty of both).

Which is why James Cameron has become one of my favorite directors. His movies are quietly masterful. I know it sounds odd to refer to James Cameron as quiet, but he's quiet about his talent. He's akin to Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep); audiences could spot a Hawks picture simply because they enjoyed it so much. His "invisible style" is, ironically, his hallmark.

I question the intentions of a Guy Ritchie or a Timur Mekmambetov (Wanted). Like Cameron, they make action movies (certainly crowd-pleasers), but are they primarily concerned with entertaining the audience? Or are they more about proving how unique they are?

James Cameron strikes me as a tremendously selfless director. His goal, above all else, is to produce a perfectly entertaining movie. That's why his scripts are perfect (Aliens), his production values top-notch (Titanic, but just about all of his movies), and his filmography uncluttered (quality over quantity, after all).

Dude is a douchebag, though, which may explain him being less than prolific. You can't make movies in studio system if everybody hates you; just ask David O. Russell.

I've made my acceptance of asshole behavior well-known. And James Cameron has certainly produced enough brilliant art to warrant a bit of egomania.

His douchiness, after all, is in service of making great movies; he's a Nazi because he cares (about his audience if not his actors).

And his movies are great because they're so much fun. Aliens has some truly insightful things to say about humanity and corporate dysfunction, but it's a great movie because it's purely entertaining from beginning to end. There are social politics in Titanic, but there's also a giant fucking sinking ship and a great love story.

James Cameron makes great movies. Great in scope and great artistically. And his movies don't concern themselves with telling you how great they are.

But audiences seem to feel guilty about having fun. They enjoy great action movies but somehow think less of them than great dramas. That's a mistake; thrilling an audience isn't any easier than tugging their heartstrings. And, again, a confident filmmaker is often content merely to entertain his audience.

So don't discount the James Camerons of the world simply because they make fun movies that don't shove their technique in your face.

I don't think the newest Avatar trailer is much better (or worse) than the infamous teaser. But Jimmy's earned my trust.

Modern Warfare 2 Gets Its Hands Dirty

2009-11-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the sixth game in a franchise that hasn’t changed in six years. It’s a first person shooter in the purest sense of the genre: a gun bobs in front of your face, and you shoot it. No jumping puzzles. No challenge, really, beyond surviving your march through the level.

And it works. Year after year, Call of Duty games bring home the bacon. You can always count on Game Of The Year editions. Gamestop announced yesterday that Modern Warfare 2 is the most-preordered game of all time, ever, period.

This is a series set in its ways – so it’s nice to see Modern Warfare 2 pissing people off.

Last week, a clip of MW2’s opening sequence hit the internet. It only took Activision five minutes to shut it down, but it was too late. Millions saw terrorists – one of which was the player – open up on civilians in a crowded airport lobby.

Reactions were varied in their severity, but the shock was universal. Infinity Ward’s blockbuster, the inevitable Game Of The Year, was asking you to gun down innocents in cold blood.

Modern Warfare 2, I salute you.

Spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

Context: you’re a CIA agent in deep cover with a terrorist cell. In pursuit of some (apparently) more critical objective, you participate in the massacre of civilians at a crowded airport. Said civilians flee, scream, and cower before your gun.

Perhaps this says something about me, but I was more surprised by the presence of a plot. To their credit, Call of Duty have always been known for terse, minimalistic plots, relying on the salt-and-pepper of good writing and unfussy plotting. The morality drama of an undercover agent committing atrocities to protect his story seems more 24 than anything.

But back to the violence. Discussing the massacre level with Andrew, he suggested it was a bit of shock-jockeying, a potentially strategic leak to distinguish MW2 from a crowded field of holiday releases. I disagree. In my opinion, MW2 was at least partially responsible for the uncrowding of the field, pushing back shooters like Bioshock 2 and Army of Two: The 40th Day. If anything, it needs less visibility, and this Activision press release seems to confirm genuine chagrin on the developer’s part:

The leaked footage was taken from a copy of game that was obtained illegally and is not representative of the overall gameplay experience in Modern Warfare 2.

…At the beginning of the game, players encounter a mandatory “checkpoint” in which they are warned that an upcoming segment may contain disturbing elements and they can choose not to engage in the gameplay that involves this scene. Consistent with its content, the game has been given an “M” for Mature by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The rating is prominently displayed on the front and back of the packaging, as well as in all advertising.

They meant for this to be a surprise.

For me, the issue of taste is irrelevant. This isn’t the first time innocents have been killed in a game – thanks, God of War – and they die wholesale in film and TV. MW2’s massacre provokes outrage because it puts the gun in the player’s hand. They don’t watch. They participate.

For once, the Call of Duty franchise is using the medium to its fullest potential.

They twice brushed this level of greatness in Call of Duty 4. First, the player spent two minutes behind the eyes of a deposed dictator as he’s thrown in a car, driven to an arena and executed in front of a roaring crowd; later, players stumbled around a nuclear wasteland, watching a mushroom cloud tower into the sky before dropping dead of radiation poisoning. You feel his heartbeat fade through your controller.

