- Holy shit, a week off? A week?? Well I hope get that job I was interviewed for… hope it was worth it. Let’s get at this.
- It’s nice to read direct quotes from Mark Hamill this morning, rather than speculation derived from an article that’s mostly speculating. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, he has some really, really wonderful things to say in terms of the direction he hopes the movies take, including a more balanced approach between practical and CGI effects, not such a heavy-handed tone, and that he and all the old actors/characters would not be the focal point. I’m still disappointed that neither of my picks got the directing job (Rian Johnson and Duncan Jones), but damn Ben Affleck I bet would make a really cool hanger shootout with laser guns… just imagine that last shootout scene at Fenway in The Town, but with smugglers and new government agents…
- Sadistik’s new album is good. Perhaps not his magnum opus, but it’s good. And I mean that in a good way, I think eventually he can do something even better than this. And with the rise of Macklemore, it’s nice to hear a Seattle rapper who actually reflects the city. Not that “Flowers For My Father” is all depressing. The song (and a handful of other tracks) that details the first-hand account of Sadistik and Kristoff Krane knocking on the late Eyedea’s door and no one answering is actually very positive. In defense of the rest of the tones though, what do you expect from a guy who saw that amount of death firsthand since the release of his last proper album? I actually find it hard to believe that the production on this was handled by multiple people, there’s a consistency to it throughout (both in quality and feel).
Also, hearing a new Cage verse make me want new Cage album. And RIP Eyedea.
- Yesterday marked the 3rd anniversary of someone very close to me. Something I never thought I would say at the age I’m at now. But when I think back to that day, and being in that room with those other people I shared that moment with, I remember it as being a really beautiful thing. I couldn’t stop shaking after it happened, and I was probably in some form of shock, but that wasn’t fear or terror or horror doing that; it was the sheer power of what I — we — had seen before our very eyes. Something rare and otherworldly and unexplainable. Something breathtaking and beyond all of us. I’ll never forget it, it feels like it was yesterday.
“Chips based on the ARM architecture run a majority of the world’s smartphones, including the iPhone and most Google Android phones, and now, a wide range of hardware makers are building ARM chips for the computer servers that drive web services and the sweeping software applications used inside big businesses. The idea is to significantly reduce the power and money needed to operate a computer data center, and clearly some big-name buyers are interested.”
- I read one legal analyst compare patents to bullets last year, in that they’re cheap and quick to manufacture and they have the potential to do a LOT of damage. The past few years have seen an escalation of patent-based lawsuits, and I don’t just mean the high profile cases like Apple v. Samsung (or the latest Facebook suit). Patent based legal action has skyrocketed in all sorts of industries, but yes… mostly the tech industries. “Everybody in the hi-tech industry is picking up their patenting, but we are also seeing that litigation is slowing people down,” Gwylim Roberts to BBC in THIS ARTICLE… “We didn’t see litigation for a long time and suddenly it began. I personally think it might be peaking at the moment – it’s now starting to get in the way of business objectives.” I believe in the next few decades — as the exponential curve of tech growth continues — we will see a revamping in patent laws across the globe.
“My wife had only recently been unemployed for 4 months and has a good understanding of what it is like. Her warnings and advice have been invaluable. That said, I was not prepared for the full brunt of it. I make a point of applying for at least 2 jobs a day, maybe more. These are not necessarily jobs on my formal career path, but are jobs I am qualified to do based on my career or based on my experience over the last 15 years. Anything and everything. The Kitchen Sink approach. Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.”
“Of course, astronomers have known about Mercury for thousands of years, but since NASA’s MESSENGER probe went into orbit around Mercury in 2011, researchers feel like they’ve been discovering the innermost planet all over again. One finding after another has confirmed the alien character of this speedy little world, which you can see this week with your own eyes. Mercury is emerging from the glare of the sun for a beautiful two-week apparition during the month of February 2013. The show begins about a half hour after sunset. Scan the horizon where the sun’s glow is strongest and, if the sky is clear, Mercury should pop out of the twilight, a bright pink pinprick of light. Mercury itself is not actually pink, but it is often colored so by the rosy hues of the setting sun.”
