Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

harry potter and the sorcerers stone

This was originally written in September 2006.

Sometimes I suspect I am the only English speaker left who hasn’t read nor seen any of the Harry Potter series. A few years back I attended a midnight sale when one of the books first came out. I went for a good laugh with some friends who were completely hooked on the series.

The place was packed! Elbow to elbow they were all lined up to get the new book. It seemed very strange to me. I’ve attended my share of movie premiers which kind of makes sense, being the first to see a film and all, but they are only a few hours long. A book takes a couple of days to get through at least, and by the size of those Potter books I’d suspect a week or more of reading. Were these people then going to go home and read the book? Could they not have waited until tomorrow and made the purchase?

Scores of them were dressed up like Potter or, I guess other characters. It was like Halloween or a Star Trek convention. I went home mystified by the fandom.

In the years since most of my friends have become Potter fans and often chatter on about it. There are marketing goods, knock-offs, and even the odd religious book condemning Potter and his odious witchcraft. The little boy in the round glasses is everywhere.

I bought the books for my wife last Christmas, secretly thinking I’d read them too. Neither of us has cracked a page.

We borrowed the films from a friend a few months back but returned them having never seen a scene. At the time we thought we’d rather read the books before viewing the films. Last night while browsing Blockbuster we finally decided to rent the blasted thing and see what the fuss was all about.

I’ll start with all the problems I had with the film and there were a few.

I hated, detested, and loathed the large CG creatures. They looked fake, they moved like plastic dolls and they totally distracted me from what was going on in the story.

Perhaps the budget wasn’t up for it, or maybe the technical department wasn’t up for it, but to me, that’s a signal to go with the old-school puppet variety. Maybe it shows my age to say that, but my eyes can suspend their disbelief with a great puppet more than with decent CG any day of the week.

The rest of the special effects were dandy. I totally believed the flying on broomsticks, the floating keys, and the like, but the three-headed dog, the giant ogre, and other larger-than-life CG characters totally irritated me. Like Jar Jar Binks only less vocal.

There were several moments in the plot that felt brushed over. For instance, there was a harsh rule mandated on the first day of school that all students were to stay out of the woods. Yet when Harry and his pals get detention they are forced to not only go into the woods but are left alone in them. Sure enough, Harry is almost killed. Not very practical on the school’s part, I’d say. I suspect this is explained a little better in the book, but if a big item like this can’t be understood by those who haven’t read then the filmmakers haven’t done their job.

The directing was fair. A few choices seemed to lack any real vision. The ball game is filmed almost entirely in close-ups with only a few long shots showing the overall action. For a game that is only partially explained I would have enjoyed trying to figure out how to play. But with the close-ups, all I could tell was that a few characters were carrying a ball, or Harry was searching for the little one.

For all the problems I had with the film, it was very enjoyable to watch. The acting was good and the characters interesting. It is always difficult for the first film in a series because there is so much background work that you have to do, and they pulled that aspect off well. I’m sure that if I was a few years younger it would sit on a shelf alongside Goonies, Gremlins and Indiana Jones.

I’m definitely looking forward to the sequels and reading the books.

Random Shuffle (09/18/06) – Van Morrison, Jerry Garcia, Ryan Adams, Seu Jorge, & Led Zeppelin

“Magic Time” – Van Morrison
From Magic Time

I can’t really remember when I first discovered Van Morrison him. I do remember having his first greatest hits album for ages and playing it like mad in college. The songs just shimmered and glowed like fresh magic. Eventually, I bought the second greatest hits album and was sunk because it stunk. Most of the songs are from a religious period if he had a religious period like Dylan. I don’t know, I’m not that steeped in Morrison mythology, but a lot of the songs seemed deeply religious, and boring.

In time I’ve come to love more and more of his songs. Is there a greater few minutes of music than “Tupelo Honey?”

I first heard his newest release, Magic Time on a bust tour of Southern Ireland. The bus driver was playing everything Irish including The Man, U2, and lots of traditional Celtic stuff. He played this album and at the time it sounded OK. It was a little slow and not filled with the type of songs you want to hear on a multi-day bus trip.

A friend bought the disk and I borrowed it and have since found it to be a late-era Morrison treasure. The songs are mostly soft, but they have that impassioned Van Morrison delivery, and the lyrics are sweet and kind and perfect for a romantic evening.

This song seems to hearken back to a time when Van was young and full of that magic vigor. It is deeply nostalgic and unapologetic about it. It has a nice little sweeping shuffle and feels like a sunny day picnic out in the countryside – neath a shade tree to keep the heat of the sun at bay.

In other words, just about perfect.

