previous reviews here.

In the Loop (2009) – british comedy satirizing the run-up to the iraq war.  verbose, profane and completely fucking hysterical.  if you like politics, satires or british humor, go see this NOW.  i haven’t seen this kind of lyrical comedy since…. i’m not sure.  possibly ever.  4.1 stars. 

(500) Days of Summer (2009) – zooey deschanel plays ambiguous relationship games with joseph gordon levitt yet somehow i didn’t want to punch her in the face by the end.  maybe because she’s zooey deschanel?  funny at parts, but never hilarious.  always kind of cute, but never in a chick flick way.  this movie had a great style, and i don’t just mean the clothes.  there was at least one scene that had the kind of subtle power that makes this in instant recommend.  4 stars. 

Thirst (2009) – park chan wook film.  he made OldBoy and the other Vengeance films.  i love this guy but he’s been on a slide ever since his Cannes breakthrough, OldBoy.  the guy that made Thirst is a completely different person than the one that made Mr. Vengeance.  that being said, this isn’t a bad film, just not as affecting or powerful.  it’s about a good-hearted priest who volunteers for an extremely risky medical experiment and gets turned into a vampire in the process.  as a vampire his eyes are opened to the world of physical pleasures that he’s been denying himself, but he struggles to remain good.  and that’s pretty much the nugget of this film: the empowering feeling of giving in to pleasure, and the consequences that follow.  there are no old school vampires dressed in rock star outfits, riding in limousines flaunting their everlasting youth.  it’s not that kind of vampire flick.  just a story about two different people in a fucked up situation.  3.5 stars. 

Tyson (2008) – documentary of mike tyson, starring mike tyson saying some outrageous things, that only mike tyson could say.  it’s almost all talking-head type documentary, which is usually a little boring to me, but what saves this film is mike tyson being himself.  the credits list tyson as one of the executive producers, and some of the shots seem staged, but that still doesn’t take away from what’s on camera.  a deeply conflicted, possibly crazy human being that once sat on top of the world.  3 stars.

Phoebe in Wonderland (2008) – elle fanning, dakota’s sister, is a mentally troubled schoolgirl who finds refuge in a school production of Alice in Wonderland.  i never read nor saw any version of Alice in Wonderland so i’m sure a lot of the symbolism just went over my head.  still, i thought this was a great and imaginative film, superbly acted by elle fanning, all good signs, until the end.  seeing the ending i recognize that there really wasn’t any other way to go.  i just wish it were more, because the film was gearing up for something better until that point.  2.5 stars. 

The Station Agent (2003) – indie film about a reclusive dwarf whose best friend died and willed him a small, decrepit, out-of-service, train stop.  at the train stop he meets the locals and makes some friends.  yay.  this is a decent indie film, and has been pretty heavily celebrated since its release a few years ago, but i have to say….  huh?  this is what all the hype was about?  it’s not as simple as i made it sound.  ….   but it nearly is.  3 stars. 

Gran Torino (2008) – previous thoughts here.  the short version: it kinda sucked.  2 stars. 

Robot Chicken: Star Wars (2007) – if you’ve never seen Robot Chicken, you’re a retard.  if you have, way to go, buddy.  this thing is short.  like 20 minutes short.  but it had some pretty hilarious parody skits making fun of Star Wars.  “but i’m ambidextrous!”  heeheheheheheheheheheheheeheh  *sigh*  4 stars. 

Away From Her (2006) – actress Sarah Polley directed this deeply affecting drama about a woman who starts to get alzheimers and how her husband is dealing with this new reality-bending situation.  i think it’s kind of nightmarish to think of the possibility of losing my memory.  i got sucked into this movie and thought about that for a while.  her husband’s grace in the face of this absolute no-win situation was heartbreaking.  4 stars. 

Manda Bala (2007) – “send a bullet”  documentary about the pervasiveness of crime and corruption in Brazil.  this films focuses on several different people, each representing a different side of the crime war in Sao Paulo.  the reality of how strong crime is there is smothering.  as a film, though, it’s kinda lacking.  some interviewees never gave me the impression that they weren’t just mugging for the camera and i found that distracting.  2.5 stars.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) – this gets points for being epic.  there aren’t enough of those these days.  but i wonder if this was unnecessarily epic, because i felt every second of its 2:46 run time.  while being technically pretty, the film was only mildly interesting and made me wonder what all those Academy voters were thinking when they nominated this.  3 stars.  (girls will like it more since brad pitt does indeed look very hunky towards the end riding his motorcycle in what has to be some kind of Ralph Lauren ad.) 

