Song of the Week - Yeasayer, "2080"

From their album All Hour Cymbals, "2080" (right click song title for mp3) is a perfect antidote for the winter blues. It's bright, symphonic, and frenzied - like MagicEye 3D holographic art. In short, it's a "rhapsody"...

rhapsody |ˈrapsədē| noun 1 an effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling : rhapsodies of praise. • Music: a free instrumental composition in one extended movement, typically one that is emotional or exuberant in character. 2 (in ancient Greece) an epic poem, or part of it, of a suitable length for recitation at one time. ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (sense 2) : via Latin from Greek rhapsōidia, from rhaptein ‘to stitch’ + ōidē ‘song, ode.’

Yeasayer will be opening for another shitty band, Man Man, in Toronto at Lee's Palace on April 14 and in San Francisco at Great American Music Hall on April 23. Check their myspace for more dates.

Shit, I was planning on directing this...

This might be old news to some (and irrelevant to many), but it's huge in my books...

[Drum roll] They're making a live-action movie based on Hasbro's toy and cartoon series, G.I. Joe. On the heels of Transformers' success this makes tonnes of sense, it's just a wonder I was never tapped to helm the project.



Shooting has barely started, but so far it actually looks like it's heading in a not-entirely-shitty direction. Mostly due to casting that varies from perfect to interesting (definitely file Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander under interesting). On the other hand the director is Stephen Sommers (of Mummy and Van Helsing fame). It could be worse though, it could've been Ratner.

Channing Tatum... as Duke

Sienna Miller... as Baroness

Rachel Nichols... as Scarlett

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje... as Heavy Duty

Saïd Taghmaoui... as Breaker

Byung-hun Lee... Storm Shadow

Ray Park... as Snake Eyes

Joseph Gordon-Levitt... as Cobra Commander

Dennis Quaid... as Hawk

Christopher Eccleston... as Destro

Arnold Vosloo... Zartan (rumored)

Marlon Wayans... as Ripcord (rumored)

And as evidenced by the more international cast, apparently their trying to soften the Americanicity of the show/toy, considering Joes aren't the most popular people at home or abroad right now. This from FoxNews, who report that some are a bit rankled by the updated concept:

"Paramount has confirmed that in the movie, the name G.I. Joe will become an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity" — an international, coed task force charged with defeating bad guys. It will no longer stand for government issued, as in issued by the American government.

The studio won't elaborate, saying filming hasn't begun and details are still in the works, but the behind-the-scenes rumblings are that the producers have decided to change the nature of G.I. Joe in order to appeal to a wider, more international audience.

The word is that in the current political climate, they're afraid that a heroic U.S. soldier won't fly."

But really, this ishttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifn't about politics because whatever they change about it, the film will still inevitably express Joe's heritage of ultra Americanism. It might not do as well in the theaters abroad as Transformers, and that hardly went beyond being a commercial for the Army. So international box office receipts for G.I. Joe will probably be decent.

Everbody will still make their money and that's what it is really about... as such, Dennis Quaid already reports that he's been scanned for his action figure (and has signed on for two sequels after this one). Ka-ching!

Selected images courtesy / keep updated: G.I. Joe Movie Blog

Movies: 2007

Forget the Oscars, it's time for the Poppies. Here's my take on a very good year in cinema (especially US cinema).

ps. click the pictures to enormosize the images

10) Climates
From Turkish writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, this film takes a pretty simple conceit and follows a crumbling relationship through the sun and the snow. It's subtlety and cruelty slowly swallow you into a world of bourgeois desolation, not unlike the films of Antonioni.

9) The Lookout
Totally underrated and underseen, this neat little heist drama is as tight as a drum.

The performances by Matthew Goode and Jeff Daniels are impressive, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt really carries this thing with an entertaining and nuanced take on a head injury victim who gets caught up with some baddies.

8) Paprika
Beautiful, smart, and purely insane.

From the director of the nostalgia trip Millennium Actress, this head trip goes meta without getting pretentious and features animation and a story that are definitely a few steps beyond Ratatouille or Persepolis.