“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” – Jerry Garcia
From Run for the Roses

Jerry Garcia’s studio albums are about like the Grateful Dead in the studio – mostly awful. That’s not actually all that fair since the Dead released several really great albums, and Jerry did a few good ones solo.

The problem, it seems to me, is that the Dead don’t know how to produce their own records. Live, in the moment, they can perform magic, but given time in the studio to record, listen, and record some more they underestimate their abilities and screw it up.

Garcia puts a little reggae influence into his version of this Dylan classic, but it doesn’t really help. Clocking in at over seven minutes, it just goes on and on without ever hitting a level that justifies the length. Oh, there is some very decent melodic Jerry guitar work in the middle, but it never manages to put me in the kind of zone I often reach during a live performance.

“Firecracker” – Ryan Adams
From 02/09/02

I believe this is Mr. Adams’ third time starring in a Random Shuffle, which may be a record, and certainly proves I have quite a bit of his music on my little computer. A very large portion of my RA collection (at least on my computer) is live. A while back I downloaded a big stinking chunk of a compilation and have yet to actually burn them to disk.

What I have heard of it, it is a bit of a mixed bag. Previously I’ve mentioned how I don’t like Adams’ tendency to write super slow, unmelodic tunes and that goes doubly so for his live material. But even the faster songs performed live, at least in this case, aren’t so great. I very much enjoy his more recent live outings with the Cardinals, but from what I’ve heard of his stuff a few years back, it is not so great. The band just isn’t as on as I like.

Take this instance, for example. “Firecracker” is a great little song. It is a nearly perfectly crafted pop-rock ditty. Live, the organ decides to go all speed metal on me and destroys the melody, Adams tries to keep up and does his best at being the big rock god lead man, but it doesn’t fit. What’s left is the remnants of a good song with a lot of energy, but without the tune that made the song great in the first place. (The video I’ve embedded above is not the version I wrote about, but I couldn’t find it anywhere).

“Rebel Rebel” – Seu Jorge
From The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions

Personally, I felt The Life Aquatic was Wes Anderson’s least interesting film. The action and the characters never quite gelled into a cohesive whole. What helped make it a good film, though, was Seu Jorges’ Spanish takes on David Bowie songs. I don’t think this particular song from the Aquatic Sessions is a David Bowie song, but what do I know I can only name a handful of Bowie songs. So this may or may not be a Bowie cover, but it most definitely is a nice, lulling little acoustic ballad. (Editor’s Note: I have no idea why I didn’t think this song was originally written by David Bowie, obviously it was.)

While visiting my folks in Oklahoma this summer a commercial came on the TV and in the background was Seu Jorge’s version of “What a Wonderful World” which prompted my brother-in-law to scoff that Jorge was in way too many commercials. At the time I wondered what he meant, as I had only seen the one commercial.

In the weeks that followed I became more familiar with Jorge’s work and have noticed that an awful lot of commercials have used his songs. It is easy to see why. Many of his songs are interesting, unique, and different yet almost instantly accessible. They are on the opposite side of the spectrum from the vapid jingles that most commercials (and pop radio) play every day. Here’s to more commercials playing Seu Jorge and his ilk.

“Battle of Evermore” – Led Zeppelin
From Led Zeppelin IV

It may prove what an odd musical upbringing I had, but I first knew and loved this song through Heart and the version they recorded as The Love Mongers on the soundtrack to the movie Singles.

I still love that version.

I’m sure I was familiar with Led Zeppelin at that time. They were the titan of hard rock, and I certainly enjoyed heavy doses of hard rock. I was more in love with current bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana, all of which, of course, have heavy influences from Led Zeppelin. But I didn’t own a Zeppelin album then.

Sometime later I rectified this and bought up most of the records. Led Zeppelin is a classic, of course, though I always preferred Led Zeppelin II.

Zeppelin always reminds me of an article I once read about Kurt Cobain, who later in life, was embarrassed that he had Led Zepplin posters on his wall when he was a young boy. They were too corporate, or not punk enough, and that pointed to being a sell-out.

An easy enough opinion for a young man to have. I certainly went through periods of being embarrassed by the music I once loved. But these days, who has the time? I admit when I was a young boy I had posters of New Kids on the Block, and dug the boy band ditties. Although, I must secretly admit it had more to do with trying to be liked by my cousin and fitting in, than any true admiration of NKOBT.

Not long later, I ripped those same posters down and wondered how I could ever have liked those boys. But now it is a fun little piece of nostalgia, and I can actually go back and admire the hooks and harmonies. It is impossible to not smile when “Hanging Tough” hits the radio on the retro hour. I still do the hand motions too.

