I Wear My Snark Upon My Sleeve

Goodnight Blog

2011-02-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all the people who've ever read this blog. Thanks especially to the people who've ever read closely enough to leave even a single comment. I'm retiring this blog, not because of a new addition to my immediate family (or for lack of comments), but because I noticed I was starting to repeat myself. The risk of repetition always comes up when I'm making music playlists. It's not that I have so few favorite songs that I'm like a teeny bopper who wears out the grooves on a record, but my wife does think I'm ridiculous for never allowing the same song to be included on two different playlists. I've broken my own rule this time as half of the songs listed below have been mentioned before on this blog (I'll make notes for when and where). After realizing that certain songs I wanted to use for my daughter's "Sleepytime" mix had already been used on my son's a long time ago, I came up with a new rule - and sole criterion - her songs had to be girlier. Now that's not to say that the songs on my son's were more rough and tumble. All the songs on both playlists are peaceful, but as I went back through my son's mix I noticed for the first time that his songs are a little more mischievous (and so is he). So far my daughter has proved to be more mellow (she only cries when hungry and sleeps the rest of the time). She has also brought me to tears more than my son ever did (and so does her playlist). If you make it more than halfway through her mix without choking up, either you have no heart or maybe you just like your music a little more playful (so does my son).

Sleepytime Mix for My Newborn Daughter
1. "Lazy Calm" - Cocteau Twins (see also my 6/19/10 post)
2. "Pay Attention/In a World of My Own" (from the movie, Alice in Wonderland) - Kathryn Beaumont
3. "La vie en rose" - Édith Piaf (see also my 3/10/09 post)
4. "Somewhere My Love" - Jo Stafford & Paul Weston & His Orchestra
5. "Sumiregusa" - Enya
6. "Canção da America" - Milton Nascimento
7. "Granada" - Emilio de Benito (see also my 12/27/08 post)
8. "December" - Norah Jones (see also my 12/22/10 post)
9. "Brahms Lullaby" - Nat "King" Cole
10. "Good Night" - The Beatles
11. "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" - Billy Joel
12. "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" (from the movie, An American Tail) - James Horner
13. "In Pace" - Sarah Brightman
14. "Strauss II: Die Fledermaus Act 1 Duettino" - The APM Orchestra
15. "Delibes: Flower Duet" - Cerise (see also my 10/4/10 post)
16. "Debussy: Rêverie" - Zoltán Kocsis
17. "Saint-Saëns: The Swan" - Jascha Silberstein and Marie Goossens (see also my 5/2/09 post)
18. "Borodin: String Quartet No. 2 (Nocturne)" - Prague Quartet
19. "Bach: Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major" - Yo-Yo Ma (see also my 2/25/09 post)
20. "Doug Reflects" (from the movie, The Town) - Harry Gregson-Williams and David Buckley
21. "Made By Maid" - Laura Marling
22. "Mockingbird Hill" - Leo Kottke

Sleepytime Mix for My Son (from four years ago)
1. "Red Rabbits" - The Shins
2. "Soldier Jane" - Beck
3. "March of the Celts" - Enya
4. "Extraordinary Machine" - Fiona Apple
5. "The Medals" (from the movie, Flags of Our Fathers) - Clint Eastwood
6. "When You Wish Upon a Star" (from the movie, Pinocchio) - Disney Studio Chorus
7. "Exploring/Say Bird/Flower" (from the movie, Bambi) - Disney Studio Orchestra
8. "Intro Versailles" (from the movie, Marie Antoinette) - Brian Reitzell
9. "Couperin: Les barricades mystérieuses" – Brian Reitzell
10. "Fools Rush In (Kevin Shields Remix)" - Bow Wow Wow
11. "Avril 14th" - Aphex Twin
12. "Tommib Help Buss" - Squarepusher
13. "Rameau: Tristes Apprêts, Pâles Flambeaux" - W. Christie
14. "Opus 23" - Dustin O'Halloran
15. "Es ist ein ros entsprungen" - Baltimore Consort
16. "Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro Act 3 Duettino" - Deutsche Oper Berlin (see also my 3/2/10 post)
17. "Return to the Heart" - David Lanz
18. "Bach: Sleepers Wake (Cantata 140)" - Balázs Szokolay
19. "Vivaldi: "Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Largo" (Winter) - Anne-Sophie Mutter
20. "Puccini: O Mio Bambino Caro (Instrumental)" - Alexander Warenberg
21. "Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major" - London Philharmonic Orchestra
22. "All That Makes Us Human Continues" - BT (see also my 9/9/08 post)

January Books

2011-02-01T05:04:00.000-08:00

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section and Entertainment Weekly that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Intimates - Ralph Sassone; "Apparently, people didn't look at pictures anymore and ask if they were lifelike. They looked at their lives and compared them to images they'd seen somewhere."

The Lost Books of the Odyssey - Zachary Mason; "Chapters are told from the point of view of Odysseus, Achilles, even Polyphemus the Cyclops; throughout, Mason envisions alternate fates for these characters."

The Lost Gate - Orson Scott Card; "There is a hidden library with only a few dozen books that are written in a secret language which Dan and his cousins are expected to learn. But they are never to speak a word of it with anyone else, or even where anyone else might hear. There are other secrets too, even secrets kept from Dan. And that will lead to disaster."

Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! - Douglas Coupland; "Takes a pop-culture approach to the man known for the phrase 'the medium is the message,' a deep thinker who ended up popularized almost in spite of himself."

The Radleys - Matt Haig; "The parents know what they are, and have concealed this knowlege from their teenage kids, who, inadvertently abstaining from the blood they don't know they need to drink, suffer from nausea, insomnia, weakness, 'photodermatosis,' and mortifying high school unpopularity. Then one night, attacked by a large ogre of a boy, the daughter discovers her true nature the hard way, precipitating a vampire family crisis."

Nonfiction

Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed - Larry Rohter; "A Times reporter's affectionate account."

The Function of Criticism Today - Alfred Kazin; "Any critic who is any good is going to write out of a profound inner struggle between what has been and what must be, the values he is used to and those which presently exist, between the past and the present out of which the future must be born. This struggle with oneself as well as with the age, out of which something must be written and which therefore can be read - this is my test for a critic."

A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation - Daniel Menaker; A former executive at Random House, Menaker draws on an array of sources - the dating scene, Socrates, studies on the hormone oxytocin, Barack Obama - in this exploration of how conversation has evolved and how it works."

How I Killed Pluto: And Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown; "The astronomer behind the discovery that led to Pluto's demotion from planethood discusses his work and his family life."

Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take On Each Other and the World - Bernard Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq; "Scorned by the French public and media, the two provocateurs decided to examine all that hatred with this epistolary collection in which they assault each other, the public, and, most often, themselves with an arsenal of bitterly sarcastic bons mots."

Happy New Year, Part III

2011-01-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

I will remember 2010 as the first year I saw a movie trailer where the only release date was for iTunes (no attempt at a theatrical run or DVD pressing to boot), that the video game Guitar Hero got a functioning six-string guitar and people called it progress, and Wendy's burger chain changed their fries recipe to be more "natural."

My Favorite Non-New Release Movie I Saw for the First Time - My Geisha (1962); second place goes to Mr. Saturday Night (1992) and third place goes to Biloxi Blues (1988)

My Movie-Watching Resolution - to give up on new releases; as much as I love going to the theater, I gotta get used to the fact that they might not be around forever; I hate this trend toward 3D (especially as a last ditch effort to "save multiplexes") and as much as I enjoyed the remake of True Grit, it mostly just made me realize that all movies used to be that good; it's been bothering me for years when people say that the quality of Hollywood movies has been steadily decreasing because I don't think box office numbers are a true measure of anything, but then a movie like Avatar makes as much as it does and it makes me question the entire direction that Hollywood is heading

For the "Best and Worst Movies" I saw the first half of the year, see my 7/8/10 post (combine the lists there with the ones here for my top ten of 2010).

Best New Movies I've Seen Since July (in order of personal significance; although I enjoyed Black Swan, Inception and True Grit, I wouldn't call any of them favorites; I still look forward to watching 127 Hours, The Fighter and The King's Speech)

1. Burlesque (November 26) I keep telling everyone that if they liked Coyote Ugly they'll love Burlesque (and that's coming from someone who never liked Cher or Christina Aguilera). Then people keep telling me that they've never seen Coyote Ugly. But that doesn't exactly refute my point, does it?

2. The Social Network (October 1) read my 12/28/10 review

3. The Town (September 17) really got me thinking about the lack of choices left to ex-cons; this isn't nice guy Ben Affleck, and the scene where he throws the child (his own?) out of the room was almost more than I could bear, but so were a lot of scenes in Gone Baby Gone, which he directed years before this; forget about all the other characters besides the community itself, because that's the one the movie's named after

4. Going the Distance (September 3) not funnier than Burlesque or The Social Network, but certainly on par with Despicable Me (which is missing here because of all the lame disco dance numbers) and Easy A (which is absent from this list because of an unlikely Mark Twain claim)

5. Monsters (October 29) if you don't mind slowpaced indie movies that randomly scare you and simulaneously break your heart, here's a dreamy picture with minimal characters, minimal dialogue and best of all, minimal but believable cheap special effects (using the director's laptop); I may not have liked it better than The Eclipse, which is comparable, but I can't remember if I saw that movie before July or after (it's been available for instant viewing on Netflix for months now)

Worst New Movies I've Actually Seen Since July (in order of offensiveness; keep in mind that I kinda liked All About Evil, Predators and Shrek Forever After; call me a masochist, but I still look forward to watching Cop Out, The Last Airbender and The Switch)

1. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too? (April 2) I keep telling everyone that if they ever make a Michael Jackson biopic, they should get his sister Janet to play him. Then people keep telling me that's an ignorant thing to say. But is it any worse than having Janet play a divorcée who drives her ex-husband to kill himself in front of his friends and coworkers?

2. Sex and the City 2 (May 28) Ignorant, ignorant, ignorant. The only reason this is here and not Date Night is because I couldn't make it all the way through Date Night.

3. Tiny Furniture (November 12) I liked the handpicked music, the smart dialogue, and the trendy sets on this movie and on Greenberg also, but why do the main characters on most indie movies have to be such horrible people? And not even antiheroes - just boring, spiteful, ugly people.