7) The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
People hardly clap after movies any more (maybe at festivals when the director's presence obliges it), but when I saw King of Kong in a half-empty theater on a rainy night in Toronto the audience burst into applause at least three times (during and after). There's a lot to be said for a feel-good documentary; a rare breed indeed. (If you haven't seen it yet, don't read this interview.)

6) No Country for Old Men
The hype is for real. No Country is as taut as they come, and the "instant classic" tag may not be that far off.

Javier Bardem is iconic, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are pitch perfect, and despite a saggy last act I was on the edge of my seat for the whole thrill ride (definitely a movie deserving of the clichés).

5) Planet Terror
No, not a guilty pleasure, Robert Rodriguez's ode to B-movies is just plain awesome. The camera work, the performances, the editing, the music - it all does exactly what it sets out to do. That's what I call good directing.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for scantily clad bad-ass chicks.


4) Michael Clayton
Yeah okay, okay, it's a legal thriller. Not the most stellar category to call home. But like any great film, it transcends its supposed genre.

A current of existential angst runs through the film, steered by Clooney's subtle performance, Gilroy's expert writing/direction, and Robert Elswit's amazing cinematography (en route to his work on There Will Be Blood).


3) Manda Bala (Send A Bullet)
Probably the film that had me most excited leaving the theater this year. A documentary shot with actual aesthetic considerations.

At once, a filmic celebration and a political indictment, its subject is sprawling but centers around corruption in Brazil. (Go watch the trailer already.)


2) Once
Maybe Once is incredibly corny, but in my little world it might be the most important film of the year (along with Manda Bala).

Made for around 150K , it bleeds DIY and is one of the first independent films to embrace digital technologies and house them amidst a more populist format. It's a musical too. Let's all sing it together, "New Sincerity"...


1) There Will Be Blood

Probably the first movie I've seen twice in the theater in its first month of release since... well, since Magnolia.

It's been touted as an epic, but I have to side more with Paul Thomas Anderson's claim that it's a horror movie. This is movie is just too fucking weird to exist anywhere else but alone at the top.

Honorable Mentions:
Sunshine; Eastern Promises; The Diving Bell & The Butterfly; Live Free or Die Hard; Persepolis; Zodiac

Prospective Picks (shit I haven't seen yet):
My Blueberry Nights; 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days; Southland Tales; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Disappointments:
- The Simpsons Movie - Would've been comparable to a mediocre episode from season 18, except they decided to make Homer into a huge asshole. He's always been a boob, but never before was he this much of a jerk.

- Spiderman 3 - The first dance sequence was a hilarious surprise, the second was the franchise's death knell.

- The Darjeeling Limited - It sucks that Wes and his clique still can't elevate their shtick above cute caricature. To make matters worse, the Indian characters couldn't have been more lifeless if they were painted on a set wall.

- 300 - The trailer was freaking awesomazing. The movie was so-so. Xerxes stunk, all the shit back in Sparta stunk, and the turtlegator villain never did anything (check the trailer at 3:07 mark).

- Transformers - Buy your first car, crush on the cheerleader, join the army, fight giant robots... yes, yes I'm familiar with the lyrics to the American national anthem.

- I'm Not There - You can virtually hear Todd Haynes shouting directions to the cast and crew, this thing is so over-earnest. There are sections though where it cuts through its own efforts and is great (most of those involve Heath Ledger).

Drink It Up.

Be Kind Rewind - A Graphic Review

I've been thinking about doing this for a while. Some kind of unwritten movie review that relies on visuals rather than the verbal. This is my first go at it and it's kind of rough, but at least you don't have to worry about spoilers, boring plot summary, or some arbitrary ratings system. We'll see how it evolves. (Click the image to get a closer look).

Wainy Days

That's episode #1 of the highlarious web-com "Wainy Days". Brought to you by the man (David Wain) behind Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten.

Yesterday they just posted the last episode of Season 2 (#20).


Check it.

Forget about the trolley strike, now there's a Headline

This li'l nugget comes to us from Reuters, via Defamer.com

Read the article here.