I’m no longer a Zeppelin fan. I think I outgrew the crunching guitars and the vulgar, science-fiction lyrics. But I have no shame in spending many hours watching The Song Remains the Same and being mesmerized by Jimmy Page playing the guitar like a violin.

Saw II (2005)

saw 2 poster

In my writing, there is often a conflict between the rational, intelligent critic, and the overly joyous fan-boy. There are many films, albums, and books that I enjoy that don’t stand up under critical observation. They are unoriginal, contain poor craftsmanship, and are quite often unintelligent and stupid, but for whatever reason, I enjoy them immensely. The difficulty lies in trying to review said material that criticizes its quality while still exuding the joy it can give while still maintaining my credibility.

This is doubly true for horror films. Perhaps more than any genre, horror cinema sets expectations very low in terms of overall cinematic quality. With few exceptions, horror films aren’t really very good and garner very little positive critical response.

For every Night of the Living Dead, there are a dozen Return of the Living Dead Part IIs. For every Dracula there exists countless Embrace of the Vampires. Gremlins spawn Ghoulies. And so on and so forth.

I can’t in any serious way recommend any of the Friday the 13th pictures, but when they come on the USA network you will always find me sitting in front of the TV anticipating the next gory move by Jason.

There is probably a secondary question in here about why I (and so many others) enjoy high-impact gore as much as we do. What is it about gushing blood and guts that excites me in some weird cinematic way? But that is more discussion than I have room for now.

I rented Saw II not because I expected it to be good, or a fine piece of cinema, for I expected it to be worse than the first one, and it rather stunk. Rather I rented the film because I wanted to see some inventive death traps, lots of gore, and plenty of blood even if to get there I had to wade through insipid acting, glaring plot holes, and a story that would make my grandma blush.

I got what I expected.

For those who missed the original or its sequel, Saw refers to Jigsaw a crazed serial killer who sets up elaborate games and traps to kill his victims. The games are often so intricate that they would take weeks to set up and involve so many improbable circumstances that they could only be produced in the movies.

In the first film, we are given absolutely no motivation for the killings. In the sequel, we are given a very basic, and rather insipid back story that is supposed to serve as reasons a person would create such elaborate murders.

Here, instead of random killings, Jigsaw has kidnapped several people and thrown them into a house, a house filled with traps and deadly games. Like in previous killings the players find a tape recorder whereupon Jigsaw tells them that the iron gates trapping them inside the house will not be released until two hours are up. However, a deadly gas is being loosed into the house which will kill them all in one hour. The only way to survive is to locate syringes located throughout the house which contain an antidote.

There are also several syringes in a large safe whose combination can be surmised once the players figure out what they have in common.

One of the players is the son of a police officer. The police officer, Eric Matthews (Donnie Walberg) manages to quite easily find Jigsaw in his lair and begins a stand-off with him to release his son, whom they can watch via closed circuit TV.

That’s way too much plot synopsis for a film that lives and dies by its gruesome traps. In the director’s commentary (yes I did listen to a few minutes of it before getting bored) it is noted that they created specific traps for each of the house players, but as the screenplay progressed their characters wound up doing more damage to each other than the traps. Thus we only see a few of the original death traps.

Herein lies a big problem for the film. The first one was effective (and I’ll use that term mildly) because of its creative use of death. The excitement was in the interesting use of gore and thrill. In the sequel, they try to create tension by making the characters go after each other a la Night of the Living Dead. But they can’t muster nearly that kind of tension. The few traps that we do see aren’t all that interesting either. The trailer for the movie shows one of the more interesting ones – a gun is bolted to a door which goes off whenever the characters use a key to open the door – and even that isn’t all that fantastic. Gore-ridden yes, but it is not exactly super original.

Again in the original, most of the traps entailed the player having to do something horrible to get out. Characters sawed their own legs off to get out of chains or dug through a corpse to get a key, but here most of the traps are pretty straightforward killers. Like the gun door, none of the characters knew it was a trap, there was no recording asking the character to do something to avoid getting shot in the head, it simply happened.

Perhaps asking a horror film to be intelligent, well acted, and actually scary is asking to much. Perhaps expecting the sequel to a mostly rotten gore-fest to be better than the original is expecting a miracle.

In the end, Saw II was a decent way to pass the time. No, there wasn’t anything to take away from the film, no revelations or interesting filmatic choices. But then again it isn’t meant to be. It made me squirm a little bit and be grossed out by the blood. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe

Bootleg Country: Paul Simon – Harare, Zimbabwe (02/14/87)

When I was an early teen, say 14, I got a little compact stereo for Christmas. It has a radio, a tape deck and a record player. As my parent’s record player had died many years prior I was very interested in this little device.