- With the recent memos NBC news leaked — wow, good on you NBC — I’m getting a little frightened for the future of the USA. The President has taken the War on Terror ball from the last guy and he is running with it without looking back or stopping for nothing. When he hands it off to a more than likely more conservative successor in 2016 I fear we will continue down the rabbit hole to oblivion. Oblivion looking like a mild, subtle, and polite police state.
- 2013 could be one of the best years for science fiction films we’ve seen in some time. The ones I’m most excited for:
Neill Blomkamp‘s second feature film behind the brilliant “District 9″, called Elysium. The overall concept of the film: 2159, overpopulated and most likely trashed Earth, the well-to-do living in a massive glorious orbiting space station society (called “Elysium”), the less than fortunate living on the surface, an ex-Con who has a chance to bring about equality back to the human race. The fact that Jodie Foster is going to be the pseudo villain, in an anti-immigrant authoritarion role aboard the station, is enough to get me to the theater on this one. Throw in the fact that this is Blomkamp we’re talking here, who’s use of CG is so subtle, who’s art direction is so grimy, this film could turn out to be eerily plausible. And I would not be surprised if he throws in some modern day rhetoric to make it feel all the more real.
The highly anticipated (for me at least) Gravity. Alfonso Cuaron‘s first movie since 2006′s “Children of Men“, which is a great flick. The story is quite simple really: two astronauts (Sandra Bullok and George Clooney) get caught-up in the destruction (accidental, most likely) of something similar to our International Space Station, the film depicts their attempts to get back on Earth safely. Now, I think this was scrapped, but rumor had it the movie was going to be one long take. Which would be insane. I have read more recently though — from fairly reputable sources — that it’s looking like the movie will be composed of a select handful of long takes. That alone has my interest peaked, Cuaron’s shot at the end of “Men” was spectacular.
In terms of discussing the influence of film on American society and the alarmingly frequent and horrifically violent acts perpetrated by Americans on other Americans, we have recently heard, AGAIN, two specific films called out and scapegoated, American Psycho and Natural Born Killers; despite the field day that these so-called “film critics” could have had with movies actually from this decade like Killers, from 2010 (oops, that’s an Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl romantic comedy). Taking a closer look at both American Psycho and Natural Born Killers, it becomes clear how weak both movies are when called out as examples of media “aired like propaganda loops on ‘Splatterdays’ and every day.”
- Considering I received an oh-so subtle death threat on Facebook the other day, it’s no surprise many users are taking hiatuses from the service right now, and will continue to in the year 2013 (it’s looking like). It was December 2012 when the data of a PEW survey was taken, finding that 61% of users were backing off from the social networking site. I think election hangover might have something to do with this. Although study subjects’ top two claims were “gave it up for lent” and “too much drama”. I actually do not agree with this idea though that on Facebook we can’t talk about deep philosophical issues. Sure, it gets tedious. But that’s because of the quality of discussion, not the discussion itself. People don’t listen to each other and they don’t think critically. Sure, I generally use Facebook to share music I like with my friends, or keep people updated on the status of my family… but it can be more than that. It’s not as good as the real thing, but it could be the 21st Century town square. Where someone presents an idea, then the rest of the public comments on it, likes or dislikes it. But no one is civil anymore. In fact, mostly what you get is 20-somethings lashing out against their family about how terrible they’ve been to them publicly. I know, this happened on my feed (not surprisingly) around December 2012.
We’ve written a few times about a patent trolling operation called Personal Audio. Like so many patent trolling companies, whose actually behind it is something of a mystery, but it does have an empty office in East Texas that no one ever goes to. It sued Apple and others claiming that it held patents on the concept of “playlists” and actually scored some victories. Amazingly, it sued Apple multiple times over the same patent, arguing that small changes to its products were new violations.