And now Infinity Ward is making us shoot civilians. It’s the kind of fly-in-your-face developing that ignores the consumer in favor of delivering a purer experience. The word for this is avant garde. Excepting Bioshock, the genre seldom pushes the envelope this far.

Thus, Modern Warfare 2 lives up to its semi-absurd title. This isn’t World War II, where you storm the beach and raise the flag for Uncle Sam. This is terrorism. This is unfair. This is dirty and uneven and it’s going to leave you feeling wrong.

Many are doubtlessly debating the morality of forcing the player to shoot dozens of unarmed innocents. I ask them: is it any better to watch it happen?

The Anatomy of the Batsuit

2009-11-03T16:05:00.009-05:00

When millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne decided to spend his nights fighting crime, he designed a special costume to wear during these proceedings. The original outfit consisted of a form-fitting gray bodysuit, a scalloped cape designed to mimic a bat's wings, a cowl with pointy ears designed to obscure his face from the nose upwards, and a nifty yellow belt in which to hold all his crime-fighting utilities.

For this year's Hallowe'en celebration, I created my own version of the Batsuit. The only piece specifically engineered for a Batman costume was the synthetic leather-ish mask/cowl - the rest I put together from found materials or from scratch, much like the actual Bruce Wayne.

Click on Continue... for some of the things I learned through constructing and wearing a Batman costume of my own.

First, to put my Batsuit in context, let's look at some previous live-action adaptations of Batman's iconic garb.

In the 1960s TV series with Adam West, the costume was basically a fabric bodysuit with a shiny pleather-esque cape and cowl. Nothing about this Batsuit reflects the dark and brooding nature of Batman's character or the savage vigilante nature of his nocturnal mission. But then again, nothing about the show itself reflects these things about Batman either: he was just a guy in a goofy costume fighting against other guys in other goofy costumes. The periwinkle blue suit contributed to the overall comic book feel almost as much as the famous *POW* *BANG* on-screen emphatics: watching West try to act a scene in his mask that completely covers his eyes takes camp to a whole new level.

The 1989 Tim Burton film made the Batsuit at once more and less practical. It's all black, increasing Batman's stealth capabilities. It's armored, which just plain makes sense given the amount of physical punishment he takes. But the sturdy leather makeup of the suit makes movement look constricted and awkward, especially when you see Batman driving the Batmobile and realize that he's physically incapable of checking his blind spots. With selective photography and clever editing, Burton & Co. tried to present the caped crusader as remarkably strong and agile, but in the long shots and long takes you could tell that the stuntman was having a devil of a time working through the choreography.

Christopher Nolan's recent Batman franchise attempts to explain many of the particular idiosyncrasies of the Batsuit. Batman Begins is the first movie where we see Bruce Wayne put together his suit from scratch, and they took full advantage of the 21st century to make it appear as plausible as possible. How can Batman move with all that molded plastic enhancing his physique? It's ultra-light titanium triweave fabric, of course. Why does he have those dumb ears on his costume? Duh, that's where the antenna for his communication device goes. Wouldn't that cape just get in the way? Not when it can transform into a glider, dummy! The latest Batman film even included a joke about the futility of the costumes in the previous films. The actual prop costume still looked rather silly and impossible to move in, but at least they tried to make you think that they wanted it to make sense.

Now let's talk about my Halloween costume. The main part of the suit is just plain gray long underwear (turned inside out to hide the nasty manufacturer's logo that's not quite obscured by the bat-signal on the chest) and a pair of black nylon/spandex briefs over the top. It has the same unenhanced physique look as the Adam West version, but with the black and gray color scheme of the original comics. My co-worker (mother) and I crafted a bat-signal out of yellow and black fabric, and iron-on fused it to the shirt. It has a similar design as Tim Burton's bat-signal, but with the cloth-like consistency and light yellow color of the '90s animated series.

I had the cape from a previous costume - Zorro I believe; we just had to cut the scallops into the bottom. It's made of fabric and doesn't quite fit with the leather(ish) cowl I found at a costume shop several months ago, but it swirls and billows real nice. The cowl was made to coincide with 1997's Batman & Robin: eight years before the Christopher Nolan reboot, and thus subject to all the visual field/head turning shortcomings of the older Batsuits, but it would be just too hard to make something like that from scratch.

I had leather boots, also from Zorro. I picked up some Darth Vader gloves from a Halloween store. For the utility belt, I put all my gear (wallet, keys, glasses, etc.) in a black fanny pack, turned the pouch around so the folds of the cape would conceal it, and strapped a yellow baseball belt over it to keep up appearances.

