Musicalia: Wilco Streaming Wilco (The Album)

Pitchfork and everyone's mother has linked to this. As was the case with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco is streaming their new album due out in June, titled Wilco (The Album). Its great cover is to the right.

Upon first listen, I have to say it was pretty good. I'll have more to say once I've listened to it 50 times--something that will surely happen.

I will say "You and I" sounds pretty great, but then I've got a soft spot for a certain Leslie Feist.

I guess this is all I need... I get a request to talk about more music from Ryan, and more albums keep coming out. Could someone stop time or fly around the earth against its rotational pull in order to reverse events and time? There's a shiny Andrew Jackson faux-gold (fauxold?) dollar coin in it for you. He's like an American Lion or something.

Musicalia: Bill Callahan Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

Over the past three years or so, there has not been an album that I have listened to as much as A River Ain't Too Much To Love despite the fact that Bill Callahan has put out a record since last recording under the moniker of Smog. While Woke on a Whaleheart was not bad by any means, there was something about A River Ain't Too Much To Love that resonated with me on a basic level that the first proper Bill Callahan LP failed to do.

Well, River, I think you've been unseated. On his newest record, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, Bill Callahan has concocted a perfect blend of the darker themes of A River Ain't Too Much To Love and the lusher arrangements and richer production of Woke on a Whaleheart. This merging has meant that I have been virtually unable to listen to anything else when reaching for an album to throw on.

From the opener "Jim Cain"--a shortening of James M. Cain (whose work Double Indemnity I recently blogged about), who had always bristled at the label of a hard-boiled crime novelist and held a passion for being a singer that never worked out--to the closer "Faith/Void"--in which he suggests that "it's time to put God away"--Callahan takes us on a rambling ride through his world, one filled with horses, birds, and wind. Guiding the listener by hand is his voice, the irregular cadence of which allows it to act as an instrument different than most. Fleshing out the entire album are tasteful, unimposing strings arranged by Brian Beattie, and in songs like "All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beasts" and "Eid Ma Clack Shaw" (I've checked and have yet to find out what the chorus means) the rhythm section adds a dimension of propulsion not entirely common in Callahan's work.

What I'm really saying, though, is that I love this new album. When I reach for a Smog/Bill Callahan release, this will be the first one I grab, and that's saying a lot.

Rediscovering the Past: Was I Retarded as a Child?

I know, I know. "What the fuck are you doing up right now?" I kind of fell asleep while writing my column, finished it, and then got around to posting a Royals entry and knew that I could bust out another about something that happened on Saturday night.

First, I will post this link that you should follow to watch the "Opening Gambit" at the very least. I say this if only to give you a true frame of reference for what I'm about to talk about.

I'll wait.

Go ahead.

All right, seen enough?

Now, as a child, I liked "MacGyver". I wouldn't say I wanted to model my life after him or anything, but I'm sure I thought the show was pretty damn cool.

Boy, was I fucking wrong in retrospect. To watch the show, you would think it was produced for Christian television if judging it by its production value. This episode in particular (Trumbo's World) features preposterous POV-through-binoculars-and-camera of carnivorous ants devouring everything in sight in the Amazon basin. The "close-ups" that the binocs and camera afford the characters in the show are patently ridiculous. To get an appreciation for exactly how dumb this is you will have to watch further into that episode, which is actually worth it.

In addition to how ridiculous the production of this show is (oh, there's also a horrible and seemingly unnecessary rear-projection sequence on a small motorboat that suddenly changes to being on a stream), there's the acting. This episode is bogged down by "Babylon 5" alum Peter Jurasik and whoever the actor that plays Trumbo is. And that's obviously already including Richard Dean Anderson, who at this point in his career decided he was going to channel John Wayne with brain damage.



I watched this whole episode Saturday night, as Chad, Mark, and I explored the Roku player. We also watched a special live episode of "Gimme a Break" (which no doubt inspired "Roc Live") and one of the Chaz episodes of "Charles in Charge" in a fit of group masochism that has seen no equal in the history of man. Trust me, this is not something you want to do. And while both of those shows were expectantly awful, it was the shock that set in upon finishing "MacGyver" that stays with me the most.

The most shocking thing about having seen this show is that this was the sixth episode, and it is unfathomable that they continued airing this series after this abysmal episode. Keep in mind, this was airing at the same time as "Moonlighting". Hell, "The Rockford Files" was off the air, what, six years earlier, and in its first season it looked better than that. There should have been no excuses for a show resorting to such archaic production value. The whole time, I kept waiting for a star wipe.