- The Times has a good article about the Coen Bros. next flick, Inside Llewyn Davis, they put up yesterday. The movie is set against the backdrop of the early-60′s folk revival, mostly in NYC’s Greenwich Village. Apparently there’s lots of music in the film, a large portion of which being live performances by the actors themselves uncut and unsupplemented. Joel compares it to a musical, notably “Les Miserables”. At the core of the film, it seems, is this notion that talent doesn’t always find its place in the world: “How good you are doesn’t always matter,” Joel said. “That’s what the movie is about.” It’s hard not to think of this film as some sort of tribute to Dylan though, coming from such proud MN artists in the Bros.
- More movie magic. Apparently principle photography on Terry Gilliam‘s Zero Theorem has wrapped. Great news considering how notoriously difficult it’s been for Gilliam to get his projects up and running — then completed — throughout his career. Gilliam did not write this one, which hopefully should see at least a limited release this year, a guy named Pat Rushin did. Rushin’s IMDB page you’ll notice is very, very empty. That’s because this is his first feature film, he’s a writing professor by trade. Interesting. What’s more is the film’s premise… from IMDB:
“A computer hacker’s goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.”
The film stars Christopher Waltz, Ben Winshaw, Tilda Swinton, Matt Damon, David Thewlis, and very possibly Bill Murray.
- Brian Wood‘s The Massive is easily one of my favorite new comics. Lofty, character heavy, intelligent, and scarily plausible, it tells the on-going story of an ex-environmentalist group navigating the waters (literal and figurative) of a new global paradigm shrouded in economic and environmental collapse. I strongly recommend it. Apparently starting with issue #10 he’ll be plotting a “mini-event”, to which John Paul Leon has crafted this amazing (and gigantic) piece of art for:
“Black Hole is one of those stories that lingers long after you read it. If you require answers and nice / neat little packages, you may want to stick with Archie and the gang. This group of teens is far from Riverdale and far more desperate. Black Hole may remind you of places in your mind that you’ve put away since high school, forcing you to ask yourself, “What was my bug? What made me an outcast?” You may not have had a small mouth on the side of your neck, but chances are, if you felt anything that wasn’t pure apathy while reading this story, then you have more in common with the afflicted than you think.”
- Alfonso Cuaron‘s first film since 2006′s brilliant Children of Men has finally set a release date: October 4th, 2013. While this may seem like eons away it really isn’t too far to go considering it’ll have been seven years since “Children”. The movie stars Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts attempting to return to Earth. I’m a sucker for high concept, intelligent sci-fi flicks, so I’m counting this as one of my most anticipated releases of the year. Not to mention Cuaron’s spectacular direction… he’s certainly got an eye for it. The movie is called Gravity.
- Similarly, Shane Caruth‘s first film since the brilliant Primer (2004) is also set for release this year, it’s called Upstream Color. Primer is confusing, no doubt, but it’s one of the best science fiction films of the 2000s and one of the best time travel films of all time. And — it could be argued — the complexities of the film serve a purpose, in putting the viewer in the shoes of the characters. Synopses for “Upstream” have been vague to say the least. The IMDB description reads: “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.“ The obvious wrench in there is “ageless organism”. Hmm.
- Finally saw Django Unchained last night! It was pretty awesome.It’s just about exactly what one would imagine a Tarentino homage to Spaghetti Westerns based in the antebellum Deep South to be. It’s incredibly violent and bloody, which should not come as much of a surprise considering its namesake. Django – the original, 1966, coffin with a Gatling gun Django – was at the time one of the most violent films ever made. It was banned in several countries, and even when it wasn’t it often received an 18+ only rating (I think we used to call that “X”). But I don’t want to paint Django Unchained as a single, well over 2 hour outburst of gratuitous violence. There’s also some other lovely things going on here: great performances (particularly from DiCaprio, Jackson, and Waltz), cool cinematography (the shot of Big Daddy getting shot on the horse wherein the horse’s legs are the only viewable subject was awesome), the Western equivalent of The Crazy 88 fight scene, some great references, and sweet, sweet justice. I’m sure he can do better, and maybe someday he will. But to see Tarentino tinker with another polarizing and shameful part of history is just too much fun for me. I think people need to take these things far less seriously.