After I got into my costume, I was ready to hit the parties. At first I was discouraged. Standing around, drink in hand, trying to make conversation proved a difficult task. The mask obscured my vision, necessitating an awkward full-body pivot just to speak to someone not standing directly in front of me, and causing me to constantly bump into things/people. The mask also covered my ears, preventing me from hearing either end of the conversation accurately. And don't even get me started on trying to breathe through the nose, or on the sweat that pools in that damn thing. At least I didn't have to paint black all around my eyeballs. Furthermore, my bat gloves had no bat traction, causing me to drop my drink to the floor (but only once).

But once the party moved outside, where it was mostly dark with plenty of places to maneuver, I found it much easier to embody the character of Batman. Despite being dressed in a light, spottable gray, it was remarkably easy to swirl my cape around me, put my head down, and slip out of sight. More than a few times, people would catch a glimpse of me, shout out, "Hey, Batman!" or something, then return to their conversations. Then when they took a look back to where I was standing, expecting me to have joined in the circle, I would have already vanished into the shadows, just close enough to see their confused reactions without being spotted myself. Creepy? Yes. Effective? Also yes.

This behavior got me to thinking that part Batman's M.O. is that you never get a good, full-on look at him for any length of time. The aesthetics of his costume reflect this fact: he looks great when he's slinking around or moving real fast, but the sight of a grown man wearing tights and a restrictive leather mask with pointy ears would undoubtedly grow ridiculous rather quickly. The practicality of his character also reflects this: if Batman stayed still for too long, he might get shot or, worse, recognized!

Speaking of which, the identity-concealing aspect of the costume worked better than I expected. In my weaker, more sacrilegious moments, I would sometimes wonder why nobody realizes that Batman is really Bruce Wayne - I mean, you can see half his face, for crying out loud! But I was surprised at the frequency of which my friends and acquaintances would not recognize me with the mask on. There's one thing that works the way it's supposed to.

But a lot of the costume didn't work towards practicality. More than a few times throughout the night I found myself cursing my gloves that wouldn't catch hold of a beer bottle or my cape that found its way under someone's foot going down the stairs behind me. "Why does Batman even HAVE these ears!?" became a popular catch phrase that always provoked a laugh from bystanders who happened to witness me bumping my head on a branch or low doorway. Ironically enough, it would be easier to slink around Batman style WITHOUT the most recognizable parts of the Batman costume.

All this got me to thinking that there's no way to create a live-action depiction of Batman's costume that is both realistic and practical. Even the bare bones versions drastically reduce visibility and range of motion, two key abilities for staying alive in the streets of Gotham. The high-tech iterations, while providing more leeway in terms of bells and whistles, look to be heavy and unweildy to the point of negating all the stealth and guile on which Batman depends.

But then again, maybe part of what makes Batman so badass is that he can do everything he does even with the handicap of his costume. And he can do it better than any other non-genetically altered human in all of comics. Sure, it would be easier to see without that stupid cowl, but it would be not nearly as cool, nor would it send the same message. Batman's principles set apart from other comic book characters, and Batman's frightening yet impractical costume, perfectly embodies those principles.

Arizona Court Rules Metadata Just as Public as Regular Data

2009-11-03T15:27:00.000-05:00

In an increasingly electronic world, metadata is becoming just as important as the data it describes. Our iPods rely on it to tell us who sang our favorite songs. Windows uses it to tell us creation dates and file sizes for everything from Excel documents to digital images. The term “metadata” covers a wide range of information, so it’s critical we determine its more particular uses and applications.

Looks like the Arizona Supreme Court agrees.

Last week, Wired’s Threat Level blog wrote about an Arizona Supreme court ruling “that electronic metadata is part of the public record under state law.” The particular case involved a Phoenix police officer suing the city on allegations of employment discrimination. He’d filed a request to obtain some public documents for the case – performance reviews by his supervisor, etc. Suspicious that the files had been backdated (perhaps tampered with), he requested the metadata and the city refused.

Two courts under the state Supreme Court ruled against the officer, claiming a difference between “record” and “public record.” The city also complained that supplying such information would be time-consuming and inefficient. Thankfully, the Supreme Court called shenanigans on both counts. Justice W. Scott Bales wrote that metadata “is part of the underlying document; it does not stand on its own.”

It’s a landmark case in our digital age. We can’t ignore the electronic fingerprints we leave on our files and documents. This may prove pertinent in future government investigations or – as more artistic media make the digital leap – issues of authorship and copyright law. Good on you, Arizona.

This Week on Audiosurf Radio – 11/03 – Ghost in the Machine Edition

2009-11-03T07:56:00.000-05:00

Every few weeks I have a techno renaissance. Tracks catch my ear with lean, hungry beats or challenge my mouse hand with furious twists and turns overloaded with traffic. Sometimes, however, the techno stands out when the other songs just don’t make the cut.

There are two Speedsound mixes this week, both from their album Sex Party – Volume 1. That album’s title is simply amazing. Also, I couldn’t find a Volume 2. I hope there isn’t one, actually. I think it’s better that way. There are also two Halloween-themed (and by themed I mean they contain the word “Ghost”) songs by Oxford’s KJBO off their album To Love a Ghost.

