Posts Tagged Laziness

Ultimate Mixtape mailing list

December 8, 2008 at 6:54 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ,

Some readers of this site were recipients of my first-ever Ultimate Mixtape around the holiday season last year. For those who weren’t, it was a year in review in mixtape fashion – different from my top songs of the year, even though this year there are 40 in both. All of these songs I love, but these were picked to have a little more variety and to create a totally badass mix. I recommend it for those who would maybe like to get a look inside my head (musically, any other way would be weird) or at least maybe get exposed to something they otherwise wouldn’t. I promise that everyone who hears this mix will have something they haven’t heard before.

So I would like to extend an offer to my lucky readers. If you would like me to mail you a copy, just comment saying so and maybe send me an email (matthew.rothstein@oberlin.edu) with your address. If you’d like me to give you a copy in person, please tell me so I can burn enough CD’s now to give them all out the first time I see somebody.

I promise you that you will enjoy this mixtape. Two discs of me flossing my extreme mixmaking skills.  And they are extreme.  And they are skills.

And no, I haven’t seen any movies lately.  And the albums list is under construction.  Thanks for asking.

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The rare combo review: W. and Choke

November 7, 2008 at 6:59 pm · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Actually, that title was a lie.  I really really want to review Choke because it’s so damn interesting, and even though I really did like W., there’s really almost nothing I can add to the already-present conversation about it, so just read this review that I agree with completely, then come back here for my own extra two cents.  I’ll wait.

Okay.

First off, the performance of Thandie Newton as Condi is the only real weak spot as far as acting goes.  It realizes the fears that every movie fan had of the whole movie in that it delves into caricature and becomes largely unwatchable.  And, as Harry Knowles of the very same Aint-it-Cool-News to which I linked you pointed out, that’s kind of how she already is, which means that those who like Condi may not mind Newton’s performance.  But I don’t buy that 100%.  Also, SPOILER the final dream confrontation between the two Bush presidents is really cool on the W. side of things (that should go without saying, since Josh Brolin rocks every scene), but I think Cromwell as H.W. in the scene plays it a bit too smugly and makes it a comedic scene when it really shouldn’t be. END SPOILER And I think everyone should see this movie if they like politics even one little bit.  It’s a really self-affirming movie for those of us who do.

Okay, now let’s get to the real meat.  Choke is a book by Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame, and from what I’ve heard by Chuck fans, it’s not one of his best.  Still, there seems to be something about his works that makes adapters drool.  David Fincher did an unbelievable job with Fight Club, of course: I don’t think there’s ever been a movie that’s had the clichéd “incendiary” title slapped on it as much as that one, and it deserved it all to boot.  But those who are expecting Choke to be for sex what Fight Club is for terrorism are in for a rude shock.  It’s really a character study of Victor Mancini, played by the awesome Sam Rockwell.

Hi, his name is Victor, and he’s a recovering (kind of) sex addict.  He takes absolute joy in being a degenerate who flouts the rules of the pre-American Revolution historical site at which he works as a reenactor/peasant and makes extra cash by choking at restaurants and asking the people who save him for money by mail.  This is his life – being a half-assed colonial American, choking for money, and having lots of meaningless sex with random people.  Oh, and visiting his mother who has severe early-onset Alzheimer’s so bad that she doesn’t even know who he is.

Victor’s a complicated guy, which is made harder by the fact that he’s a total asshole, and revels in it.  The ongoing conflict for the viewer is whether or not to root for Victor.  His undying attachment to her is totally selfless at first glance – she thinks that her son never visits and turns the whole hospital against him, despite his devotion – it turns out that his repeated death wishes on her aren’t just latent resentment; he actually wants her to die, just only after she discloses his father’s identity.  And that search takes such a ludicrous twist that I won’t even go into it at all.