My mother, ever the child of the sixties, had an astounding record collection of great early rock and roll (I am sad to say it has since been lost in a flood.) The Beatles, Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Sonny and Cher, the Rascals, Beach Boys, Loving’ Spoonful, you name it if it was a hit in the 1960s she probably had it on vinyl.

This was also the point in my life when I began to take music seriously. Certainly, I had enjoyed music prior to this. I used to tape Casey Kasem’s Top 40 show every week as well as the local stations’ nightly top 10 requests. But I would often record over those tapes with whatever songs were new and popular. Music was something fluffy and fun, like candy that was to be enjoyed and discarded afterward.

Now with all of this great music at my fingertips, I began to really understand the depth and reach of what music could really be. For the first time, I began to really digest the poetry of Dylan, the guttural sex of the Stones, and the sheer brilliance of the Beatles. This was more than just throw-away pop music, it was important.

I spent many hours sitting inside my room, lying flat on my back in my bed devouring this new music. Most of these songs I had heard previously. Mother listened to Oldies radio and so much of what I was now listening to wasn’t new at all. I had heard all of Bob Dylan’s greatest hits separately many times over the years. Yet, as odd as it may sound, I had never put together that they were all his.

As much as I might now scoff at Greatest Hits albums, the 10 songs put together on Dylan’s version were life-changing to this little boy. I couldn’t believe one person had sung so much greatness.

It was Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel that made the biggest impression on me. Something about the sheer force of their songwriting knocked the breath out of me.

To this day I can remember listening to the “Boxer” late one night. As I had done many times before I turned off the lights and set the volume down low so as to allow the music to lull me asleep. Except I couldn’t sleep because my mind kept listening. I couldn’t stop, the song was too forceful to allow such a thing as sleep. The music, as it has done many a time since, kept me awake and begging for more.

02/14/87
Rutfaro Stadium
Harare, Zimbabwe

When I first started dating the girl who was to become my wife I gave her three CDs as a means to share my musical obsession. They weren’t necessarily my all-time favorite CDs, though they would certainly be high on the list, but albums I thought she would never have heard and that would shed some light into music that moved me.

Those albums were Willie Nelson’s Stardust, Nanci Griffith’s One Fair Summer Evening, and Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Graceland is an album of sheer joy to me. It is filled with great pop songcraft as well as a myriad of astounding vocals and rhythms from South Africa. It also helped bring about Americans listening to “World Music”.

This show is a song-by-song recreation of the album complete with a cacophony of South African musicians who provide their own myriad of sounds.

In fact, it is the African performances that make the bootleg worth listening to. Simon certainly performs with adequacy, but there is nothing here that really outshines the album. Part of the problem is that he only plays songs from Graceland. To be a really great performance, to me, you need to play songs spanning your entire career, not just one album.

Maybe Simon wanted to highlight only his newest album. Perhaps he wanted to showcase the African musicians and singers for the entire show. It seems to me this could have been done better by arranging a few older songs to include the singers. I can imagine an absolutely astounding African vocal arrangement of “April Come She Will” and a mesmerizing “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” But for whatever reason, we don’t get any of that, just Graceland and several what I can only guess are African originals.

It is there that the disks shine. The South African performers create sounds with their voices and instruments that are out of this world (or at least out of this part of the world). It is mystifying.

Unfortunately, the mix of Simon and the South Africans is a little underwhelming. I have heard marvelous things about this tour, and I suspect had I been in the audience I would be saying similar marvelous things, but to these ears, the tape doesn’t hold up to the hype.

It is hard to point at anything particularly wrong with this set, but when I think of Paul Simon performing Graceland live in South Africa with performers from the area I get all goose pimply and when I listen to the disks, I keep waiting for something more.

It is a good set, with good music. It’s just that when compared to say the Grateful Dead circa 1977 or Dylan in the 60’s or Bela Fleck in any year, this set just doesn’t have that same magic.

Random Shuffle (09/11/06): Barenaked Ladies, Bruce Broughton, Alison Krauss, Everything But the Girl, & Eric Von Schmidt

“Brian Wilson” – The Barenaked Ladies
from Rock Spectacle

I’m a total sucker for pop culture references. Perhaps this is because I am not only a pop culture junkie, but often make references myself in everyday conversation. I suppose when artists make similar references it makes me feel like they are one of us, or rather more pertinently, I am like them. Perhaps I could be a cool rock star, or writer pleasing fans by adding in subtle references to pop culture.