So we’ve got some ghosts, and we’ve got some techno. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a ghost in the machine (which should totally be a mixed drink). Jump time!

Recommendations

Let me preface this one by saying that I didn’t initially plan to recommend “Chemical Trip.” But my second playthrough of the set revealed that Speedsound clearly trumped anything the dismal BJKO could muster. “Chemical Trip” grows evenly. It starts spare, introduces quarter notes on the Two and Four, slides them into every beat, then finally breaks out the big streams of traffic. I enjoyed the noises in the upper register; I could’ve cared less about the repetitive low-pitched drumming supporting everything. If you can lift your ear above the din, you should hear some interesting attempts to assemble a melody out of disparate sounds. Lock on to the weird droid voice panning from left to right. It’s the one responsible for the traffic thickets. Switching between lanes became like a dire game of Frogger as I tried to weave through the phalanx of brightly colored rectangles. Toward the end of the track, a voice speaks, “Nobody had a bad trip.” I disagree. I’m pretty sure if I dropped acid and rode this song I’d have a terrible trip.

If there were a modern version of TRON – oh wait, there is. Never mind. If there were an updated version of ReBoot – dammit. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that if we could look into a computer, see the binary homunculi inside, we might find it listening to “Love in Paz” while running, say, disk defragmenter or something. Whatever would be a computer’s equivalent to High Intensity Interval Training. Aurally, there’s lots of whizzing and whirring, clicking and beeping. But also deliberately tinny yet elaborate drum loops that sound like someone artfully rapping a pen on a sheet of plywood. The beats are rarely dull, and often so complex I wonder what harm they might cause a sentient machine. The atmospheric sound kept me interested when the drums leveled out – at one point I heard high-pitched echoes, like water dripping from a stalactite or someone gently striking an aluminum pipe. In the middle there’s a section in what feels like 6/8 time. The dragged triplet feel helped alleviate techno tedium, plus it generated a whole host of white blocks. My only complaint is that it’s a tad long. The challenge never really lets up. You should play this song just so you can check out the Comments section and listen to all the newcomers express their awe whilst dabbing the blood from their eyes.

Other Selections

In honor of the Halloween weekend, Lebeth chose two songs by the band KJBO. Why? Because they happen to have to songs with the word “Ghost” in the title. I don’t know where she found these guys. When I search “Ghost” in my iTunes, I get the Minibosses “ghosts n’ goblins” cover, “Ghost of Corporate Future” by Regina Spektor, and “Ghost of Stephen Foster” by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. I would’ve gladly ridden any of those over these tracks by KJBO. I’ve voiced this complaint about prior Internet indie bands, but the mixing is just awful. Not only does the vocalist sound whiney and pitchy, he sounds like he’s singing from under a rug in the next room. This is frustrating, given that the barriers to entry into music recording seem pretty low even if you’re musical standards are pretty high. “Future Ghosts,” if you can get past the song, is a fine ride, mostly because you get to ride the guitar part (which is due in par to the lackluster drumming). I can barely even comment on “It’s Hard to Love a Ghost.” It was that boring. I had to pretend I was playing a videogame adaptation of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind wherein every time I cleared a set of blocks I was deleting my memories of this song.

Author’s Note

Each song was played twice (yeesh, KJBO) on the Pro difficulty using the Eraser and Vegas characters. I’m happy I found these Speedsound tracks entertaining. My patience for their dense remixes was beginning to wane, but “Chemical Trip” and “Love in Paz” have reeled me back in.

At the Mountains of Madness- Part Twelve: "the Grown Ups"

2009-11-02T19:30:00.003-05:00

It finally happened: the rug has been yanked out from under Madison Avenue. A sniper's bullet has shattered the fun little world that Don Draper and company have made for themselves. The days of workplace alcoholism and playing grab-ass with the secretaries are over (or at least on their way out). Camelot lies in ruins and now it won't be long before Sterling Cooper follows suit. This episode has been a long time coming, essentially being an inevitability since the show started way back in 2007 and as one might expect, the vast majority of this episode (and in all likelihood next week's season finale as well) was devoted to the Kennedy Assassination.

If this were Friends, the episode would be titled "The One Where JFK Gets Shot", but unfortunately it isn't, it's Mad Men and we're going to have to deal with that. So click ahead and let's all try not get teary as we remember the episode where Kennedy got elected and everyone was getting drunk and screwing in the office, shall we?

President Kennedy's death is one of those watershed events in American history where everyone who was alive at the time remembers where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing when it happened. For most of the Sterling Cooper staff, they were at the office: Don is fighting with Lane over money things and his lack of an art director (something that he probably could have helped to prevent IMHO), Pete has been effectively demoted as Kenny Cosgrove has won the Head of Accounts challenge and has been elevated to Senior Vice President in Charge of Accounts. Peggy has dipped out for a "nooner" to quote Paul (new favorite phrase) and is in bed with Duck, who is in fact privy to the events of the day but would really like to have some sex before he gives it much thought. Also, Duck has a tattoo which unfortunately is not of a water fowl of any kind.