4. Grown Ups (June 25) There is no way that these guys would ever be friends in the first place, much less bring their families together decades later. When Adam Sandler slapped Rob Schneider with his own banana the first time, it was mean, but funny. After the fourth or fifth or sixtieth time...

5. The Kids Are All Right (July 9) Based on the hype, I thought I'd be exposed to a less shallow, less voyeuristic gay movie, but instead I got an is-she-gay-or-isn't-she soap opera love triangle, same as you'd see on Showtime's The L Word and a ripoff of that scene in Love Actually where Emma Thompson discovers her husband is definitely cheating

Songs I've Discovered (and Rediscovered) Since July (in alphabetical order):

1. "Acapella (Benny Benassi Remix)" - Kelis; at first I thought this was the same girl that performed "Let's Go Crazy" at the BET awards, but that was Janelle Monáe; I must have heard of Kelis from her work with Björk, Robyn or David Guetta, who did last year's "When Love Takes Over;" I like it when R&B artists go electro, as further evidenced at the bottom of this playlist

2. "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" - T. Rex; when I heard "Children of the Revolution" on Lords of Dogtown, I sat through the end credits to find out who wrote the original song; T. Rex turns out to be that rare '70s rock I always avoided for no good reason

3. "Ça Pourrait Changer" - Brigitte Bardot; from the Youth in Revolt soundtrack; name me one current singer who sounds like she's having this much fun

4. "The Clap" - Bostich + Fussible; minimal techno meets Tejano accordion; where has this been all my life?

5. "Derezzed" - Daft Punk; from the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, which I thought was an Inception ripoff until I read that Hans Zimmer (of Inception) helped out, but I guess that really doesn't stop it from being a ripoff, does it?

6. "Dog Days Are Over" - Florence + The Machine; I avoided this group for the longest time but eventually surrendered to the harp

7. "Everywhere" - Fleetwood Mac; I heard this in a restaurant with my parents and when I said this song was a forgotten gem, my dad said, "I have this one;" anyway, it may be from a bygone era, but we can be sure it hasn't been forgotten

8. "Fader" - The Temper Trap; it's like Jimmy Eat World but better; it's all about that "semi-charmed kinda" chorus

9. "In Motion" - Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross; who could've guessed that Nine Inch Nails and Sigur Rós would become the stuffy soundtrack music of Oscar-type movies?

10. "Keep Looking" - Sade; I didn't see any difference between the sound on her new album this year and her old stuff from the '80s, like this song

11. "Little Green Bag" - George Baker Selection; I recently caught up with the British TV series, Coupling, which did a Reservoir Dogs reference on one episode and it reminded me of this song

12. "Me and the Moon" - The Drums; for fans of New Order

13. "Only Solutions" - Journey; from the movie, Tron, which led to The Matrix, which in turn led to Tron: Legacy, so it takes one to know one

14. "Raise Your Weapon" - Deadmau5; hauntingly beautiful, especially after it goes dubstep in the second half

15. "The Reeling (Groove Police Remix)" - Passion Pit; from the movie, Going the Distance

16. "Scott Pilgrim" - Plumtree; from the movie of the same name (actually, it's the song that inspired the books which were then adapted into a movie)

17. "Sequins" - Abe Vigoda; for fans of The Cure

18. "Too Much" - Sufjan Stevens; for fans of indie rock falsettos and electronic music that's unpredictable

19. "What's My Name?" - Rihanna & Drake; I would include this on my top ten list below if not for Drake

20. "Your Love" - Nicki Minaj; one of many pop songs this year to use an '80s sample (it uses "No More I Love You's" by Annie Lennox), the most obvious being "I Like It" by Enrique Iglesias (which uses "All Night Long" by Lionel Richie)

Ten Best New Songs I Heard from 2010

1. "Running from the Cops" - Phantogram (February 9)
2. "Blessa" - Toro y Moi (February 16)
3. "Ghost in the Graveyard (Ulrich Schnauss Remix)" - A Sunny Day in Glasgow (March 16)
4. "White Flag" - Gorillaz (March 2)
5. "Rill Rill" - Sleigh Bells (May 11)
6. "Revival" - Deerhunter (August 2)
7. "Glass Printer" - The Besnard Lakes (March 9)
8. "Stick to My Side" - Pantha du Prince (February 9)
9. "Bang Bang Bang (feat. Q-Tip & MDNR)" - Mark Ronson & the Business Intl (August 17)
10. "As We Enter" - Nas & Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley (February 23)

December Books

2010-12-31T08:27:00.000-08:00

"When you're a young writer, you subtract the birthdates of authors from their publication dates and feel panic or hope. When you're an old writer, you observe the death dates of your favorite writers and you reflect on their works and their lives." (Gail Godwin, The New York Times Book Review, December 12, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and Stephen King's year-end list from Entertainment Weekly magazine) that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Anathem - Neal Stephenson; "Delights in the language and etymology he has designed for his fictional world . . . and in the 7,000 years of detailed history he has given it."

The Finkler Question - "A mugging prompts a quest for self-discovery in this tale of anti-Semitism, friendship and wisdom; winner of this year's Man Booker prize."

The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman; "Journalists, long taught to never make themselves the story, now have Tom Rachman do it for them. His alternately acute and poignant debut novel, about the dramatic follies at a Rome-based English-language newspaper, is divided into chapters dedicated to different characters, each as distinct as a newspaper section."