One hundred and fifty thousand people pour into Lima every year from Peru’s provinces. Like Rodas, most end up in pueblos jóvenes—literally young towns—in improvised dwellings with no running water and sporadic access to electricity. This constant influx means houses are added by the day, built into the rocky hillside with walls of salvaged wood or concrete if the family can afford it. Like Rodas´s parents, most immigrants come to Lima to find work, shelter, and perhaps a way to break out of poverty—they aren’t able to build themselves homemade shelters, except in some of the poorest areas of the country, where they often do so on unstable ground. Paradoxically, many residents of the pueblos jóvenes are forced to pay two to three times more than they would to live in downtown Lima: these settlements are unauthorized and so subject to extortionist landlords who tax access to pirated utilities.
- I got Mixed Blood Majority tickets this morning, along with Cecil Otter’s first solo show in some time. MBM is a super group of sorts, at least when it comes to the Twin Cities music scene. The group features vocalists from both No Bird Sing and Kill The Vultures, and production from Doomtree‘s Lazerbeak. Pretty excited, as all three members are some of my favorite local musicians. Here’s the latest thing they threw up on their Soundcloud page:
If you preorder their album right now you’ll get the album, a shirt, a poster, and a random CD from either of their other bands for just 12 bucks (without shipping). Good deal.
It was a real pleasure just so sit and talk with you. I listened very carefully to what you had to say about this compelling history, and I’ve since read the script and found it in all the detail in which it describe these monumental events and in the compassionate portraits of all the principal characters, both powerful and moving. I can’t account for how at any given moment I feel the need to explore life as opposed to another, but I do know that I can only do this work if I feel almost as if there is no choice; that a subject coincides inexplicably with a very personal need and a very specific moment in time. In this case, as fascinated as I was by Abe, it was the fascination of a grateful spectator who longed to see a story told, rather than that of a participant. That’s how I feel now in spite of myself, and though I can’t be sure that this won’t change, I couldn’t dream of encouraging you to keep it open on a mere possibility. I do hope this makes sense Steven, I’m glad you’re making the film, I wish you the strength for it, and I send both my very best wishes and my sincere gratitude to you for having considered me.”
When I was in Chicago I went to the art institute with my wife, I didn’t go there the last time I was in the city. Anyways they had a special exhibit there featuring the work of one Steve McQueen. No, not that one. This McQueen is from London, now living in Amsterdam. He’s probably most famous for his second major film, Shame. The Michael Fassbender movie from 2011. He also won the Camera d’Or at Canne for his first feature film in 2008. But he’s been making art for a long time. He’s a film artist mostly. So much of the exhibit was reels played on loops. There were a couple different makeshift theaters constructed for some shorts. We watched chunks of two, and the entirety of another. He’s definitely got his own style, but it’s hard to describe. The page for his exhibit in Chicago reads:
Most of McQueen’s oeuvre—including his gallery-based installations as well as feature films—evidences a potent, at times oblique, political consciousness. Many works address specific social and historical moments in ways that seemingly emerge from documentary or journalistic impulses. Other films are more abstract, their meanings shaped by allegory or metaphor. McQueen always communicates directly to viewers through what one writer termed “the medium of aesthetic affect.”
