It's a road movie with two load characters who aren't buddies and don't ever build the cliched 'grudging respect' for each other in any organic way. Yeah, by the end of the film they're apparently buddies, but there's really nothing in their actions along the way to suggest that the friendship is actually growing. They treat each other just as badly from the first scene where they meet to the penultimate scene where they part ways. The final scene, of course, lets us see that they really are friends now and that everything has worked out for the best, but there's nothing authentic or organic in the progression of the tale to make that happy ending even remotely believable.
Oddly, none of that means that Get Him to the Greek isn't a hell of a lot of fun.
The Russel Brand character, Aldous Snow, is such an over-the-top caricature of rock god excess that he's hilarious to watch for pretty much the entire film. He's a man child trapped by his own fame and unable to articulate what he wants - the drugs and the partying that carry most of the film's gags or the quiet life that he occasionally shows glimpses of actually desiring. No matter his true desires, he comes across as also unable to make any steps toward either life, finding himself hopeless but hilariously trapped in a permanent state of filthy rich adolescence, a fully grown boy needing a minder to drag him toward anything even remotely productive.
The film is rife with thoroughly entertaining performances surrounding Jonah Hill's slobby main character (the weakest character in the film, honestly, there mostly to be the straight man hopelessly trying to keep up with Aldous's excesses and keep Aldous on the somewhat straight and narrow.) Sean Combs, in particular, nearly steals the show as Hill's boss, a record label executive who is willing to put up with any excess of his artists as long as he is able to keep his four children in string cheese and mansions, whose disembodied face haunts Hill in the midst of a drug-induced freak out.
This is an hour and a half of pointless entertainment.
The Disappearing Spoon: and other true tales of madness, love, and history of the world from the periodic table of the elements - How could I not love a book with a title like that?
It's all about the stories behind the discoveries of and uses of the elements on the periodic table - everything from personal anecdotes about Fritz Haber whose genius lead to the production of cheap fertilizer from ammonia sequestered from the atmosphere one element at a time to the brutal slights of Rosalind Franklin and her contributions to the discovery of DNA's structure.
In addition to the human stories - which are fascinating, there are a number of stories of the elements themselves, their discoveries, their namings, their cosmic origins.
This is a treasure trove of information that I think will make my chemistry teaching richer - perhaps richer with trivia but richer none the less.
One of my favorite reads in a long time...
Exit Through the Gift Shop - I don't care whether Exit Through the Gift Shop is a real documentary or not. The movie is an outstanding exploration of what is or isn't art, and the veracity of the story involved wouldn't affect that exploration one whit.
The tale opens with Banksy - deep in face-shading hoody, voice morphed to unrecognizability - explaining that the movie was supposed to be about him but that he ended up being far less interesting than Mr Brainwash who ends up being the subject of this film, supposedly directed by the mysterious Banksy.
Our story begins with Thierry Guetta, the eventual Mr Brainwash, filming a very amateurish documentary about the culture of street art around the world. In the process Guetta films the working process of a number of guerrilla street artists, eventually filling thousands of hours of videotapes until he feels he has filmed every artist other than the most famous of the street artists, Banksy.
By a stroke of luck, Banksy contacts Guetta through mutual friends and brings Guetta into his inner circle, one of few people who actually get to work with the mysterious artist. As Guetta documents Banksy's process, Banksy finally asks Guetta to edit together the film that Guetta has supposedly been working on for years. When Guetta produces an unwatchable film, Banksy takes over the project and turns the filmmaker into the subject, documenting Guetta's growing predilection for his own street art.
In the process, Banksy captures the creation of an entirely new street artist, one who reaches the public consciousness fully grown, fully formed, and entirely and fully fabricated, an artist who buys his art show and his publicity, purchasing the kind of history and attention that most artists come about organically.
The third act sees Mr Brainwash outsourcing the creation of his 'art'; buying himself a 'gallery' for his first. hugely massive show; and focusing far more on the pomp and the publicity than on anything remotely artistic, and here is where the movies veracity stops mattering.
Whether Banksy really did set up everything to create Mr Brainwash for the sake of the film...whether he faked Mr Brainwash out of whole cloth...whether he is Mr Brainwash in an alter ego...whether he made up the entirety of the film...Banksy has made a film that brilliantly explores what is and isn't art, whether we appreciate art because of what it is or because of the furor surrounding it, and how easily the art world is to manipulate with a little money.
American Vampire -A solidly good start...Let's see where the series as a whole goes from here.
American Vampire tells the tale of vampire for the American crowd, born in the Old West, mutated spawn of the old vampyre that have been around since days of old in creepy, Eastern European castles but now inhabiting curtained train cars and playing long-term investments in the railroads. Our titular American vampire is born of Skinner Sweet, a railroad robber who has chosen the wrong train cars to rob, those of the European vampyre.
Sweet, of course, is turned into a more modern, sunshine-tolerating American vampire, and in the other half of the tale, he passes he newfound abilities on to a 1920's starlet who has run afoul of these same European vampyres as they have continued to build their media/economic empires.
The two tales intertwine well, revealing details about each other while producing enough excitement to keep my interest. The framing device of the two tales is that of a writer who saw Skinner Sweet turned and who has now come out to reveal that his 'fictional' account of that day isn't quite as 'fictional' as he might have portrayed things.