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson; "Set in an English village, Simonson's first novel wraps Old World sensibility around a story of multicultural conflict and romance. A retired major - the starchy widower Ernest Pettigrew - is mourning the recent death of his brother and frustrated by his materialistic son. Gradually he's drawn to Mrs. Ali, a shopkeeper of Pakistani descent who shares his love of Kipling but is regarded by village society as a permanent foreigner."

Rich Boy - Sharon Pomerantz; "The ambitious son of working-class Jewish immigrants gains entree into a world of pedigreed wealth and privilege through charm and smarts alone - but will he always be defined by where he came from? A gripping narrative that doubles as a sweeping rumination on the American class system."

Stephen King's Top Five Books of 2010

1. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace; "To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past 50 years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other. For pop culture vultures like me, the central plot is fascinating: The late James O. Incandenza has created an 'entertainment' - Infinite Jest - so irresistible you can't stop watching it. Three dozen terrific characters spin out from this, my favorite being Joelle Van Dyne, a.k.a. the P.G.O.A.T.: Prettiest Girl of All Time. But it all comes back to that lethal film - because for guys like me, irresistible entertainment, lethal or not, is the holy grail."

2. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen; "If you haven't met Walter and Patty Berglund of St. Paul, it's time. Franzen chronicles their ups and down (mostly downs) with a cold mind and a warm heart. Two wedding rings go into the toilet over the course of this novel, but there's a measure of redemption for both of those who do the casting away. I finished uplifted and energized by Franzen's storytelling ability."

3. I'd Know You Anywhere - Laura Lippman; "The best suspense novel of the year. Eliza Benedict has got a nice house and a nice family, and has managed to put the trauma of her life behind her. At least until the serial killer who kidnapped and raped her - but let her live - when she was 15 gets in touch from death row and says he wants to see her."

4. Savages - Don Winslow; "Chon and Ben, the antiheroes at the center of this novel that's every bit as savage as its title, aspire to be kinder, gentler drug dealers, but when the smoke clears, one is tempted to quote Sarah Palin: 'How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?' This is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on autoload. Winslow's stripped-down prose is a revelation."

5. Last Night in Twisted River - John Irving; "It starts with the accidental killing of a Native American woman (the youngster who brains her with a skillet mistakes her for a bear). Father and son take off, pursued by the relentless Constable Carl for nearly 50 years. There's a lot of Canada here, a lot of cookin', and a lot of gorgeous (and cynical) Americana. Irving's best since Garp.

Nonfiction

Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights - Jessica Kerwin Jenkins; "This gilded, graceful book is nothing less than a miniature encyclopedia of style, exploring everything from the origins of badminton to the art of origami."

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less - Sarah Glidden; "Vivid dialogue and deceptively simple line drawings that are shaded with delicate watercolors, resulting in a graphic memoir of subtlety and understated wit."

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War - James Bradley, "whose Flags of Our Fathers recounted how his father helped plant the American flag on Iwo Jima, here contends that William Taft's covert 1905 diplomatic mission to Japan helped set the stage for World War II in the Pacific, the Chinese Communist Revolution and the Korean War. With each port of call, Bradley assesses the effects of American race-based foreign policy calculations in Asia; the brutal counterinsurgency in the Philippines, the forced annexation of Hawaii, the betrayal of promises to protect Korea from Japanese expansionism."

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void - Mary Roach; "Much more interested in the small steps for man than in the giant leaps for mankind, chronicling all of the niches and pecularities of exploring the outer reaches . . . simultaneously informative and get-strange-looks-on-the-subway hilarious."

Yours Ever: People and Their Letters - Thomas Mallon; "Intended as 'a kind of companion volume to A Book of One's Own,' Mallon's 1984 study of people and their diaries, this exploration of the art of letter-writing embraces old friends - Flaubert, Freud, the Mitfords - and plenty of unknowns."

12 Albums in 10 Years, 1983-1992

2010-12-29T07:02:00.000-08:00

Strangers sometimes tell me I look like Quentin Tarantino, and unfortunately that may be true, but I like to hope I also look at least a little like Steven Patrick Morrissey (you can judge for yourself with the album cover pictured here). I used to work with a punk rock girl who was possibly a cokehead but admittedly a swinger. You wouldn't think I'd share anything in common with her but one day I combed my bangs up high and she smiled when she asked me if I was going for the Morrissey look. Now the pompadour hairstyle dates back to French court of Louis XV and it reached its height (no pun intended) of popularity with Elvis Presley, so my coworker should've made those comparisons first, but she didn't. She could've called me a retro hipster or wannabe cholo and I wouldn't have been as surprised, so I said, "Yes! I mean, wow, how did you guess?" She told me that her amputee mechanic husband had been trying to perfect the Morrissey hair for years. Then she followed up with a concert story about someone throwing a water bottle at Morrissey after he complained about the smell of "burning flesh" (he's a vegetarian), and how he dropped the microphone right on the spot and walked off the stage, ending the show less than halfway through. She also mentioned that tickets for that show weren't cheap, but he didn't seem to care. From what I've read about Morrissey, that story sums up the singer/songwriter pretty well. If it doesn't mean anything to you, check out the funniest of his many funny, mean song titles: "Dial-a-Cliché" (Viva Hate), "Lucky Lisp" (Bona Drag) and "You're the One for Me, Fatty" (Your Arsenal). I don't know him personally so it's not really my place to comment on his demeanor or personality, but I do know that he was prolific. If you count official live recordings and singles compilations, he was involved with the releases for twelve albums in only ten years. This is the twelfth top twenty playlist I've posted for a band or individual music artists, yet I haven't even covered all of my top ten favorites. The reason for this is that some of my favorites, like Panda Bear, P.M. Dawn and Propaganda, released less than a handful of albums, so a top twenty list would just come off as a ranked list of ALL their songs. I'd love to do top twenty lists for other prolific favorites like The Rolling Stones, but I don't I'll ever be able to evenly weigh all their thirty-some albums and EPs. Similarly, what follows is not a career-spanning top twenty list for Morrissey, but know that if you like what's here, he's still performing and recording to this day.

