Nooch

It will be my pleasure one day to point at her picture in a magazine or up on a billboard and say, “Nicole Antonuccio? I knew her back in the day in Pittsburgh. She was always great.” Nicole is one of those people who means what she says and delivers. She is a rarity, someone who dreams up big ideas and then actually pulls them off. I’m so proud of the work that Well Known Strangers has done on stage and I know a big part of the chemistry and camaraderie that exists is because Nicole got a little idea in her head for us to make a series of web videos. So we had a brainstorming session one afternoon. The group of us all sat around and bounced ideas back and forth. I tend to be a little cynical about these kind of things but Nicole addressed concerns and ideas and potential conflicts like a pro. Next thing I know, we’re having another meeting, building characters and creating scripts. Suddenly everyone is writing these scripts and these scripts are funny! Whoa, now we’re all in costume in Tessa’s boyfriend Alexei’s basement, filming these scripts. We have lights! Nicole is right there, directing us and acting and making our ideas a reality. Did I mention we were having a great time? We were! A damn blast.

A couple days pass and Nicole sends us some raw footage. “I’m so excited you guys that I cut this together really quick.” The footage is fantastic. All the while, our shows are getting better, we’re getting better. In mid December we submit Well Known Strangers to the Chicago Improv Festival and I have to admit I kinda forget about it. Jump ahead to a late evening/early morning at the beginning of February. I’m dealing with a finicky dog when my phone dings an email alert. Well Known Strangers has been accepted to the Chicago Improv Festival. I’m wide awake now. It’s happening. We’re really that good. Nicole starts releasing the videos, each better than the last. I realize that I’m not nervous about shows anymore. I trust these people. They trust me. They’re funny. They think I’m funny. And honestly, wouldn’t that be it for you? Your group is doing well, you cut some fine web videos, maybe time for a break? Not Nicole.

She sends an email out for some help developing another improv show. She’ll be playing a character and she wants help fleshing it out. I show up with Ben for a Friday(!) evening practice where we find Nicole and Connor ready to go with ideas. This is no idle thought. This is a real show. There is a plan and it is happening. A couple of weeks pass and I look on the Steel City Improv schedule to see the premiere of That’s What Jeanne Said, a live improvised talk show. Nicole took this idle idea and made it flesh and tangible and most importantly, it’s good. Better than good. Of course Nicole has produced sharp, funny web videos to promote this show too. Now it’s time to take a break? Nope no not at all. Nicole decides that Jeanne, in keeping with her character, an upstanding young lady looking to become a journalist and better her community, will take part in a half marathon to benefit Girls On The Run. Running a marathon in character, that is the Nicole Antonuccio dedication. During all this, inevitably really, Well Known Strangers wins Group of the Year at the SCIT Awards and Nicole is honored as Female Improviser of the Year, because real recognize real. This is the long way of saying that Nicole deserves it all and more because she puts in that work. This Friday April 12th she is presenting a special show of That’s What Jeanne Said that will benefit Girls On The Run and like everything else that Nicole is involved with, it will be great. You should go. 10pm. 5950 Ellsworth. Say you knew her when.

 

The Best Music of 2012. Sorry for the lateness. (I’m not sorry)

I have been messing with this list for so long that I almost let 2013 pass me by. 2012 was good. I saw The Afghan Whigs live. I started doing improv which has completely changed my life for the better. I celebrated a year of marriage to the love of my life. THE RAID: REDEMPTION came out. Banner year all around. Let’s get to the tunes!

25. Rufus Wainwright – Out of the Game
I’m not a hardcore Wainwright fan. I like his upbeat stuff more than his ballads, I don’t have any interest in his reenactments of Judy Garland concerts. His last album was horribly self indulgent but this Mark Ronson produced record is Rufus taking the hint to have fun, be loose, and sing songs about Rashida Jones. I’m at the point in my life where the artists who once sang of wild nights and hedonism now sing songs about island vacations with their husband and kids. That album title is heavy.

24. 2 Chainz - Based on a T.R.U. Story
I think we all inflated our expectations for this album. 2 Chainz was murdering guest appearances all over the place, being the best part of every song he popped up on. A whole album of 2 Chainz? Yes please. The highlights tend to be the guests like Drake on “No Lie” and Kanye West on “Birthday Song” but 2 Chainz has charisma and a knack with hooks so you have a pretty fun ride. Delete the Mike Posner track on sight.

23. Blinker The Star – We Draw Lines
90’s could-have-been drops a sleeper. Is this alt or indie? We Draw Lines is super hooky and well produced, which I guess means it isn’t indie. With so many 90’s groups returning with absurd twists on old sounds and songs, Blinker The Star came out with just great tracks that manage the trick if being reminiscent of the old sound without being derivative.

22. Usher – Looking 4 Myself
“Climax” is great and we should be happy just to have that. That the rest of Looking 4 Myself turned out as well as it did is kind of a miracle. Usher doesn’t strike me as the best barometer of taste, and I still recall how bad “Love In This Club” and “Moving Mountains” were, so the style experiments that work on this are nice surprises. The two Swedish House Mafia tracks aren’t mindless EDM like “O.M.G.” and most of the lyrics on the album are introspective in ways I never would have predicted. “What Happened To You” is a particular higlight in this regard. At the same time, the sexual confidence of Usher is largely unfettered and very hilarious. I think we’re like one album away from a song that will have the subtext of “I sexed her so hard she died. My bad.” Can you keep up with Usher sexually? He is doubtful.

