Category: Uncategorized

Bloggy Blog

I started this blog in the Autumn of 2004. That was when blogs were first becoming a very big thing. In those days it seemed like everyone had a blog. There were music blogs and movie blogs, political blogs, and book blogs. There were blogs about just about anything you could imagine. But mostly, people were just blogging about their lives. They’d share pictures of their families and pets, and they’d talk about their everyday happenings. Then Myspace happened, and then Facebook and social media took over. There was no reason to blog about your life when you could just post things to your social media of choice.

Blogs are still around, of course. But they mostly seem to be about something, people don’t blog so much about their personal lives but about their hobbies. When I started this blog I was journaling the year my wife and I spend in France. Eventually, I started writing reviews of movies, music, and books. By the time we came back to the States, I was a full-on pop culture blogger. Every day I would talk about various artistic endeavors that I had enjoyed (or not enjoyed as the case may be) but I was also finding odd little things on the Internet and blogging about them. Whether it was the world’s highest bridge or what Michael Jackson would have looked like without plastic surgery, I was regularly posting all sorts of stuff.

Eventually, that included writing about bootlegs and then sharing them. Over time that overtook pretty much everything else and for years that’s all I did. I loved sharing all that great music with you all.

Then Amazon Drive told me they were shutting down a few months ago and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this site ever since. Truth is I think I’d like to go back to those old days.

The thing is I haven’t really used Facebook in ages. I gave up on Instagram a couple of years ago. Up until recently, I’ve been a big user of Twitter, but there has been a big dustup in ownership over there and things are becoming a lot less fun. Especially since most of the cool people I followed over there are jumping ship. There are a few sites that are vying to be the new Twitter but the thought of moving to a new platform and trying to build a following just sounds exhausting.

But here I am with a blog that already has something of a following. Why not treat it like my own personal social media site?

Here’s my idea:

I will still post music. I’m still holding off until April when my Amazon Drive account will deactivate and I’ll hopefully have all my shows listed and sorted (I’m doing good on that front and I think I’m still in line to complete that project in April). But when that time comes I’m thinking about once a week I’ll do a post where I’ll share a bunch of shows from a tour or a venue or something. I’m not quite sure how the post will look but hopefully, you’ll have a way to both look at setlists and sources and then download what you want.

I’ll post movie reviews and continue to do things like the Friday Night Horror. I like the idea of doing daily posts about interesting things. I could link to other blogs and sites that put up download links to music, but also link to interesting articles and setlists, kind of like Expecting Rain does now.

But then I also might post a picture of a beautiful sunset that I took that morning or be excited about some TV show I just got into, tell a funny story. This will become my personal space. Hopefully you all (and others) will enjoy it too.

That’s the idea anyway. Truth is I’ve had this thought rattling around in my head for weeks and I’m just now posting about it. Actually doing this is another thing altogether. I have to get into a groove in order to post random things every day. I don’t know if I’ll find it again. Maybe I’ll just write the odd review now and again until I start posting live music again. Maybe once I do, I’ll wind up just posting music and nothing but music.

Or maybe this idea will take off. If it does then you are now forewarned that I’m gonna be posting all kinds of stuff, whatever floats into my brain as interesting.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

the man who knew too much

I suppose for those who are not Alfred Hitchcock aficionados the version of The Man Who Knew Too Much they know is the one with James Stewart and Doris Day. That’s a fine film in its own right, but most people don’t realize it is a remake of a film from 1934. Both films were directed by Hitchock making him one of the few directors to ever remake themselves.

The earlier film was from the director’s British period and stars Peter Lorre in his first English language movie. It is an excellent film and a few years ago Criterion gave it a humdinger of a Blu-ray release. I reviewed it for Cinema Sentries and you can read that review here.

Casino Royale (2006)

casino royale

One of the fun things about going through my old Cinema Sentries reviews is reading some of my old work. Ok, sometimes it is less fun than it is cringe-inducing, but I still enjoy reading what I wrote many years ago. I wrote a review of the first of Daniel Craig’s James Bond outings back in 2012. Truth be told I have no memory of writing this review. I thought I had only written a review of Octopussy for the Cinema Sentries Bond-a-thon, but I guess I wrote this too.

Weird.

Sometimes reading my old reviews sends me back to when I wrote them, but not this. It is literally completely lost to my mind. But hey, you can read it now too, if you like. Just click here.

Octopussy (1983)

Octopussy

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. I have these ideas of posting things every day. Of turning this site into an old-school blog where I write movie reviews, casually talk about the music I’m listening to, and maybe tell stories about my life. But when it comes to actually writing I get distracted and nothing comes out. Maybe this week I’ll get better at it.

Until then we’ll talk about James Bond. Several years ago the folks at Cinema Sentries got together and reviewed all of the James Bond movies. I got to talk about Octopussy, a movie I hadn’t seen since I was a kid (and haven’t seen since I wrote this review). It wasn’t as good as I remembered, and it certainly didn’t live up to that ridiculous title, but it was still kind of fun.

