Weekend Video: Shane MacGowan & Friends - "I Put a Spell on You"

Shane MacGowan, Nick Cave, Mick Jones, Johnny Depp, Bobby Gillespie, Chrissie Hynde, a bunch more. I love Shane's voice so much, especially when you can sort of understand what he's saying and his scream is perhaps the best of all time. Everybody else is cool to see (especially Jones) and I enjoy Cave and Hynde's work as well but MacGowan just yelling in the background is the highlight for me. There's not much more to say, the song and video speak for itself.


Rating: 5/5

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Beat the Devil's Tattoo (2010)

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club started off as a kick ass garage rock band for their first 2 albums, 2000's B.RM.C. and 2003's Take Them on Your Own. For a while they were thought to be the saviors of rock. Their 3rd album, 2005's Howl, was a huge change as it was an album of americana/folk rock before going back to the garage for 2007's Baby 81. Their latest album mixes both styles with an emphasis on the heavier side. It's their best and most complete album yet.

If you want flat out rock there's "Conscience Killer" and "Mama Taught Me Better" for a softer folk there's "Sweet Feeling" and "Toll." Most of the album falls somewhere in the middle with "Bad Blood" and "River Styx" being standouts. They also venture into a sort of delta blues with the Title track. The album closer "Half-State" is B.R.M.C.'s most ambitious track ever recorded. It's 10.5 minutes that mixes everything that makes the album great into one.

B.R.M.C. still wear their influences (Jesus & Mary Chain, Stone Roses) proudly and openly and they will never be considered a deep lyrical band but they are very good at what they do. While never living up to the expectations they faced early in their career, they have never before released an album as eclectic and exciting as this. If you have never heard them before Beat the Devil's Tattoo is the perfect time to start.

Rating: 4/5

Cold Souls (2009)

Is your soul getting in the way of you achieving true happiness? Is it affecting your performance at work? If so why not have it removed, it's then one less thing to worry about. That's the premise for Cold Souls a existential comedy starring Paul Giamatti.

Giamati plays a fictionalized version of himself. He's rehearsing for a theater run of Uncle Vanya and it's not going well. He just feels like something is weighing him down. He sees an ad to have your soul removed and stored and decides to check it out. With his soul extracted he becomes a horrible actor and attempts to have it reinstalled. This proves more problematic than it should be and away we go.

First time writer/directer Sophie Barthes lifts a page from the Charlie Kaufman playbook and does a fine job balancing weird existential comedy, some slapstick and manages to make a statement about commercialism in the process. Giamatti is one of my favorite actors and he does not disappoint. His simple facial expressions left me chuckling constantly and he plays exasperated as well as any actor working today. David Strathairn is great in a supporting role as the head of the soul removal company as well.

It's not all fantastic, whenever Giamatti isn't on screen the movie drags. Also the ending, while fitting with the tone of the movie, felt tacked on and rushed to me. The movie looks really good for a low budget affair, it portrays a very dreamlike atmosphere that really helps to set the overall tone.

I enjoyed Cold Souls quite a bit but it's probably not for everyone. It's weird and deliberately paced but Giamatti's performance is worth watching in itself and the rest of the movie is interesting if nothing else.

Rating:
3.5/5

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day: Blu-ray (2009)

I first saw the original Boondock Saints when it was a blockbuster exclusive rental on VHS around 2001. I fucking loved it. It was like watching an amazingly violent, vulgar and slightly offensive little secret. The years have not been kind to my opinion on it. As more and more people viewed the movie (and considered it a classic), it just wasn't as cool anymore and without the "coolness" factor what's left is a fairly unoriginal, emotionless and amateurish flick. There are tons of people who love it but at this point I can't be considered one of them. I don't hate the original, it's got energy and (borrowed) style, but there's not much there under that.

It took 10 years for writer/director Troy Duffy to make the follow up and while I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, I was curious to see if he would add anything different to the sequel. It turns out he has not. All Saints Day is basically a rehash of the original but a lot more boring. Somebody frames the Brothers MacManus in the killing of a renowned priest and they come out of retirement to get revenge. They run into pretty much every character from the original (even the dead ones) and go on their way to kill a lot of bad people. That's basically it and I doubt most fans of the original would want much more than that anyway.

The movie just didn't work for me at all. It's 2 hours long and spends the first hour setting up the plot and introducing new characters. Duffy's relative strength is writing and shooting action scenes not character development or even comedy and the first half really drags along slowly without much action in it. The humor in the first wasn't exactly highbrow but it was a whole lot smarter than what is presented here. A prime example is when a bad dude says he shit his speedos, Duffy then shows his ass with a poop streak, hilarious.  I love a good shit joke but the key word is good, it just wasn't funny. There's also numerous scenes that just feature people yelling at each other for no apparent reason, I think they were supposed to be funny but it didn't work. Things pick up a but in the second half I guess but I had pretty much checked out at that point.

The actors all seem to go through the motions. Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery aren't exactly Oscar contenders but they both seem to be mailing it in big time. Billy Connolly is fine but plays a pretty minor role in regards to screen time. Julie Benz basically replaces Willam Dafoe's character and she is allowed as much leeway to go crazy with it as Dafoe was but her performance just doesn't add anything. Clifton Collins plays the new sidekick but he is given nothing much to do at all as well. Most of the other supporting characters are just annoying.

The Blu-ray is nothing special either. All Saints Day is pretty low budget and the picture quality shows that with softness all around. It doesn't look bad by any means just nothing spectacular. A bigger disappointment was the Audio. For an action movie it's very front heavy and there is very little surround use at all, even during shootouts.  Bass level is fine but nothing overwhelming either.

I'm sure there will be lots of people who will enjoy All Saints Day for what it is (it's got a 77% approval rating by the Rotten Tomatoes community) but I found it overly long and pretty boring. There are a lot of nods to the original for fans to spot but I wish Duffy would have spent more time putting together some more action scenes or a tighter pace than trying to cram every character and situation from the original in. Fans of Boondock Saints will probably still want to watch it but I wouldn't recommend anyone go out and buy it without watching it first.

Ratings:
Movie 1.5/5
Blu-ray3/5

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

I finally got around to watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, widely considered one of the greatest films and lead performances off all time, and I can clearly see why it is held in such high regard. Yes it's a silent movie but spoken words are not needed to convey emotion and this film is proof positive.

The movie is based on transcripts of the trial records of Joan of Arc. With apologies to history buffs for my bastardized version, she led a French revolution against the English based on what she believed to be God telling her to. She was very successful but ultimately captured and this film is based on her trial.

There are two spectacular things this film has going for it: Carl Theodore Dreyer's direction and Renee Jeanne Falconetti's performance. This is one of the first films to feature actors faces in close up shots and it does that prominently with almost half the film being in that style. There are lots of other interesting and previously unseen (at the time) camera angles as well. Dryer positions it from above and below the action making for a new cinematic experience.

As great as the direction is, it's Falconetti's performance that really shines. The range of emotions she shows based solely on facial features is astonishing. Fear, contempt, anguish, acceptance and forgiveness are all conveyed so remarkably it can really hold even a modern audiences attention. It's virtually impossible to describe in words what happens in silence on screen.

I am so glad I finally watched this film and if you're at all interested in film history or just great movies in general it is essential viewing.

Gentlemen Broncos (2009)

When I first saw the teaser for Gentlemen Broncos sometime last year I was very excited for the movie. All it consisted of was Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Concords) as his character, Science Fiction writer Ronald Chevalier, spouting off nonsense in the most self indulgent manner possible. I knew that this character could pretty much carry a comedy all by himself, even as a supporting player. I was wrong.

Gentlemen Broncos focuses on aspiring teenage writer Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano) who attends a fantasy writers convention only to have his story plagiarized by the once acclaimed but now struggling Chevalier. There are other subplots involving Purvis' home life and the movie is interspersed with acted out scenes from Purvis' story (starring Sam Rockwell as Bronco).

It's fairly obvious right away that the movie is co-written and directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre fame. It's got the same offbeat style and the same quirky type of characters that filled both his earlier 2 movies. While not a giant fan of his previous work I enjoyed both movies enough to not discount his future projects.  I knew this movie got really bad reviews but with comedy in particular, my personal taste doesn't always match up to professional critics so I usually ignore reviews for comedies. I wish I hadn't.

There's just not much that struck me as funny in the movie. Clement is great as Chevalier but he's not given much to say that's actually humorous. Being a self-indulgent ass can be hilarious but not without some great lines to back it up. Rockwell also is a bright spot, he portrays the hero in both Purvis' vision and Chevalier's of the same material and had me cracking up a few times but his screen time is relatively small.  The rest of the cast just floats along mostly looking weird but not really doing anything funny. It feels like Hess just throws weird looking people on the screen and expects people to laugh at them. It works on a real superficial level but can't sustain much humor for a full length movie.

The movie does have a few laughs here and there but they're pretty spread out. It's mostly full of general weirdness and far to many slow spots where nothing happens dramatically or on a comedic level.  I guess it's entirely possible that I just didn't "get" Gentlemen Broncos and maybe there's an audience for this movie out there but it seems doubtful.

Rating: 2/5

2012: Blu-ray (2009)

How can the destruction of the world be so boring? That's the question I asked myself throughout all 2.5 hours of 2012. I had pretty low expectations going in so I can't really say I was disappointed but I thought the movie would at least be viscerally exciting.

If anyone is not aware of the plot, it involves the ancient Mayan prediction that world would end in the year 2012 coming to fruition. The focus is mostly on John Cusak's character and his attempts to save his estranged family from peril. Chiwetel Ejiofor also plays an important role as a gov't official with a strong sense of compassion. There's a bunch of other people involved including Amanda Peet, Danny Glover Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt and most memorably Woody Harrelson. If you're wondering why I haven't named any character names it's because the movie doesn't establish any of them as real people so why should I refer to them then as anything other than the actors who play them.

The actors all give acceptable performances, for a giant popcorn movie, with Harrelson as the standout but acting isn't really the point. Director Roland Emmerich has shown over the course of his career (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow) that he loves to blow things up in spectacular fashion with characterization an afterthought. The point is to watch all the destruction occur and for a while it's pretty cool to look at. The problem I had was that it all starts to look the same after a while. How many times can a plane take off on a runway that's falling apart at the seams? How can Hawaii being destroyed look the same as the annihilation of Las Vegas etc etc? The run time is also very problematic, at 2.5 hours there's only so much CGI earth crumbling I can take and the lack of any emotional ties to the characters means when shit's not blowing up or crashing down there's nothing to keep an interest.

The Blu-ray itself is very high quality but it falls short for me as a reference disc. The picture quality is excellent but a lot of the CG looked very, very fake. I didn't see 2012 in the theaters so maybe that's how it's supposed to look but on Blu I found it very distracting. The Audio is reference quality. It's extremely loud and powerful as expected. There is tons of Low end, constant surround usage and dialouge is never lost in the mix (not that what they're saying is of great importance).

I'm sure there are tons of people out there that really enjoy this movie and can take it for what it's worth. I just found it overlong, very repetitive and devoid of almost all emotion. It's a great looking and sounding movie, even if the affects don't look all that real, and probably worth viewing on a good HT system but I have no interest in ever sitting through it gain.

Ratings:
Movie: 2/5
Blu-ray 4.5/5