(New) Morning in America

"Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning."
- Maya Angelou, "On the Pulse of Morning" (the 1993 Inaugural Poem)


"Suddenly, all your history's ablaze
Try to breathe, as the world disintegrates
Just like autumn leaves, we're in for change
Holding tenderly to what remains."
- TV on the Radio


"The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men."
- James Baldwin


"You can't hold down what can't be held down
New formulas callin' you to move around."
- Roni Size/Reprazent


"America! Fuck Yeah!"
- DVDA



Ladies and gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama.

Yes We Can (Make Pastries?) - live from East Meadow

My mother-in-law made brownies today. "In honor of our brown president," she says. The mystery of my wife unravels a little bit every time I'm over at her parents' house.

It's That Time of Year Again

Nothing in the world... NOTHING... makes my scrotum shrivel up like the American Idol auditions.

Follow Me Around

I was just on Spout.com and saw this posted there as part of another article. One of the best advertisements ever made, in no small part because it was disguised as a spectacular short film featuring the talents of Clive Owen, Forest Whitaker and Mickey Rourke, and directed by one of the greatest living filmmakers, Wong Kar-wai.

From BMW Films, it's The Hire: The Follow.

(And speaking of following, don't be shy. Why don't you follow Words of the Weasel Sort? Up there on the right. It won't hurt and I promise that 2009 will have more interesting content than last year. Go on and do it.)

Bad Apple

Steve Jobs has done it again!


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

The Best and Worst of 2008

Another year has ended and with it, a tallying of the best and worst of the year in entertainment. Rather than compile a ranked list of movies, music, etc. that I enjoyed (or didn't) this year, I'm going to take an approach that is, at the same time, lazy and novel. I'm just putting it all out there, good and bad, in one big list.

So without further ado:

THE MOST EMOTIONAL THING OF 2008

WALL-E - I'm kind of a cold bastard at times. I don't cry at movies. I can sympathize but I don't usually empathize. Since I was a kid, I've cried at four movies: Life is Beautiful (which I kind of feel a little embarrassed to say now), the end of Miyazaki's Spirited Away, Julie Delpy's waltz in Before Sunset, and WALL-E. The first time I saw WALL-E, which I'm now sure is both Pixar's best film (which is saying a great deal) and one of the great animated films of all time, I teared up a little towards the end. The second time I saw it, I wept like a little girl through half of it. A good part of this is because I don't think I've connected with any character in any film the way I did with WALL-E. He's a bit of a collector, a movie geek, appreciates music, and he's in love with a workoholic and connects with her by making her laugh. I'm misting up just thinking about this movie. Pound for pound, WALL-E is a better film than Dark Knight but I have to take a point or two off for making me cry.



BIGGEST MINDFUCK OF 2008

Synecdoche, New York - The less I say about it, the better. It's something that you need to experience for yourself.


THE BEST THING I GOT FOR FREE IN 2008

The Slip by Nine Inch Nails - NIN's tightest album maybe ever and Trent decides to give it to us for free. Earlier in the year, he gave us Ghosts I-IV for $5, which was nothing to sneeze at, but Ghosts is more interesting because it's two hours of NIN instrumentals (NINstrumentals?) and it's easily dismissable as table scraps. The Slip is just a solid album from top to bottom, as I've already mentioned here, worth a full album price. But you can get it for free here.


BEST LIVE SHOW OF 2008

Saul Williams at Irving Plaza - In a perfect world, Saul Williams would be the biggest star on the planet. He's an intelligent, gifted poet and lyricist, and an unbelievably hypnotic and electric live performer. The fact that Saul is still in relative obscurity (Nike commercial notwithstanding) and Lil Wayne is nominated for a hundred Grammys is an embarrassment and doing a disservice to the future of American music.



MY THEME MUSIC FOR 2008

Dear Science by TV on the Radio - I have a softspot for black guys playing guitar. Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Eddie Hazel from Funkadelic, the guys in Living Colour, Fishbone, and Bad Brains, the list goes on; it just makes sense to me. I've always liked TV on the Radio ever since I heard their Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes album but for some reason, they never "clicked" for me until I heard Dear Science. If Saul Williams would be the biggest star in my perfect world, then these guys would be the Beatles. They've given me hope for indie rock in part because indie rock has become fucking BORING lately (Hey, I like Bright Eyes and Wilco almost as much as the next guy but there's more to music than mopey songs about smoking cigarettes, bad relationships and willful self-sabotage. Give me something new!) and in part because Bloc Party, whom I thought was going to be the band of the decade, has failed to deliver on the promise of their amazing debut, Silent Alarm, especially with this year's less-than-impressive Intimacy. Dear Science is the album of the year. According to my last.fm profile, I've played "DLZ" 32 times so there's the link for it.