Boy A (2007) – british indie film about a seemingly nice and simple young man recently released from prison for some kind of heinous crime.  i won’t spoil the surprise.  his nice and normal new life is thrown around when his past starts to catch up with him.  can’t say too much without spoiling the movie.  decent indie film with a likeable central character in a hard situation.  this film has a decent heart without losing its grip on reality.  3 stars. 

Funny People (2009) – judd apatow’s latest, and possibly his best, even though it’s the least funny of his films.  many people will disagree with me on that, including me, depending on the mood.  adam sandler is a gajillionaire comedian who finds out he has a terminal illness, but wants to keep it a secret.  he befriends seth rogen, a struggling stand up comic/deli clerk, and together they ride unicorns.  right away the subject matter is darker than your usual buddy comedy since it revolves around Sandler’s terminal prognosis.  the fact that it’s able to inject any humor at all is a miracle, and it does.  it’s still quite funny.  but there’s real drama here, expertly acted by sandler, as he deals with his death and his life up to that point.  (about halfway through, there’s a turning point in the film that changes the tone.  some people seem to have a problem with this.  i’ve even heard some reviewers calling this a schizophrenic film.  this is one time i can confidently say they just didn’t fucking get it.  it all fits.)  in the end, Apatow succeeded, again, in introducing drama elements where there were none.  somehow he did it even when the subject matter is death and morality.  4 stars.   

i have a new cube neighbor. 

he’s a big black dude that seems friendly enough.  he has an accent like he might be an islander?  not sure.  so  yeah. he’s friendly, but maybe a little too friendly, if you ask me.  he doesn’t butt in and demand attention or anything but if you start a conversation with him, forget it, son.  you’re now his prisoner for at least the next twenty minutes.  i made the mistake of introducing myself then i had to stand awkwardly, trying to run away from his droning monologue about where he came from, what he worked on, his opinions about the current new environment, why he doesn’t have a working computer, why he was invited to the manager’s meeting, what they said at the meeting, why he “tells it like it is”, what might happen with our present employer, etc.  all that in one monologue — i can’t really call it a conversation because no one else really said another word once he got going — and he doesn’t really talk quickly either.  just a constant on and on and on and on about whatever the fuck pops into his head.  meanwhile, i’m trying not to develop leg cramps and exhaustion from standing so goddam long, and wondering if i really tried, like really tried my hardest, would i be able to propel my body through that window like they do in the movies?  would he keep talking as i fell to my death? 

so yeah.  loquacious to say the least.  he’s also one of those snot-heavy mouth-breathers.  he must have some sinus issues because his head is always full of snot and he’s always breathing through his mouth.  it’s kind of gross.  he’s taller than me too so i can see straight up his nostrils and locate the dried up asteroids of boogy that pepper the rims of his nose.  these sinus problems must be hell on whoever he lives with.  i know this because he falls asleep every afternoon in his cube and he snores like a motherfucker.  no one wakes him up, because it’s pretty damn hilarious if you ask me.  we all just sit there and let him snore his ass away.  yesterday, the customer manager walked in on him while he was snoring and she just started talking to him like nothing happened.  he snapped up immediately and started replying back some non-answers, trying to play it off like he wasn’t just dreaming about naked fat chicks one full second ago. 

one last thing about him, and this one is completely bizarre.  he talks, like i said, with a slight islander accent.  very slight, but it’s there.  i think it’s islander.  might be continental african.  point being, it’s not american, it’s not european.  one day i hear him on the phone and he’s spouting off some cockney london accent.  !!  the difference between that English accent and his normal speaking accent is so extreme, it’s clear that he’s play-acting to one of us, either us here at the office or whoever he was on the phone with.  i mean it’s not like he’s speaking two different languages and has to do with what he’s taught.  we all speak the same english so, wtf?   i don’t know.  you tell me.  it’s weird. 

-  Football kicks ass.  (duh)  there are just so many things to love about football.  the chess match.  the contests between individual players.  the hard hitting.  i love it when a team can methodically drive a ball down the field while chewing up the clock.  i love it when a defense can completely shut down an offense.  the parity.  assuming you’re not the Detroit Lions, pretty much any team can win on any Sunday against any opponent.  they say betting on football is too stressful because of this unpredictability.  i could go on…

-  It’s the most social of all sports.  it is right now, anyway.  name another sport season where people will predictably go out and eat, drink together to watch a non-playoff game.

-  Bar food.  everything fucking fried to the max then smothered in melted cheese.  i even tried fried pickles last year (sans cheese) and thought that was delicious. 

-  Fantasy Football.  actually this is kind of love/hate.  it kills my fan spirit to have to look at the numbers and charts all the time to tally my score regardless of the teams involved.   but, hey, it paid for more than half my new tv a few years ago! 

-  Football season = hot to cold weather changes.  the air gets cooler and drier.  the leaves change colors.  the smell of burning shit fills the air in a pleasant way.  you people on the west coast miss a gorgeous time of year that is the northeast fall. 

regarding that Snow White picture i posted yesterday, this might sound a little crazy but i think she’s kind of hot.

hot or not.  is that a bad ass illustration or what?  how fucking sinister does she look?  did you scroll through the album?  here.  look at it again.   look at the Alice in Wonderland pic.  look closely.  do you see something strange?  look at her throat.  that’s a bloody slit throat, kiddies!  i saw that and gasped.  all that heart-shaped blood on the walls might in fact be her blood and she’s f**king smiling about it! 

check out this Sleeping Beauty that was left out of the cinematical link i posted.

yes, i believe her eyelids are SEWN SHUT.  this guy’s a sick bastard and i think i love it.  check out more of Jeffrey Thomas’ stuff here. 

***

and i was thinking about my Top 5 Films with Women post two days ago.  none of those five films i ranked were 5-star quality films, imo.  are there really that few quality films strictly about women?  or am i just missing them or not liking them because i’m a man?  do you know any better films about women? 

  read further for more awesomeness.

-   sandwiches of the world **droooooool**  (except for the carrot goat cheese sandwich.  that’s a double vomit sandwich.)  i almost broke my teeth trying to bite my monitor when the first pic of the pork bun came up. 

-  a conservative and a liberal sound off about Ted Kennedy. 

-  teaser trailer for Avatar, james cameron’s super advanced bleeding edge animated project that he’s been working on for 93218409214 years now.  he’s supposedly been pushing the envelope, inventing and pioneering all new technologies to make this film.  you see here it looks pretty damn fantastic.  they released 16 minutes of footage in theaters recently and a friend of mine caught it.  he said it looks amazing, like nothing he’d ever seen before.  this friend is definitely the type to speak in hyperbole and exaggerate the moment like that, but still.  you see it here.  it looks cool.  i just wish JCameron would stop reminding me that he directed Titanic.  that does nothing but hurt him these days. 

-  Lost Coastlines by Okkervil River.  i like this song.  it’s a strangely compelling combination of unexpected sounds.  

-  Getting Real About the High Cost of Cheap Food – because our culture of cheaply abundant food is making us unhealthy, is polluting the environment, overburdening our healthcare system, depleting seafood sources, and making germs stronger.  eat at Chipotle.  save the world. 

-  my friend called this the worst song ever made.  i think i agree.  you might too.

-  sorry about that.  to make it up to you here’s another great song by The Gossip.

-  possibly the awesomest thing i will see all week.  Twisted Disney Princesses (safe for work.  probably not safe for your soul).

-  and finally on this craptastic thursday, we are presented with Strong Bad’s distinction between Indie and Independent films.  quite hilarious. 

i think i am going to save wednesdays for a regular column called The Top 5.  that shining name is the product of all my creative faculties.  biting Nick Hornby and reviving an old and recently dead habit of mine to name Top 5′s in all different categories, i thought i’d do this just so i have something easy and regular to write about at least once a week.

seeing as how i used up all my creative juices in picking the name “The Top 5″, i’d like some ideas from you on what exactly to rank top five in the coming, bound to be exciting, weeks.  i need your help, please.  send me any Top 5 ideas that might pop into your head as long as they don’t ask me to 1.  identify myself in any way, or 2. incriminate myself.  oh yes, i will not rank anything that might be politically partisan, but i doubt politics is a ripe field for mining top 5′s anyway. 

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Top 5 Films With a Female Lead

this is turning out to be surprisingly hard to do.  there simply aren’t many films with women leads and the best films that do have women as lead characters have them in a mixed ensemble or as part of a pair, which fits technically in this category but really betrays the spirit of this list.  seriously, look back and try to think of any decent films that had a woman or group of women as the sole protagonists.  it’s hard!

