They were STILL making them? Even *I* moved over to CDs (not exactly sparkling new tech themselves) decades ago? Even the iPod is already 9 years old, after all…..

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Some longtime, wonderful friends were up to visit last night. Besides excellent food, gelato and company, they brought the DVD of Fanboys over to watch. I had not heard of this movie before (crazy fictional tale of some Star Wars fans seeking Skywalker Ranch) – but it’s fairly recent (2008).

And who knew there was such a ‘war’ on between Star Wars and Star Trek fans? Apparently so, at least according to this movie (and Triumph from a few years ago). There are a lot of fun cameos (and at least one gross one) in this movie, too. It’s not a ‘mockumentary’ a la Spinal Tap or Best in Show – nor a ‘real’ documentary like Trekkies – but there are similar aspects, definitely.

Sadly to admit, to get the absolute most out of it you have to be a pretty big nerd – in my case, I spotted one reference that even my nerdy friend who brought the movie didn’t catch. I guess I ‘win’ – this time 🙂

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Watched Point Break again a couple nights ago (It was on USA Network). Ah, what a guilty pleasure. This is one of my all-time fave movies, for several reasons:

1) It has everything that Keanu Reeves is reviled for (yar-dude dialog and acting) yet everything he’s perfect for (playing an ex-football QB who’s now an FBI agent, with the perfect name: “Johnny Utah”?)

2) It has Patrick Swayze (RIP :(), one of those rare onscreen combinations of sensitivity, philosophy, thrillseeking, surfing and violent rubber-masked bank robbery – no WONDER they called him ‘the Boddhisatva‘

3) It has Gary Busey – sadly somewhat absent from American film these days – but in his prime, nothing could touch him for over-the-top acting coupled with ridiculous obnoxious characters and mannerisms. What’s not to love? (See also: Under Siege – where he teams up with Tommy Lee Jones and Colm Meaney to battle Steven Seagal – classic ridiculous movie to rival even Point Break!)

4) It has bank robberies committed in broad daylight by crazy guys in President masks (Nixon, LBJ, Carter and Reagan) who seemingly have been at it for four years every summer, same m.o., and never been caught – until Keanu and Busey come along? 🙂

5) It even has Anthony Kiedis(!) in a bit part as part of a surfer gang briefly trying to beat the crap out of Keanu, until PS helps Keanu turn the tables.

Silly plot and dialogue aside – the film has some great action/montage sequences – most of the surfing scenes are slowed down and very pretty to watch, and the skydiving stuff is also very cool.

And the end doesn’t disappoint, even though it’s plainly preposterous. Keanu’s ‘vaya con dios’ ending line says it all.

Like another fave – The Fifth Element – this movie is just pure entertainment – what Hollywood was invented for (although now there’s also YouTube :))

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Saw the short ‘documentary’ Heavy Metal Parking Lot this evening. This is a very short movie filmed way back in 1986, when ‘heavy metal ruled America’ for a short time (you had to be there :)). The ‘movie’ itself is pretty basic, not a heck of a lot more than the camerman/interviewer going around the parking lot before a Judas Priest show and handing the mike to various burnouts drinking beer and yelling ‘Priest Rules!!’ over and over. Some highlights:

1) Did we really have all that horrible hair? Yep. If it wasn’t a mullet, or ‘she-mullet’ (guess where the hair-metal bands got those long scraggly ‘dos? From the chicks!) – it was an uncombed ‘feathered back’ mess. The last time I saw that many winners in the same space, it was either Monsters of Rock (at the Seattle Kingdome – sporting Dokken, Metallica, Scorpions and ‘Van Hagar’) or even worse, a USFL football game in Portland during high school. Yes Virginia, there are lots of weird people/trolls out there who live under big rocks nearly every day of the year and only come out into the light for crappy semi-pro football or rock concerts.

2) Nearly everyone on camera seems to be drinking beer, even though almost none of them are even 21 (several admit their age on camera between beer chugs) and there was at least one cop seen walking around, to boot! This concert was in Maryland somewhere at what looks like a high school stadium (but I think it was in fact a sports stadium). Even worse, one guy brags about being 20, then his girlfriend says she’s 13(!) – then they start making out – ewwwww! The one saving grace is that he’s wearing aviator-style sunglasses – which proves that those glasses STILL SUCK today too, guys!

3) The one guy who says he likes Scorpions best (they were my fave at the time) is also sporting a ‘f*** you’ tshirt – pretty funny. Like nearly everyone else, he mugs heavily for the camera , yells and then chugs.

there are other ‘extras’ on the DVD but bleh. They include other subject-matter ‘parking lot’ movies (including a Harry Potter one?) and a brief HMPL ‘alumni’ movie – where they talk to some of the people in a ‘where are they now’ style. Watched about 5 mins. of this, but bleh.

Man, watching that was just too weird. And a little TOO real 🙂

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So watched the two recent Narnia movies again on DVD in the past couple weeks, and (again) enjoyed them both. Despite the Christian overtones of the stories (based on well-known and devout Christian professor/author/intellectual C.S. Lewis) – the movies don’t seem to preach in my view. I haven’t read the book(s), so they may be a bit ‘stronger’ in that regard, not sure.

But the stories are strong and in both movies, there is an EXCELLENT villian – Tilda Swinton as The White Witch in the first (VERY brief appearance in the second); and Sergio Castellitto as Miraz in the second. Definitely a great counterpoint to Liam Neeson’s ‘jesus lion’, Aslan, in both movies. Both villians are so definitely, unmistakably evil, that the audience all but HAS to root for Aslan and the children in the end.

But to me what’s also interesting with these CGI extravaganzas now increasingly coming to the movie theater – e.g. the LOTR trilogy, the Harry Potter series, (and I’m sure many more, given Marvel Comics’ seeming intent to commit nearly every comic superhero they’ve ever done to film) is to watch both the quality and quantity of the CGI effects (which arguably make all this possible) evolve over time.

Even between the battle scenes in the 3rd LOTR movie and the Narnia movies, I think there’s been improvement – when they show large fields filled with armies, the level of detail is just subtly more believable every time around. In the 3rd LOTR, there are a couple places where it just looks a bit too ‘cgi’ – when the horses are running in for the attack and a few get munched by flying boulders/arrows, or when Legolas is jumping back and forth as he climbs the Oliphaunt to bring it down with his arrows, etc.

This was one of my major gripes with the second set of Star Wars movies. Notwithstanding the largely lame and predictable plots and some *very* questionable character choices (Jar Jar Binks lowering the bar every time he appears or opens his mouth for example) the battle scenes just looked like a cartoon trying to be live-action. Yes, in the first three movies they had effects to make the armies (good and bad) look bigger, etc. than the amount of extras they had on the set, of course. But especially in Attack of the Clones – it just looked to me like ‘here’s an army of CGI guys that are going to fight this second army of CGI guys’ – and ultimately who cares who wins? At least in the third movie with its convoluted and confusing plot, they had the saving grace/bad guy of Christopher Lee – definitely NOT a CGI guy for the most part (wither Yoda?).

But back to Narnia. I just think these two movies (presuming there will be several more to track the rest of the books) have a good mix of effects, villainy, and plot, without one overdoing the rest to the detriment of the movie. GOOD STORYTELLING, as always, wins out in the end.

This is ultimately why Pixar has been so consistently successful – even for their only ‘good’ movies (e.g. Cars, possibly A Bug’s Life) there is still a strong character element that really builds a connection between the audience and the action onscreen. And in the GREAT ones (The Incredibles, Ratatouille being at the top of the list of course) the dialogue is sharp, the characters are real and human – even if not actually ‘humans’ – and the plots are complex, complete and diverse. Of course Pixar are also animation masters, but that’s usually just icing on the cake next to the great storytelling.

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Saw these tonight, makes the wait until December even harder!!!!

Tron: Legacy Is Officially Going To Be Really, Really Good
‘Tron: Legacy’ exclusive: Disney looks to Pixar for help; hires screenwriters Michael Arndt and Brad Bird to beef up script

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This never gets old… 🙂

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Continuing a two-week-long tradition, we saw our friends’ band – Shiftless Layabout – this past Sunday night at a small bar in Wallingford, Sea Monster.

Notwithstanding the coolness of being in a bar that has *anything* to do with sea monsters generally, SL is a great band to boot! Their sound is funky, but more akin to roots-funk (e.g. The Meters – who were playing over the bar stereo both before and after their set, conveniently enough) than say, The Red Hot Chili Peppers. In part because they have horns (like my boys in Fishbone) but they just have a mellower, more laid back sound. All the better to groove with.

Their next gig is Friday Oct. 22 @ The Scarlet Tree over in Roosevelt area. Check them out before the show by hitting their myspace page linked above, or on YouTube.

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Was home sick from work today – amid other restful non-activities, watched A Bronx Tale on DVD. Although it’s a bit slow-paced, it was a good, if not great, movie.

ABT is not a typical gangster movie – although the narrative perspective used here (that of young Calogero ‘C’ Anello) is arguably very similar to Henry Hill/Ray Liotta in Goodfellas – this story only really goes until “C” hits high school, vs. Henry’s time in the mob from childhood all the way through to selling them out on the witness stand. Also, in ABT “C” associates with gangsters, but never really ‘joins’ the way Henry did. And, the main gangster, Sonny, goes out of his way in a couple situations to try to *keep* “C” out of trouble.

Robert De Niro (also directed) plays C’s dad, an honest, if definitely not rich, local bus driver. Italian, but keeps out of the way of the mob and also, like Sonny, tries to keep his son out of harm’s way, with varying degrees of success.

I appreciated that here, unlike say Goodfellas or the even more over-the-top (ridiculous, IMHO) Casino, the emphasis was on characters and motivations, even though naturally, being a gangster-related movie, there was plenty of violence. The ‘biker‘ scene alone probably had enough for the entire movie, but whatevs. But there seemed to be a genuine effort made to understand C, his dad and to a lesser degree, even Sonny.

Sonny is a ‘local’ neighborhood mob boss, not a big shot like the Corleone family or other typical movie gangsters – it’s interesting because they basically show him hanging out at the neighborhood corner bar nearly the entire time, with only a few exceptions. They have gambling in the basement, obviously various ‘operations’ going on in the area – but they almost never mention them, really.

It always boggles my mind on these guys because (at least according to the movies, maybe not in real life) they always seem to get whatever they want – and spend the entire time just boozing, womanizing and gambling? At least the Corleones (well, Michael anyway) seemed to see a life outside the mob (although he failed to get there in the end)? Why is ‘success’ limited to/measured by just booze, broads and bashing heads? I don’t get it. Maybe it’s just a ‘simpler’ lifestyle :).

Anyway, if you want to watch a gangster movie that still provides an adequate violence quota but actually tries at the same time to have a different style of plot and develop its characters – this is a decent choice.

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So came across this several weeks ago, and watched several of them again today. This is a ‘fake talk show’ called Between Two Ferns, where Zach Galifianaikis ‘interviews’ various celebrities. I’m about 90% sure these are staged, but there are some moments that are pretty edgy and it’s a bit unclear (probably the whole Natalie Portman one, most of the Ben Stiller one, possibly Bradley Cooper) if they are staged or not – certainly there is an element of improv there. If you liked The Hangover, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or ZG’s recent appearance on SNL (his monologue was among the funniest part) – you will love these bits, way, way funny! Also reminds me of The Office, especially the UK version.

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