BEST BACKGROUND MUSIC FOR 2008

The Odd Couple by Gnarls Barkley - Don't believe the anti-hype. It's a better album than the first one and "Who's Gonna Save My Soul?" is one of the better singles of the year.


THE THINGS THAT I LAUGHED HARDEST AT IN 2008

1) "That smelled just like bologna for some reason." - Lincoln Osiris (Kirk Lazarus [Robert Downey Jr.]), Tropic Thunder

2) The song that John C. Reilly sings about his balls to Will Ferrell in Step Brothers:



3) And this:



MOST SURPRISING THINGS OF 2008

1) Colin Farrell in In Bruges. How he wound up in this movie, I have no idea, but he turns out one of the best (and funniest) performances of the year, finally picking a good role and delivering on the promise of his performance in Minority Report.

2) New Amerykah Part One: Fourth World War by Erykah Badu - Erykah Badu, whom I've always admired more than liked, released a weird, radio-unfriendly concept album... and God bless her for it. It's weird, it's long, and it's really fucking good. Another couple of albums like this and she could be crowned the next George Clinton if she's not careful. For proof, here's the first track off the album: "Amerykahn Promise".


CRUSH OF 2008


I never thought anyone would replace Jordin Sparks. But then I started watching Mad Men and was winded by the stunningly gorgeous Joan Holloway, played by Christina Hendricks. I'm not going to lie: I get massive boy pains every time she glides into view. It's as if someone reached into my brain and pulled out my ideal woman - a tall, full-figured redhead with an attitude - and put her on TV. I'd feel wrong about admitting this if not for the fact that my wife fits the same criteria (except for the red hair... now) and has a massive girl-crush on her as well. In a world that increasingly fetishizes skinny waifs, it's refreshing to see the likes of her on television. If the producers of Mad Men are smart, they'll put her all over the ad campaign for Season 3; viewership will increase tenfold. I mean, Jesus, LOOK AT HER!


BEST BOOK I READ IN 2008

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 190 years after its publication and I'm finally getting around to reading it. This year, it was particularly difficult to get any time to read and so I think I only finished about 5 books that weren't graphic novels. I had to read Frankenstein for a class and I expected the Boris Karloff, bolts-in-the-neck, angry-townspeople-with-pitchforks-and-torches story. What I got was a rich, eloquent work with a story a hundred times more complex and interesting than the common conception of the monster, something much more in line with Blade Runner than the 1930s Universal films. It touches on human nature, on the moral, ethical and religious implications of scientific research and even has something to say about evolution a few decades before Darwin. Really stunning stuff for 1818 and when you take into account that Shelley was 19 when she wrote it, it becomes even more impressive. The book was so good, in fact, that I'm currently reading Shelley's 1824 novel The Last Man, which is considered to be the first science fiction novel as well as the first post-apocalyptic work.

MOST DISAPPOINTING FILM OF 2008

Burn After Reading - I had an ex-girlfriend who was fond of telling an unbelievably long joke involving a man's obsession with getting 17 green golf balls every year for Christmas and birthdays. She would tell the joke slowly, making it last longer than five to ten tedious minutes, sucking the listeners in to the point that they start to get restless because the punchline is nowhere in sight. Until it comes:

(paraphrasing) And so the man gets into a car crash and is taken to the hospital. His parents and his wife show up and the doctors tell them that he won't make it and to say their goodbyes now. So they go in to the room and he's got tubes sticking every which way and they tell him they love him and everything. And his father says, "I have to ask. Why did you want 17 green golf balls for gifts all these years?"

The man says, "Do you really want to know?"

His parents and wife say, "Yes."

The man says, "OK, I'll tell you. It's because... it's because..."

And then he died.

So the joke is ultimately on the listener purely for the teller's benefit. I was reminded of this joke once my blind rage cleared after seeing Burn After Reading because the only explanation for the film, knowing how talented everyone involved is, is that it was all intentionally horrible and that we're supposed to get some sort of pleasure (emotional or aesthetic) out of that intent. And the joke of how pointless it all is would have been funny if the whole movie that preceded it wasn't painfully unfunny. Some people are good sports when a practical joke is played on them; I'm not usually. So fuck this movie.