Morrissey with The Smiths
1. "Accept Yourself" (1983) - from the compilation album, Hatful of Hollow
2. "Back to the Old House (acoustic version)" (1983) from the compilation album, Hatful of Hollow
3. "This Charming Man" (1983) from the single of the same name
4. "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" (1984) from the single of the same name
5. "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" (1984) B-side on the single, William, It Was Really Nothing; my absolute favorite Morrissey song
6. "How Soon Is Now?" (1984) from the single of the same name
7. "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" (1985) from the album, Meat Is Murder
8. "Asleep" (1985) B-side on the single, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side
9. "Unloveable" (1986) B-side on the single, Bigmouth Strikes Again
10. "London (Live)" (1986) from the album, Rank, released a year after the band broke up
11. "Is It Really So Strange? (BBC session)" (1986) from the compilation album, Louder Than Bombs
12. "Shoplifters of the World Unite" (1987) from the single of the same name

Morrissey on his own
13. "I Don't Mind If You Forget Me" (1988) from his debut solo album, Viva Hate
14. "Interesting Drug" (1988) from the compilation album, Bona Drag
15. "The Loop" (1990) B-side on the single, Sing Your Life
16. "King Leer" (1991) from the album, Kill Uncle
17. "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful" (1992) from the single of the same name
18. "Certain People I Know" (1992) from the album, Your Arsenal
19. "Seaside, Yet Still Docked" (1992) from the album, Your Arsenal
20. "Suedehead (Sparks Mix)" (2006) from the remix compilation, Future Retro; original version (1988) from the album, Viva Hate

This Is My Last Movie Review

2010-12-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

"Unbeknownst to most moviegoers, the saddest story in films concerns the emergence of brutal scorekeeper critics." (film critic Manny Farber in 1965, as quoted this year by film critic J. Hoberman, Harpers magazine, July 2010)

"For the past month, I've been trying to fully engage with the social layer. I joined and contributed to such services and platforms as Quora, Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, Blippy, Swipely, DailyBooth, Goodreads, Daytum, etc., etc. I tried to tweet five times a day. I gave two sites access to my credit cards so I could share my purchases with friends. I did my best to check in wherever I went on Foursquare. And what it all made me feel, mostly, was stupid. And anxious - that I didn't have enough people following me and then that I was the kind of person who wants people to follow him." (Bartholomew Cooke, GQ magazine, December 2010)

The Social Network (four and a half stars total) has the second best soundtrack of the year, the first being Inception, which is all about the music, in my opinion. Just based on those movies' trailers, I'd already awarded a blue star to each, long before I ever saw either one. The music on Inception's trailer instantly inspired parodies on YouTube (including an acapella one) and The Social Network's trailer earned a record deal for some Belgian women's choir (Scala & Kolacny), all because of their version of Radiohead's "Creep." The trailer for Catfish, AKA "the other Facebook movie," even tried subtly connecting itself to The Social Network by playing a children's choir (Langley Schools) version of The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." I mention this for my own future reference, but also to point out that music is very important to me, moreso than story or visuals in a movie, therefore the different-colored stars under my "movie review guide" are not all equal. Whether that's a flaw in my system or a flaw in my use of the system is up to you. This applies to The Social Network in that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg created a system for communication that, according to the movie, is either flawed by its very nature or at the very least, used by some for very flawed reasons. I'll admit that I don't have a Facebook account nor do I know the exact defintion of the term "algorithm" but that doesn't prevent me from appreciating a movie derived from these things. The story is metafictional enough to comment on itself with lines like "there's got to be a land speed record for talking" (the dialogue and pacing require multiple viewings). I've heard people complain about the ratio of fact to fiction in this unapologetic "biopic," but they do make it easy to tell the difference whenever there's a melodramatic scarf burning or cinematic workplace violence. If reality is what you want, look no further than the irony of the special effects "twins." Where most movies would have stopped short with that "achievement" by itself, this movie gave each twin a unique personality. Now that's how you use special effects for the story's sake, and not the other way around! But back to music, when "Baby You're a Rich Man" started playing over the end credits, I knew one era had ended and another had begun. Much like the movie's protagonist, The Beatles' back catalog has spent far too much time in litigation, but if these kids with their new-fangled Webhacktweeterwalls can save the past from itself and get oldies playing on the big screen again, maybe they can save the future too.

Unconventional Christmas Movies

2010-12-26T18:51:00.000-08:00

So many people told me today that they were glad that Christmas was behind them or that it didn't feel especially Christmasy this year. If you're like me, it was over too soon and you can never get enough. That's why it pays to know where you can go for a discreet Christmas fix without tipping off any haters who might make fun of you. Perhaps you looked at the EW poll pictured here (click to enlarge) and thought, "Love Actually can't possibly be the second most popular Christmas movie, it's not even a Christmas movie, and neither is Die Hard!" If so, you were half right. They may not be Formal Christmas movies per se, but any movie that doesn't star Santa Claus and/or include singing about snow can be an Informal Christmas movie. You can watch the latter kind of movie anytime throughout the year without fear of being judged. If you think Gremlins (1984) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) are pushing the envelope when it comes to what's considered Christmasy, check out the five highest rated theatrical releases on IMDb under the keyword "Christmas:"

1. The Godfather (1972)
2. Goodfellas (1990)
3. The Apartment (1960)
4. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
5. Annie Hall (1978)

If those don't make you feel that extra something special, you can always turn to my unconventional favorites:

1. The Family Man (2000)
2. Serendipity (2001)
3. Better Off Dead (1985)
4. Donnie Brasco (1997)
5. Batman Returns (1992)

The Twelfth CD of Christmas

2010-12-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

When we got into the car yesterday, we asked my son what he wanted to listen to and he said "Christmas tree music" (for him, Christmas is all about the tree still). I have a Christmas mix CD in the car which starts off with "Skating," one of Vince Guaraldi's jazz songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas, but even when I play jazz that's not Christmas-themed, he calls it "Christmas tree music." Well anyway, my wife had just finished burning a CD with a different Christmas mix, so she popped that in but the first track wasn't jazzy. Lo and behold, my son cried out, "That's not Christmas tree music!" So from the mouth of babes, Christmas is jazz. Just in case you didn't know. And that's really interesting to me because for a lot of kids that grew up on A Charlie Brown Christmas, that's probably true. But even if you hated those holiday specials like I did, there's still all the jazz crooners that seem to dominate Christmas: Dean, Ella, Frank, Louis, and Sammy. Okay, maybe not so much "dominated" by Louis Armstrong, but since his name has come up here, it gives me a great segue into the final CD, Wynton Marsalis' Christmas Jazz Jam. You see, when most people think about jazz, they think about Louis Armstrong, but whenever I hear the name Louis Armstrong, I'm always reminded of Wynton Marsalis. That's because everything I know about Louis Armstrong, I learned from the Ken Burns Jazz documentary, which is mostly about Armstrong and relies heavily on interviews with Marsalis, who pronounces Louis with an "s" instead of "Louie," like everyone else I've heard talk about him. Modern jazz purists criticize the Burns doc for only covering the music before 1960, much the same way they criticise Marsalis for being "stuck in the past" musically. I personally don't care that his Christmas album is mostly Dixieland jazz. It's sure happier than a Charlie Brown TV special is. But if you're looking for sad and slow, there's a bluesly take on "Blue Christmas." If you're looking for something more modern, at least give his "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" a try. When I bought this CD, it had a sticker on the wrapper that said it was a Target exclusive, like two other awesome mix CDs that I already owned, A Holly Jolly Christmas: 15 Kids' Christmas Classics and Santa Baby: A Romantic Christmas. Now I see that Christmas Jazz Jam is available on iTunes and I feel a little cheated. I'll get over it though because I know Christmas isn't actually about trees or even jazz, it's about sharing. So thank you for sharing the Twelve Days of Christmas with me while I shared my favorite CDs.

As a bonus, here is a list of my top ten Christmas songs, regardless of artist or style (in alphabetical order, with the number of versions I own):
1. "Ave Maria" (5)
2. "Carol of the Bells" (10; betcha can't guess which song is my popular favorite; for a version that's scarier than the tubular bells on The Exorcist, check out the sustained dissonance at the end of Ray Conniff's "Ring Christmas Bells")
3. "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (4)
4. "The Little Drummer Boy" (8)
5. "Mary's Lullaby" (the two that I own are two completely different songs; there's the LDS Children's Songbook song and the John Rutter one that I sang in choir at the University of Utah; yes, I can be heard on iTunes, albeit in a sea of voices)
6. "Merry Christmas Baby" (5)
7. "O Holy Night" (7)
8. "Silver Bells" (7)
9. "Sleigh Ride" (6; this is probably my personal favorite, even though I don't own that many versions of it; the only contender would be "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and I own even less versions of that; for a very contemporary sound, check out KT Tunstall's new release)
10. "This Christmas" (5)

The Eleventh CD of Christmas

2010-12-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

"The reggae Christmas tradition didn't just roll in overnight, it reaches all the way back to the old-school artists who cut their teeth in the pre-reggae days of ska and rocksteady . . . Ska pioneers Byron Lee & The Dragonaires pump some punchy horns and perky organ riffs into an old holiday standard, ending up with "Winter Wonderland Reggae." And historic harmonizers The Ethiopians stir up a rocksteady beat for the ring of that "Ding Dong Bell." (iTunes Essentials Reggae Christmas "Deep Cuts" introduction)

The first time I ever heard a reggae version of a Christmas song was six years ago in Toronto. We were visiting my sister-in-law and at the time she lived mere blocks from Kensington Market, apparently the home of a significant Rastafari population. I'm always intrigued by music that's played loud enough to be considered noise pollution, so I made my way over to the tent where this old Jamaican guy was blaring his very own Soul Vibes Reggae X-mas mix CD from a speaker half as tall as me. For fear that nobody would believe what I'd heard, I asked him if he would sell me a copy. Next thing I know he's pulled out an suitcase full of bootleg CDs and wants to bargain. The CD (homemade liner notes pictured above) turned out to sound like crap on every other stereo system besides his and maybe I was high on whatever that guy was smoking when I bought it, but it has led to further enlightenment, also known as "My Top 20 Reggae Christmas Songs" playlist (titles in bold are personal favorites):

The Chistmas Album
1. "Rich Man for Christmas" - Lady Saw

Christmas Eclectic
2. "Silent in the Night (Dub Mix 2)" - Up Bustle & Out feat. Blaze

Christmas Greetings from Studio One
3. "Jingle Bells" - Roy Richards
4. "White Christmas" - Bob Marley

Christmas Party Time in the Tropics
5. "Winter Wonderland Reggae" - Byron Lee & The Dragonaires

Now That's What I Call Christmas! Vol. 4
6. "A Child Is Born" - Rihanna
7. "Drummer Boy" - Sean Kingston

Reggae Christmas
8. "Here Comes Santa Claus" - Winston Francis
9. "Have Yourself a Merry Christmas" - Heavy Beat Crew (if just for the lyrics, "if you drink, then remember don't drive, want you all to stay alive")

Reggae Christmas from Studio One
10. "Hi Fashion Christmas" - Dillinger & The Brentford Harmonics (samples "54-46 That's My Number" by Toots & The Maytals)
11. "Real Christmas Rock" - Tennessee Brown & The Silvertones

Sweet Reggae Christmas
12. "Christmas a Come" - Chaka Demus & Ini Kamoze

Trojan Christmas Box Set
13. "Ding Dong Bell" - The Ethiopians
14. "Merry Merry Christmas" - Alton Ellis & The Lipsticks
15. "The Night Before Christmas" - Eek-A-Mouse
16. "O Come All Ye Faithful" - Freddie McGregor
17. "We Wish You a Reggae Christmas" - Yellowman
18. "Santa Claus Dub" - The Aggrovators
19. "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S" - The Rhythm Aces

Verve Remixed Christmas
20. "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (Yesking Remix)" - Billie Holiday

The Tenth CD of Christmas

2010-12-23T07:53:00.000-08:00

"On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me" the last title for an unintentional top ten list of Christmas CDs (sorry tonot follow the meter or rhyme scheme of the song). I say "unintentional" because when I decided to blog about a different album each day during the Twelve Days of Christmas, the only order I put them in was the order that I bought them. Music is all about memories though, and the the CDs that bring back the most memories are the ones I've owned the longest. So by default, the first ten that I bought also happen to be my top ten of all time. If you told me I could only own one Christmas CD, I would choose Music Box Christmas (see my 12/10 post). But I understand that music boxes are my own personal obsession and might sound monotonous or shrill to someone else. Changing the scenario, if you told me YOU could only one Christmas CD, I would recommend Christmas with Conniff (1959). Why the switch? It's because of all the CDs I've blogged about thus far (there's two more on their way, but they're not "top ten"), none are as much middle-of-the-road fun for the whole family, perfect for parties without being too loud, yet reverent of the Christmas spirit without being too slow. In other words, if you don't like Ray Conniff, I don't want to know you.

According to one reviewer on Amazon, Ray Conniff was "Muzak before Muzak was Muzak," but I disagree. The unique thing about Conniff's music was he had the singers wordlessly "sing" the instrumental parts, something like scat, but definitely not like elevator music. Most Conniff fans seem to agree that We Wish You a Merry Christmas (1962) was his best holiday album, but I disagree with that too. The tracklisting on the back of that CD may say that there are twelve songs, but half of them are medley segments, so there are really only six tracks. Even then the whole album is no more than a half hour long, and the last two tracks are annoying rhythmically, so you're basically paying the price of a full album for four good songs. (The liner notes describe it differently: "a rhythm sound that is one of the album's particular delights, and the chorus takes full advantage of the unusual alternating 4/4-3/4 beat.") This leads me to his third holiday album, Here We Come A-Caroling (1965), which according to another reviewer on Amazon, "replaced the harps with guitar," though it only bothered me on two out of the twelve unique songs. The bottom line is that Ray Conniff was always innovative, even if that goes against the definition of "elevator music."

The Ninth CD of Christmas

2010-12-22T07:46:00.000-08:00

There are currently four volumes in the Now That's What I Call Christmas! series, six if you count the Country volume and the single-disc Essential volume. You could own this series by itself and consider yourself a Christmas pop music expert. I'm not going to cover the Country volume here, but I have put in the research to blog the following consumer report on the main series and its Essential volume.

Which volume is actually the most essential? "There can be only one."

Artists appearing multiple times in the series (my pick for each in bold):

1. Christina Aguilera - "Merry Christmas Baby" (Vol. 3) vs. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (Vol. 4)

2. Gene Autry – "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (Vol. 1) vs. "Frosty the Snowman" (Vol. 3)

3. Tony Bennett – "Winter Wonderland" (Vol. 1) vs. "My Favorite Things" (Vol. 3)

4. Mariah Carey – "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (Vols. 2 & 4) vs. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" (Vol. 3)

5. Nat King Cole – "The Christmas Song" (Vols. 1 & 4) vs. "O Come All Ye Faithful" (Vol. 3)

6. Bing Crosby – "White Christmas" (Vols. 1 & 4) vs. "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth" (Vols. 1 & 4) vs. "Silver Bells" (Vol. 3)

7. Celine Dion – "Don’t Save It All for Christmas Day" (Vol. 1) vs. "O Holy Night" (Vol. 2) vs. "Feliz Navidad" (Vol. 3); NONE - not because of Celine Dion but because of the arrangements

8. Gloria Estefan – "Love on Layaway" (Vol. 1) vs. "Christmas Through Your Eyes" (Vol. 2) vs. "’ll Be Home for Christmas"(Vol. 3)

9. Ella Fitzgerald – "Sleigh Ride" (Vol. 1) vs. "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (Vol. 3)

10. Amy Grant - "A Christmas to Remember" (Vol. 2) vs. "Breath of Heaven" (Essential)

11. Burl Ives – "A Holly Jolly Christmas" (Vols. 1 & 4s) vs. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (Vol. 2) vs. "Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town" (Vol. 3); ALL - because Burl Ives is the man

12. The Jackson 5 – "Up on the Housetop" (Vol. 3) vs. "Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town" (Essential)

13. Brenda Lee – "Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree" (Vol. 1) vs. "Jingle Bell Rock" (Vol. 3)

14. Peggy Lee – "Happy Holiday" (Vol. 2) vs. "The Little Drummer Boy" (Vol. 3)

15. Dean Martin – "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" (Vol. 1) vs. "The Christmas Blues" (Vol. 2) vs. "Baby, It’s Cold Outside" (Vol. 3) vs. "A Marshmallow World" (Vol. 4)

16. Johnny Mathis – "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" (Vol. 1) vs. "Silver Bells" (Vol. 2) vs. "It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" (Vols. 3 & 4)

17. *NSYNC – "You Don’t Have to Be Alone" (Vol. 1) vs. "I Don’t Want to Spend One More Christmas Without You" (Vol. 2); BOTH - so deal with it

18. Stacie Orrico – "O Come All Ye Faithful" (Vol. 2) vs. "Christmas Wish" (Vol. 3)

19. Elvis Presley – "Blue Christmas" (Vol. 1) vs. "Here Comes Santa Claus" (Vols. 3 & 4)

20. Rihanna - "It Just Don't Feel Like Xmas (Without You)" (Vol. 3) vs. "A Child Is Born" (Vol. 4)

21. Kenny Rogers – "Kentucky Homemade Country Christmas" (Vol. 2) vs. "Christmas Is My Favorite Time of the Year" (Vol. 3)

22. Frank Sinatra – "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (Vol. 1) vs. "Jingle Bells" (Vol. 3)

23. Luther Vandross – "O Come All Ye Faithful" (Vol. 1) vs. "Please Come Home for Christmas" (Vol. 2)

24. Andy Williams – "The First Noel" (Vol. 2) vs. "It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" (Vols. 3 & 4)

Songs appearing multiple times in the series (my pick for each in bold):

1. "Baby, It’s Cold Outside" – Tom Jones (Vol. 2) vs. Dean Martin (Vol. 3)

2. "Blue Christmas" – Elvis Presley (Vol. 1) vs. Johnny Cash (Vol. 3)

3. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" – Frank Sinatra (Vol. 1) vs. Judy Garland (Vol. 3)

4. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" – Vince Gill (Vol. 2) vs. Carrie Underwood (Vol. 3)

5. "Feliz Navidad" – Jose Feliciano (live version; Vol. 2) vs. Celine Dion (Vol. 3); NONE but the original studio version, which appears on the Essential volume

6. "I’ll Be Home for Christmas" – Barbra Streisand (Vol. 2) vs. Gloria Estefan (Vol. 3)

7. "Jingle Bell Rock" – Bobby Helms (Vol. 1) vs. Brenda Lee (Vol. 3) vs. Daryl Hall and John Oates (Essential)

8. "Jingle Bells" – Diana Krall (Vol. 1) vs. Jimmy Buffett (Vol. 2) vs. Frank Sinatra (Vol. 3) vs. James Taylor (Vol. 4)

9. "The Little Drummer Boy" – Bing Crosby and David Bowie (Vol. 1) vs. Lou Rawls (Vol. 2) vs. Harry Simeone Chorale (Essential) vs. Sean Kingston (Vol. 4)

10. "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" – Johnny Mathis (Vol. 1) vs. Andy Williams (Vol. 3 & 4)

11. "O Come All Ye Faithful" – Luther Vandross (Vol. 1) vs. Stacie Orrico (Vol. 2) vs. Luciano Pavarotti (Vol. 2) vs. Nat King Cole (Vol. 3) vs. Celtic Woman (Vol. 4)

12. "O Holy Night" – Celine Dion (Vol. 2) vs. Al Green (Vol. 3)

13. "Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree" – