In my review of The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears I noted that while I liked the film I was not likely to ever watch it again. And yet my review of the film makes me want to do just that.
It is a strange, almost incomprehensible film – one filled with beautiful, dark, blood-soaked images. I barely remember it. I need to rewatch it.
My full review is here.
Being an amateur reviewer is fun, but sometimes exhausting. Because I have a regular full-time job, a family, and sometimes I pretend I have a social life finding the time to sit down and watch something and then review it can be complicated.
Ok, let’s be real here. Obviously, I have the time. I watch a lot of movies. I talk about them here so I can’t pretend that I don’t have the time. Let me start over. Being an amateur reviewer is fun, but sometimes I want to watch whatever I want to watch and not have to write about them afterward.
That’s better.
Being an amateur reviewer does take a lot of time. When I write an official review I try to do a good job. I spend quite a bit of time in research mode. I’ll read about the making of the film. I’ll read new reviews and reviews that were written at the time the film came out. I like to dig into the history of genres and filmmakers. Etc. That stuff doesn’t always come into the actual review, but I like to do my research.
But reviews also have a deadline. PR people want you to have the reviews up the week the film comes out (or in my case when the Blu-ray is released). When things go well that is no problem. But sometimes they don’t actually give me a copy of the film until after it has come out. Sometimes I’ll request quite a few things and then find myself having to watch and review half a dozen films within a few days.
Or sometimes, as is the case with this series, I’ll get a multi-season collection and have to get my review out quickly. Binge-watching a series is one thing. Bing-watching multiple seasons in a few days and managing to write something coherent is something else. With stuff like this, I tend to watch a couple of episodes then skip a few and work my way through the entire thing like that. There just isn’t enough time to watch every single episode.
So, Borgen is a Danish series that is often likened to The West Wing. I remember watching it, and liking it, but the whole thing is a blur. I know I skipped around quite a lot with it and now I really want to sit down with it, taking my time to enjoy it.
You can read my review here.
Comic Cons and the like have become big business. I remember hearing about the huge one in San Diego for years. That’s where the big names come and preview all the big nerd-centric movies and television series that will be released that year. I suppose there were Star Trek conventions, etc. in various cities for years, but these days it seems like there is some kind of con going on just about everywhere on every weekend of the year.
In 2014 we got one in Tulsa and I got a press pass to go. It was a little daunting but fun. I came back the following year and the year after. Each time the con got a little smaller, the celebrity names a little more b-lister. I guess Tulsa just isn’t a big enough city or something.
I got kind of tired of it, too. I like looking at the costumes people wear, and some of the doo-dads people sell are cool. The whole celebrity thing is weird, though. I have no desire to pay a lot of money to get a celebrity autograph or to snap a picture with them. The talks can be fun, but more often than not the celebrities seem kind of bored and they tell the same stories.
I’m not knocking it. If you enjoy that sort of thing then by all means enjoy it. But after a few times going myself, I’ve had enough.
And now my daughter is getting into all that. She actually loves to cosplay and wants someplace to go where she can be with like-minded people. I’ve taken her to a couple of them and we’re going to another one here in a couple of weeks. So the circle of life comes again.
Anyway, I did a little write-up on that first con I went to, and you can read it here.
I pay very little attention to politics these days. I know I probably should, I know it is important. I do get enough information to make what I think is an informed enough vote, but there is so much vitriol out there that I can’t take too much of it in.
I used to pay close attention. I used to argue about it on social media thinking I was making a difference. Then one night I realized I was lying in bed at two o’clock in the morning trying to make the perfect argument to convince an old college friend on Facebook of something or other.
I didn’t convince him of anything. In fact, we got into a pretty good fight and stopped talking to each other for a long while.
My blood pressure can’t take that crap.
And that’s how I make an introduction to my review of a book that is full of political cartoons from a century ago! Puck was a hugely important political magazine that ran from 1877 to 1918. This book covers that history and presents a whole bunch of the cartoons that ran inside its covers. As you can read in my review, it is quite informative and rather dull to this non-history buff reader.