I get that contrarian aesthetics dictates that this is the Coens' funniest movie in an Andy Kaufman sort of way but that's just bullshit. Though I will buy that it's a Coen Brothers movie for people who don't like the Coen Brothers. The Coens have long been accused of having contempt for their characters and, occasionally, their audience. I've never seen evidence of either in any other film but this one more than makes up for it. The humor is genuinely lowbrow and not clever in the least, save for John Malkovich and JK Simmons. The mawkish gestures of George Clooney, Frances McDormand, and Brad Pitt (all of whom should know better) are more reminiscent of Mad TV than O Brother, Where Art Thou and the plot, while cleverly convoluted, is still more convoluted than it's worth. It's just an unpleasant film all around and no amount of justifying that the Coens intended it to be such will make it any good.

THE FLAT OUT WORST THING OF 2008 (besides the inexplicable success of Lil Wayne)

Tiro en la cabeza (Bullet in the Head) - Not to be confused with the John Woo film of the same name, this is a film from Spain that I caught at 2008's New York Film Festival. At first, I wrote it off as merely a misfire but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was a supremely pretentious turd. It's a 90 minute, largely silent film. Oh, there's dialogue in it but we only hear two lines of it ("Fucking cops! Fucking cops!") and that happens about an hour into the film. It's filmed as if the audience is keeping the main character under surveillance as we see him wait for five minutes for a train, or play with his kid in the park, or have sex with some woman after talking to her for a few minutes. Ultimately, it turns out that he's an ETA terrorist, he shoots two cops, jacks a woman's car, leaves her in the woods and that's it. I'm spoiling the big reveal but the problem with the film is that none of the action is worth not hearing the dialogue. I don't think it would even be that great of a film even if we could hear what they're saying. So the fact that the film is intentionally tedious until the last 20 minutes and director Jaime Rosales' decision to keep the dialogue from us is proof positive that he loves the smell of his own farts. At my NYFF screening, the end of the film was greeted by dead silence and then a single "BOO!" that erupted amidst the brief smattering of applause. It's just an ill-conceived film that makes the mistake of saying more about itself than about the message it's pretending to convey.



(Roughly, the trailer says that none of the footage in the trailer is from the film itself, further proof that the director is quite comfortable living with his head up his own ass.)

THE SINGLE BEST THING OF 2008

The Dark Knight - Unless one of the Oscar-baiters out now turns out to be one of the best films I've ever seen, The Dark Knight stands to be my favorite anything of the year in general. You've already seen it, so I don't need to explain. You either agree with me or there's something so wrong with your programming. I'm not a big comic book geek and I don't have any particular allegiance to superhero films. But I do know a good flick when I see one. It's dark, it's brutal, it's long, it's scary. In my estimation, it's perfect popcorn entertainment. Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger puts the boots medium-style to Tim Burton and Jack Nicholson respectively, not only redefining the Batman mythology but redefining what it is to redefine. If you take out the comic book elements, you'd still have a solid crime drama worthy of Scorsese. No other superhero film can make that claim. Minor issues notwithstanding (so, how exactly did the Joker and his gang escape from Bruce Wayne's penthouse anyway?), it's a tight story and one of the most ridiculously entertaining films I've ever seen, and I have no expectations that it will be topped anytime soon.


HONORABLE MENTIONS (in no order)

Iron Man
The Renaissance by Q-Tip
808s and Heartbreak by Kanye West
The Flight of the Red Balloon
Miles from India
Reprise
The Wrestler
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

New Year's Resolutions

So 2008 is finally over and I, for one, am all too glad to see it go. The economy went into the toilet, too many people I know lost loved ones this year, and there were a smattering of considerably less but nonetheless shitty things that happened throughout the year. Of all the people I know, I seem to be one of the more unscathed and that brings with it a sense of gratitude to the Cosmos but also a sense of fear that it's going to be my turn next. Nevertheless, I look forward to 2009 with a sense of optimism. We're getting a new president, and a possibly good Alan Moore film adaptation so there's a lot to look forward to.

Every year, I write down some resolutions and then I immediately throw them out because I know I'll never stick to them. This year is different. This year, I will guarantee that I will stick to them by making them so unbelievably easy that I won't even have to think about it.

- I've got to do more writing both here and elsewhere. My wife and I have a goal to make a couple of short films this year. Between the ideas we have as well as some our friends do, to say nothing of all the free time I'll have soon, we'll have plenty to work with. As Winston Zeddemore said, "We got the tools, and we got the talent."

- I will liveblog the Oscars better this year.

