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Category: Reviews

Double header ow

Last Sunday, I sauntered on down to the Boston Common movie theater, conveniently located on beautiful Boston Common, to see a movie. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see Terminator 3, Pirates of the Caribbean, or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (that last being an outside chance of a choice), but I was in the mood for phat action. As the kids say.

So as I walk into the theater, some woman is trying to give away a Pirates ticket for the show that starts in ten minutes. I say that’s an omen, accept it with good grace, and head up to the theater. On my way out after the show, I note that I can easily catch the next showing of T3 if I’m willing to wait 45 minutes or so, and I had my Game Boy with me, so that was that.

Nothing like an unusually inexpensive double feature. The only problem is that I keep finding myself thinking what an excellently unusual Terminator Johnny Depp was, and I want to write a long essay about how Schwarzenegger is getting a bit old to play a swashbuckling pirate captain but the script did a good job of making that into an asset rather than a liability. The curse and all. And Claire Danes makes a fine a love interest with an athletic and adventurous bent. Wait, that one fits both movies. Well, you see the aftereffects.

I would recommend T3 if only they’d cast Natasha Henstridge as the new model Terminator. Kristanna Loken was so much the budget version. Other than that, good matinee. Pirates rocked just as much as everyone else says, and you don’t need me to tell you that.

I will say that Jack Davenport’s turn as the British naval officer was much more nuanced and subtle than we had any right to expect from such a part in such a movie; it’s been a long time since the boring corner of the love triangle got to play the conflict between duty and empathy. But Davenport’s a hell of an actor. Get Ultraviolet — it’s out on DVD.

Pair by pair

I had a nice time this weekend ingesting the first season of Coupling, which is a pleasant little BBC comedy. Think Friends, but with more sex and cleverer writing, sort of like Sports Night but without Jeremy. (Hey, that metaphor crashed and burned. Don’t point, it’s rude.)

Alas, in England “season” means “six episodes.” Still enjoyable, and it gives me a proper base from which to mock the NBC remake. Man, that’s gonna suck.

Anyhow, it’s not terribly deep but it’s fairly witty and it’s got Jack Davenport who was so good in Ultraviolet. As the viewpoint protagonist, he’s got a fairly tough job being the straight man, and he does a good job centering the show.

I want your

Dylan Kidd came out of nowhere with Roger Dodger, and sometimes it shows. The pacing is off, for example. But man, I’m a sucker for the rhythms of language, and Kidd has ‘em down pat here.

The plot? New York, nightlife, a pretty amazingly cynical copywriter who has only his sense of language to be proud about. Womanizing. Said copywriter’s nephew. Lessons learned.

The acting’s good. The nephew, at sixteen, nails being a tense sixteen year old geek, right down to the expectation of dot-com riches without a college degree. Campbell Scott is very good as Roger; he gives enough to let us care about him, which is pretty crucial if you’re going to be playing an asshole. Oh, and Isabella Rosselini is so very perfect. Worth it for her alone, actually.

The pacing fails in places. It’s sort of episodic, kind of in a made for television spread it out over two nights way. Apparently some cuts and additions were made after the test screening, and I think Kidd just isn’t experienced enough to do a really great job editing post-facto. Not too bad, though, it’s just that you can see the seams.

Worthwhile. I really like this kind of jagged Neil LaBute stuff, though, so if you like your movies less cynical you might want to stay away.

Press Enter

Saw it, liked it. In brief:

Visually impressive. Nice to see the Wachowskis showing off their ability to do eroticism again (go see Bound). Clever enough conceptually. Fun villains. Very good car chase scene. Harold Perrineau, who is always a pleasure. Second act of a third act play, which always has problems. But good solid fun and I’m excited for the third one.

Hard on him

The new Richard Thompson CD is out, so what are you waiting for? Somewhat terrifyingly, it appears to come with a bonus CD, and Amazon claims that “Kiss” by Prince is on that CD. Dig if you will the picture. I’ll report back on that when I know more.

What I know right now is that you can get a limited edition EP at certain retailers, which has a couple live tracks on it, so the healthy thing to do would be to buy it. I did.

One of the live tracks is “Hard On Me.” When Mr. Thompson is touring with a band, there are always a couple of songs that serve as hangers for elaborate guitar solos. When I saw him the first time, it was “Amnesia.” This time it’s “Hard On Me,” and it’s so damned good I want to talk about it.

“Hard on me, hard on me
Why do you grind me small?”

The song starts out as one of his dirges, grim and painful and driven by inexorable drumming and simple blunt chording. Around a minute in, he starts sending shimmering riffs on top of Danny Thompson’s bass, and when he hits the chorus the next time, the first hints of guitar madness creep out, bent notes singing around the edges of his rough voice.

Two minutes in and he’s launched the first solo. It’s atonal, not rushed, climbing up and down the scale and lingering in the spaces carved out by drum and bass guitar. Doesn’t last too long, just a minute, before the space collapses and it’s back to the dirge. Four minutes in, and the band is picking up the harmonies, none of it beautiful and all of it pained and when they fall off the edge of the verse his guitar is there to pick up the pieces.

Silence.

Danny Thompson steps up, fingering his huge standup bass with unexpected agility. Coming from such a huge instrument, it’s a surprise. It sets the stage for what’s going to happen next.

A heartbeat.

Richard Thompson starts carving out space again, and if you know his music, you know he’s going to keep on going. It’s simple at first, just a riff and another riff on the same theme and a third riff down a half an octave. Plenty of room to breathe.