When I looked further into him, I found he shot a feature this summer to be released in 2013 tackling slavery. The cast is unreal: Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Giamatti, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men, Serenity, etc), and on and on. As hard as it may be to watch, the film reportedly will be hyper-realistic. Almost journalistic, like his shorts. Paul Giamatti spoke about the project with Collider, explaining that McQueen did not want to sugar coat it at all, that he wanted to present it as is. Very matter of factly. The movie is a true story, based on the memoirs of one Solomon Northup. A New York musician who is conned by a couple gentleman offering him a job playing fiddle, they then sold him into slavery. He was in the slave trade for 12 years before returning home, most of which was spent in Louisiana.
So ya know, all those people bitching about how Tarentino is just using the backdrop to tell a revenge spaghetti Western can go and see this movie this year too. There’s your art-house counter-part. The problem is I’m sure a lot of people will not. I think part of this is people look at Tarentino and for them he’s their artsy filmmaker. But that’s a problem. Cause he isn’t Michael Haneke, and Pulp Fiction is not The White Ribbon. So it’s a catch-22. Tarentino’s take on such a difficult part of our history isn’t examining things well enough for you, it’s just gun play and fake blood, but then again you also don’t watch real art-house, independent movies. That’s as oblique as it gets for you. Know what I’m saying?
There may be no other South Park statement I disagree with more than when Kyle says (Season 8, Ep. 3: “The Passion of the Jew“) — very much sounding like the words are coming straight from Matt Stone’s mouth: “we watch movies to be entertained”. He’s referring to Mel Gibson’s slaughter fest about Christ, but it really does feel like that’s what Trey and him believe about all movies. That movies are entertainment, pure and simple. And once you cross over that line your movie turns to garbage. It’s this type of thinking that led to Orgazmo and Baseketball. That’s what happens when you reach no higher than entertainment alone.
I bring this up because last night I saw Lincoln, a film that somehow is caught in the middle of such a debate. A film about the political mechanizations of a two party system, and the struggle to get things done within that system. It should be boring. “Boring”. And it’s funny cause I’m reading a number of reviews that think it is boring, from “critics” and general public alike. They’re wrong, it isn’t boring. In fact, it tries really really hard not to be boring. That’s part of the problem. Why even include that opening Civil War scene? Looking back it seems grossly out of place. The film opens with an incredibly violent war scene between a “colored” regiment of The Union and a Confederate regiment in an all out brawl scene reminiscent of Gangs of New York. Bayonets are stabbed into bellies and before you can blink it’s over. This is probably included to further pad a scene late in the film when Lincoln is strolling through the remains of a battlefield before War’s end. But for the audience, it’s actually less of a shock because we’ve already seen the carnage, even if Abe hasn’t.
It may have been clever (well, I guess not that clever… more like serviceable) to bookend the movie with another horrific scene of violence in Lincoln getting assassinated. Two horrible and terrifying scenes to start and end the film, one with faceless soldiers dying in the muck, the other with the main character dying at a play in the nicest box-seats in the theater. Contrasting bookends. But that didn’t happen either, the film ends in another theater, where the Lincolns’ son Tad is watching another play, sitting in another box. And as the camera panned to the left, my wife and I both thought: “well this isn’t very historically accurate”. But it was all a red herring, and you’re left leaving the theater a little befuddled. It kinda feels like Spielberg is trying to fuck with as many different types of movie-goers as he can, and it turns into a meal someone kinda screwed up but it tastes okay so no one is too pissed but the food is really simple to begin with.
Structurally, it’s just sort of a mess. The “horror of the War” stuff is in there to make the “passage of the 13th” stuff feel secondary, and to make Lincoln seem all the more so wholly dedicated to the freedom of the slaves even to the detriment of thousands more lives. Scenes of Gordon-Levitt as Abe’s older son Robert outside a military hospital feel forced and crammed in, as do domestic scenes between Day-Lewis and Sally Field. Okay… holy crap Sally Field is really bad in this movie. Like, really really bad. And I know that Mary Todd Lincoln was probably bi-polar and suffered from migraines and had mental problems, but she doesn’t really play it that way. You don’t get the sense that those things exist really in that, 1) she doesn’t really play the character that sympathetically, and 2) you can just see it in her face that she’s of a level mind. This may have been the way she was written too, but she certainly does nothing to pull the character off the page and present a real, living, breathing tortured First Lady.