Most of the cast is hit pretty hard by the tragedy. This might rank as the worst day of Pete's life, losing the promotion he's been fighting for since episode one and the death of the President. He spends most of the episode in front of the television with Trudy, drinking, and who could blame him (because she's so pretty)? Pete seems to be absolutely headed in the direction of defecting and taking up with Duck at his rogue agency. Unless there's some big twist next week, expect season four to open with Pete (and maybe even Peggy) working for Duck at Gray. But who knows, maybe Lois will run over Ken's foot with a lawnmower and save the day. It would certainly be ironic considering that it was Ken's lawnmower that hacked off Guy's foot and saved Lane from indentured servitude in India.

As has been established since this season's second episode, Margaret Sterling is getting married on the day after the shooting in Dallas. The reception hall is only half full and there enough extra entrees for every guest to have seconds (you see, when God closes a door He opens up a window). Roger is doing his best to salvage his (other) little girl's big day and is actually managing quite well, all things considered. There's just the pesky problem of all the guests watching the news in the kitchen and Jane's refusal to fall in line as far as Margaret is concerned. Also, the cake is nowhere to be found. As he plops a drunken Jane ("He was so handsome...and now I'll never get to vote for him!") down on the bed, Roger makes a call to his ex-paramour, Joan. This is the second sentimental call in two episodes between two characters whose post-affair marriages are not turning out like they hoped they would.

I'm going to call it now: the season will end with Roger and Joan getting back together and Ken losing a foot.

But whither the Drapers? Betty takes the news harder than almost anyone and it serves a catalyst for their rapidly deteriorating marriage. After spying Henry Francis at Margaret's wedding, she again meets with him and their illicit almost-affair takes more steps towards becoming the real deal. While Don is still shaken by Kennedy's death, he's handling it with his trademark grace under pressure, but the developments on the home front are a bit more serious. Betty informs Don that she doesn't love him anymore and leaves it at that. An interesting parallel can be traced between Don and Betty: at the series inception, it was Don doing all the cheating and putting the marriage at risk, now at the end of the third season, Don has hung up his philanderer's costume and is settling into being an honest-to-God family man. He wants to make the marriage work. Betty is the one set on breaking up the family: she runs off to Henry while Don stays at home with the kids instead of giving Suzanne a national tragedy booty call. The episode ends with Don back at Sterling Cooper on Monday's national day of mourning to find the office deserted except for Peggy who is re-working a campaign featuring an open-top convertible. While he came there because "all the bars are closed" it's fitting that he arrives only to find Peggy, his protege. Don's real family is falling apart, the only one he has left is the one he has made at Sterling Cooper, and how long can that last?

JFK has been a constant feature of Mad Men from the beginning, nipping at the heels of the staunchly Republican offices of Sterling Cooper. In a way, Jack Kennedy was kind of the Don Draper president, being a handsome war hero with a capacity for skirt chasing and leading a double life (JFK suffered from crippling back problems dating back to his Navy days, and suffered from Addison's disease, neither of which were publicly disclosed during his lifetime). Maybe John F. Kennedy was not the scion of a wealthy Irish-American family but was in fact the son of a drunk Depression-era farmer from coal country who stole the identity of the real Kennedy during the PT-109 incident? Think about it.

Now that the Kennedy era has come and gone and Lyndon Johnson has risen to power, what lies in store for the members of our favorite fictional advertising agency and their families? Tune in next week to find out in the dramatic conclusion of "At the Mountains of Madness"!

A Decade of Dreck #2: Battlefield Earth

2009-11-02T12:00:00.003-05:00

Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 32 - Run-DMC

2009-11-02T07:00:00.010-05:00

I was driving in the car with my younger sister during my Beastie Boys portion of this project (Week 8). I cued up Licensed to Ill on the stereo, and informed my sister (the good brother that I am) that this was the first rap album to top the Billboard Charts.

My sister made the sort of bored expression that only a sixteen year old girl can pull off. "I'm not impressed," she informed me, without missing a beat. The subtext of this damning statement, of course, is that this music is old, and thus dated, past its expiration date, no longer fit for consumption.

Is newer always better? We tend to think this way, and not just in regards to music. We're always looking for the next big thing, whether it's an album, a book, a movie, a political movement. And it's certainly true that newer music is probably the best representation of our current age, better suited to speak to us about contemporary issues. But does this necessarily make it better than that which came before, or just different?

Sometimes past works become so popular that it's hard to approach them with anything close to a clean slate. Take, for example, Run-DMC, this week's artist. I'm sure in 1984, their music was exciting, even jarring. I can understand the historical significance, but I don't think I can appreciate how new this music was back then. In part, I've been softened up by rap music since then - the very music that draws inspiration from Run-DMC's initial albums. It's a paradox. Certain groups become so successful, so influential, that they effectively make themselves irrelevant.