21. R. Kelly – Write Me Back
Dude can’t stop. Write Me Back falls right in line with 2010’s Love Letter. Good to great throughout, with the exception of two songs that you can delete from your iPhone like I did. “Feelin’ Single” is one of the greatest songs R has ever written, and “Share My Love” endorses impregnating as many people as possible. See you in July, Robert!

20. A-Trak – Tuna Melt EP
Four bangers and then he steps back to let you collect yourself. A-Trak is one of those “genius takes hours of practice” kind of guys and his time and effort shows on this pretty flawless little EP. I think this bodes well for the years of classic bangers to come.

19. Gucci Mane – Trap God
Gucci Mane also dropped Trap Back last year but Trap God  is just a little bit better. I’ve finally come around on Gucci’s mush mouth style and I like it quite a bit. Of course it’s best when coupled with someone frenetic like Waka Flocka Flame, who elevates a track like “Rollies Up” to classic status. Also, do you guys know how much a rolex watch costs? A lot! Having multiple rolexes seems financially irresponsible. Plus who owns a watch nowadays? The time is on your phone, Gucci!

18. Katy B – Danger EP
It only took a year and change for all the dubstep people to switch up their style to actual danceable EDM and what a joy it is to behold. Apparently just a teaser EP for an upcoming full length, B sets the bar high. Even the ballad is good. True story, I listened to “Aaliyah” four times the first day I heard it.

17. Waka Flocka Flame – Triple F Life: Friends, Fans & Family                          

 It is tough to follow a classic. That’s right, Flockaveli is a classic. Deal with it. Triple F can only pale in comparison but Waka still brought the heat. “Lurkin” is an instant classic and “Candy Paint and Gold Teeth” is laidback fun. “Rooster In My Rari” is the kind of crazy fierciness I expect from Waka out the gate. I’m not entirely on top of the vernacular but I’m pretty sure “Rooster” is about getting head a in Ferrari. I COULD BE WRONG.

16. G.O.O.D. Music – Cruel Summer
Hey, I know there are a couple crap songs on this, but it also has “To The World”, “Clique”, “Mercy” and “New God Flow” right in a row at the beginning. And that Cudi song ain’t bad either. “Cold” is fire. Every Kanye verse is a career highlight. This thing is great! Great! (I deleted “Sin City” off my iPhone long ago)

15. Skrillex – Bangarang
I don’t think I’ve come around on dubstep so much as the artists who know what they are doing have managed to make dubstep’s more abrasive elements more fun and listenable. So Bangarang is just uptempo bangers, with very little of that that slowed down drop garage that was the Skrillex calling card on previous releases.

14. TNGHT – TNGHT
Someone somewhere pointed out that this album is just trap beat instrumentals. Good description, person I can’t give proper attribution. Every beat knocks, 16 car shaking minutes.

13. The Presets – Pacifica
This is actually a heck of a lot like the last album by The Presets, Apocalypso. Best tracks are in the middle, kind meanders at the end, fun experiments all around. They do seem more earnest now. Hey, we all get older. It’s fine. “Fall” and “Promises” are dance songs with real emotion within them.

12. Gossip - A Joyful Noise
This is the best Gossip album, full stop, no debate. Total dance party, great production, and Beth Ditto sounds amazing. Worst album art of the year though.

11. Japandroids - Celebration Rock
This album took me a couple months to really start digging. These guys rock faces and do that “Whoa oh!” singing that is a lot of fun to sing along with in the car. “Continuous Thunder” is a great closing track which is saying something since most rock album closing tracks are total bummers. You know who knew how to close an album? Rage Against The Machine. The last song on their first album is “Freedom”, which is a balls out classic. End with a classic. Make me happy I stuck around til the end.

10. Death Grips – The Money Store
I’m not going to lie to you, some of this album is terrible. But it is mostly awesome. The drums and the synths will suddenly merge out of their isolated chaos and sync up into a joyous union of laser anger. That is a pretty accurate way to describe “Hustle Bones”. The guy can’t really rap and the lyrics make no sense but it all comes together on “Hacker”, which goes all disco ball synths out of nowhere and reminds us that angry punks still like to kiss girls.

9. Vitalic – Rave Age
Vitalic drops some hall of fame bangers on this one. “No More Sleep”, “Stamina”, “Next I’m Ready”, all monsters. No one has dropped an all banger, all monster tracks dance record since the duel headed releases of MSTRKRFT’s Fist of God and The Bloody Beetroot’s Romborama in 2009 but this comes pretty close.

8. Future - Pluto/Pluto 3D
You can listen to either version of this album, I’ve just been listening to the 3D release because it has the “Same Damn Time” remix on it and Diddy’s verse is amazing. Also I think having “You Deserve It” as the first actual song is a better look. Future is a hook machine and all of his tracks are hits or hits to be. Like Waka, he knows how to make his guests shine, like T.I. on “Magic” and especially R. Kelly on “Parachute”, where Robert basically hijacks the album to tell all his haters that he is back and better than ever. Truth.