The interplay from Stephen King and Scott Snyder's two tales make for engaging reading, and the concept of an American vampire is one worth exploring, seeing how his pursuits and attitudes are so drastically different from his European forebears. These first five issues - largely becoming the accepted length for a hardback collection but feeling a bit scant in my frugal thoughts - make for a great read and set up the series for a very rich possibility of further tales.
If those come to fruition, this will be one well worth following.
Following that long a layoff, one of two things is pretty likely: the band comes back making music identical to what they were making, largely aping who they were and showing little growth or turning out something totally new, something that is less Cake and more the product of some new band. Cake doesn't exactly hit the former, but this new album would fit very squarely into their previous catalog.
There are a few catchy tunes - "Sick of You" and "Federal Funding" being my two favorites so far - but there are a lot of songs that sound like vintage Cake songs that wouldn't stand out on most of the previous albums. John McCrea's delivery is still suitably ironic and barely qualifies as singing in any fashion, and the instrumentation continues to provide surprises from moment to moment as the band picks up odd synthesizer tones on many of the new tracks. The lyrics are undeniably Cake as there still isn't a band out there that writes like these guys do, but this album makes me wonder if the layoff wasn't more because the band just didn't have much new to say rather than because they've been so durn busy on other projects.
It's a solid 3.5/5 stars, and I'm still looking forward to seeing them in May.
You can stream the full album over on the Rolling Stone site and can check out a few of the vids via YouTube.
In the 1969 version of True Grit, John Wayne plays he part for gags, hamming up the screen and going from sober and cantankerous to drunk and cantankerous after just one side-sip from his jug of confiscated whiskey. The roll of Mattie Ross is reduced to almost a red herring, providing Marshall Cogburn a reason to head into Injun territory in hunt of Ned Pepper rather than to drink himself to death with his 'family' of the Chinaman who rents him a bed in his storage room and a cat who has no reason to be in the film.
We do get a fine turn by the slightly suave Glen Campbell as the Texican ranger LeBoeuf and by Robert Duvall as the chased and doomed Ned Pepper, but this is Wayne's film, and his performance just isn't nuanced enough to have stood the test of time. There are dozens of greater westerns, and dozens of greater films showcasing The Duke in his prime.
Pass this one by and go with the 2010 version by the Coen brothers.
This volume collects the two-issue, Neil Gaiman-penned 'final' tale of Batman, an imaginary tale of the Caped Crusader's final bow, his curtain call. The story was published in conjunction with the 'death' of Batman/Bruce Wayne at the end of Final Crisis (which was an awful mess, by the way). (The Bruce Wayne character has, of course, subsequently been returned to the DC universe as is he had never died/been sent through time/eaten a bad bit of beef.)
Here Gaiman has the titular Caped Crusader witness his own funeral as disembodied narrator accompanied by a mysterious female figure. The funeral begins with his friends on one side of the aisle and his rogues gallery on the other, each telling the tale of how they saw Batman die. None satisfying the true Batman who watches the proceedings. Alfred's tale is the most fascinating as it turns the entirety of the Batman mythology on its head and postulates that perhaps Alfred created the whole thing to draw a despondent Bruce out of his depression.
The heart and common thread of all the tales, however, is that of the eventual fate of the Batman figure, not even of Batman himself. Batman is at its core a revenge fantasy, our solitary light against the darkness that he has known. As such, Batman cannot fail, cannot ever be less than perfect, because we depend upon him. But he isn't allowed eternal success, either, because we recognize that he is just one man whose efforts hold back an unstemmable tide of darkness. We hold our fictional ideal of the Batman as both perfect and eventually doomed, knowing that his death may come from a random bullet (a la Omar) or from a meticulously planned out trap from one of his most worthy adversaries, and yet we know that neither ending will satisfy us because we cannot bear to see our Caped Crusader, our knight in kevlar armor ever fail.
Heroesonline postulates an further reading of the book thusly...
Regardless of how many times you re-invent the character, one thing will always remain: Batman is at heart a boy’s revenge fantasy. He must always succeed because he is stronger and smarter than every other human. He can overcome any adversity and win the day for the greater good--just like a hero should.That's about right. We wouldn't have it any other way.
...
But Gaiman is reaching for something more, something richer, something darker and something that is NOT happy. Batman is the absolute dark reflection of the Christ figure. Instead of dying for our sins—which the previous 40 odd pages publically offered the readers—Bruce Wayne is destined to remain alive in tragedy and torment to entertain us over and over and over.
No matter who is drawing him, no matter who is writing him, no matter who fights temporally for the right to wear the cowl, Bruce Wayne will always be the little boy kneeling in a filthy alley surrounded by blood and bodies and a broken strain of pearls. Forever.
Bruce Wayne is in hell and God help us, as readers of his exploits, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
The filler of this collection isn't much to mention, but the main story is every bit the equal - if drastically different - from its spiritual predecessor, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
A few quickies...
- Batman: The Widening Gyre - horrible...embarrassingly bad Batman comic that entirely misses the character of Batman/Bruce Wayne...thank you for pooping on my favorite comic character, Kevin Smith...
- Starman Omnibus, Vol 5 - I loved, loved, loved the first four volumes of this tale. This one not so much. The main character goes into space, and all of the air gets sucked out of the tale. Where Opal City and her history was as much a part of the tale as was the cosmic rod, the trip into the blackness of space is just of no interest to me. Blech...but I'll be back for the concluding volume 6 and the eventual Grand Guignol storyline.
- No Ordinary Family - still grooving to it...
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