Miscellanea

Some fun stuff from the internets from the past week...

Looks like an end to the writers strike is finally imminent, which means an end to the strike's most unsurprising revelation... Conan O'Brien is a funny funny man. This video serves as a nice sendoff to his last few weeks of late night sponzaneity.


Hitchcock gets a makeover courtesy of Vanity Fair. Kinda neat, kinda nauseating.





Star Wars action figure celebrity doppelgängers courtesy of toplessrobot.com. These are hilarious.






And finally, if you're sick of this planet... take a look at the winners of the space settlement art contest because as you'll soon come to realize, "When evening comes to a growing young Mars base, the colonists are able to put away their tools and go home to relax."

It's the weekend!

Celebrate by playing your favourite vintage video games, playing with lego, listening to some bitpop, or... by watching this neat li'l animation.

Why not?

The "Muthafu**in'" Tracks!

Who said folk music was tame?

Came upon this band, the Tracks, playing an in-store at a used bookstore. I was walking by and I heard this cacophonous din and I look inside and there's people with masks on with a girl on the mic repeatedly yelling, "We're the Muthafuckin' Tracks!"

Beside the spectacle, they pretty much had a standard folk set up (guitars, paired down drum kit) along with some bells and whistles. (and a toy piano!) Although there were a bunch of people that seemed involved only two of them really touched any instruments. At the end of it all, it was reminiscent of a really primitive Animal Collective, or a more tongue-in-cheek CocoRosie.

Afterward they handed out some CDRs to the crowd. All that was on it was one track, Sorry Scenes (right click to download), and a JPEG of them doing their best Knife impression.

got Milk?

Monday night, coming home from watching a movie, I walked into a movie being made in the Castro. They're filming Milk, the story of San Francisco City Supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk who was assassinated in 1978.

Gus Van Sant is directing. Sean Penn plays Harvey. Emile Hirsch, James Franco and Josh Brolin also star.

It was a pretty funny scene with the Castro completely decked out in '70s nostalgia (as it has been for a couple weeks), hundreds of bell-bottomed extras, and the usual assortment of SF bums and bystanders. Right after I emerged from the subway, there was an AD or something on the mic thanking all the extras for braving the cold and then introduced none other than Princess Leia Organa (or Carrie Fisher). The crowd went crazy, and she gave this rousing, yet familiar speech - pretty much word for word:


Monday night, coming home from watching a movie, I walked into a movie being made in the Castro. They're filming Milk, the story of San Francisco City Supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk who was assassinated in 1978.

Gus Van Sant is directing. Sean Penn plays Harvey. Emile Hirsch, James Franco and Josh Brolin also star.

It was a pretty funny scene with the Castro completely decked out in '70s nostalgia (as it has been for a couple weeks), hundreds of bell-bottomed extras, and the usual assortment of SF bums and bystanders. Right after I emerged from the subway, there was an AD or something on the mic thanking all the extras for braving the cold and then introduced none other than Princess Leia Organa (or Carrie Fisher). The crowd went crazy, and she gave this rousing, yet familiar speech - pretty much word for word:

"Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars; now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. [...] This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope."

And as she ad libbed something about homos at the end of the speech, I started bonding with some Hawaiian teenagers over the spectacle. Just then an old preppy guy asked them for a light. The guy turned out to be Cleve Jones, and he spoke with pride how Emile Hirsch was playing him in the film. Very cool dude (he told us how 30 years ago he would be "on the megaphone, leading a mob of angry homos down the street, burning cars...").

I stood around with my friend for about an hour more watching them film the sequence Cleve described to us, with now a bespectacled Emile leading the mob. We even caught a peek at Gus himself and I was tempted to yell some adulation at him, but even amidst the excitement I realized I'm not much of a fan and didn't think, "I admire Elephant's ambition, but it was severely flawed" would go over that well.

Check out some photos of the time-machined Castro courtesy of Observd and Tristan Savatier (click to enlarge)...

[There's some footage on the tube as well... Here. And here.]