7. DMX – Undisputed
Got intensely into DMX in 2012. It started when i caught his appearance in the concert film Backstage where he suffers no fools, leaves it upon his wife to properly greet Chuck D and answers Chuck’s question about the tour experience saying that every moment not spent on stage is pure misery. Then I watched DMX in Belly and my mind was blown. This guy is too real. I believe everything he says. It isn’t always nice(it is never nice) and it is frequently ugly and it is riveting. DMX is an amazingly consistent artist. His discography is largely dud free and his previous two albums have an incredibly high ratio of bangers to not-bangers and while Undisputed is more 50/50 bangers to not-bangers, X stays X. He’s passionate, he’s angry, and he has a great ear for beats. Swizz Beatz stays DMX’s greatest collaborator. “Y’all Don’t Really Know” is an insta-classic X/Swizz collaboration.

6. Hot Chip -In Our Heads
Such beautiful songs. Hot Chip at their most sincere, at least to me. I haven’t watched any of the videos off this album but all the videos for their previous albums seemed to undercut the emotional sincereity of the songs, like Hot Chip were worried about being too real. These songs sound like they come from a pure place, like they’re talking and “it’s just me and you”. (h/t Kanye) Closing with the one-two punch of “Let Me Be Him” and “Always Been Your Love” is an emotional wallop.

5. Torche – Harmonicraft
It’s all about the tones, man. I don’t know how to play guitar so I don’t know if they’re tapping, plucking, or flicking the strings with a guitar pick but it sounds majestic. And powerful. And delivered with a brevity unseen in metal. Next song! Next Song! Is this metal? It seems too poppy and clean, yet it roars. I’ll leave that for someone else to worry about.

4. Carly Rae Jepsen – Kiss (Deluxe Version)
I still don’t care for “Call Me Maybe” and that horrid song with the Owl City guy but just about everything else here is fantastic. A couple club bangers(“Tonight I’m Getting Over You”, “Wrong Feels So Right”), great pop tracks(“This Kiss”, “Hurt So Good”, basically every other song) and nearly every single one is about forbidden love or risky romance. I think at least a quarter of these songs are about the queasy feeling you get when you first develop feelings for someone, and the rest are either about hooking up with someone even though Jepsen’s character is involved with someone else, or in the case of “Tonight”, dancing away the pain of a breakup. All produced to glistening perfection. Shit’s great. I also deleted all the ballads long ago. We are truly in the future.

3. Deftones – Koi No Yokan
Is this the best Deftones album? Maybe. These guys just keep getting better and Koi No Yokan hits all the sweet spots and never falters. This is easily the best collection of Deftones midtempo slow burn ballad monsters that they’ve been trying to perfect since the self titled album in ‘03. If “Entombed” doesn’t become a metalhead wedding staple I will be very surprised. It still has plenty of blazing riffs but it’s pretty great to hear these gorgeous ballads, with Stephen Carpenter’s guitar just wailing into (what I imagine is) the night sky.

2. Killer Mike – R.A.P. Music
“Oh!”
“Whoa!”
“Oh man!”
“This album ain’t kidding around.”
“Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!?”
“C’mon, that isn’t fair.”
“…..shit.”
- Me listening to this album the first time.
My reactions haven’t changed. Killer Mike and producer El-P go hard for the entire running time, with Mike covering Reagan’s poisonous legacy and telling enjoy stories about Jojo’s conversations with a phantom Ghostface. El-P’s beats are across the board hall of fame shit and “Big Beast” is the kind of monster track that is so perfectly constructed and powerful with two great guest spots from T.I. and Bun B that continues their tradition of being better on other people’s records than on their own.

1. Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream
Kaleidoscope Dream is the best album of 2012 because it is infused with joy and ingenuity. Miguel is locked in to what he wants his music to sound like and he doesn’t chase any trends, he is undeniably himself. The production is lush and expansive but the focus is always on Miguel’s voice and his lyrics, which are really good. I love The-Dream but the guy traffics in a kind of smart-dumb style, same with R. Kelly at times. Miguel writes himself characters and scenarios that are interesting and funny and sad. “Pussy Is Mine” manages to sound like the deepest lark ever made. “Oh, I was just messing around in the studio on this heartfelt paeon to a woman who I think is going to leave me. No biggie.” Anyone else get goosebumps from the first 30 seconds of “Don’t Look Back”?

Best songs of 2012

1. “New God Flow” – Kanye West, Pusha-T, Ghostface Killah
2. “This Kiss” – Carly Rae Jepsen
3. “Feeling Single” – R.Kelly
4. “Sweet Life” – Frank Ocean
5. “My Life” – Rich Kidz feat. Waka Flocka Flame
6. “Big Beast” – Killer Mike feat. Bun B, T.I. and Trouble
7. “Climax” – Usher
8. “I’ve Seen Footage” – Death Grips
9. “Don’t Look Back” – Miguel
10. “Aaliyah” – Katy B x Geeneus x Jessie Ware
11. “No More Sleep” – Vitalic
12. “Birthday Song” – 2 Chainz feat. Kanye West
13. “Lurkin” – Waka Flocka Flame feat. Plies
14. “The House That Heaven Built” -Japandroids
15. “Snakes Are Charmed” – Torche
16. “Hacker” – Death Grips
17. “Bad Girls” – M.I.A.
18. “Bangarang” – Skrillex feat. Sirah
19. “Fuckin’ Problems” – A$AP Rocky, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz
20. “Hot Cheetos & Takis” – Y.N. RichKids

Cloud Atlas

The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer go hard. They also treat the audience like intelligent adults, which didn’t get them much money back but that happens. Cloud Atlas is remarkable in that they got it made at all and with this cast. Hugh Grant as a face painted murderous cannibal? Hugo Weaving as Nurse Rachet? That alone is worth the price of admission.