I read all of these old reviews of mine before I post them to the site. I mostly enjoy reading my thoughts on things I watched many years ago. Reading this review, of a sci-fi/horror series from Britain released in 2014 I suddenly realized Millie Bobby Brown was in it. She is now known as “11” on Stranger Things.
Back then she was just a kid, and now a well-known one. It is funny to think I saw her in this series and wrote her name in my review, but had no idea how big of a star she would become.
Not that it really matters, I just find it interesting. Like I didn’t know who she was then, and until just now I didn’t realize she was in that show (of which I have the vaguest of memories watching.)
Anyway, you can read my review of the series here.
I know for many of you my movie/Blu-ray/book/whatever reviews are not the primary reason you come to this site. At a guess, I’d say there are quite a few of you who wish I’d stop writing them. This site used to be about the music, man, I can almost hear you say.
I appreciate that you all tolerate these things, and never complain.
For once I’ve got a review that is about the music, man. The Rolling Stones have released quite a few concerts on video in their From the Vault series over the years. I got a couple of them to review a while back and here’s one of them.
I’m not by any means a Stones superfan. I definitely can’t break down their discography or which years are best in terms of performances. But I dug the hell out of this show as you can see from my review.
I truly have no memory of watching this. I did enjoy reading my review and noting how movies had kicked into nostalgia overload (the review was written in 2014) and chuckling about how quaint that sounds today.
I guess the movie was a mash-up of a bunch of 1980s family adventure films, but not nearly as good as any of them. This is probably why I don’t remember it. I’m sure I sold the Blu-ray so all I have left is this review.
I’m a huge fan of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist – or I should say I was a huge fan. Nothing happened to cause me to not be a fan, I just haven’t seen it in years so I have no idea how it holds up, or if I’d still find it funny.
I definitely found it funny in 2014, when they released this audio-only, live version of the show. The series was always basically comedians doing their bits in an animated format. Here is it comedians doing bits in audio format, pretending to be an animated show.
I dug it back then, as you can see from my review.
A beautiful, upper-class schoolteacher prepares to marry her military hero husband. But instead of saying “I Do” she declares that she cannot marry him. He rebukes her with a slap to the face. She responds in kind and knocks his head plumb off of his body. She flees the church with her white wedding gown covered in bright red blood.
This is a dream of course. Diana (Jemma Redgrave) will have many more of them before the film ends. Many, many more of them. I’d say a good 2/3rds of the film is dream sequences.
The dreams aren’t particularly scary, or even all that inventive. While watching this I kept thinking that if someone like David Lynch had directed it, Dream Demon would be a true classic. He’d create nightmares that we’d be talking about for decades. Instead, we get a lot of long hallways, a creepy basement, and the occasional man on fire.
Despite all of this I still quite liked the movie. What the dreams lack in imagination they make up for in beauty and mood. They are all shot with dramatic, shadowy lighting and wonderfully moody colors. They are…well…dreamy.
The plot outside of the dreams involves Diana trying to understand why she is having these dreams. Is she just nervous about getting married like her therapist suggests, or is there something more nefarious happening? Despite the title of the film, there isn’t anything supernatural going on, although it does owe a great debt to A Nightmare on Elm Street made just a few years earlier. But sadly, there is nothing akin to Freddy Krueger stalking her dreams. The film could really use a good villain.
There are a couple of obnoxious paparazzi types hanging around and one of them (played by the great Timothy Spall) features in some of the dreams, getting more and more grotesque with each one. But they ultimately don’t amount to much.
She’s helped by Jenny (Kathlene Wilhoite) an American who says her biological parents used to live in Jenny’s house, but she was adopted as a young girl and has no memory of them.
The two begin sharing dreams, each living inside the other’s nightmares and they begin to be afraid that they will never escape them.
Unlike a lot of movies of this sort, neither girl makes any real effort to stay awake. They don’t drink coffee by the gallon or try to remain standing or anything. Diana falls asleep a the drop of a hat. She’s constantly nodding off while sitting on the couch or anywhere else. Despite the fact she’s terrified of what she might dream of.
The resolution is as unimaginative as the dreams, and yet again I still quite enjoyed the film. There is a mood that the film is vibing on that I found to be pretty great.
Allman Brothers Band
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Morrison, CO
August 12, 2001
** 16 BIT **
Source: Neumann KM-140’s (ORTF) > Lunatec V2 > Tascam DA-P1 > DAT(m)
Transfer: DAT(m) > Sony PCM-R500 > S/PDIF > Tascam HD-P2 > CDWave > FLAC (16/44.1)
Mastering: .WAV > Sound Forge Pro 10.0a (boost mids and highs, minor edits, normalize, & add fades) > CDWav (tracking) > Trader’s Little Helper (level 5) > FLAC
Location: Row 10, ROC
Recorded by: Jeff Bowen, aka OldNeumanntapr, and Jack Hunt
Transfered by: Terry Watts
Mastered by: Dennis Orr
Tagging, Via xACT 2.53, And Front-Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr
Setlist:
Encore:
Gregg Allman – vocals & keyboards
Warren Haynes – vocals & guitars
Derek Trucks – guitars
Oteil Burbridge – bass
Butch Trucks – drums
Jaimoe – drums
Marc Quinones – percussion
OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This is one of two shows that I have recorded out of my home state of California, the other being Blue Oyster Cult in Utah on this very same trip. I flew to Salt Lake City and met up with my friend Jack, and we recorded Blue Oyster Cult at the Weber County Fair in Ogden, UT, before driving out to record the Allman Brothers Band in CO. I’d always wanted to see Red Rocks Amphitheatre after hearing stories about it for so many years. It’s a really cool place. We got there in the early afternoon after staying in a motel for the night in Wyoming en route from Utah. Red Rocks is a ‘park’ during the daylight hours so we were able to walk through it at see the complete amphitheatre. I had heard that from the upper part of the amphitheatre you can see lightning storms out over the valley below. Thanks to Kirk West, Jack was able to score a pair of backstage passes from the band that we used after the show. We both met Warren Haynes backstage after the show, which is actually ‘under’ the stage rather than behind, because of the natural rock formations that surround the amphitheatre. In addition to my taping gear, which the band had no problem with, I also brought in my old black-body Nikon FM. I had to hide the FM in the taping bag because the band would not allow cameras. So, I had Jack shoot photos during the show and I ran the recording gear, and I told him that if they threw him out for taking pictures at least I would be there to run the audio gear! However, when the time came for photos with Warren backstage after the show, the shot that I took of Jack and Warren was clear but the one that Jack took of Warren and me was blurry. I attribute that to the fact that Jack made several beer runs (for himself) during the show. (He claimed that he wasn’t good with available-light manual focus without a flash. The depth of field at f/2.0 is very shallow.) Likely excuse; He was drunk. Susan Tedeschi opened for the Allman Brothers, and we recorded both sets. We were lucky to claim a tenth row right-of-center position to record from. The sound was really good and I was fortunate to be able to use my friend Allen Chen’s Lunatec V2 microphone preamp. This was the first time that I saw the Allman Brothers do ’Mountain Jam’. We had a minor shock when we got back to the parking lots and found the rental car gone, but soon realized that it had been towed a short distance away and re-parked on the other side of a big rock outcropping. Not sure why. It took another day and a half to get back to Salt Lake City, after overnighting at the same motel in Wyoming. I stayed at Jack’s house just north of Salt Lake City for a week so I could ‘mine’ his DAT collection, and then I flew home. The flight from Phoenix to San Luis Obispo was almost a disaster because thick fog almost kept us from landing at the SLO airport. We made one or two attempts before the stewardess got on the radio and said that because of the fog there was a possibility that we would have to divert to Fresno. My girlfriend was waiting at the airport for me and I was not happy about the prospect of spending the night in Fresno. Fortunately, the third time was the charm and the pilot, whose name was ‘Captain Kirk’, brought us through the fog and we landed safely. Not quite a month later to the day the country would grieve over 9-11.
Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. 😉
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