Also, I find that I've encountered parodies of this music far more often than the music itself. To bring up the Beastie Boys again, whenever I listen to Run-DMC's amazing song "King of Rock", I find myself thinking of the line from Hello Nasty - "I am the King of Boggle / There is none higher / I get eleven points from the word 'Quagmire' ". Once you've heard a satire like that, how can you take the original seriously anymore?

WEEK 32

Artist of the Week: Run-D.M.C.

What I Knew Before: I think I came into this world with Run-DMC's cover of "Walk This Way" already implanted in my mind; it's one of those songs you just know. Other than that, I had a vague idea that Run-DMC was the first significant rap act to really hit it big on the charts, but I had never really heard much of their music. It just doesn't get that much play outside of I Love the Eighties anymore, I suppose. I did have "King of Rock" in my iTunes library but, in one of those strange quirks of the digital era, I'm not sure how it got there. Its play count was at zero before this week.

My listening: The self-titled Run-D.M.C. (1984), King of Rock (1985), and Raising Hell (1986). I listened to Raising Hell everyday this week, and I listened to the other two three times a piece. Also, I am writing this on Sunday having just listened to Tougher Than Leather (1988), which was so awesome that it knocked the post-Halloween hangover right out of my head. I wish I had listened to it more this week.

What I Liked: Run-DMC brings this raw, unbridled energy to most of their work that pretty much knocks my socks off every time I hear it. The music also has the ability to make the most mundane tasks seem awesome - listening to this made it a lot more fun to unload the dishwasher, or drive to the grocery store.

Run and DMC have a pretty good back-and-forth thing going with most of their rhymes. A few times it degenerates into a sort of lame call-and-response, but most of the time the interaction between the two rappers is pretty fun to listen to. At the same time, most of the rhythms are pretty simplistic, without a lot of the ellisions and rhythmic tricks used by modern rap artists. But that same rhythmic simplicity gives the music a sort of power - once you get into Run-DMC's groove, it's hard to get out of it.

I liked the group's attempt to integrate rap and rock. I know that "rap-rock" has a negative connotation nowadays, but what Run-DMC is doing is pretty cool. They hinted at this combination on their first album with "Rock Box", pursued it unconditionally on King of Rock, backed off a little bit on Raising Hell, and finally reached the perfect combination between the two on Tougher Than Leather. Jam Master Jay's beats aren't bad, exactly, but they're rather spartan and, for the most part, without embellishments. It's a lot more fun to hear Run and DMC rap over a roaring hair-metal guitar riff.

What I Disliked: Remember that thing about dated music I was talking about? A lot of these lyrics are stupid. Really stupid. They seem naive, simplistic and childish compared with what would come later. Some of Run-DMC's earlier stuff has a lot of social messages, which I don't really mind - songs like "It's Like That" and "Wake Up" might be corny, but at least they're sincere. But some of the other songs have lyrics that are pretty terrible. "You Talk Too Much" is a six-minute track filled with strange insults about someone who talks too much ("It's everybody's business that you love to mind / And talkin to you, is like dropping a dime"). And even Run-DMC's attempts at self-aggrandizement fall flat ("D for Never Dirty / MC for Mostly Clean").

I know I just lauded them for their simplistic rhythms, but that got really repetitive after listening to the group for hours upon end every day of the week. Their best songs manipulate this rhythmic minimalism to great effect. Their worst songs fall into that call-and-response format I was talking about, and become really boring, usually involving one of them rapping a line in an ascending, questioning tone, and the other responding in a descending, conclusive tone. ("One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five-and-six-and-seven? One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five-and-six-and-SEVEN!" That is my impression of the format for a lot of their tracks. It reminds me of Bulworth rapping.)

Finally, while Run-DMC can pull off the rap-rock integration, it falls completely flat when they try to tie in other genres of music. As Exhibit A, I present you "Roots, Rock, Reggae" and as Exhibit B, I give you "Ragtime".

What I Learned: I learned that Run-DMC was the first rap act to bring the tough, street-smart mentality to the genre. Before they came onto the stage, rap was a lot flashier and showier. Run-DMC brought an angry sort of minimal austerity to the music, and they were probably just as influential in the way they dressed (all in black, with Fedoras and unlaced Adidas sneakers. Compare this to the glitzy outfits of Grandmaster Flash).

I also learned that Run-DMC was opposed to the cover of "Walk This Way", but producer Rick Rubin pressured them into it. While it certainly won them a lot of fame and airtime, I think I'm going to have to side with Run-DMC. It's a kind of a stupid song, and it's sort of a shame that it's become their legacy. There are other, better, Run-DMC songs that involve this partnering of rap and rock.

Cool Fact of the Week: Jam-Master-Jay was murdered in 2002. Since then, Run-DMC has officially disbanded, with the two surviving members refusing to perform under that name. In an age in which a lot of older acts are embarking on "reunion tours" with only one or two original members, I think that Run-DMC's decision to retire the name is very classy indeed.

