The Past Three Months: In Review

Okay, before I get rolling with the slew of reviews I owe you, in the previous post I neglected to mention a pretty big event from the past three months. So here it is:

Dave and Ali's Wedding
Our friends Dave & Ali got married! Ali was our roommate back in the Arlington days; she is more or less one of the most fantastic people on earth. We're talking Liz Bishop awesome. She was a godmother to the pups, enduring some wicked fights, and provided me with many a ride home from the Arlington T stop. Bless her! And now she and her hubby Dave, another really nice guy, are all hitched. It was a nice, traditional ceremony and a very cool reception in a barn-like place. There was a little five year old, tux wearing ring bearer boy who found it necessary to remove his shirt on the dance floor, effecting an odd Toulouse Lautrec meets Chippendale's ambiance. Very weird. He also grabbed the mic from the DJ at one point and shouted, "Auntie Allie, I'm so glad they let you be in the family." Or something like that. It was hilarious. We had a great time, and it is undoubtedly the only wedding I've been to where I cap the evening off by dropping off several bags of dog food at the happy couple's condo. Unless there's some really weird traditions in Beck's family that I don't know about.

Back to the Reviews
Okay, phew. So in the last three months, besides the fact that I haven't been as active about my posting, I have kept reading and watching movies. Actually, beck and I have been watching a whole boatload of Angel lately, so my movie watching has been on something of a hiatus lately as well. But that's cool. So below, if you'll bare with me, are very miniature reviews of the movies and books that I've seen in read in the off time. These will not be getting the full treatment in my films section or my books section, but one, there are some new reviews there, so check them out, and two, all future reviews will be posted there. I will try to put notices up here when I post new stuff, but you should check the main site frequently for updates. Awesome updates. In fact, as a special enticement, I promise to put up something *awesome* on the main site today. But it's going to be hidden, and I'm never going to tell anyone where it is. But it'll be sweet. Anyways, here are some reviews:

Movies

The Searchers (1957): 45
Laughable acting, a stupid, drawn out plot, ridiculous characters and enough awkwardness to bottle up and sell. This movie often gets called the "greatest Western of all time" and is actually ranked very high (#8 or so) on some of the lists of best movies, so clearly I'm not getting something. Admittedly, it's a beautiful film and the whole notion of John Wayne as antihero is pretty brutal and shocking. But this is a classic case of a film that hasn't aged well. the stilted style of pretty much everything involved is so painful as to be funny, and it really detracts badly. I generally don't like great movies with glaring holes - I'd rather see a movie that's consistently good throughout - and the warts on this film render it fairly terrible to me.

Kicking and Screaming (1995): 65
Another film that surprisingly has not aged well. This came out in the midst of the mid-nineties "talkies," dialog focused films (like Before Sunrise and, in a weird way, Pulp Fiction) that wrapped themselves up perhaps a little narcissistically in their own witty retorts. And it is high humor, and I actually like the genre a lot - but this account of college graduates struggling in the real world just comes off without as much "kick" as I remembered. It lacked energy, in short, and I was fairly disappointed as it often gets referenced as a cult classic. Funny, I suppose, and breath-takingly cynical, but just a little flat for my tastes.

Ghost World (2001): 86
A fantastic film that creates its own painful space between its characters that leaves the screen and leaves you as disoriented at this representation of the world as they feel within it. Buscemi is great. The mood of the film is wonderful; the only drawback, I thought, was the somewhat cheesy art teacher. But aside from that, just a wonderfully emotive film about struggling with alienation and coping with the world at large as an outsider. Highly recommended.

The Illusionist (2006): 21
Nevermind the inherent stupidity of a 2006 movie made about magic - I mean, wow, special effects, who knew - this movie was atrociously bad. Horrendously predictable plot, stupid characters straight out of Princess bride, a "twist" that was blatantly transparent, and an "A HA!" revelation of said twist that may have been one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on film, and that includes video, which includes my shout-acting performance as Snoopy in 5th grade. What's even worse is that EW lauded this film on its Must-List because of Edward Norton's stellar performance. Norton was okay, or at least okay as you can be in a movie this stupid. Argh. the only reason I'm giving it a passing grade is because Jessica Biel is pretty in a vapid chooses bad movies kinda way, and she went to Tufts. Avoid this craptasm.

The Departed (2006): 85
Just a high, high energy, excellently cast, runaway train of a movie that was a blast to see in the theater. And if you're a fan of Scorsese and you, um, like looking at Hollywood celebrities' head shots, then this one won't disappoint. DiCaprio, he of "best performance by an androgynous waif boy" fame, is awesome in this one. Damon is sweet. Nicholson is, well, he's Nicholson. This is just an intense, finely crafted piece of art - no real deeper message other than the unholy corruption of those in power, but this is the Scorsese genre at its near peak.