Cloud Atlas isn’t afraid to hit the audience in the head with it’s messages and that is fine, just fine. The filmmakers also wanted to do everything in this movie and lord do they. Probably the only movie ever made with a daring escape from an old folks home cross cut with a high speed aerial race through holographic roadways of a futuristic Asia. It’s like no one ever said no to any idea but most of the ideas were good anyway so it worked out. When I was in college I used to find movies all the time from Japan, Korea and France that would push the envelope of content and form and I would lament that American filmmakers never came close to that level of audacity and creativity. Based on the grosses of films like Cloud Atlas and Scott Pilgrim vs The World, American audiences don’t want daring. It is still nice to see someone try every couple years. Darren Aronofsky went buck wild with The Fountain, which flopped, but was able to recover and become an Oscar guy while still going hard(Black Swan is hot fire)(y’know what The Fountain is hot fire too) so I can only hope that the Wachowskis don’t lose their nerve and make something boring. I have gone on record as not enjoying Speed Racer but they clearly weren’t taking notes from anybody on that one either.

But Cloud Atlas is a winner because it has ideas and characters and momentum. All six of the intertwined stories are interesting and compelling in different ways while still contributing to the thematic whole of the film. And the really crazy thing is that everyone is relatable and sketched out, whether they’re a worker clone, a gay prostitute/composer, or a post apocalyptic tribesman. All human experience is relatable, and the basic human need for freedom and the search for ideas is always a great framework for a story. Or six stories at that.

Y’know who is great in this movie? Halle Berry. No shit. I know she has an Oscar but man have I sat through some Halle Berry shit shows in my time. Some how, Big T and The Ws managed to pull some fine work from Ms. Berry, be it as an intrepid reporter or as a white Jewish woman. Tom Hanks is kinda hit and miss, but he is very, very good as Zachry, the post apocalyptic tribe guy who is constantly haunted by a top hatted Hugo Weaving hallucination. Classic Hanks. Classic Weaving.

The makeup in Cloud Atlas is frankly bananas. The movies have not yet figured out old age makeup so that means that we have to endure a couple scenes where Hugh Grant is playing a melted candle. Hugo Weaving goes through the most transformations, playing a large breasted female nurse, an asian guy,  a sideburned assassin, the aforementioned top hatted, green skinned ghoul, and a rotted nose slave owner. The yellow face that Weaving wears along with several other non-asian actors is inevitably distracting and yeah, kinda racist and ignorant. I think the Wachowskis and Tykwer were trying to be post racial and work out their ideas about universal people and that we are all one in a continuous loop of life but ehhh, that shit is still kinda racist. I mean, Tom Hanks didn’t play a black guy at any point, yknowwhatImean?

But better we reach for the stars then never try at all, right? Right. Cloud Atlas is literally about trying when it seems like a bad idea/wrong idea/worst idea and just living(or dying) with the consequences.

Hard Boiled

I cannot believe it took me ten years to rewatch Hard Boiled. I have certainly spent the last ten years enthusiastically telling people how great it is and they need to watch it but what I really should have been doing is forcing those people to watch Hard Boiled right at the moment I thought to recommend it. C’mon, like what they were doing was better than this movie? Fat chance. Of course it may not have been physically possible to watch Hard Boiled at that exact moment (wedding, in a bar, at a house party, between acts at a music festival) but sometimes sacrifices have to be made and if you are going to do any sacrificing do it at the altar of John Woo’s Hard Boiled.

Watching Hard Boiled ten years ago, I recall screaming a lot, a hallmark of many a great action film. Not screams of fear but that of joyous “That happened and I thought something like that could never happen and now I’m a better person” kind of scream. HB is chockablock with screamy moments, like when Chow Yun Fat slides down a railing firing two guns at the same time. Or when Tony Leung pops out a boat and smokes a guy like an armed jack in a box.

I couldn’t recall the plot of Hard Boiled and was surprised to see it used the old undercover-cop-wants-to-get-out-before-he-is-in-too-deep bit. That it also incorporates the cop-on-the-edge-turn-in-your-badge bit as well means that there is little room for anything but badass badassness. Chow Yun Fat’s cop on the edge is named Tequila and he likes to rappel into chop shop warehouses and have insane gun battles. He also likes to play clarinet and he can chew a toothpick and smoke a cigerette at the same time. Tony Leung’s undercover cop is named Alan(!) and he tends to look more concerned about the crazy things Tequila drags him into. Tequila thinks Alan needs to relax and realize that “Life should be fun”. Right after he says this they slide out of some mortuary freezers and mow down a whole room of bad guys. Fun!

I completely forgot about that character of Mad Dog. Portrayed by Philip Kwok, Mad Dog comes from a long line of quiet badass bad guys. He doesn’t say much but he certainly knows how to blow up a trailer with grenade, barrelroll past the explosion and gun down the guys coming to see what the commotion is all about. Slick. Kwok looked familiar to me and I was not at all surprised to see that right before filming Hard Boiled he had worked on Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky. Two classics! He also featured in a movie called The Sword Stained with Royal Blood. I cannot vouch for the quality but that title is A plus. Mad Dog has some cool honor codes, like when he disagrees with the murder of an entire hospital and puts down his gun so that some patients can leave the room that his gunfight has stumbled upon. Mad Dog is a bad guy, not a monster.