Musicalia: Soundtrack to a Defecation

While taking care of business before leaving work today, the following song (perhaps the best song ever written) came on:

I have to say that I have come to the conclusion that I would prefer that this song come on anytime I drop trou and get to working on what I do best.

Man on Film: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I've been meaning to write up a ton of music stuff, but I kind of have to be listening to the album while I do an entry on it. As I tend to sit down at the computer while I am watching the Royals (there are 20 seconds between pitches, so there's definitely time), this is not the easiest thing to fit in since I use the auditory cues of the broadcast to keep tabs on things. As such, you get my reaction to Wolverine.

First off, I expected this movie to blow hard. Nearly everything I read implied that this was in fact worse than X-Men 3. In the last ten years, I have only seen one movie in the theaters that I hated more than X-Men 3, and that was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (which I wrote a rather angry review of over at IMDB, which I will actually cut-and-paste here*).

*(Spoiler Alert) This film is like having a fat man who ate at IHOP run a marathon and then drop a diarrhea dump on your chest and proceed to use your face as toilet paper

I should preface this review by saying that I was indifferent as to how I might feel about this film going into it. I thought the first film was fairly good. It was entertaining, but nothing that made me yearn for a second one. That being said, I hadn't read a review of this film (and still haven't) and had only heard that it had received mixed reviews. I had tempered expectations going into the theater, but I was certainly open to a good time.

A good time was not had. This film was quite simply awful. I have not seen anything in a long time that made me marvel at the fact that it was actually the finished product of a gigantic summer film churned out by a Hollywood Studio. I saw X-Men 3. While that was dreadful, this was eons past X3 in terms of excrement put to celluloid.

The plot was akin to a second-grader's class project. There was zero character development and not a single moment in which you thought you were seeing an original thought projected onto the screen. While it is a sequel, at some point the things that happen to the characters should matter, and if something bad happens to a character, the events that have molded him or her to that point should affect the audience somehow. Instead, the tools responsible for this screenplay have events happen without emotionally investing the audience in any way, shape, or form as to the fate of the characters on-screen, simply hoping that writing an event will somehow tug at the heart-strings of the audience without ever having to earn it.

I don't know that it is entirely the filmmakers' fault, because it seems that Verbinski & Co. were tied to some P.O.S. script that was churned out in a matter of days to get the cameras rolling, so Disney could bend the movie-goer over and sodomize them while getting paid for it. In the place of an actual story, they were probably told to blow up the film with mind-numbing action sequences and lame special effects.

To add insult to injury, the film clocks in at a mere two-and-a-half hours, which for a film with a plot wouldn't bother me in the least, but when you can write out the entire plot of this film in a matter of moments, seeing that paper-thin storyline stretched into 150 minutes is unbearable.

I could even make an exception to all of the aforementioned gripes and say that there was something in the film worthwhile if there was one performance from the cast that was mildly amusing. Alas, there is not. The actors all seem to have mailed it in, including Depp, who had a single chuckle-worthy moment as a follow-up to an Oscar-nominated turn in the previous Pirates outing.

***********SPOILER ALERT*************** When it comes down to it, all you'll get from this film is an obscenely long prologue to Pirates of the Caribbean 3: The Search for Spock--I mean Jack, because the entire plot of this atrocious piece of refuse is enough to fill a mere introduction to a real story.

Of the X-Men series, I really only loved X-Men 2. I thought the first one was overloaded with way too many characters crammed into the mix just for show. The dearth of characters was such that there was little-to-no room for character development, and the casting of Anna Paquin as Rogue was simply infuriating to me. Additionally, there were way too many villains just kind of hanging around apparently tasked to look vaguely intimidating while doing little else. So fuck the first one.

The second one was amazing. I was shocked. There is really not a disparaging word I have to say about that film. It touches on the themes of alienation and extermination that made the comic books great. The villainous military element was startlingly scary while paring the focus down to a more realistic enemy.

Then there was the third installment which was unspeakably bad. The shitty thing is, there was no way it wasn't going to suck balls with Brett Ratner at the helm. Despite the low expectations, it exceeded the expected awfulness to take a seat directly behind PotC:DMC in the unenviable realm of worst movie of the 2000s*.