Further Exploration Would Entail: There are some later Run-DMC albums that are almost universally panned - Back From Hell (1990), Down With the King (1993), and Crown Royal (2001). The latter includes collaboration efforts involving Kid Rock and Fred Durst, so I think I'll definitely be staying away. Rather, I'm interested in exploring the early forms of rap music to which Run-DMC was reacting. I doubt that Grandmaster Flash, the Sugarhill Gang, or Afrika Bambaataa have enough albums out to merit an entire week, but I might start exploring their singles.

Best Song You've Heard:

King of Rock

Best Song You Haven't Heard:

Tougher Than Leather

Next Week's Artist:

The Allman Brothers Band

[Postscript: I got some inquiries last week about my chronology. I am already on Week 32 on this project, but I've only been blogging for the past three weeks. The artists of the previous, unchronicled weeks have been (in order, as far as I can remember): The Stone Roses, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pavement, U2, Depeche Mode, Guns N' Roses, Joy Division, the Beastie Boys, Bob Dylan, R.E.M., Mötley Crüe, Yes, A Tribe Called Quest, the Velvet Underground, Radiohead AND Daft Punk (this week was a double), Fleetwood Mac, Jane's Addiction, Robert Johnson, Can, Public Enemy, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, OutKast, Oasis, Johnny Cash, Duran Duran, The Who, The Police, and Pearl Jam.]

A Decade of Dreck #1: Prologue, and Pavilion of Women

2009-11-01T18:00:00.002-05:00

Congratulations once again to our own Alex Boivin, who just yesterday ended his month-long quest to watch a horror movie every day in October. We hope that all of you enjoyed the series as much as we did, and we hope to be able to bring it back next year.

In the meantime, though, it’s on to bigger and better things. Well, bigger, anyway.

Film review site Rotten Tomatoes published a big retrospective list a couple of months ago, attempting to round up the 100 worst-reviewed movies of the decade – from what I can tell, they did a good job, because there’s not anything on that list that I’d argue with them about. One of us made an offhand comment about watching all of them for the blog. So here we are.

This is too big an undertaking for any one person to handle, so it’ll be a team effort – we’ll try to plow through a few of these cinematic misfits a week, with an eye toward finishing up by March 7, 2010, the date of the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony. It sounds like a long time from now, but you, dear readers, are not the ones with that list of movies staring you in the face.

So it begins. Today’s movie: Pavilion of Women.

2001’s Pavilion of Women takes place in China in 1938, on the very cusp of World War II. Madame Wu, our female protagonist, is celebrating her 40th birthday.

The main thrust of the movie – get this – is that Madame Wu is older than she used to be, and she’s tired of her strange-looking and poorly dubbed husband’s sexual advances. Guy loves blowjobs. Loves them. He’s always trying to push people down there. It’s very uncomfortable.

Because she’s tired of dealing with her husband’s, ahem, needs, Madame Wu decides to get him a second wife (read: concubine). She runs this by her staunchly traditional mother-in-law, who is all for it. This plan goes from concept to committee to complete in the space of some ten seconds.

The concubine rolls into town, and the husband doesn’t like her very much because of her subpar blowjobs. His and Madame Wu’s son (played by John “Hikaru Sulu” Cho) sure likes her, though, and we assume that they fall in love because the movie tells us that they do. I’m not sure when they fell in love. I guess it was just a given.

Because of this (?), Willem Dafoe is a foreign priest who runs an orphanage. As a result, he comes to tutor Sulu and Madame Wu and Concubine in the ways of Western culture. Everything comes to a head when Father Andre and Madame Wu hook up in a stable during a rainstorm. Willem Dafoe rubbing his fish lips all over a sobbing Chinese woman in a barn rivals the Pearl Harbor parachute sex scene in my mind as one of the least sexy Forbidden Romantic Trysts in any movie.

The movie principally concerns itself with illustrating cultural clashes between East and West, New and Old – it does this through an elaborate series of ham-fisted, obvious metaphors. Willem Dafoe saves Madame Wu’s friend from dying in childbirth, even though men aren’t supposed to see the fun zones of women to whom they are not married. The town gets electricity, which comes on for the first time in the middle of a traditional Chinese stage performance. Sulu wants to marry for love, even though his marriage has been arranged since before he was born. It goes on, and on, and on. The most hilarious example is when the giant altar containing all of the images of the Wu family’s ancestors is blown to hell by Japanese bombers. Now that’s subtlety.

And that’s pretty much it. Its sort of odd, off-kilter story isn’t helped by its stable of unlikeable characters, its unnecessary scenes, or its strange edits (it keeps fading out over and over, like some TV movie. I’m surprised I didn’t see a star wipe somewhere in there). It’s not a great period piece or a great love story. It doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page, which is probably more telling than anything I can say about it.

Battlefield Earth is ranked #86 on the Rotten Tomatoes Worst 100 list with 6% freshness. Its RT page can be found here.