Whatever the reason for my love, when I heard the Barenaked Ladies break-out hit “One Week” I immediately adored it. The fast-paced, rat-a-tat-tat references filled me with glee. Add to that a reference to Kurasawa and I was sold.

I didn’t actually buy the album the song was on but rather an album filled with their “hits” played live. It was here I formed the opinion that they are decent songwriters with a tendency to get overly sentimental and have some of the worst rhymes in pop music. And tend to rely too heavily on jokes rather than true songwriting.

“Brian Wilson” is one of their better numbers with a sly reference to the Beach Boys’ nervous breakdown. I can even forgive the drooling joke because it references Pavlov in a way that borders on genius. Yet again when you hit the chorus the music moves into juvenile playing. It is nothing more than some adequate players speeding it up. It’s like they hit rock star mode and know nothing more than to play faster without actually having any chops.

The album is like that. There are a handful of great songs that make me laugh and feel BNL could be a great freaking band, but then they slip into full obnoxious teenage writing. Oh well, we’ll always have “If I Had a $1,000,000”

“Theme to Silverado” – Bruce Broughton
from the Original Soundtrack

I’m periodically a total sucker for rousing movie scores. Sometimes I like to pretend that I am a classical music buff, but in all honesty, though I do enjoy some of the bigger pieces, I mostly relegate that stuff to background music. Though not classical music in any sense other than the lack of singers, movie scores seem stuck in the same genre to me.

Perhaps they are more rousing, or maybe because they are attached to images and words that I adore, they seem to take up more space in my musical collection.

Silverado is a very decent movie that tried to reinvent the western genre and serves more as a winking tribute to old-style westerns. The score is mostly forgettable but the main theme has a nice bit of oomph to it that perks up my lips most of the time.

“Oh Atlanta” – Alison Krauss and Union Station
from 06/24/01

Alison Krauss has a great country/bluegrass voice. It is a perky, beautiful thing. The Union Station likewise are all superior musicians. Sadly, I tend to like very few of their songs. There are just a few that make anything memorable or enjoyable after they are heard.

“Oh Atlanta” is one of the few. Maybe it is because I love the south, or that my wife is from Georgia but I’ve never met a song about the state I didn’t love. It helps that Krauss sings it with verve and that the lyrics involve coming back to Georgia, and that is a longing I understand.

I grew up in Oklahoma but spent four years getting a college degree in Alabama and I consider myself an adopted son of the South. I don’t think I could ever explain the feeling to someone who has never loved the South, but there is just something intoxicating about the land. The people seem nicer there, the tea sweeter, and the air filled with more life.

I hope to move back there someday, and I think I’ll play this song on my way.

“Love is Strange” – Everything But the Girl
from Spin Sampler

When I was in high school I subscribed to Spin magazine which I considered to be far superior to Rolling Stone. In those days, before Guccione Jr sold the rag, it was. It had a focus on “alternative” music which of course, at the time in the early 90s was all the rage. Like that music it made me feel like I was onto something different, something only a few understood. Never mind that millions of people bought Nirvana and Pearl Jam albums, the whole scene felt like it was for the few, the cool, and I wanted to be like that.

For subscribing, I received a sampler disk filled with all the hip alterna-songs of the moment.

Though I sported the long hair and the grungy flannel and the black t-shirts with Soundgarden and Dinosaur Jr on them, I was still a closet fan of the soft, acoustic love songs.

Don’t tell anybody.

This is a cover of the Dolly Parton number. It’s played with less danceability, but there is a softness to it that I find lilting. They repeat the lyrics twice, the second verse having a little “oh-whoa” rave-up between each line.

I was always fond of the lyrics “You’re sweet loving is better than a kiss/when you leave those kisses I will miss.” This seems to say that love is more than a physical attraction, and yet physical attraction is very much a component of romance. As a geeky teenager who had never had as much as a kiss, those words spoke to me.

I still love that song. I put it on a comp for my wife and we played it during the reception of our wedding.

“Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm” – Eric Von Schmidt
Troubadours Of The Folk Era, Volume One

I first heard this song on Nanci Griffith’s album Other Voices, Too in which she plays a very upbeat version with a who’s who of country/folk musicians. It is a great version that almost makes you forget the lyrics are about an awful, destructive, deadly storm.

This is the original (?) version and here it is much more of a dirge. Von Schmidt plays the guitar with a kind of deep, dark feel like it is the sea wall approaching. His voice adds menace to the song.

I dig the folk tradition of making songs out of tragedies. Horrible things happen and we make songs to sing around the campfire to it.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)

the death of mr lazarescu poster

Poor Mr. Lazarescu, his wife has left him, his daughter has moved across the ocean to Canada, and his sister and brother-in-law lecture him about the money he has borrowed. He’s been having massive headaches and throwing up since morning, and the ambulance never seems to come.