Anyway, here’s my review.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Down (2001)

down

Friday night comes and I need a horror movie to watch. I really want to watch something I’ve not seen before, but scrolling through my current streaming services doesn’t turn up much. I start to put on The Ring (2002) the American remake of the excellent Japanese film Ringu (1988) with Naomi Watts, but I’ve seen it before, and as I said I’m wanting something new. I land on this film which also stars Naomi Watts. It is about an evil elevator in a New York skyrise and that sounds like fun.

Sometimes when you randomly watch something after flipping through the streaming channels you discover something really good. Sometimes, like tonight, you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake.

Down is a remake of a Dutch film called The Lift which is something of a cult classic. Dick Maas directed both of them. I haven’t seen the original but if the remake is anything like it I won’t be bothering with it at all.

It seems to be trying for some sort of blending of horror and comedy but it fails at both. The comedy is broad and bad and not all of the actors seem to understand they should be going for laughs, while others seem to think they are in a Marx Brothers film. It was made just before Watts became a star so while she is featured prominently in all the promotional material she actually isn’t the lead. That role goes to James Marshall who, if you are like me, you’ll stare at for a long time trying to remember where you know him from before you finally look it up and realize he was in Twin Peaks. He plays everything quite straight whereas Naomi Watts seems to have walked in from some SNL skit from the early 1990s. She lays it on thick and broad and sports the worst Brooklyn accent I’ve heard in a while.

The film has great character actors like Dan Hedaya and Michael Ironside, Ron Perlman and Edward Hermann in small roles, all of which seem to be playing in different movies.

This is a movie that begins with two security mooks looking through those tourist telescope things on the observation deck of this big skyscraper. They are looking into the window of a nearby window watching a couple of prostitutes get sexy with some dude. It is played for laughs like it’s one of those low-budget comedies the USA Network used to play on Friday nights. It goes downhill from there.

While the comedy is bad the horror is worse. It builds very little suspense, the deaths are sometimes gruesome but never effective. I’d say it was more of a supernatural thriller instead of horror but it isn’t very thrilling either. In the last 15 minutes or so it does switch from just bad to so-bad-its-good territory but by then I was just ready for it to be over.

As an interesting bit of trivia, the film was scheduled for a 2001 release but then 9/11 happened and for obvious reasons, it got pushed back into oblivion. At some point, they think the elevator mishaps are caused by terrorists. There are actually characters who talk about how Bin Laden tried to take down the twin towers which is now kind of creepy. And that’s about as creepy at the film gets.

Lone Star (1996)

lone star

I have a very distinct memory of watching this movie. I saw it with my mother. This isn’t the sort of movie we’d normally watch together which means there must have been a good review in the local paper. I think we showed up late because I remember we had to sit up close. We were maybe in the third row and off to the side. It was very uncomfortable watching from that spot.

I remember liking the movie, but not much else about it. Except for the crick in my neck. It wasn’t like any movie I’d ever seen before so my feelings were skewed. Or rather I didn’t know exactly why I liked it, except that it was really interesting. In my memory, I’m in high school, but by 1996 I would have been in college, so I must have been home for winter break, or maybe the summer.

A corpse is discovered in the desert outside a small border town in South Texas. It has been there so long nothing is left but bones, a Mason’s ring, and a sheriff’s badge. The current sheriff, Sam (Chris Cooper) determines that the dead man was Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson) the former sheriff. He went missing decades ago after getting into an argument with Sam’s father, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey). Buddy then became sheriff and was and is beloved by the town.

On the surface, the film is a murder mystery. But there is so much below the surface. As Sam searches for the killer (who he thinks just might be his father) he digs up the past. His past, his father’s past, and the town’s past. As a border town sitting right on the river that divides Mexico from the US the town is full of whites, blacks, Indians and Mexicans. Racial relations have changed over time as well.

The film moves between the present and the past in a most interesting way. The camera will move in on one character, say Sam talking to someone about Charlie, then it will slowly move away and the characters from the past will be there acting out the scene. It blurs the lines between the past and present, memory and history.

Sam runs into his high school sweetheart and they rekindle their relationship. An Army Colonel is transferred to a nearby base. His estranged father runs the local bar, the only place blacks felt welcome in the town for decades. The past meeting the present again, and again.

Director John Sayles weaves this tale full of side stories and numerous characters like an enormous tapestry. Long after watching the film I’m still thinking about it. I don’t know why it took me nearly 25 years to watch it a second time, but I’m quite sure I’ll see it again before another quarter century rolls around.

Sorry For the Lack of Posting

My family and I were down and out all last week with…something. We ran light fevers, had heads full of gunk, felt achy and our heads hurt, and we coughed our bloody lungs out. It wasn’t COVID, we tested negative for that. I’m guessing it was a mild case of the flu since that’s been going around. Whatever it was it made me not want to do anything more than lay on the couch and moan. Luckily I had already planned on a four-day weekend so I didn’t miss too much work. Unluckily that four-day weekend coincided with Thanksgiving and I spent it doing the aforementioned moaning on the couch.

I’m feeling quite a bit better now, though I am still coughing quite a bit. So, I’ll try to resume some regular posting again. I had several more Noirvember postings that I wanted to get to, but at this point, I’ll probably just do some kind of overview of what I watched in a few days. I know at least two of you will be interested in that LOL.

I do not have a movie theme for December yet. I’m not a huge fan of Christmas movies so I won’t be doing that. I might not do anything. After two theme months it might be nice to just watch whatever I want. I’ll still do the occasional review, and I’ll definitely be making public my old reviews again.

On the music organizational front, I can officially say I am done with Bob Dylan. If I remember I’ll post a list of all my Bob shows for you all to look at with envy. I’m now working my way through various other artists that I’m moving off of a hard drive that will be solely dedicated to Bob. Then I’ll finally get to that hard drive my friend sent me many years ago. That’s the Peter Gabriel, Queen, Pink Floyd, etc. drive that I’ve been feeding off of for a long time. So, I am making good progress.

I’m still aiming to be done in April when my Amazon Drive goes dark. Then I’ll start posting music downloads again, at least in some fashion.

Anyway, I hope everyone else is well and happy.

Heat 2 by Michael Mann & Meg Gardiner

heat 2

Heat, the Michael Mann film from 1995 is one of my favorite movies. It stars Robert DeNiro as a master criminal who heads a crew of high-end professional thieves (including Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and Danny Trejo) and Al Pacino as the highly-skilled detective out to catch them. It would be a great movie if it was just a cat-and-mouse game between those two forces, but it is so much more.

At its heart, it is really a character study of these two characters who are both very similar though on opposite sides of the law. Both men are highly intelligent, great at their jobs, and extremely dedicated. The DeNiro character swears off all attachments because he says he needs to be able to flee without a second thought, he has to be able to leave everything behind. Pacino’s detective is married, but it is falling apart (and this isn’t the first time that’s happened) because he can’t ever leave the job at the office. Kilmer plays a man kind of in the middle of these two. He is smart and very good, but he’s got a girl and he’s dedicated to her. He’ll get the job done, but he’ll never leave her.

It is a long movie and one that takes its time. It allows the audience to really soak up these characters and live in this world. It is a film I like more and more each time I watch it and one I always enjoy spending time with.

So, I was excited when I learned that Michael Mann (with help from Meg Gardiner) had written a sequel to Heat. As a novel. Which is weird, right? Mann has never written a novel before, and Heat is a movie. Except Mann often talks about how when he writes a movie script he writes long character descriptions giving them background stories and filling in their characters. Apparently, he writes hundreds of pages of background stories that never make it to the actual script. Heat was actually a remake of an earlier film of Mann’s called L.A. Takedown, which was originally intended as a TV pilot but when it wasn’t picked up he converted that into a television movie. What I’m saying is Mann knows and loves these characters so it makes a certain amount of sense that he’d want to revisit them in this format.

Heat 2 is really good, even if it is a little convoluted and relies a little too heavily on coincidence. It follows two timelines that eventually converge. The first follows directly after the events of the film. Chris (that’s the Val Kilmer character) has escaped with his life (barely) and is on the run. He makes it to Paraguay where he begins working for a crime syndicate.

The second timeline follows Vincent (the Al Pacino character) several years prior to the events of the movie as he chases a violent gang of home invaders in Chicago. Neil (the DeNiro character) and Chris and their cohorts are also in Chicago at the same time, involved in an unrelated crime.

The stories converge in interesting ways. At least to me. Your mileage may vary.

Spoilers for the movie: at the end of the film Neil is dead and so he can’t factor into the events of the book that unfold after that moment. It is clear from the film that Neil and Vincent had never met before. In this book, the two characters circle each other without really knowing it and the various coincidences and events that connect them do feel a little contrived and may be a little too much for some readers.

Personally, I didn’t mind. Mann and Gardiner do a great job of bringing us back into this world. The voice of the characters line up so well with the actor’s performances in the film that I do wonder how it would come across to someone who hasn’t watched the movie.

I highly recommend watching the movie then reading the book. Mann has already said he’s interested in adapting the book into a movie or possibly a TV series. I’d vote for a series as there is so much crammed into these pages it would be difficult to fit it all into a movie, even a long one. It will be fascinating to see who they get to play these characters as the original actors are far too old for it now.

Oops

Lots of you just received an e-mail of a post I made with some pretty pictures of a house under construction and some empty lots with a sales pitch included.

Sorry about that.

In my real life, I’m a home builder and I run a separate website for that business. It is also run through WordPress and I accidentally posted something for work on The Midnight Cafe. I have deleted the post, but I hope you enjoyed the pretty fall colors.

Also if you happen to live in NE Oklahoma and are looking for a house to buy, give me a call 🙂