There are many different things you might find me doing on a weekend: sports bar, beer, football, strip club, movies, napping, growing a beard, and lounging. None of these things would be considered particularly “classy”. This weekend was a little different. Everything I did either supported the arts or was a notch above what you otherwise may find me doing. I had culture shooting out of my ass.
A recap:
Friday Normally my musical tastes skew toward a combination of Death Metal, 70′s Country, and Gangsta Rap but my girlfriend has a thing for Jazz. I decided to humor her (once!) and we headed to Jazz at the Bistro in Grand Center to see her friend Shaun Robinson play. They were a very talented group of guys and while Jazz is typically not my thing I would go back and see them again. We capped the evening with a couple martinis at Jimmy’s On The Park.
Saturday While I did allow myself some time to watch my beloved Tide stomp Mississippi State 32-7 football did not dominate my Saturday for the first time in 11 weeks. Instead we headed to Frontenac with some friends to see Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) at the St. Louis International Film Festival. This was a Swedish film which “tells a darkly atmospheric, poetic and surprisingly tender story of adolescence … and vampirism.” It was excellent. It tells the story of a 12 year old loner who befriends a vampire of the same age. After awhile the subtitles were not at all distracting and the film had some great visuals. Unfortunately Let the Right One In is scheduled to be remade and bastardized by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield). We finished the night discussing the movie over a bottle of Syrah at Sasha’s Wine Bar in Clayton.
Sunday Since I’ve given up on the Rams this season I figured I’d stick with the theme of the weekend and see what other educational experiences I could drum up. I ended up at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park. While I typically find history somewhat interesting this place is a bore. It basically consisted of the history of beer, Charles Lindbergh, and the 1904 World’s Fair. I didn’t see any of the more interesting subjects like Harry S Truman, Missouri during the Civil War, history of architecture in St. Louis, etc. Mo History needs to step it up. I really think St. Louis needs to step up and build some world class museums like Chicago. I then spent some time walking around the park and Wash U – where I’m considering going to business school but probably won’t ($68,000????). After the walk I headed over to the Tivoli and saw another movie being featured in the festival, a documentary called Number One With A Bullet. It “explores the interrelationships between guns, poverty, drugs, hip-hop culture and cultural violence”. It featured interviews with Mos Def, KRS-One, Obie Trice, Ice Cube, and others discussing the institutional violence in the innercity. This one was good but not great.
So there you have it. Jazz, martinis, foreign films, and museums. This was definitely a different type of weekend for me. It was nice but I’m ready to get back on track by attending the Metallica show tonight!!!
November 17th, 2008
This is part 2 in a 2 part series about summer 2008 movies. For part 1 click here.
This post will focus on movies released roughly between July and September.
Just like before as a nod to the Hollywood lifestyle films are rated on a 5 coke booger scale. 1 being a key hit (terrible film) and 5 being Tony Montana’s desk mound of blow (great film).
Wall-E (2/5)
Overrated! I don’t really mind that this was a political cartoon although I didn’t really come to watch that. What I didn’t like was the full hour without any dialogue. I mean this isn’t Tom Hanks in Cast Away here we’re basically trying to humanize cartoons – something that’s very difficult to do. I also don’t like mixing humans with animation and I never have. It’s one reason I didn’t like Roger Rabbit as a kid. The animation from Pixar was amazing as usual.
The Dark Knight (4/5)
I’ve never been a big fan of the Batman movies even when I was younger. They almost seemed too cartoonish which may sound ridiculous since these are comic book movies but I always like a good action movie better. The Dark Knight delivers. There are tons of explosions and Heath Ledger is amazing as the Joker. Unfortunately he’s dead now. Not sure how good a sequel will be. My only complaint is that this film is overly long and the Two-Face character seemed rushed. Also, I saw this movie in IMAX which added really nothing but shot my ticket prices up to $12 apiece.
Tropic Thunder (1/5)
I don’t know why I had such high expectations for this movie. I mean Ben Stiller has made a lot (a lot!) of crap films in his career. But this one had Robert Downey, Jr. and Jack Black and the previews were deceptively funny. The film however was godawful. I actually remember leaving the theater and saying aloud, “Well that was fucking terrible” because it was. The funniest part was the fake movie previews in the beginning which was then followed by a 2 hour crapfest.