Charge Shot!!! Cranston in: An A-choir-ed Taste

2009-11-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

Writer’s Jukebox – The Sounds of Autumn

2009-11-01T09:06:00.000-05:00

We’ve entered Week Three of the Writer’s Jukebox Project, as we continue on our quest to chronicle the current musical tastes of our writing staff.

In actuality, it’s a lot less formal than that. I Just Enjoy Capitalizing Things.

Gene’s been listening to some bands I’ve never heard of (except Boston) but whose names I’m in love with – The Fugs being particularly awesome. Chris is coping with the Floridian faux-Autumn and is using music to remind him of falling leaves and brisk winds. Boivin, to coincide with his Nights on Bald Mountain series, has been listening to a crapload of the Misfits.

All in all, it’s another wide variety. There should be something for everyone. Even people who want Rod Stewart covers. Hit the jump for more on that one.

Gene – A whiff of the Summer

It’s a terrible thing what unemployment will do to your consumption of new music. Fearing my compulsion to buy records on impulse, I had to skip the Record Fair in NYC last weekend (which counted Robert Crumb as one of its many attendees) and avoid Jersey City’s Iris Records—only a few blocks from my apartment—at all costs since I’ve moved here. Well, not all costs. I bought a first pressing of The Fugs’ 1969 live album Golden Filth and Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth for twenty bucks and then swore off the place. Accordingly, my usual playlist has mostly been of the free variety for the past few months. I’ve been listening to two albums from Boston’s The Great Valley, Under Snow and Sophia’s Skull / White Gloves, both of which can be downloaded for free from here. The band sounds a lot like some of Lou Barlow/Sebadoh’s stranger deviations into lo-fi. They throw a lot of instruments into a concoction of loosely performed and jarring folk songs. The silly, spooky lyrics complement the music (“I want to kiss you Sophia / I wish you weren’t a shrunken skull now”) and give the albums a cohesion that Sebadoh rejected, for better or worse.

I would really like someone to buy me Morgan Fisher’s Hybrid Kids from 1979. It’s a collection of covers in which each track is performed in a style as opposed to the original artist’s signature as possible. Observe Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” with a new wave inflection (link goes to a pop-up stream from WFMU). Mr. Fisher also made a Christmas album that sort of defies description.

Even though this is my favorite time of year, I’ve been listening to Washed Out’s Life of Leisure to get a little whiff of the summer every now and then. It’s super infectious electropop and should probably be enjoyed with some thong sandals and a boogey board.

Chris – Reminding myself that it is, in fact, Autumn

This is my first year living in Florida, and it feels like I'm stuck in the late-summer version of "Groundhog Day". Every day I wake up and discover it's sunny and 85 degrees outside. I've found myself missing seasons. As a result, I've made a playlist to remind myself that it is, in fact, autumn. The list is half classical and half popular music, with songs that remind me of fall in one way or another. The list begins with Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer", and ends with Guns 'n Roses' "November Rain" - the former representing the transition from summer to fall, and the latter from fall to winter. I think this sort of playlist symmetry is amazingly clever, myself.

Other than my autumnal songs, I've been on a big nineties kick for some reason. I've discovered that, if I hit all the lights just right driving to school, I have time to listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Soul to Squeeze", and the Smashing Pumpkins' "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" one after the other. Both these songs are sort of stupid, but the latter especially functions as a good pick-me-up at the beginning of the day. If the red lights are bad that particular day, there's time to listen to Blind Melon's "No Rain" as well. Songs that are over as soon as you park your car are important in my book; I have trouble shutting off the engine in the middle of a song.

Finally, through the grace of my public library, I've discovered the Arcade Fire about five years after everybody else. Good stuff. It's a concept that shouldn't work (a MANDOLIN player? Really?), but somehow it meshes perfectly. Funeral and Neon Bible have been welcome additions to my late-night schoolwork soundtrack.

Boivin – On a Misfits kick around Halloween time

For most of these past few weeks, and coinciding with my epic undertaking of watching a horror movie every day though the month of October, I've been following Alkaline Trio's advice and "put Walk Among Us on and turn it up". You see I've been on a Misfits kick as I often am around Halloween time, and I don't think I've listened to anything by Danzig and co. in the past 3 days or so.

My infatuation with the Misfits began in high school when my friend made me a mixtape for my newly bought used, CD player-less Volvo which included "Skulls". When I got to college, my freshman roommate listened to Static Age at least once a day and it sort of rubbed off on me. I especially like this Misfits because they form a fusion of two or three disparate styles and make them mesh into something entirely their own. The guitars, drums etc. are all unmistakably hardcore punk, but Glenn Danzig's vocals are straight up old school rock 'n' roll with echoes of Elvis and Roy Orbison, and then there's a touch of Italian opera thrown in for good measure. Danzig probably has one of my favorite voices in rock music, his croon/growl is probably the closest thing out there that a man's voice can produce that makes me feel like makin' love. There's that and all of those references to horror movies, that always gets me in the mood too.

Favorite songs: "She", "Horror Business", "Where Eagles Dare", "Last Caress", and the post-Danzig "Saturday Night."