Then it gets faster, six minutes in, all fancy and frilled and in the middle of the runs he slices big minor key chords like a painter laying down a sunset. That’s the musical range established and it’s off to the races. He fights his way up and down the solo, each note echoed and balanced by another, pairs and triplets and quartets of song too quick to distinguish as anything other than a group. At the top of his guitar’s range, he lets the notes stretch a bit, marking a boundary before diving back into the swamp.

Bass and drums, utterly calm, keeping the rhythm so that Richard Thompson can strain against it. “Hard On Me.” It’s a song about a desperate man, played with a desperate guitar that can’t — quite — break — free —

Nine minutes in, and he’s bending notes into shapes that shouldn’t exist. Bend and triplet and bend and little flurry of sound and it’s amazing that he doesn’t repeat himself. The guitar is frantic, gone from straining against the beat to just playing as fast as it can in hopes that it’ll outrace the trap it’s in. Then, suddenly, he reaches calm. Big fat sustained chords, five of them, returning us to the song. A final dance up and down the range of possibilities. Twelve minutes of passion thwarted. And of course, a last unfinished note that simply dies.

“I swim with emptiness.”

Phew. Before I fall off to sleep, exhausted from listening to that yet again, I’ll note that if you have a Mac you can pick up “Mr. Rebound” and “Fully Qualified To Be Your Man” from the iTunes Music Store as single tracks for 99 cents a pop. Yay!

Rhode Island blues

Much to my joy, Family Guy is out on DVD. The first set is season 1 and 2; season 3 is out in September. The video quality sucks, with way too much pixelation, but it’s not like the animation was the real attraction anyhow.

I wouldn’t call Family Guy great art, but it does a nice job of parodying all the tired old sitcom plots while stuffing itself on pop culture one-liners. It’s also more surreal than almost anything else on television — utterly deadpan. Plus you gotta love Stewie, and Chris is voiced by Seth Green. What’s not to love?

Reaching for the silver

I finally got around to reading David Neiwert’s book on the Patriot Movement, In God’s Country. I’d expected it to be scholarly, given the publisher, but it turned out to be a pretty journalistic work. I suppose that’s not surprising, given that Neiwert’s a journalist.

Anyhow, it makes for a really accessible read. The bulk of the book is comprised of stories about Patriot Movement members of various stripes in the Pacific Northwest, from Oregon to Idaho. Neiwert is from the area, which makes a big difference. It’s never a book by some outsider telling stories about the rural whackos. Rather, it’s a book by a guy who knows what the area is like, and knows what independent-minded people are like, and can explain what’s different about the extremists who’ve come to infest the area. He speaks with an authority that (say) an East Coast journalist would lack.

The book also covers the history of the movement in the Northwest, going back to the Silver Shirts and beyond. Plenty of good context for what’s happened more recently. He talks about Ruby Ridge, Bo Gritz, and plenty of lesser-known incidents and people. There are no grand conclusions or predictions; there’s just a picture of what’s going on, some reasons why, and some questions that can’t yet be answered.

What’s missing: I’d have liked to have seen more about the links between the Patriots and the Christian Identity movement. He notes that many Patriots are Christian Identity believers, but I’d like to have seen more on financial connections and so forth. (Bonus points for linking in Scaife and Coors.) Admittedly, it might have diluted the focus of the book, but I’m still curious. I know a lot more than I did about specific instances of the Patriot Movement but I don’t know enough about the structure behind the structure. Maybe that’s another book.

Still, it’s very readable and very informative, and I’ll probably give away a few copies for Christmas this year. If you don’t really know what the Patriot Movement is beyond “those militia weirdos,” this is a book you ought to read.

Late bend

Whoops, I forgot to natter on about Bend It Like Beckham. Well, let me fix that.

It’s a cute little romantic comedy about a cute Sikh lass who wants nothing more than to become a football player. (It’s British, so not the NFL.) There’s love, there’s an improbably attractive football coach, and there’s a remarkably sexy best pal. Family concerns get in the way of our heroine’s needs but all is resolved in the end. I’d call it a sterling example of the genre and recommend it.

Carefree days of yore

Rules of Attraction rocked; thought you’d like to know.

Nah, really. It’s glossy and terribly calculated, but it’s also stark and unflinching, and I like that in a movie. The plot isn’t exactly much but you wouldn’t complain if it was a romance with this little plot. Think of this as the anti-romance. Come to think of it, pair it off with The Talented Mr. Ripley and maybe Igby Goes Down and you’ve got yourself a nice thematic trilogy.

Basically: three students at Bennington College (I mean Camden College, not really based on Bennington, really) have varying degrees of unrequited love slash lust for one another, and matters proceed poorly because what do college students know about healthy relationships? The students are played by the cream of the WB teen drama crop, and they do a surprisingly good job. The roles are the kinds of roles you expect to see Ryan Phillipe playing, except these guys do it better and with real energy. Some of the directorial tricks fall flat, but some are perfect. (That energy thing again.) Watch for the split screen.

For the trainspotters, I will note that a) the real Bennington does not have a cheap Burning Man ripoff party, and b) the real Dress To Get Laid party wasn’t that wild the one time I made it up there. Then again, I’d have been one of the sneered at Ivy League interlopers, so maybe I missed the real fun. But that’s not the point, really; Rules takes place in the hyperreal. Inhale.