Not a monster

Now Johnny Wong, that guy is a fucking animal. So Chow Yun Fat pops him in the eye.

Can I tell you about my favorite part of Hard Boiled? I mean, besides all the other parts I’ve mentioned above. It happens right after the shootout at Alan’s houseboat. Alan is suffering from a shotgun blast to the back and Tequila has just helped him kill a shit load of bad guys. What is that? Oh no, Johnny Wong is en route to the dock and if he sees Alan with Tequila then the jig will be up! Tequila says,”I gotta get out of here. I’ll see you soon,” turns around and dives right into the water, clothes and all. I cannot express how both hilarious and awesome this moment is. Also, practical.

Hard Boiled is still the gold standard for action movies. Vern called it “Die Hard times ten“. I think it might be Die Hard times 20. Maybe even 30. Did I mention that periodically throughout Hard Boiled Tequila will go to a bar and get advice from John Woo? Yes, it is true. And it tends to be pretty good advice too. More directors should do this. I would have liked seeing Tom Cruise get help from Spielberg during Minority Report.

“So the movie is going good.” “Yeah, real good.”

On watching Game of Thrones

I did not watch Game of Thrones when it first aired because people couldn’t stop talking about how hard it would be to follow. The A.V. Club started posting two reviews of each episode, one for “newbies” and one for “experts”. Online discussion would run deep as people would pick and prod the show and it’s loyalty and/or defiance of the text. In short, the internet made Game of Thrones sound like a pain in the ass to watch. “I’ve read the book so I get it” is pretty much the worst endorsement a person can give an adapted work. If it can’t stand on it’s own without additional works outside of it’s medium propping it up, fucking throw it away. Imagine my delight and surprise when I finally watched the first episode of Game of Thrones and I Fucking Loved It.

All the worry in my face and the tension in my hands relaxed as the characters lived. They spoke to each other like human beings and were relatable too! I realized that the “experts” and hard core Game of Thrones Heads(let’s call them Throners) didn’t really want people to get into their favorite series of books. Because then they’d have to share it with the rest of the world that they hate and seal themselves off from with walls behind shelves stacked with books like Game of Thrones. Well sorry, Throners.(Not sorry.)

For a so-called hard to follow show Game of Thrones is much easier to parse than say, the first couple episodes of The Wire. If you don’t quite know who someone is on Game eventually they’ll say something and clear up any confusion but you’ll have to wait. Until then, enjoy the ambience and the ownage. To steal from Zodiac Motherfucker, I have also taken to calling Game of Thrones “Game of Owns” on twitter and it’s an apt name. Game of Thrones is heavy on the ownage. At one point a guy cuts off the head of a horse. His own horse! And that wasn’t even the craziest part of that episode.

I didn’t expect to find such relatable and interesting characters on a show like Game of Thrones. I thought they’d be a bunch of ninnies speaking Olde English and having proper rows along with tepid sword fights and laughable infidelities. INSTEAD, incest, horse decapitation, and paralyzed children. Everyone is so funny on this show. The King walks around being a hilarious asshole and having chuckle sessions with his adulterous wife about how awful their relationship is but what are you gonna do besides get drunk, amirite? These people fucking living in this crazy universe. They live there, and familiarity breeds contempt so they’re going to be jokey and spry and funny. But no one is trying to be cute so it never turns into an awkward Whedon situation. You know what I mean.

My point is that I didn’t think I would like this show but it turned out that I think it is great. Shout it from the mountains.

In the first episode everybody got a dog! Seriously!

Conan the Barbarian (2011) is terrible.

I think a barbarian, by name alone, should not be cuddly and appealing. They should project menace and fear. When someone is called “barbaric”, it isn’t because they are kinda snide and smirky. In the second decade of the new millenium, Conan the Barbarian is hardly uncivilized and surprisingly philanthropic. Quick with a smile, the 2011 Conan likes to party, kiss pretty girls, and have romance novel sex scenes with them.Your mother might call this film “cute”.

Conan the Barbarian 2011 doesn’t start out so cute and cuddly, no sir. The first half hour gives us a heaping of back story and mythology(someone had a mask, they broke it, now Stephen Lang wants to put it back together and Rock That Shit), baby Conan is introduced in utero, dodging a sword put through his mother’s womb. Conan’s father is Ron Perlman, which is the kind of casting that I imagine was done without an audition.

Exec 1: “Who you like for Conan’s dad?”

Exec 2: “Fucking Hellboy, son.”

Ron Perlman raises Conan to understand how to make a sword and Young Conan proves his worth by murdering a bunch of guys and bringing their heads back to camp like it ain’t no thang.

No thang.

Not soon after, Stephen Lang shows up looking for that damn mask, murders everybody, melts Ron Perlman with molten steel and makes Young Conan watch. Harsh. CONAN SWEARS VENGEANCE!

Well, not really. Conan grows up to be a bro. He hangs out with his friends, they break up slave rings and when the slaves(who are predominately topless women) ask what they should do next, Conan shoots his pal the side eye and we smash cut to a PARTAYYYY!!!! Beers and arm wrestling matches, Conan has the hottest slave girl and his buddy has the 2nd hottest and I’m surprised that Conan has grown up so well adjusted.