And everybody chastises him for the drink.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is billed as a comedy, but if it is such then it is so black that I couldn’t see it. Really it is just sad, very sad, possibly the saddest movie I have ever seen.

The movie starts with Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) calling for an ambulance. We then see him call his sister, who promptly, along with her husband, yells at Lazarescu for drinking too much and asking for the return of the money he has borrowed.

Then he waits and waits for the ambulance. Eventually, he finds his way into the hall, knocking on the door of the neighbors requesting medicine.

He is chastised for the drink.

The neighbors have mercy and nurse him to the couch where he pukes up blood. They call the ambulance again and note its more serious nature. When the nurse, Mioara Avram (Luminita Gheorghiu), arrives she finds Lazarescu in the tub, where he has fallen. She takes his vitals and tries to determine what is wrong with him.

And yells at him for the drink.

They take him to the hospital, where the doctor is extremely rude.

He chastises Lazarescu for the drink. He abuses the hospital staff, Mioara, and Lazarescu mercilessly. There is no bedside manner. Lazarescu is completely belittled for not taking care of himself properly, for the drink, for everything. The diagnosis is that it is liver failure due to the drink and tests are ordered from another hospital.

Lazarescu is abumulanced to hospital number two.

He is chastised for the drink.

The doctors there are much kinder and run a series of tests which result in serious complications for Lazarescu. Because of a bus accident, this hospital is completely full and unable to perform the immediate surgery needed to keep Lazarescu alive.

He is taken to a third hospital.

He is chastised for the drink.

The staff here is worse than the staff at hospital number one. Mioara tries to explain the urgency of the situation, but the doctors want to reexamine Lazarescu and spend most of their time arguing with Mioara. They then refuse to operate because a now near comatose Lazarescu doesn’t understand he needs to sign the release forms.

He is taken to a fourth hospital.

They do not chastise him for the drink and get him ready for surgery.

It is nothing short of heartbreaking.

It is shot in a documentary style. It uses natural light and lots of handheld cameras giving the film a very realistic feel.

Though it is a Romanian film, it asks plenty of questions about the state of healthcare systems around the world. It is a film that physically angers me. When doctors are more concerned about being sued and filing the proper paperwork than about caring for the ill what has gone wrong with the world?

Even the nice doctors and nurses look haggard. Long hours and extra work due to the bus accident leave them all exhausted. I’ve never thought about tired doctors, but it makes sense, they work long, hard hours and should be exhausted by the end of their shift. The healthcare workers also spend their downtime between tests and examinations chatting about personal things as if they weren’t involved in matters of life and death. It is an intimate look into the chaos, madness, and complications of caring for people.

It is a difficult film to watch. The pacing is languid and the subject matter is dark. Despite being a “comedy” there are few if any light-hearted moments. At a 153 minutes it is a large dose to swallow. Yet it is an important look at healthcare, loneliness, growing old, and how we take care of our fellow man. One that shouldn’t be missed.

Random Shuffle (09/05/06) – Billy Bragg, Merle Haggard, The Muppets, The Wallflowers & Warren Zevon

Originally posted on September 05, 2006

“New England” – Billy Bragg
From 10-14-96

Billy Bragg is an old-school folkie who wears his politics on his sleeve. He often allows his political ideas to take over his music and his songs come out like platforms rather than carrying a tune. But when he nails it he creates a wonderful collaboration between ideas and killer folkiness.

This is a great example of his cleverness. In its original form, it’s a bit of a break-up song by way of a single guy looking for fun and not love. Live, and many years after it was originally written, he has changed many of the lyrics to reflect his own life now. Having settled down with a girl and a son, lines about singlehood have morphed into lines about fatherhood. It’s all in good fun, and the audience gets a kick out of it and sings out the final chorus.

Good stuff.

“Theme From Dukes of Hazzard” – Merle Haggard
From Ladies Love Outlaws

As a kid, my mother would never let me watch the Dukes of Hazzard on TV. She was concerned that it depicted cops as being bumbling crooks and ex-convicts as the good guys. This, it seems, would have corrupted my own morals. Fair enough, Mom, but I often slipped over to the neighbors and watched it.

The theme song remains a classic. It always reminds me of a guy named Adam who would play this song over and over in college, right along with anything Lynard Skynard.

“Moving Right Along” – The Muppets
From the Muppet Movie

I went to see Muppets from Space with a carload of friends in a little, tiny, dinky theatre in Prattville, Alabama. It had originally been a one-screen theatre and they cut it in half to create two screens. The door into the theatre was one of those swinging bar things and the hinges made obnoxious screeching noises when they swung.

