HOFFA was okay, but not exactly spectacular, unless you really get off on watching Jack Nicholson overact (and co-star Danny DeVito's peculiar ideas about direction). SYMPATHY FOR THE UNDERDOG was much better, although still not exactly a watershed moment in Asian cinema... although it does have my idea of a happy ending (that is, an ending where everybody dies). Tomorrow we'll see if LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN turns out to be any better....

Expressions to avoid during a recording session.

Steely Dan dictionary.

TRANSFORMERS was kind of silly and very much like a comic book come to life (complete with ridiculous scenarios, much silliness, and bad dialogue), but it's all right, because they blew up shit real good.

And now I go nappy-poo for a while, for I am a tired cheese.

Oh, and I am officially on vacation now -- my first paid vacation in at least four years. w00t!

Blah blah blah. Now I sleep....

kohntarkosz was right: SAW III blew dead goats. You'd think I would have guessed this from having seen SAW II, but what can I say? They didn't have the episodes of THE SOPRANOS or MEAN STREETS, and I was desperate....

I had forgotten how good DIE HARD was. I'd also forgotten what Bruce Willis looked like with hair. And I know the movie must have been made quite a while back, because early on it shows him lighting a cigarette in the airport terminal after getting off the plane at LAX. (Even scarier, it demonstrates how old I am that I can remember being allowed to smoke on a plane.)

The amazing world of high-speed photography.

Now that's what I call poor packing.

A fool and his money....

THE PROPOSITION turned out to be really good (and really violent, and really biblical, neither of which is terribly surprising, given that the script was written by Nick Cave). Next up in the queue: SAW III. Somehow, I have this mysterious hunch that it will not be anywhere near as good.

If you have, and you've seen the mysterious CLOVERFIELD trailer, feel free to tell me what's up with it -- Paramount has blanketed teh internets with cease 'n desist letters and forced everybody, including YouTube, to take down the postings of the trailer. So now I know (vaguely) about the trailer but tragically cannot watch it, which I find most annoying. Why make a trailer if you don't want people to see it? Truly the minds of studio executives work in mysterious ways.

EDIT: Okay, I found a bootleg copy online that may or may not be there much longer, plus this appears to be the official site. Not that it's any more illuminating.

I can see why PAN'S LABYRINTH (whose title is a misnomer, by the way -- a marketing-savvy corruption of the original Spanish title, "The Labyrinth of the Faun," that completely ignores the fact that the faun in the film is not actually Pan) won a whole pile of awards and a twenty-minute standing ovation at Cannes, but man, that's one intense motherfucker of a movie. It's certainly not kid-friendly by any stretch of the imagination -- it opens and closes with a dead girl (the main character, in fact), and in between, casts forth some of the most disturbing screen images ever. The film's tone is consistently dark (as is most of the lighting), and the film it reminds me of the most right off the bat is another dark fable, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN (itself not exactly a kid-friendly venture). The film is set in Spain in 1944 during Franco's reign, with monsters both above ground and below. Creepiness abounds throughout the movie, and while I hate to provide spoilers (that's what the Wikipedia entry is for, nu?), I'll just say this -- everything that can go bad does, and generally in the worst way possible. BRRRR!

Coming up in the film queue over the next few days:

MALCOLM X
ANIMAL FACTORY
CARNIVAL OF SOULS

A swell interview with David Tibet (head doomsayer of Current 93, whose early album DAWN is one of the scariest things I've ever heard), courtesy of alagbon.

The new Oxbow album is not what I expected at all. It's also really good, although I'm not surprised by that since Lisa C. raves about them and her taste is swank. You can see (via YouTube) what they look and sound like here.

Now that's a big burning bowl!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Another case of overthinking something that wasn't really worth that much thought.

Useful info for practicing musicians living in li'l rent boxes.

Paris fatigue.

And now, before I toddle off to watch Takashi Miike's IMPRINT and then read BLAZE, an amusing video for all you IT / geek types (mad props to ladydreamtime for pointing the way):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eIFoz-Tjf8


EDIT: It turns out the Miike movie had no closed captioning, so I'll have to watch it during the daytime... most annoying. I ended up watching BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA instead, which was largely an enormous waste of an hour and a half of my life, even if it did have a young 'n surly Warren Oates (best known to people of my generation as Sgt. Hulka from STRIPES) in it. The only good parts were the shooting matches, and those didn't get going until about 3/4 of the way through the film.... Still, these people could actually act (which is more than I can say for anybody in THE MECHANIC, which was also crippled by piss-poor editing, incredibly bad dialogue, a ridiculous plot, and mediocre cinematography -- but then again, it did have Charles Bronson, which makes up for everything, sort of), and Peckinpah actually knows how to shoot film, so it wasn't a total bummer. Definitely not the caliber of film I expected from reading all the hype-poop on the back of the dvd case at Vulcan, though.

Friends don't let friends watch VICE SQUAD. Eeeeeew.

It is kind of hilarious, though -- unintentionally, of course -- to hear Wings Hauser turn in one of the worst vocal performances ever in the film's theme song "Neon Slime" (and yes, it sounds as bad as its title -- some people should not be allowed to emulate blaxplotation film music, yee).

I may have to cleanse my soiled palate later by watching a DIRTY HARRY movie....

I finally got around to watching this film. It was super. Too bad the closed captioning on the dvd was hosed, though. My favorite moment: Carl's unexpected visit from his good pal Shep Proudfoot. Now that's what I call a meeting of the minds, even if Carl did spend most of their "conversation" on the floor howling in pain and terror....

Tomorrow night I'll watch MILLER'S CROSSING. But now I must consume el-cheapo pizza in preparation for going here to see Devil Bat's Daughter and Venison Whirled.

EDIT: * W U P S * I spoke too soon... before I could even finish my yummy el-cheapo pizza (only 79 cents! truly a bargain!), the bottom fell out of the sky. I don't believe we'll be going anywhere anytime soon now....

I foresee a viewing of MILLER'S CROSSING up next on the agenda.

All this babble over a cartoon dingus.

See what happens when you let the little head think for the big head?

Wouldn't it be simpler just to not have the prom at all?

LOLcats and other disasters of the human / animal psyche.

I was just thinking about this while reading a Richard Scarry book recently.

Everybody has a blog now. Everybody.

Oh, I finally managed to watch this Coen brothers film. (You can find a better assessment of the film, with pictures, here.) I still haven't decided what I think about it, other than it does prove once again that John Goodman is one of the most underrated actors of my generation.

From the director of THE GRUDGE comes MAREBITO, one of the most deeply fucked-up movies you'll ever see. Even by my standards, this is a severely twisted film. Watch it if you dare...!

Now that's what I call a serious clusterfuck.

Look! She takes rehab as seriously as she does marriage!

In the meantime, look who they turned loose.

Dudes just can't get along with anybody, can they?

Searchin' for a weasel.

Progress on solving a bizarre crime?

A big mouth will get you in big trouble, son.

Now that's funny.

##

I watched the latest offering from David Cronenberg, the 2005 film A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. This is one of his better ones, and very much in keeping with his trend of recent years toward less constantly visceral films versus more psychological ones. I've seen over a dozen of his films -- my favorites are VIDEODROME, DEAD RINGERS, CRASH, SPIDER, and probably this one -- but all of them have been good (or at least interesting). His early stuff used to be obsessed with body horror and gross depictions of the human body subjected to disease and/or violence, whereas his more recent stuff is less about the gore and more about the psychodrama between the characters. (Although there is a fair amount of disturbingly realistic violence and gore in this film, when the violence happens.)

I still think DEAD RINGERS is one of the creepiest films ever made, right on up there with HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and CLEAN, SHAVEN. The whole business about "mutant tools"... maaaaaaaan....

Anyway, now I'm gonna go watch SAW 2. And while I'm on the subject, the scene at the beginning of SCARY MOVIE 4 (a parody of the opening of the original film, featuring Dr. Phil and Shaq) is possibly the funniest thing I ever seen that wasn't the greatest moment in one of those Cheech and Chong movies.