*Southland Tales obviously ends up in this category, but I didn't see it in the theaters, thankfully. It also happens that Jeremy, who is apparently as willing as Jackie and I are to see just how bad a movie can get, decided to dive into ST, as well as Wolverine.

So I expected this to somehow be worse than that. Upon deciding to test our tolerance for utter shit, Jeremy, Jackie, and I sucked it up and went on Sunday night. On the phone when we decided to do it, Jeremy suggested that he may actually want to walk out, which he doesn't do.

Well, we didn't walk out.

Don't get me wrong. This was not a good film. It was actually bad.

There was no cohesive thread to the narrative. Much in the same way Pirates 2 came off, Wolverine seemed like a movie of action sequences that was pieced together with little regard for themes, story, or dialogue. As was the fault of the first X-Men movie, there were far too many characters thrown into the film with little idea as to how to utilize them, not that such an undertaking would have been possible in a film any less than nine hours long. Ryan Reynolds and Taylor Kitsch were both very good as Wade Wilson and Gambit, respectively, but had a combined screen time of somewhere around ten minutes. Liev Schreiber is good as Sabretooth, but it feels like they didn't make Sabretooth animalistic enough. Jackman does exactly what he has done for the three prior X-Men installments. He owns the character and pulls off the extreme badass well.

As for the other stuff, the effects were at times solid and at other times laughably bad. The scene where he is inspecting his new claws in the bathroom mirror is abysmal. For most of the movie, the claws look amateurish. Some of the action sequences work. Others are not quite as good.

Going much more into this would be absurd. I don't know why I've written so much. Well, maybe I do. Wolverine was my favorite comic book character as a teen. He took over where Spiderman left off. Wolverine was so much darker. The darkness quenched a thirst for something slightly more adult in the admittedly lighter comic book fare of the Marvel Universe. For the most part, the character has been portrayed well in the film medium. It just so happens that the films themselves have often been lacking. I guess that speaks to Hugh Jackman's skill as an actor.

Tube Steak: "In Treatment", You've Still Got It

The second season of "In Treatment" has been every bit as compelling as the first, with Gabriel Byrne's Dr. Paul Weston descending further into his brokenness as he has removed himself from his home and family. Perhaps the most interesting development of this second season has been how he has let his patients into his life as his family structure--fractured as it may have been--has all but evaporated.

Coming off of a tumultuous year in which he fell in love with a patient, was sued for malpractice by the family of another, divorced his adulterous wife, and moved to Brooklyn from his suburban Maryland home. Having nearly blown up his life, it would seem that the writers wanted to test out John Donne's notion that "no man is an island, entire of itself."

Within the dynamic of this season, Paul is seeing patients that seem to address his own need to supplant his estranged family with one comprised of patients. Paternal instincts come to the fore heavily in the April and Oliver sessions. Mia finds new ways to try to draw Paul into her life as a husband figure. There are maternal qualities to his relationship with Gina.

Most importantly, from these small segments of people's lives, once-a-week therapy sessions, the audience is given gifts. Like in Week Four, two episodes after having to move a Mia session to the other room from the dining room and implying her want for the session to occur in there was motivated by wanting to feel special, he brought Oliver--who felt unwanted by his parents and had stopped eating because kids at school (and his father to a lesser degree) were calling him fat--into the kitchen (and into his world) to have a sandwich. If anything can be made of the parentheticals and tangents in that prior sentence it is that the show is rife with subtext.

There is so much going on in each episode--the week's events in each patient's life being uncovered, the patient's past affecting their every decision--that it really is like a mystery every week, as Terry Gross got to on Fresh Air earlier this week.

Diversions: The Smiley Face Killer Strikes Again

Thanks to Chad for giving me the head's up on this, but it looks as though the serial killer I have been preaching about for about a decade now has struck again.

This is how it is every time. 20-something college male goes missing, ends up in river. I like how drunk males found ways to not end up corpses in rivers for thousands of years, and now there are what 15 or 20 since about 1998 or so in the Upper Midwest--a relatively regionally specific phenomenon--but this is mere coincidence.

Do college kids in Alabama not drink within 20 miles of bodies of water? What about in Oregon?

Now I don't necessarily buy into that jibber-jabber about there being a gang of serial killers or that the initial incident in New York that the detectives on the case are trying to link to the midwestern cases is tied in at all, but for fuck's sake there is no way this is all coincidental.