- I'm not going to have insane expectations for Obama's first term in office. I have no doubt that the country is going in a better direction having voted him in. But between all the pre-term stuff that's been going on and how everyone is starting to realize that he can't be all things to all people (and are getting unreasonably pissed off about it), it seems like no one is on his side anymore. I think we're going to have to wait and see but we have to give the guy a chance. Because really, consider the alternative (more on that later).

- I will catch up on the films I have yet to see on the long list for the Sight and Sound 2002 Poll. Out of the 885 films voted for, I've seen 205 at last count. Got to up that a little bit. Netflix Instant Viewing will help a great deal. Herzog marathon at my house!

- I will not replace every DVD I have with a Blu-Ray copy.

- I'm not going to go on movie message boards anymore. There's a lot of nice people on them and I get a lot of great suggestions for films but I need to focus my energies on writing. If I'm going to focus on writing, I can't spend time posting messages about why I think WALL-E is a better film than E.T., no matter how much I enjoy answering such queries.

- And most importantly, I will ignore the existence of Sarah Palin. Completely. Eternal Sunshine-style, she's going to be erased from my mind. I will not click on any articles about her (unless of course there is some threat to national security detailed therein). I will not read any articles or watch any television packages about her fucking horrifically named grandchild. I will not track down a copy of Nailin' Palin and watch it. I will not even engage my father-in-law, brother-in-law or anyone else in conversation about her and how painfully clear it was that she is unfit to run the United States of America; that her candidacy for Vice President was a tactic that backfired spectacularly; that if she was a pro-choice Democrat and Obama's VP pick, McCain/Romney would have won the election by as many votes as Obama/Biden won; and that we Matrix-dodged a giant bullet that would have meant certain doom for the human race. For me, the 2008 election was Obama/Biden vs. McCain/[insert image of glaucoma blindspot next to McCain]. So if you mention something to me about her, and I reply with, "Who is this Sarah Palin person? Is she on Gossip Girl or one of those shows I don't watch?", you'll understand why.

Happy New Year!

Zombie Apocalypse Watch - December 22, 2008

 

Far be it from me to condone anything that makes light of the zombie apocalypse - it is no laughing matter and certainly won't be to anyone who makes jokes about the prospect of friends and loved ones being eaten and turned - but occasionally some sobering truths can be extracted from the jest.

 

I happened upon an article on pinkraygun.com, for whom my friend Teresa writes Lost recaps, that caught my attention.  Teresa didn't write this particular article but it's worth reading nonetheless.  It's entitled: "10 Rules for Dating in the Zombie Apocalypse."  Like I said, I don't usually go for jokes in the face of certain doom, but it has a tone that reminds one to be on one's guardthere is plenty of practical information to be gleaned from this.

 

For example:

 

3. Carry a hammer - A hammer can be used as a building tool, a food preparation tool and a self-defense tool. It will be the new must-have accessory, so set yourself apart by bedazzling your hammer. A bedazzled hammer says "I'm practical and trendy!" Extra points for preparedness if you name your hammer. "Mjolnir" and "Smashy" are great names and show your date that you appreciate your hardware.

 

A hammer is quite helpful for the reasons listed above.  Granted, it isn't the ideal tool for close combat with a zombie and is almost useless if you are surrounded by them but its non-combat uses - like basic carpentry or breaking off locks to get to ammo, food, medicine, and/or shelter - and its portability make it a necessary tool to keep with you.

 

Also:

 

7. Don't talk too much - You'll only give away your hiding place and draw more zombies to your location.

 

What needs to be elaborated upon here?  Seriously.

 

And most importantly, the article ends on a down note, but one that you need to hear regardless (I have highlighted the key information below): 

 

10. Be kind to zombies - You don't want to thin out the zombie dating pool too much because one day, you'll be a zombie, too. You may miss out on "Mister Right," but you're almost guaranteed to find "Mr. Bite."

 

Obviously, the "be kind to zombies" part is a joke but it is something to keep in the back of your mind: one day, you'll be a zombie too.  Don't use it as an excuse to give up on life and accept your death as inevitable.  Use it as a tool to keep yourself going in the roughest of times.  If and when you are alone, having seen everyone you know die, remember that the zombies would love nothing more than to make you one as well.  Don't let them.  It is up to you and only you to live to fight another day.  You owe it to your friends and loved ones to stay alive.  They may be flesh-eating undead now (the ones you didn't dutifully kill, that is) but the living people they once were would be very happy to know that you survived.   Something to think about.

 

 

Zombie Apocalypse Watch will keep you in the know every Monday and Thursday until the zombie apocalypse.