Borat (2006): NR
This one defies rating. I think it can be summed up by a quote form one of my students: "Once you see it, you can't unsee it." True. Hilarious, offense? Yes, all these things. Performance art of the highest level, actually. You can bitch all you want about the stagedness of certain scenes, but the fact that some of the scenes were not staged - and that a man can pull off something that still seems outrageous in an era saturated by, say, youtube and camera phones and insanity galore - is amazing. I think the opening weekend theater experience is hard to reproduce, so I imagine this will lose a lot when it is released in DVD, but it is fun partaking of a pop sensation. I do agree with many critics that the LCD may not get the joke... I have to say I recommend this one, just so you can know what the fuss is about.

Books

Oblivion: Stories (2004) by David Foster Wallace: 87
Just a fantastic collection of short stories by my favorite author. Included in this book: a skewering of American marketing, a soul-crushing account of an acquaintance's suicide, a lunatic in a school, a baby burned, sleep disorders, a prodigy in a tribe, a man with spiders and a mother with a disfigured face, and finally, a man who craps art. It's insane and mindblowingly written - risky and multi-faced, just an exhilarating read. Good stuff.

Signifying Rappers: Rap & Race in the Urban Present (1990) by Mark Costello & DFW: 78
I find it hilarious that people accuse this book of being "out of date." Um, hello? It was written in 1989! SO why are people surprised that it is written on Public Enemy and not Eminem? Damn, people, what do you want, soothsayers? That aside, this is a sharp and witty dialog on the nature of rap as art and as reflection of the culture that birthed it. From two white academic guys, so take that for what its worth. I found the DFW points fascinating, the MC ones not as much, but perhaps the most important revelation of the entire book was the notes on artistic theft, and how rap can be often boiled down to white guys stealing from white guys who stole from black guys who... etc. It is salient, if "out of date," given the ease of digital theft these days (and the "mash-ups" that have accompanied it). So I say blah! This is a cool window into the nascent years of popular rap and written well taboot.

Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans (2003) by McSweeney's: NR
A collection of funny and not so funny stories from that year. Highlights - a discussion on the politics of Star Wars, a cultural account of the conflicts in Lord of the Rings, and a set of jokes, the best of which was "A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a drink. He drinks it, stays a while, and then goes home to sit and think about all the wrong decisions he's made in his life." I mean, that's gold. there's also the requisite lists at the end which some people find hilarious but I really don't. Oh, well. Anyways, check it out; solid stuff.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006) by Marisha Pessl: 35
Too cute for its own good, a predictable plot that hides itself as clever, and really the ultimate sin of the book - taking a clever, academic educated girl who champions the academic world and the deep thought that goes with it - and turning her into a walking soundbite machine. Seriously, the very "in life, there are no shortcuts" Cliff's Notes that Pessl lambastes on her website get abused here to an unbelievable extent - Pessl and or Blue, the protagonist, pretend to be above it all, but there wide variety of knowledge and quotes itself turns into a grand aphorism, a surface scraping of thoughts. The book itself is enjoyable enough, but it's pretentious as all hell, and the non-Blue characters end up as either absurd cardboard cutouts of convenience (insert rich high school girl HERE) or pathetic ridiculoids who inhabit an insane social space that will only service the moving ahead of the aforementioned boring and easily seen plot. In case it's not coming across, I did not care for this book. And again, our friends at EW gave it an A and thought it was smart, witty, and full of pomo genius. Since when does pomo man full of stupid references for references' sake, especially those that serve as a pond scum level of understanding and not any real kind of knowledge? This is the worst kind of academic dishonesty - though the book is readable and entertaining at times, its over-all vibe is so unqualifiedly condescending that it makes me mad just thinking about it.

For the record, my references are jokes, and I hope that I don't come off like Blue - it's a game of shared experience to throw these "pomo" references, one that illuminates certain angles and not one that betrays masturbatory literati name-dropping.

Chuck Klosterman IV (2006) by Chuck Klosterman: 73
A collection of celebrity interviews, misc. essays by Chuck and a piece of fiction that was actually pretty good. Chuck K. is funny, but not as awesome as he thinks he is, sometimes. This is coming from a fan; I have thoroughly enjoyed his other books, and I enjoyed this one. But there's something that's empty and Andy Rooney at the end of 60 Minutes about it now and then, and it annoyed me enough to drop the rating a bit. Definitely good, definitely entertaining, I laughed out loud a lot, but I think the level is a little too hipster smug and not in depth / philosophical enough for me to really get into. Speaking of pretentious, hi, my name's Nyet.

And SCENE!

There you go. One of the things that derailed me from the previous incarnation of writing was that I started feeling compelled to write reviews of every little thing I encountered. I don't like being compelled to do things, so a stack of need-to-be-reviewed books and movies appeared, and I was slugging through it. To cut to the (Cordelia) chase - I am only going to give movies / books or whatever full reviews if I feel like it. Otherwise I will put quick notes on here. See, wasn't that easy? Ahhh.... problem solved. Tune in next week...