Day-Lewis is, of course, amazing as Lincoln. Everything from the way he walks, sits, writes, speaks, even the way he crawls feels like history in the flesh. Easily one of the best performances of the year. David Strathairn, who probably shares the most screen time with Abe, is almost as good as William Seward, a dedicated and brilliant Statesman from New York (who survived his own assassination attempt the night Lincoln got shot). In fact, the entirety of the cast is just brilliant. And rightfully so, as these are some of the best character actors working today. Hal Holbrook, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haley, David Costabile, Tim Blake Nelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and on and on and on it goes. These performances are what really elevates this movie, without them it’d be just another terribly average period piece.
But hey at least I have new material when someone proposes that Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest directors of all-time… from now on I’m just going to say, “eternal-flame dissolve cut”. Equal bad marks should probably go to Tony Kushner — who’s strength is definitely dialogue (probably why he’s such a good playwright) — showing both a lack of creativity and screen-writing class working knowledge when it comes to structure. In the end, this movie might know what it is, but I hardly do.
- So Disney bought Star Wars. If you don’t know. Which is… meh. I mean, I’m not like a huge Star Wars fanboy or anything so I don’t have to strong of feelings either way. I do, like 80% of humans, love the old Star Wars movies; and I do, like 85% of humans, hate the new ones. From what I’m reading from people who know a lot about this stuff, there are novels that act as the official “post-Original Trilogy” story. Something to do with Han and Leia’s kids, Luke running a new Jedi order, and the resurgence of the Empire and the Sith. This could be decent I suppose. The problem with the new ones — and I’m sure this has been written about extensively — is the fear of treading new ground. This notion that they had to fall back on the old ones to be good. You can see that in everything from the bizarre and wacky coincidences written into the story, the way the ships are designed, even the way Palatine was scarred to look like a shitty Halloween costume of himself in Jedi. As long as they don’t do any of that, and focus on a new story, new characters, new designs, they should be alright I hope.
[But hey, I'm one of like 3 million assholes writing my opinions on the Internet about this so what the fuck do I know?]
- William Gibson’s seminal novel Neuromancer is being turned into a film as we speak. Little is known about the project. The IMDB page is empty, to say the least. Liam Neeson’s name is on the cast, which may or may not be true, but sounds awesome. If you don’t know about the novel it’s one of the best science fiction novels of all-time. It started the genre we call “cyberpunk”. It also featured characters “jacking into” the Internet which was obviously directly lifted for The Matrix movies. Anyways, here’s a new poster (the first):
I have the impression that this is the opinion the government wants to impose on people, their way of opposing the situation. I think that when a person goes somewhere, she reflects, she thinks about where she is going and why, because she is using her time and energy. It’s a conscious choice. I don’t go to a demonstration because it’s cool. It isn’t at all cool to go to demonstrations today. The forces of order are nearby. They can beat you up. The demonstration on May 6th proved that. Nowadays, many people find themselves behind bars solely because they went to a public demonstration.
If I mentally transpose the words “entertaining” and “sport,” Dylan’s sentiment gets close to what I’m trying to express (and what I want to feel, but can’t). There was a time when I watched football in order to not think about my day-to-day life, but fantasy sports slowly changed that — in fact, my affinity for fantasy only makes it worse. I turn the players I draft into tiny parts of my life, which stops me from remembering that they have no relationship whatsoever to who I am. It makes me unconsciously think of them as extensions of myself. And I wonder if this is more problematic than I want to accept. Do I have any right to get angry at Chris Johnson? Does anyone?
- The Trouble With The Mask. Great op-Ed on the inherent problems with the new Joker in Batman and featuring a brilliant Bukowski quote.