Worst movie experience ever.

Except that I sat by Julie Austin, whom I had the biggest crush on. Nothing came of it, she married Mr. Knapp and I moved to Texas.

That has nothing to do with the wonderful first Muppet Movie or this song from it, but that’s what I always think of when I think of Muppets.

This is a great little song that’s full of humor and grace, much like the Muppets themselves.

“I’m Looking Through You” – the Wallflowers
From the I Am Sam soundtrack

The idea of filling a soundtrack with covers of Beatles songs sounds like a good one to me. On the I Am Sam disk it works about half the time. Some of the covers are just too close to the original to make any impression, others try to reinvent the psychedelic madness of their later albums but just don’t get it. The Wallflowers manage to do very little new with the song, but it still comes out all right.

They’ve pepped it up a little, and Jakob Dylan’s vocals have enough of a rock edge to make it interesting. It is really a testament to the power of the Beatles song than anything. I wouldn’t exchange this for the original, but it’s fun and something slightly different, and sometimes that’s alright too.

“Werewolves of London” – Warren Zevon
From Excitable Boy

I have to admit that I don’t actually own this album, but I did download the single. I also have to admit this is the only Zevon song I know. They say he was a good guy who wrote great songs, and I’m sorry I don’t know him better.

This is a great freaking song. I always wonder if it has anything to do with the movie and I’m always too lazy to look it up. I love the light-hearted feel, and the great sing-along quality to lyrics about a murderous rampage. It makes me think of Teen Wolf too (Not Teen Wolf Too) with Michael J Fox as a cool werewolf.

29 Palms (2002)

29 palms

About 3/4ths of the way through 29 Palms an inept security guard (Jon Polito) says, “Nobody thought I’d do that, did they?” In a way, this line could sum up the entire plot structure of the film, for it seems the filmmakers want nothing more than to surprise the viewer at every turn. They seem to be wearing a smirking smile knowing they are coming up with something different, something no one would expect. Yet, in spite of all the twists, turns, and quirkiness, it all feels like something I’ve seen before.

It is as if, while attending film school all of the filmmakers heard over and over again to avoid clichés and then skipped class the day originality was discussed. As if the avoidance of redundancy is all that it takes to be interesting.

To say something nice, it is filled with lots of great character actors like Michael Lerner, Michael Rapaport, and Jeremy Davies and they do manage to rise above the lackluster material.

Barely.

Davies plays an unnamed drifter who starts the film as a clerk for a corrupt judge (Michael Lerner) and may or may not be an FBI agent. The judge is about to make an important decision on whether or not an Indian Casino can expand. The judge hips the Native Americans onto the drifter and they promptly kill his girlfriend. A hired killer (Chris O’Donnell) is turned loose to do the same to the drifter.

The killer contract includes a bag of money and a severed hand (which is apparently from an enemy of the Native Americans and is to be used to frame someone, but it’s all fairly vague and unclear.)

The inept security guard steals the bag which is in turn stolen by a corrupt cop (Michael Rapaport) and then again stolen by the drifter (who somehow knows about the bag, though this too is also vague and unclear).

The remainder of the film centers on all of these characters (and more!) trying to get their hands on the bag. There are quite a few plot turns and the characters are all quirky and indie-friendly, but honestly, by the midpoint I stopped caring enough to write it all down.

If the filmmakers had stopped trying to make everything so original and quirky for a second and worked on their stories, and maybe developed a couple of their oddball characters, it might have worked. But instead, we get a film that may be “different” but it never makes me interested enough to care.

Bootleg Country: Gillian Welch – Grand Rapids, MI (09/17/03)

I have a long history of not going to a concert and then regretting it for years to come. The reasons for not going usually involve not having anyone to go with/not wanting to go alone, and not being familiar enough with the artist to convince me that the show is a must-see.

That and I’m a cheap bastard.

A few months down the road I usually become more familiar with the artist and begin cursing myself for not seeing them. This happens often in the city where I currently live. It is a college town and large enough to nab artists just before they hit the big time, but too small, and too close to Indianapolis to carry them after that. So usually it is once missed, never see again.

Gillian Welch came to town a few years back and I thought about seeing her. I liked the few songs I had heard of hers, but the voice in the back of my head got to nagging me – you don’t know her songs, you won’t be able to sing along, you should be saving your hard-earned dough – and I didn’t go.

Oh, how I have cursed my ever-loving name for that. How I’ve yearned for her to come back to no avail.

09/17/03
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, MI

Quite simply, Gillian Welch’s voice is nothing short of heavenly.

If there really are angels, and they really do sing, then they must sound like Gillian Welch.

She has some of the most haunting, achingly beautiful songs ever sung. I am reminded of Alison Krauss in that the two have similarly beautiful voices, yet where Alison’s choice of songs often makes no impression on me, Gillian’s own songs and her choice of covers are perfect for her style and often get stuck in my head for days on end. I have been singing “Look at Miss Ohio” for a week now.

This show starts with a triple play of my favorite Gillian Welch songs. “Look at Miss Ohio” starts off the show and it often gets a repeat play around these parts. It is followed by “Elvis Presley Blues” which is the first Gillian Welch song I ever knew, and remains one of my favorites. It speaks of nostalgia, the deep mysterious ache of loss, and the magic of music. It is a perfect song and Gillian Welch sings it like it’s the only song in the world.

My holy trinity is concluded with “Rock of Ages” which is one of Gillian Welch’s rocking-out songs, and by that I mean it has a tempo other than a slow dirge.

Before I go any further, I really must mention David Rawlings, Gillian’s musical partner for many years. David often gets overlooked in writings about Gillian but is very much an important player in her musicality. On stage, he sings harmony and plays guitar, and gives the music a layered and more dense quality.

She follows her trio of excellence with an entire show of great music. It is a show that reaches spiritual proportions. The music is so soft and warm and kind it wraps around me like a blanket near a fire while the cold wind and rain whip about outside.

This is an audience recording and as such we hear the crowd scream and shout between songs at a louder volume than preferable. However, they do keep quiet during the song performances allowing the music to filter in untouched and unmarred.

My only complaint is that the show runs just a tad long. While the music is always beautiful, Gillian’s penchant for playing slow, sad songs starts to be too much by the middle of the second disk. I find myself fully ready for it to be over a few songs before it actually is. I suspect as an audience member I would have begged for more, but as it is, on CD I’m ready for the closure.

It is a great disk by a overlooked performer, whose music really matters. In a world full of dizzying pop songs, flashy lights, and fast-edited videos, Gillian Welch seems more of the past, like some ancient hieroglyph pulled from the very dust of America. It is old, real music that should last another millennium.

Night Watch (2004)

night watch poster

“One side is in Russian, the other side is in English,” the girl behind the counter noted about the DVD I was renting. “So if you play it and it is in Russian, just turn it over,” she continued. I wanted to glare at her and snidely question her about her movie appreciation skills. Shouldn’t girls, who work in the movie industry, freaking appreciate films as God intended them? But I’ve had that argument one too many times. If Blockbuster wanted their employees to have a clue, I guess they’d pay them more.

Night Watch lives in the same world that we do, but in a different kind of dimension if you get my meaning. It is a dimension filled with vampires, shapeshifters, and seers. They live alongside humans, but secretly without being understood by the likes of you or me.

These creatures, or Others as they are called, were once engaged in a brutal war, but being evenly matched signed a truce many years ago. Much like in our own Cold War, the Others have set up watchmen for both the light and dark sides to ensure each side keeps up with their side of the truce. Part of this bargain is that when new others are formed; neither side will interfere with them until they have chosen a side. For the Others are actually born of human seed, and do not know they are different until something extreme occurs and their powers come out.

Our movie lies in a time in which a cursed virgin proclaims the nearing Armageddon, and a chosen child will throw the balance of good and evil to one side.

The film sets up its universe and mythology extremely well. In a prologue, Lord of the Rings style, we learn about the others and the war and the truce, it is just enough to allow us to gain understanding without bogging down in the mythos. As the story unfolds we gain a better understanding of the rules and still feel that there is a deeper story. That it is based on a series of books only adds to that mythos.

Visually the story lives in a Fight Club world where digital animation moves alongside live action. There are lots of extreme close-ups of machinery and metro tubes that transition smoothly into the real.

I’m not sure if the subtitles were created by the filmmakers or were a later addition, but they become a part of the film. Sometimes they are swatted away by a character, zoom out like the cars on a highway, or are underlined for emphasis becoming more like characters than simple translations.

The characters are well developed and often give hints at deeper backgrounds, which again, may come from their literary counterparts. Sometimes the main character is treated like more of an officer in the others than he actually seems to be, all to move the story along.

It is a slick, MTV generation movie. A glossy popcorn piece of cinema with a cool mythology, and some killer visuals. It is not great cinema, but a darn fine piece of science-fiction/horror.

While watching it I kept thinking there was great material for a sequel or sequels. Turns out it is the first part of a trilogy, the second of which is already playing in Russia. I’ll be keeping an eye out, for sure.