The other thing that happens at the upscale hospital where Victor’s mother (played incredibly by Anjelica Huston) is staying is that Victor meets Paige Mitchell, a new doctor taking care of his mother.  Where their relationship goes is purely fascinating to me, but other people I talked to were not as impressed.

This movie was adapted and directed by Clark Gregg, who also plays Victor’s boss (and kick-starter of most of the funniest scenes in the movie) and played Agent Coulson of SHIELD in Iron Man over the summer, for those who want a better mental image.  I really like the direction – the flashbacks are all necessary and don’t feel cheap, which lots of flashbacks do when they’re pulled off wrong.  I’m pretty sure this is Gregg’s first effort in both writing and directing, so kudos for him and I hope to see more work.

I think the strength of the screenplay is that all of the major characters are dynamic – their personalities, or at least how the audience views them, change over the course of the movie, so that the audience doesn’t feel like they’re a step ahead of the script – in a way much different from Fight Club, I feel compelled to add.  While Huston’s turn as the mother is obviously the best supporting job, I think that Denny, Victor’s best friend, played by Brad William Henke (I haven’t heard of him either, but he’s apparently in the upcoming Star Trek movie playing some guy named “Uncle Frank,” which makes me twice as excited for the movie just because there’s an Uncle Frank) is pretty close.  He goes from a chronic masturbator with an attitude almost as bad as Victor’s into a genial, peaceful guy that just seems content with who he is and what he does.  It doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering transformation  while it’s going on, but when I thought about the movie after, it really hit me how much he changed and how much for the better.

Sorry for the delay in posting this – again.  It was one of the tabs on my browser, half-written, for days and days.  I think I’m going to do another combo review next – a rap roundup, if you will, of some major hip hop releases of the year, like Lil’ Wayne and T.I. and maybe something else.  Stay tuned.

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Yo Mama; TV On The Radio review

October 27, 2008 at 10:57 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What? Me, get sidetracked? Me, forget about my own blog? Yeah, well, yo mama’s so forgetful, she…well, I’m bad at coming up with those jokes.  Anyway, the point is, I’m a little mad at myself for my being lax with this blog, and I think I’ll be doing more of it from now on.  The obvious choice for the beginning of my revival is the new album by my boys, TV On The Radio.  Their birthday present to me (hey, it did come out the right week) was at first titled Dear Science,, but they did drop their comma, apparently because it complicated sentences like this.  But after Dear Science, I’m not quite sure what to review.  I’m positive I’m going to have one more review out of stuff I watched/listened to over fall break, which I spent in absentia in Dallas, but I’m not sure what it should be.  Should I find some new music to review that I’ve been getting into, like London Zoo by the Bug or Los Angeles by Flying Lotus, or should I review one of the movies I saw (Choke or W.), or something else?  I’m going to use the poll feature that I just discovered to see if I can leave it up to you yabbos, as Menick would say.

Dear Science may wind up as my favorite album of the year, and even so it’s a little disappointing.  That’s just a function of the ludicrous expectations an album like Return to Cookie Mountain creates, especially when it’s just the second album by a band, especially a dynamic band like TV On The Radio.  I think that a lot of die-hard fans like myself have reacted like myself – initial shock and ambivalence, followed by a gradual warming.  This is not an album like TV’s first two, but then, Return to Cookie Mountain wasn’t like Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes either.  The third album by any band gives you a sense of what they’ll be in the future, and TV On The Radio have told us here that they’re going to keep changing and keep surprising.  Thank fucking god.

Dear Science is not really a rock album.  Not at all.  The closest genre I can pin it on is funk, but only because it’s so funky.  It’s not really funk either, more like where funk wants to be in 20 years (maybe post-funk? Yeah, I like that).  But this album isn’t so uniform, so I think I’m just going to go track-by-track, like a real fanboy.