Still Want to see
Pineapple Express
Burn After Reading
Hamlet 2
On the fence
The Rocker
The X-Files
Step Brothers
The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor
No Interest at all
Hellboy II
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Death Race
The House Bunny
October 1st, 2008
This is part 1 in a 2 part series on 2008 summer movies. Stay tuned at the end of the summer for the second part.
I love the movies and I go often. From the popcorn and milkduds to the unattainably hot actresses there’s something about going to the movies that makes summer so much fun. I lean toward the films that focus more on explosions than emotions so the summertime is my favorite movie going season. Here’s my review of the films released during the first half of the summer (April-June).
As a nod to the Hollywood lifestyle films are rated on a 5 coke booger scale. 1 being a key hit (terrible film) and 5 being Tony Montana’s desk mound of blow (great film).
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (4/5)
This is a very typical Judd Apatow film. A strange looking guy is with a hot girl then fucks it up by doing something dumb only to redeem himself in the end. It’s formula but it’s a formula that works. Especially since the girls (Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis) are hotter than in any other Apatow film. Also there’s a fair amount of penis. I believe it’s an old Hollywood principle — boobs are sexy but weiner makes people laugh.
Iron Man (5/5)
Loved it! Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor and it’s about time they start casting those for superhero roles. The semi-realistic plot and plenty of explosions make this one a winner. My only problem is that they cast Jeff Bridges as the villain. I seriously can’t even see him on screen without thinking of the dude. “The dude abides, Iron Man.”
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2/5)
Very disappointing. I’m still upset about this one. A few reasons I’ll list: you can’t have a 58 year old woman (Karen Allen) being the love interest. I’m sorry it’s just gross. Shia Lebouf once again brings nothing to the table. In fact I think he actually takes things off the table. I’m supposed to believe he’s a tough motorcycle riding punk? He’s like 5’4″!! Also aliens? WTF? George Lucas bastardizes another franchise.
Wanted (4/5)
This is a surprisingly good film. I went for the Angelina Jolie and ridiculous action sequences and I came out enjoying the whole thing. The plot is a little thin (a magic loom says who should be killed? Wha?) but the action is worth it. They use a lot of free running for the sequences and it’s visually impressive. Also Jolie shows her naked booty (hey tushy tushy). Worth it.
Movies I still want to see:
Wall-E
Kung Fu Panda
Baby Mama
On the fence
You don’t mess with the Zohan
Get Smart
The Happening
The Love Guru
Not a chance in Hell
Sex and the City
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Speed Racer
What Happens in Vegas…
Harold and Kumar something something…
July 7th, 2008
For some reason I’ve always found myself attracted to movies that are considered “cult classics” – movies with a small but passionate audience. These are usually movies that are too violent or use too much clever/edgy comedy for your average Midwestern moron to understand. As a result almost all of these movies have been considered commercial failures. Evil Dead, The Big Lebowski, Office Space, Clerks, and Roadhouse are examples of really good cult movies that never got a chance in theaters.
As I sat around my house on Sunday evening nursing a wicked hangover I decided to see if Netflix could help me through the day. A fair amount of searching later and there it was: 1986′s Cobra starring Sylvester Stallone. It had all the necessary elements – it was hyperviolent, had a ridiculous tag line (“Crime is a disease. Meet the cure.”), and it starred freaking Rambo! I was in.
Cobra did not disappoint. Here’s a couple reasons to add it to your DVD shelf:
The Plot makes exactly zero sense. The cops are chasing someone whom the media dubs “The Nightslasher” who in reality is actually some sort of axe wielding army of psychopaths. Now even if there wasn’t DNA testing available in 1986 I would think when a hacked up body turns up in a car that has been chopped in half with axes they might suspect the criminal is one than one dude right? Apparently not.