Bros

The plot does catch up with Conan and before long he is having a violent meet cute with Rachel Nichols where they make jokes about each other’s names and engage in flirtatious banter. They also take part in a stagecoach chase that was done better in Your Highness. These two goofballs end up having a harlequin novel sex scene, complete with body doubles. The next morning Conan sleeps in(such a guy, right ladies?) while Rachel Nichols goes off to be captured and move this gosh darn plot along. Before you know it, Conan is fighting snake creatures and chopping off Rose McGowan’s hand.

The largest failing is a script that desperately hits all the typical notes combined with players directed to not really give a shit. Even Stephen Lang, an expert in scenery chewing, is rather blase in his performance. Aim for the sky, you guys. Conan is a damn barbarian. It’s in the title! You can’t miss it. What’s he doing high fiving people and making jokes? Conan doesn’t understand jokes. If you play a joke on him, he rips off your arm. Conan 2011 wants to sleep in, hang out at the quad and kick the old sack around.

Things I liked in Conan the Barbarian(2011):

• Squib work is off the charts. Blood spurts out of papercuts, yo!
• Conan hits a horse in the face with giant chain, in slow motion.

Holla.

Haywire

Get it, girl.

Steven Soderbergh has a reputation for good work because he only does things that interest him. He didn’t make Ocean’s Eleven because he wanted to make a bunch of money, he made it because he knew he could make a good movie. All of his projects come from a place of “This could be interesting, this could be good.” Does he always succeed? No. He is only human, like you and I, but I can not discount his intent. When it came time for Soderbergh to make an action movie he sought out an actress who could actually accomplish the feats all action movies require and we are all the better for it.

Haywire has been described as a Steven Seagal movie with a female lead. I don’t think everyone has used this comparison in a positive manner. Anyone who has taken time to watch the early theatrical Seagal films knows that those films rule and that Seagal, for a time, was unmatched. Is Steven Seagal a good actor? No, because he has no interest playing anyone but Steven Seagal. If Gina Carano spends the rest of her career playing variations on Gina Carano, a woman who kills people with her thighs, we as society should be so lucky.

The plot of Haywire is classic and simple. Carano has been betrayed by those she trusted and she has to beat and bludgeon her way to the truth. Written by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote The Limey, Haywire‘s story is told in a non-linear fashion which allows the film to start off with a bang and then double back to explain just how Carano found herself beating up Channing Tatum in a diner.

I love the way Soderbergh shoots his action so that it is clear and easy to follow. That last sentence is insane but the last ten years of action movies have made it so. Gina Carano can do all this running and kicking and punching so why hide it? Show your skills to world, make them jealous. Maybe that’s why audiences have come to accept the cut/cut/cut editing style; it let’s them know that what they are seeing isn’t real, Matt Damon can’t really kill a guy with a rolled up Time magazine and neither can they and that is Ok. Well America, Gina Carano can actually chase a man down, run up a wall and crush him with her leg muscles. Deal With It. Since Haywire has acquired a Cinemascore of D+ I can only imagine that audiences left the film feeling lazy and insignificant. If a film makes you reassess your life I think it has done something right.

Is Haywire Steven Soderbergh’s best film? No, but it isn’t a trifle either. Soderbergh’s career is a testament to stretching yourself, trying new things, and being daring. Dude made a 4 hour Che Guevera biopic AND an experimental art film with a porn star. And he still hasn’t made a fucking 3-D movie. BOW DOWN.

Moneyball

With all the new free time I have acquired I am catching up on comics unread and movies unwatched. I have watched some duds, a masterpiece, and a one “Yeah that’s fine but Best Picture? C’mon”. That title belongs to mulitple Oscar nominee Moneyball.

I approach Moneyball as a devout hater of baseball since it is obviously the most boring sport in the world. I have no affection for sports in general but baseball is seriously the most boring shit to watch and play. Most sports have a one or the other thing going on. Soccer is a sweat storm. Football cripples people. Tennis is a full body workout with the added threat of mental breakdown. Have you read David Foster Wallace’s piece on tennis? It’s great, and that is coming from a guy who does not give a shit about tennis. I have friends that love baseball and have dragged me to baseball games and attempted to explain the game, the history and legacy of the players and I can’t bring myself to care. I can appreciate that they care and when I took a tour of the Seattle Mariner’s stadium while on vacation I was moved by the tour guide’s emotional recounting of a historic moment that took place at the field. I did not care about the event but I cared that he cared. With all of this baggage I still decided to watch Moneyball.

The gist of Moneyball is that teams with piles of money can buy the good players and teams with less money are stuck with the dregs of society. Brad Pitt’s Billy Beale teams up with Jonah Hill to fight against this terrible system. Jonah Hill has a couple scenes where he sorta kinda explains what his system is but the film isn’t really that interested in how the system works so I had to just go with the flow. The script is by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin but it never buzzes to life. Brad Pitt is fine but unremarkable and Jonah Hill is even less remarkable which got him an Oscar nomination because the Academy will only recognize comedic actors when they learn to stop making fools of themselves and learn that life isn’t just about having a good time. They have to stop making movies full of dick jokes and star in a respectable movie about men and baseball.