  1. “Halfway Home” – Damn catchy, the most memorable song of the bunch (though not really the best).  The beat is almost as propulsive as “Wolf Like Me,” but the vocals keep it more snakelike and soulful as opposed to charging like its predecessor.
  2. “Crying” – One of my three favorites on the album.  I like the little tight guitar figure, something that we really haven’t heard from TVOTR much.  This is the closest to funk or soul that they get throughout the album, and I think it really colors the rest of the whole piece.  Kyp Malone establishes himself here as on almost equal footing with Tunde Adebimpe as a singer, and he sings just about the same amount on this album.  Their voices are subtly different, Malone’s a bit more versatile, Adebimpe’s a bit stronger.  He sings all three of my favorite songs on this album, but that’s not Tunde’s fault.  By now though, we know that Kyp’s a better songwriter.
  3. “Dancing Choose” – Okay, Tunde raps here.  That’s cool enough.  But if you need more, a) he can really do it, b) his lyrics are really clever, c) the chorus is really catchy, and d) like on nearly every track, the horn section is badass.  There.
  4. “Stork & Owl” – Least memorable track on the album.  Kyp Malone does some great work with vocals, and the production is all there and cool, but something doesn’t mesh with me.  I think this is what separates Dear Science from You & Me, meaning that You & Me is better by just that much.  Not a lot, but I don’t have any bones with any song there, and this is just a little bit off.
  5. “Golden Age” – And just when Dear Science was about to lose momentum, here comes another off-the-wall-in-its-funky-awesomeness track.  TVOTR loves itself some Track 5 – “Mister Grieves” from Young Liars, “Ambulance” from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, “Wolf Like Me” from Cookie Mountain, and now this.  There’s nothing really eloquent to say here, just listen.  I can only say that this is the most immediately appealing (read: mainstream) song they’ve ever done, and the second of my three favorites.
  6. “Family Tree” – The only real mellow track on the album.  “Stork & Owl” and “DLZ” are both downtempo, but they have a lot of angst that they work with, whereas this reminds me a little of Coldplay, except, you know, better.  There’s delicate piano throughout, but the minimalist percussion (drum machine? Jaleel Bunton, what say you?) keeps the pace slowly going.  This is not TV On The Radio, but it’s very lovely and nice.  It works.
  7. “Red Dress” – And back to the awesome funk.  The best lyrics of the album open this track, and it only stays awesome from there: “Fuck your war/’Cause I’m fat and in love/And the bombs are fallin’ on me/fo sho/But I’m scared to death/That I’m living a life not worth dying for.”
  8. “Love Dog” – This is more like the TV On The Radio I know.  A little shuffle with some vibes, some “ooh”s from Tunde, and you have just another very good TVOTR song.
  9. “Shout Me Out” – Straightforward, catchy, relaxed pop.  Constant guitar triplets in the first half add depth and keeps the song moving forward.  And then it breaks loose and we get the classic “Amen break” drum beat, scientifically proven to be the most propulsive beat in music.  Really good song.
  10. “DLZ” – Tunde’s voice owns this track.  The way he growls the word “nevermind,” turns a word that normally is the most passive into a war cry.  Jesus.  Deep, dark funk.  The production can be credited for the dark feel, with the drums’ echo and the horns section.  I love this goddamn song.
  11. “Lover’s Day” – This song is the third of my three favorites, and it’s an “I’ma sex you up” song in the classic vein of “Sexual Healing”.  The only twist here is that it’s a celebration, a rejoicing of carnal sex on an epic scale.  The song just gets bigger and bigger, even though the lyrics stay ludicrously intimate, like “I’m gonna take you/I’m gonna shake you/I’m gonna make you cum/Swear to God, it’ll get so hot/It’ll melt our faces off.” Yeah.  That other C-word was used, in a non-smutty and non-ironic way.  Did it just blow your mind? No? Well, it’s cool anyway.

The star of this album throughout is unquestionably David Sitek’s production.  As Sam Walker told me when we geeked out to each other about this album, this production is unbelievably immediate.  The music isn’t clouded in haze like Desperate Youth or the way prog-rock seems to be going these days.  It’s catapulted into your face, but in a very unique way, because that’s the only way Sitek knows how.

I will now wipe the fanboy semen out of the inside of my pants, and hope that you will forgive me and continue to read this blog, because it won’t happen again on our second date, it’s just that it was just so hot, oh god, oh god…..

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Oh, great, I’m doing this again; In Bruges review

September 19, 2008 at 12:19 am · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

What a douche I am.  I promised an early return to blogging, what with arriving on campus two weeks before class with nothing to do, and wound up with not just an on-time return, but a late return.  I guess once I got used to not writing, it all just went downhill.  Anyway, after BOTO got its act together, it was time for monkey see, monkey do.

I’ve done plenty of watching movies recently, not so much listening, and some creative writing.  So we’ll go easy on the music reviews for the time being, but being at Oberlin – meaning being within Oberlin’s majestic file-sharing network – should give me plenty to stock up on.

My first review of the semester is Martin McDonagh’s brainchild In Bruges, actually his first feature film.  It’s quite ambitious for a debut, though he must have had some confidence based on the fact that his only other studio film, a short subject titled Six Shooter, won the Oscar for best live action short back in ’04.  In Bruges, like Six Shooter, is an incredibly dark comedy.

I’ve never seen the short film, so I’ll stop making comparisons at this point.  In Bruges is about two hitmen, Ray and Ken, played greatly by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, ordered by their boss to hide out in Bruges (pronounced broojh), Belgium, after a job gone bad.  We don’t exactly know what exactly went bad, or why Bruges, but this movie isn’t about the mysteries of that.  Gleeson and Farrell take time debating it out loud, so the audience doesn’t have to get too preoccupied with it.

The entire film’s formula goes as follows: the dialogue is hilarious – exactly what you imagine British/Irish repartée to be in film, with some midget and drug jokes thrown in (Lots of midget jokes, actually),  And the action and plot events are black as the night.  Everything goes sideways, people’s past actions come back to haunt them, etc.  And when I say “formula”, I don’t want that to be taken as an insult.  I really only realized this about the movie now, and I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago.  It didn’t tarnish my viewing at all.

The writing in this film is a joy (see above, British/Irish repartée), with lots of merry cursing (“You retract that last bit about my cunt fucking kids!”) to liven it up.  Colin Farrell seems like kind of a divisive, or at least divided, actor.  He has mostly done pretty bad movies, but has made a couple interesting choices, and he seems to be getting better into his 30’s.  I personally liked Alexander, though it was a bit long.  I thought Farrell was great, although overshadowed by the even-more-interestingly-careered Val Kilmer in their scenes together.  Here Farrell is very good, if not the strongest actor in the movie.  He really knows how to get a laugh, it’s when he gets weepy that he drops off a bit.  But not all that much.

The strongest actors are Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, Fiennes a bit more so.   Gleeson is paternal, wise, workmanlike, a bit presumptuous, and a bit simple.  Those may seem contradicting; they don’t to me and aren’t in the movie.  Fiennes is a cunt. (The movie’s words, not mine.  But I would have to agree.) A wondrous, wondrous cunt who, when his wife tells him to stop bashing a phone against a desk in anger (“It’s an inanimate object!”), screams “You’re an inanimate fucking object!” (Farrell notes, “Jeez, he swears a lot, doesn’t he?”)

This review was pretty crappy and fragmented, because it was written in spurts over a month’s time.  I promise to come back stronger with my next review.  Keep your ears to the ground.

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What kind of summer has it been; Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson review

August 13, 2008 at 3:22 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , ,

With Helena’s arrival today, I will be marking the final phase of summer vacation, this last week in town.  This summer shot by like a bullet – a hot, thunderstormy, musical, bloggy bullet.  I didn’t get to hang out with my friends as much as I wanted because my schedule was the opposite of everyone else’s except Ben, who had the same schedule, and was just as drained as I was at the end of work, but we hung out a reasonable amount anyway.  He’s cool.  He’s a cool guy.  With everyone else, it feels like I missed an opportunity.  Sad face.  I don’t think it was this blog’s fault, because I wrote almost all of my entries after 2 AM, so it didn’t really take away from anything but sleep.

The reason I felt the need to sum up was because I think I’m going to take a break until I get to Oberlin, which is August 19th.  This next week’s going to be very crazy, and this blog would complicate things too much.  But I will check up every so often to see if anyone else wrote reviews to fill the void (hint, hint).  But once class restarts, I will be in a creative writing workshop, so get ready for creative writing pieces to start becoming a bigger part of this site.  I don’t know if they will take the place of reviews the day they post them; I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I knew Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson first when he opened for TV On The Radio at their free awesome concert at McCarren Park Pool last summer, and I thought he sounded a lot like Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but he seemed really cool and he was as good as any opener-for-an-opener I’ve seen.  So when I saw Pitchfork review his debut album, and I found it available online, I wanted to give it a try.  Wouldn’t you?

Well, having given the album a really good listen or two, I can say that my comparisons of MBAR to Ounsworth were not as accurate as I had thought, but not completely off.  His self-titled album (Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, for those keeping score) is at once classic singer-songwriter fare and anything but.  Listeners can tell that his studio recordings are just beefed up versions of songs originally meant for one man and his guitar, and his songs are very personal (and fucking DARK); but his influences of Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio (GB’s Chris Taylor produced the album, and TVOTR’s Kyp Malone contributed to it as well in ways that I’m not exactly sure about, but I’m guessing they at least included backup guitar) take the songs to a shambling, ethereal place reserved for the aforementioned bands that have such a clear idea of their own sound that they can do anything within it.  And speaking of shambling, ethereal places, I should mention that this album is entirely about drug use and depression, using personal experiences which are way more intense than I anticipated.

Well, not every song is chiefly about drug use, but it’s all at least inspired by it and tangentially having to deal with it.  Album opener “Buriedfed”, also the best track on the album (why does that always happen? Have some place to go, people!), is a story about a man who kicks open the casket at his own funeral and the crazy things that happen to him after.  But there’s also an aside about drugs, in which MBAR slurs, “Reckless ruin is killing high/A great, fine victory we’re still alive/My, my, what a surprise/I got home late, I don’t care/Better late than never, dear.”  It starts out contemplative and mournful, and turns into a rousing anthem (though I don’t want any anthems to exist for drug use or kicking open caskets) and campfire chant.  It’s also one of two songs whose lyrics I could get in their entirety; the only other one was second track “The Debtor,” which is more directly, and more poetically, about, ahem, drugs.

In it, Miles mumbles, “Tried to stop the bleeding/It’s a shame that you failed/The red fell so hard, it hailed/Tried to kick on Tuesday/But I didn’t succeed/The air was too thick to breathe.” I don’t want to imply that MBAR is unintelligible, he just acts like the druggie he portrays in his songs, and was before and after this album was recorded back in 2006, though he, if you read the article I linked to, is clean now, meaning he smokes a ton of weed, but nothing else.

After reading that article, I found that MBAR fascinates me.  If his success grows, he will have lived the rock star life to its fullest, in the best and worst ways.

As a whole, this album is very compelling, and musically interesting, but it lacks charisma after the first few songs, which means that even at a reasonable length, this album drags.  But then again, that’s the difference between MBAR and bands like Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio: they’re more developed, more confident, so they know what to do with their sound.  So I can’t give this album a positive review, just a pretty good.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to his next.  I think Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson can go places, especially if he finds something better to call himself.  Jeez.

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Maxwell’s House; Oreos to be broken out

July 27, 2008 at 3:09 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , ,

So another, deeper thanks to Maxwell for posting another review (two in two days! how is that even possible?!) and thus allowing me to focus on my pending review of Siren Music Festival for Nicole’s famed BOTO, which will arrive probably tomorrow, since I need to ask how to post it.  I’m lost anywhere but here.  If I have some spare time at work, I will try to review Patton early and possibly squeeze a second review out later that night, but if you’re counting on one review from me tomorrow, count on Patton.  That’s all for now, folks.

UPDATE: The Siren review has been submitted for review on BOTO, and will be up shortly, so head on over using the link on this page or on the handy-dandy sidebar.

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First of the Siren reviews: Islands

July 24, 2008 at 12:02 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , ,

I hope to get at least a couple reviews in today to catch up on my laziness, then hopefully be back to normal.  I realized that in the past couple of days, I had gotten used to not reviewing because of the thumb, and had thus not left enough time to watch/listen to anything new.  Also, having now seen the Dark Knight myself twice, I’m pondering having a go at my own review of that, but it would probably abbreviated and have the function of filling in some things I haven’t read about in other reviews but I thought stood out a little.

I only got to see Islands for about 45 minutes of what seemed like an hour and a quarter-long set at Siren Music Festival, and I was less enthusiastic about them than my companions, and we agreed that it was probably because I’d already heard them on their album, so it didn’t strike me as novel, and I had already pretty much made up my mind about the band.  But I’ll talk more about that in my upcoming (read: as soon as BOTO lets me) review of the festival on another, more widely read medium.

Arm’s Way, Islands’ second album, was almost as hard to make up my mind over than Coldplay, because it doesn’t just have both good and bad, it has great and horrible, often at the same time, and I think I know why.  The music is very compelling, lots of good, tight harmonizing here, with good energy throughout, but the lyrics are so intellectually bankrupt that I just can’t get behind them.  It just seems like lead singer/songwriter Nick Thorburn just looked for words that kind of made sense in a rhyming dictionary.  There’s no heart, no sincerity to them.  In “Creeper”, he sings: “Right from the start, I was stabbed in the heart/didn’t/know i wasnt breathing/didn’t know i had been bleeding”.  Groan.  From opener “The Arm,” he opens with “You faded into/a different shade/a completely different hue/of a kind of blue”.  And no, blue has nothing to do with the rest of the song.

Really, this album seems like a poor man’s version of Muse, the band that is huge everywhere but America, and probably the most mainstream of all of my favorite bands.  Muse’s songwriting chops aren’t really up to snuff in regards to the other bands I listen to, but the music is put together really well, and the music has a lot of charisma and a lot of “sing-a-long-ability”, in addition to an edginess that makes even the major-key songs seem a little aggressive.  Basically the same is true of Arm’s Way, only the songwriting is even worse, and the music is not quite as good, though it’s close.

Final gripe with this album: it’s long, and too one-note to get away with it.  Though it only has 12 tracks, it runs 68 minutes long, and that’s because the second half of the album is exclusively songs that are 5 minutes and up, with the closer, “Vertigo (If It’s A Crime)” being an inexplicable 11 minutes long.  But I’ll cut the review off here, to prevent similarities.

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The Dark Knight was too good for me to review

July 21, 2008 at 12:39 am · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged ,

So I’m just going to give you a laundry list of reviews that you can peruse if you wish.

AintitCoolNews.com: Alexandra DuPont, Capone, Quint, Moriarty (companion piece with Hellboy II)

New York Times: Manohla Dargis

LA Times: Kenneth Turan

New Yorker: David Denby (WALL-E review on page 2)

New York magazine: David Edelstein (Mamma Mia! review on page 2)

New York Observer: Andrew Sarris

The two Davids are negative reviews; figured I’d add some ideological (EDITED) fluidity, but I don’t agree with them.

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Long weekend over; Dante’s Peak review

July 16, 2008 at 3:47 am · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , ,

Long story short: I had a really busy few days and decided to de-prioritize blogging for a while, but I’m back with a couple movie reviews (tonight and tomorrow) before I get to some music from the upcoming Siren Music Festival at Coney Island.

A personal note first, though: I submit to Nicole a nomination for a BOTO pick for worst shoe salesman ever – the guy at Finish Line who recommended these Nike Shox shoes because I told him I had low arches.  He gave me a size 10 shoe along with “ThinFit” insoles, meant to be worn in dress shoes that you’ve outgrown but would still like to fit in (read: NOT RUNNING SHOES).  What’s so wrong with that? Well, there’s a story that explains that.  When I went out for my first run in these new shoes, after about two minutes of running, my feet were in excruciating pain that was making its way up all the joints of my left leg.  I decided something was wrong and went back the next day to Finish Line, and talked to the manager.  Turns out that my feet were actually 11’s, and I was informed about the insoles I previously mentioned.  Rage, then the purchasing of New Balance shoes, followed.

Dante’s Peak is a hilariously bad movie, the reason I chose to watch it rather than the last hour or so of Das Boot, the review of which will come tomorrow.  I wanted the review I came back with to be a light one, and what could be more light than a town-destroying volcano?

I’m not going to go into too much depth about the movie itself, and this won’t be a terribly long review.  Here are some quick hits:

  • Wow, they really tried to make Pierce Brosnan an American character.  Wow, did it not work.  At all.
  • I love how the giant cloud of ash overtakes the entire town in mere seconds, save for the one street on which Pierce Brosnan’s truck is driving, natch.
  • If you read this and then watch the movie, try not to imagine the red-bearded guy as Timothy Busfield.  Go ahead, try not to.  Now you can’t.
  • Aw, the mayor still works at the coffee shop she owns in town.  You’d think that between those two jobs, she could pay for one waitress.
  • Speaking of the mayor, if her last name is Wando, she’s not blonde and blue-eyed, and she doesn’t live in the Pacific Northwest.  At least if it was Watto, she’d be more qualified to run the coffee shop, provided it sold a few spare parts and gambled away a few child slaves.
  • All hail Pierce Brosnan’s shirt, which has the power to withstand sulfuric acid better than a metal boat.  All hail.
  • Here’s to you, Grandma Ruth.  Let’s go over how many different ways she fucked up: She suggested a swim in the acid lake, refused to leave her cabin-on-the-volcano, which prompted her idiot grandkids to drive up to try to save her, prompting their idiot mom and idiot Pierce Brosnan to drive up and save them, which led to them all going boating through the acid lake, where, when the acid ate the propeller of the boat they were taking across, she jumped into the acid to pull the boat to shore, then seemed surprised to find that the acid was, in fact, painful.  After being carried halfway down the mountain, her last words were, “At least I got to die on the mountain,” completely ignoring that the mountain, in fact, murdered her.  Here’s to you, so drink.  Drink up.  Drink up.  Drink up.
  • Props to Ethan for pointing out the worst-delivered and worst-written line in the movie.  I can’t possibly relate how bad it was in text, so just watch the last ten minutes and find the line by the mousy-haired girl on the volcanology staff.  It will probably jump out at you.
  • There were a couple of what I like to call “foreshadowing hammers” here (meaning, times where the movie hits you in the face with a hammer labeled FORESHADOWING), but my favorite was when the squirrels were laying around dead, and the mayor of the fucking town, responsible for the well-being of the town says, “Must be some sort of squirrel epidemic,” then just moves on.  Well, doucheclown, don’t you think it’s your job to alert some sort of person qualified to investigate “squirrel epidemics”?
  • My favorite “oh my god, that’s actually blatantly false” quote comes from Mayor Wando and rounds out this review that wound up pretty long because I like bullet points: “A man who looks at a rock must have a lot on his mind.”

Comments (2)

No review tonight

July 10, 2008 at 2:38 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

I just plum ran out of ideas for what to review tonight, since I didn’t have time for a movie, and I always need to listen to an album I review for a couple days.  I promise another review tomorrow night.

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