Marion Cobretti is a shoot first ask questions later cop. During the opening scene a hostage standoff is taking place at a grocery store. I guess the group of cops stationed outside can’t figure out what to do so they have to “call in the cobra”. When Cobra arrives he enters the building and kills the criminal by throwing a knife into his chest and then shooting him 5 times. In fact in the entire movie I don’t think he actually arrests anyone. He kills a lot of people but arrests no one. He may not have even been issued a set of handcuffs.
The Violence is ever present. Seriously I think for every action scene there is about 10 lines of dialogue. There may only be about 2 pages of actual written dialogue in this entire movie. The rest consists of action shots and montages with 80′s house music dubbed in.
Brigitte Nielson before she hit the wall. She was very very attractive in the 80′s. Now she spends time with Flava Flav in reality TV land. Time is one cruel bitch.
The Ending stays inline with the rest of the movie and also makes no sense. Cobra has just spent about 18 minutes shooting guys on motorcycles with a machine gun when he comes face to face with the main bad guy (possibly the actual Night Slasher, again there is very little dialogue). The bad guy says “You won’t shoot me. You’re the law. The law is civilized.” Did this moron not just see Cobra shoot like 38 guys dead? You think one more is going to effect him that much? Ridiculous. What do you think happens? Uh yeah Cobra kills him.
I think this movie was written by a group of guys sitting around smoking weed and trying to find another vehicle in which Stallone kills about 200 people. Mission accomplished.
I give it 2 out of 5 Coke Boogers.
June 30th, 2008
Last night I finally received my newest toy, the Roku Netflix Player. After waiting almost two weeks for backordering and Fedex’s slooooow ground shipping to get here I came home after work and there it was. A tiny black box roughly the size of a paperback book (if that book is the Bible) that I could watch my Netflix movies on! No more waiting for the mail to get here! I was excited. Then I tried to set it up which turned into a major pain in the ass.
The contents of the box were simple. The player, a remote, and cables. Easy enough. I hooked up the Roku to my TV via HDMI and plugged it in fully expecting it would detect my wireless network and be on it’s way. Not so fast. It found my network alright but it refused to let me connect. After unhooking and reconnecting wires and restarting modems and routers I still had nothing. I was pissed and a little sweaty.
I logged on to the Roku support website where I was told to hook the player up through a wired connection “just to get it started”. Apparently there was a software update that needed to be installed which would greatly improve the networking capabilities of the box. Now how I was expected to know that a product that was just released two weeks ago needed a software update I’m not sure but I decided to give it a try. I dug out my 25ft ethernet cable and hooked it directly into the box. Everything finally worked. The software installed and I was viewing my queue in seconds. I wasn’t quite prepared to be tripping over ethernet cable for the next 6 months however so I gave the wireless route another go.
Of course that didn’t work. Same error as earlier. I was seriously about to smash this POS with a hammer. I took a deep breath and tried it one last time. Unhooked and power cycled everything then said a little prayer to Jeebus Cripes. And what do you know….it worked! Estimated time of install = 2 hours.
Making up for all the hassle is the interface. It is slick! The videos are near DVD quality and after adding a movie to your instant queue it appears in about 15 seconds on screen. Netflix has done it once again.
There are, of course, some areas for improvement:
Selection Only about 10,000 of Netflix’s 100,000 movies are available for instant watching. They need to work hard to increase this selection. Most TV shows seem to be there so that is a plus.
Blu-Ray All the videos are standard def. It would be nice to have a few HD choices in there as well. Like I said the majority of videos I tested were DVD or near-DVD quality but a few looked like they were on the edge of VHS quality.
DVD Menus/Controls I understand the nature of the Internet and the effect that it has on video but I would like the full DVD controls to be available on these videos. FF/Rewind/Next/Previous/Extras etc. Right now there is a rudimentary FF/Rewind functionality.
More than Netflix One of the biggest drawbacks is that this box only plays Netflix videos. I realize that’s the point but I would like to see it incorporate content from other sites. If they add Hulu, DailyShow.com, and South Park Studios I don’t think I would ever leave the house. Mp3 and XVid would be gravy.
I would like to personally thank George W. Bush for the economic stimulus which allowed me to purchase this $99 box. Thanks Bushie this almost makes up for the time you cock-blocked me back in 2004 (that’s a story for another post).
June 5th, 2008
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