There is a really strange scene early on where Brad Pitt goes to pick up his plot contrivance-I mean daughter from ex-wife Robin Wright. Like all movie ex-wives she has taken up with a man who is nothing at all like the hero; in this case a weenie guy who knows nothing about baseball, portrayed by Spike Jonze. I assume the scene is there to let us know that Billy Beane was too much of a man for this woman who requires a nebbish who probably just reads and exercises by going for walks. HE CAN’T EVEN PRONOUNCE THE PLAYER’S NAMES! GOSH!

There are a couple scenes where Beane calls up other team managers and trades players. These scenes have a playful tone but since I never really understood why anyone was doing anything for any reason beyond the fact that the movie has let me know that Billy Beane is a good guy and all the old people are bad guys it all just plays as bouncy rhythms. That was an Up scene. Oh, this a Down scene. And so on and so forth. Would I be wrong in thinking that Zaillian’s austure epic style watered down Sorkin’s punch-punch-punch style? I’m just saying, Aaron Sorkin wrote a very entertaining tv show based entirely at an ESPN knockoff and a very entertaining movie about Facebook. Is baseball that hard to dramatize? Probably. There are a couple moments where Beane explains to Hill’s Peter Brand that he has to learn how to tell players they have been cut from the roster or traded. Hill is apprehensive but he eventually does tell a player they have been traded and everything goes fine and what was the point of that? “In this scene everyone acts like an adult.” Thrills!

Steven Soderbergh had been developing the film with a greater focus on the statistical elements of the source material, but had the film cancelled out from under him which allowed him to making the awesome Haywire so all is well that ends well, right? I don’t know if a all statistics take on this subject would make for a better movie but it certainly would have been less muddled. Since Moneyball isn’t that interested in the stats or the game itself both get a short shrift over Brad Pitt’s angsty sojourns. How much of Moneyball is just Brad Pitt sitting around, mulling shit over? We even get a long take of him pulling off the expressway to turn his car around. It’s a long take. I am not exaggerating. The film takes time early on to introduce various players, coaches and managers played by Chris Pratt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. These characters do nothing except have short terse conversations that have no payoff. Hoffman’s story arc is essentially sad, pissed, smiling. In other words, a waste of time for one of our greatest actors. Pratt is introduced as catcher who can’t catch who is made into a first baseman but then hits a winning home run so ok? Quite an arc you’ve created there.

Moneyball ends with sigh as we learn that other teams have utilized Beane’s statistical strategy to great success, except for Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s. So does Moneyball really work? Maybe, sorta, a little, not really, yes and no. Ultimately, it’s sports so it doesn’t matter anyway.

The Best Albums of 2011: A list

Do you need an introduction? Well, I liked all these albums.

20) Patrick Stump – Soul Punk

Fall Out Boy stan for lyfe. Stump has his Timberlake moment and he nails it. The lyrics are cheesy but that’s because he has no time for winks and artifice. Dude wants to dance, girl.

19) Wild Flag – Wild Flag

Carrie wanted to rock again so she assembled a wrecking crew and done wrecked some shit.

18) Spank Rock – Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is a Fucking Liar

Spank Rock has important things to say and ideas to relate but thankfully he still makes booty jams. Go with what you know.

17) Foo Fighters – Wasting Light

In the Foo Fighter’s documentary Back and Forth, Dave Grohl points out that it was miraculous that There Is Nothing Left To Lose won a Grammy and it was recorded in his basement. He was equally incredulous when Wasting Light was nominated this year since it was recorded on tape in his garage. For his next one he should put Butch Vig in his pantry and Pat Smear in the laundry room.

16) Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire – Lost In Translation

A really good rapper who loves to rap about being under appreciated and getting head. Well, someone appreciates you, eXquire.

15) Beyoncé - 4 (Deluxe Edition)

The regular version is fine but you need the deluxe version for the song where she convinces her companion (Hov one presumes) to stay home from the club and makes the point that if he stays home he gets to have sex with Beyoncé. Well played, B.

14) Rival Schools – Pedals

Walter still sounds tougher than he looks and Ian is still a casual guitar god.

13) Justice – Audio, Video, Disco

In a way, Justice are taking a piss. But their interviews are so sincere and they say things like “My favorite book is the Bible” and aren’t kidding. They already did their half ass version of Don’t Look Back and now they’re doing a variation on Boston, except their spaceship crashed.

12) Cut Copy – Zonoscope

Divisive, this one. If In Ghost Colours cured cancer than this one took care of scoliosis.

11) Limp Bizkit – Gold Cobra

Wes Borland saved up all his best riffs and didn’t even use them in his own fucking band. It’s like he knew one day he’d want to put on the ol’ body paint and play “Break Stuff” for the millionth time. Fred Durst is now full on hilarious and lacking in apparently any self awareness, naming a song “Douchebag” and taking it’s chorus to homoerotic realms previously unexplored. He also refers to himself by the name “Polar Bear”, as his rhymes are indicative to the native climate of Siberia.

10) DJ Quik – The Book of David

DJ Quik is the kind of guy who will brag about things that no one else brags or even necessarily cares about. But that’s because Quik only deals in tangibles. He really does play piano, write his own rhymes, and once pistol whipped his sister for black mailing him. Also he still has all of his hair.

9) The Rapture – In The Grace Of Your Love

Jesus saves? Alright, just this once. Seeing as you brought all these jams with you.

8) Win Win – Win Win

Banger city, population: these guys. The Glenn Beck parody is on point too and I don’t generally fux with skits.

7) Das Racist – Relax

They’re still funny but most importantly the beats are fire. I’m not mad they put ”Rainbow In The Dark” on it since “Rainbow In The Dark” rules so who gets mad when a good song comes on? Not me, that’s for sure.

6) SebastiAn – Total

SebastiAn took his time putting out his debut album, some might say past the sell by date of this particular sound and style of music, in this case ’07 era blog house filter disco. But that stuff is great! And unlike dubstep you can dance to it. Everybody still likes to dance, right?

5) Lady Gaga – Born This Way

What a thrill to have Lady Gaga finally take her philosophy to making music videos and applying it to her music. That philosophy of course is more, more, more, steal, steal, steal. Love it. Her videos are still shit though.

4) Fred Falke – Part IV

Daft Punk make boring soundtracks now and Mylo won’t come out of his house except to yell at Kylie Minogue so Fred Falke rolled up his sleeves and did the hard work for them. I don’t want to say Fred’s a genius or anything but this thing is front to back bangers so maybe he is. Have him take a test and get back to me.

3) Sloan – The Double Cross

Sloan are great. They made another great album. They’ve taken Diddy’s words to heart.

2) Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne

The first time I listened to this album I thought it was good. Then I listened to it again and I thought it was still good but maybe had some other issues. I went back a third time to check out those issues but also to listen to the three song stretch of “Niggas In Paris”, “Otis”, and “Gotta Have It” which is the best 9 minute stretch of any album this year. I went back a fourth time and really started to enjoy the new lyrics on “That’s My Bitch”. The fifth time through I was in traffic and just kinda vibed with it. The sixth time I listened to it I had taken a break so it was all fresh and new again. Definitely started to appreciate Jay’s fire on “Why I Love You” but had started skipping “Made In America” at this point. On my seventh listen I was more amused than irritated by “Lift Off”, which only exists because Kanye was dying to use that NASA sample. On my eighth listen I pondered why they didn’t figure out some way to work “H.A.M.” into the equation instead of as a bonus track. On my ninth listen I was sure that someone should have told RZA to calm down with the ghostly wails on “New Day” so we could actually hear all of the lyrics. That said, just hearing these guys say “Me and the RZA connect” is treat enough. On my tenth listen I reconciled the fact that even if “Who Gon Stop Me” samples dubstep these guys at least take it’s bludgeoning sound to a logical conclusion and take that shit all the way over the top with Holocaust references, since dubstep is sorta the Holocaust of music scenes.  I just listened to Watch The Throne for fun after that. Good album!

1) Friendly Fires – Pala

Friendly Fires are too pure for this world. Even their sad songs are iridescent dance jams. Ed MacFarlane sings like he might die tonight and we’ve got to make the most of it, right now. “Are you ready, there’s not much time.” “Where are we going?” “I don’t know, but we’re going to dance the whole way!”

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Nerd alert

(Warning: spoilers)

Basically the hipster DaVinci Code, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is David Fincher covering himself, delivering limp rehashes of Zodiac, Seven, and The Social Network, without any of the energy, flair or originality of those films. The plot is boring, the thrills nonexistent. The one chase scene is two vehicles on an empty road that lasts about a minute. Then the car flips over and explodes and everyone goes home. Daniel Craig is insanely miscast as a mega-nerd who bumbles around and says things like “Yeah, I’m a bit out of shape” while displaying a washboard stomach and looking like Daniel Craig. He also has multiple sex partners in the film who are all, “C’mon and fuck me, Daniel Craig!” which of course. The character of Lisbeth Salander is more interesting but the film doesn’t trust the viewer to believe that she would have any interest in solving a mystery even though she is introduced as someone who sleuths for a living so she has a lurid rape scene that is supposed to function as the tie between Salander’s interest in Daniel Craig’s research into a missing girl. Salander’s natural intuitive sense and foresight displayed at the very beginning  of the film when dealing with other plot points that occur at the end are ignored because you gots to have that rape scene apparently. Salander and Daniel Craig spend a lot of time staring at their computers and, unlike The Social Network, this bored me. A killer is eventually revealed and he talks forever before being dispatched because he couldn’t just kill somebody, could he? No, he has to explain himself. Then Lisbeth buys Daniel Craig a jacket and the clerk is all, “Nice jacket” and Lisbeth says, “It’s for a friend.” Sadly, Daniel Craig is back with his girlfriend who is actually married to someone else so Lisbeth throws the jacket in the trash and rides off on her bike AND THAT IS THE END OF THE MOVIE. Does anyone know if he finds the jacket in the trash at the beginning of part 2 and realizes what a jerk he’s been?

I’ve seen some reviews that praise the rape scene which is fucked up, right? If you must have a rape scene in your movie(must you? I doubt it) then don’t mess around with how terrible rape is. Irreversible is pretty much the last word on movie rape scenes because it just sits the camera down for between five to ninety minutes(give or take) and just watches a horrible event unfold. The style is the lack of style but it never takes away from the awful power of the event. Irreversible forces the viewer to reconcile with this terrible act. After sitting through that, the rape no longer functions as just another plot point but a damaging, awful life event that scars the characters forever. In Dragon Tattoo it’s just the impetus to get to the cool revenge scene. Salander before and after is unchanged. The scene is pointless. I rest my case.