Amelie (2001) – i’m not sure a box of frolicking puppies could better capture the cuteness that is this movie. 

Elizabeth (1998) – imagine dropping a love sick woman into The Godfather and you have Elizabeth. 

The Hours (2002) – it’s been a while since i’ve seen this, but i remember loving its serious and heavy subject matter.  why one might even say that this film almost treated the women like many films treat men…  and look!  it’s an ensemble of several women! 

Marie Antoinette (2006) – i know a lot of people have irreconcilable problems with Kirsten Dunst, and i know this film was a tad slower than its upbeat 80s new wave soundtrack and splashy florescent colors might lead one to expect, but i still think this was a great film.  underrated to say the least. 

Sixteen Candles (1984) – crimes of Long Duck Dong aside…

Honorable Mentions:
Clueless
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
La Femme Nikita
Lost in Translation
Secret Sunshine (korean)
Take Care of My Cat (korean)
Volver

-  interesting…  from the nytimes.  “Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, asserts in a new book that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national threat level just before the 2004 election in what he suspected was an effort to influence the vote.”

-  when my manager talks these secondary sounds come out of his mouth like he’s chewing a packet of ketchup or something.  or maybe like he has a small, loose wad of suran wrap in his mouth.  that kind of sound.  and there’s often some dried or gooey spittle accumulated at the sides of his lips.  maybe he has rabies? 

-  even though it’s not a surprise at all, it’s still sad to me that the Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds film The Proposal, out for nine weeks, has grossed over $157M so far, while The Hurt Locker has collected only about $10M in eight weeks.  i haven’t seen The Proposal, but by most accounts it’s more of the same that i have seen before, but i have seen The Hurt Locker and it’s a little bit of awesome.  granted The Proposal is on 1500 screens while The Hurt Locker is on < 500 screens, but the per screen averages are the same even when The Proposal is out on triple the screens.  either The Proposal is a sleeper hit or The Hurt Locker is not getting its just due or both.  has anyone seen The Proposal?  how was it?  netflix users are giving it 2.5 stars.  are you glad you spent that $10 or would you rather have spent it on something a little more worthwhile? 

-  wow Transformers 2, a movie i haven’t heard one good opinion of, is on its way to making $400M so far.  good for them.  that’s like Goldman Sachs numbers.

-  talking about The Proposal reminds me of The Proposition, an Australian western i am a big fan of.  it’s not your typical western but it’s still a great movie nonetheless.  stars Guy Pearce (Memento), Danny Huston, Emily Watson and the underrated Ray Winstone (The Departed).  “You’ve got the wrong fucking black man.”  killer.

-  here’s a short piece about how one apparently deserving film was treated like ass by its distributor and is dying a slow and painful death.  “Instead of selling the concept, band of outcasts like The Commitments, they Disneyfied this movie with glitter paint. So what is an ironic, smart script with a killer soundtrack was sold like High School Musical meets Phil Of The Future. “

-  here’s a great post from cinematical recounting some of Tarantino’s greatest music moments in his films.  anyone seeing Basterds this weekend?

i need recommendations for fiction novels please.  i seem to have plenty of non-fiction books on my to-read list, but barely any fictions, and i definitely need some easy reading to loosen me up between those long, dry non-fiction books. 

if you need to gauge my tastes before recommending, the following are my recent fiction favorites.

The Killer Angels
American Pastoral
Clockers
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

***

i haven’t seen The Time Traveler’s Wife movie yet, nor am i really going to go out of my way to do.  it was a great love story book that will unquestionably get screwed up by the film.  rachel mcadams is great but eric bana doesn’t really have the romantic/dramatic talent to pull this one off, imo.  and i’d much rather live with the fond memory of the book in my head rather than muck it all up with the crappy disappointment of the film. 

am i being cynical?  pessimistic?  unadventurous?  yes.  also, hopefully, wise and educated.  (i’m wise and educated, motherfucker!)  i know how movies oversimplify and kill books.  i know how Bana looks when he tries to do drama.  i know how distracted i get when watching a movie after reading the book, especially so close together.  “but that’s not how the book went…”  the book was great and we’ll leave it at that.

besides.  souxie said the movie sucked and that’s pretty much all i need to hear. 

***

i really wouldn’t mind a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll with salt, pepper and ketchup right now.  but you know something?  this is going to sound a little unholy to some, but restaurant bacon is kind of a let down.  you know almost all places pre-cook their bacon right?  so, if you order bacon on your sandwich, it’s most likely been cooked a few hours ago, and has been sitting there drying up and cooling off.  that’s why when it comes out the bacon is only slightly less hard and chewy than your average concrete sidewalk. 

it’s still delicious though.  but imagine how toe-curlingly awesome your chicken sandwich would be with home-cooked bacon, made to order.

this sandwich place i go to has a grill top and they apply the oil with a brush.  one morning i saw where that oil comes from.  everyday, several times a day, they unwrap a giant head-sized block of butter/margarine and drop it into the metal receptacle on the grill top where it melts and becomes the oil for the grill.  delicious, yes.  healthy, no.  makes me think twice about that mayo or russian dressing that also comes on the sandwich. 

a buddy of mine owns a great little deli on 6th Ave below Central Park South (59th St) right behind the Ritz called Angela’s Rock N Roll Deli.  i can’t remember if i mentioned it before or not.  anyway they make delicious sandwiches.  when i went to visit, my friend made me try like 97 different sandwiches and i noticed that strangely all of them were delicious, and all had a common je ne c’est quoi goodness about them.  i stopped to think about it and noticed that the rolls he used were really tasty.  i asked him about it, and he said, indeed, the rolls were the very expensive kind.  he didn’t skimp. 

it’s weird.  people usually don’t give a second thought to the bread when they order up a sandwich, but quality rolls made such a big difference there.  i mean isn’t that why people are willing to pay like $39 for a sandwich at Cosi?  the bread?  it isn’t the fillings, that’s for sure.  Cosi’s chicken and turkey taste like they were created in a petri dish by guys wearing lab coats and goggles. 

the buddy with the deli also invented a great new sandwich called the Beastie Boy.  it involves lots of hot pastrami and corned beef served up very creatively and deliciously.  i don’t want to spoil the surprise.  if you’re from nyc, i think you might have an appreciation for this.  it’s a little hard to eat, but, oh, so worth it. 

i once went to this place in Boston called Thornton’s.  they have this great steak sandwich.  two things separate this steak sandwich from others.  1.  the steak isn’t thinly sliced.  they are thick, juicy slices of grilled beef.  you’re actually eating a steak.  2.  the bread is garlic bread!  oh yeah and it was like overflowing with slices of real cheese.  no cheez whiz.  so that’s three things.  delicious.  basically every step of that steak sandwich screams “Real Food!”  hearty food. 

i always see Katz’ Deli on tv but i’ve never been there.  in the world of food porn, those episodes on Katz’ Deli are the Hustler.  straight to the goods and plenty of it.  everytime i see it on tv, i cry a little bit because it looks so damn good and i’m usually starving.  (i might have also been crying because i chewed my hand off and swallowed it.)  egads.  those mountains of hot, thick sliced pastrami with mustard on fresh rye bread…  you can see the steam rise off the meat as they cut off your portion!  *sigh*  next time. 

holy shit.  have i really spent all this time talking about nothing but sandwiches? 

former south korean president Kim Dae Jung died yesterday of pneumonia at the age of 85.

mixed thoughts on him.  some people say he’s a national hero.  other people say he was a communist puppet.  i’m sure both are right in this case, to varying degrees.  he fought against the military dictatorships that dominated south korea’s early history, but he was also a super pink lefty populist.   

sure he tried a different and novel approach to unification but i am of the opinion that the Sunshine Policy failed with tragic results.  don’t let it be lost in the love-fest that’s bound to ensue now that he died that he got caught secretly funneling over $1B to north korea to secure the meeting with Kim Jong Il that won him the Nobel Peace Prize.  that’s right.  he almost literally bought himself that Nobel prize with korean tax payer money.  and with that money he almost definitely purchased at least part of the nuclear arsenal for Kim Jong Il that has the world shitting itself.  are the koreas any closer to uniting?  nope.  but NK does have a nice set of new and functional nukes now. 

this is the real world, so let him be judged by real results, not just good intentions.  he helped develop a nation, the nation of my parents, one of America’s strongest allies, while at the same time helping to develop the world’s enemy.  it’s a mixed bag. 

***

anyway.  on to brighter things. 

The Horrors – Sea Within a Sea
The Gossip – Heavy Cross
Metric – Gold Guns Girls
Bat For Lashes – Daniel