Man on Film: State of Play

A political thriller in spirit of 70s paranoia films like All the President's Men, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor. Clearly, the newspaper aspect of the film means it owes most to All the President's Men, and it is a worthy follower. Obviously, the source material of State of Play is only a BBC miniseries, not the greatest political scandal in the history of this country. What this film lacks in historical import, it replaces with strained relationships, adultery, the prospect of the outsourcing of the military to one uber-corporation (think, oh, Halliburton), and the death of the newspaper. Needless to say, there was a dearth of ground to be covered.

Now, State of Play is by no means earth-shattering. While never approaching the realm of the primarily pedestrian, Kevin MacDonald's non-documentary follow-up to The Last King of Scotland is merely solid. Here, too, there are not any acting performances that fall short, but as with the other, the film lacks the quality of being exceptionally memorable. Shortly after leaving, all thoughts of the film have gone, quickly retreating to the recesses of one's memory. It is not a crippling shortcoming, and boredom never sets in while watching.

All that being said, the film is good and never feels predictable, a good trait to be sure. Ben Affleck and Jason Bateman are great, but Rachel McAdams's character is not penned with enough depth for her to show off her talent and charm (both of which are prodigious). Russell Crowe is Russell Crowe and does seem best suited to be the character actor he has resumed being of late.

Again, State of Play falls short of being great, but you'll not regret having seen it.

Reading Rainbow: Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

After aborting a month-long effort to get into For Whom The Bell Tolls, I decided that it was not worth it anymore and dove right into another of the many books sitting on my shelves unread.

This one was James M. Cain's masterpiece, Double Indemnity. I am sure most, if not all, of you faithful readers have seen the Billy Wilder directed adaptation of the film. If you haven't, do so. Now. Seeing 'cool' Fred MacMurray--and he pulls it off completely--is kind of mind-blowing.

The problem with attempting to read the source material for an iconic film--after all, the film version is largely credited as being the progenitor of the film noir genre--is that you probably already know where the book is going.

If that concern were applicable to this piece of literature, Cain's prose flows forth effortlessly, and it is told from the first-person so it reads very quickly--even with the occasional hurdle arising from its having been written very much in the parlance of its time. Walter Huff (the film version changed his surname to Neff) is an engaging narrator, and as the reader, you want to go along for the story.

Luckily, the film version does differ fairly dramatically in the third act from the novel, so any knowledge of the ending from the film is not applicable when reading the Cain novel. As is often the case, the book is better than the film--at least in that regard--although with this book, there is the unusual scenario that arises (in this time so far removed from the production of either piece of art) that the adaptation has become the much more prominent work. That is so much the case in this situation that the book has nearly been forgotten.

This should be rectified.

But don't take my word for it.

Man on Film: Crank: High Voltage

Holy Fuck.

The amazement that strikes you while sitting in the theater watching the greatness that is Crank: High Voltage is a little difficult to explain. There are a myriad of factors that inspire that awe.

First and foremost, is the inconsolable head-shaking that you imagine studio heads possessed with when they realized that this was the film they greenlit. Then, there is the idea running through the set while filming that there is no fucking way anyone is ever going to see what was just committed to celluloid so they go even further than they initially anticipated. Also working its way in there is the shock and awe that results from the rampant cultural and racial insensitivity that permeates the film.

And then there's the style. From start to finish, you are also in the throes of film-making style that can most appropriately be described as 96 minutes of McG action sequences on crystal meth. If you thought that some of Michael Bay's heavily cut action sequences could be hard to follow, then holy shit will the freneticism of the latest Mark Neveldine/Brian Taylor film fuck you up.

And all of these things are why Crank 2 is fucking amazing.

Now, I hope you saw Crank because it sets the bar pretty high. In Chev Chelios first time around, there was a new standard set for being over the top. This time, that bar is broken in half and stuck up your ass, and then for good measure the other half of that bar is jammed up your urethra. In a good way.

Too describe how far Crank: High Voltage goes would be a disservice to all. The obscenity, violence, nihilism, and anarchy of this film should be seen without being spoiled in any way. Jason Statham eats up this kind of role, and it makes you look forward to whatever he gets to do next (The Expendables, and it will kick your ass). His star power cannot be denied, and the audacity of the filmmakers is frankly unparalleled. See this movie to be amazed at how much further it went than the first installment.

If that wasn't enough, here's the trailer: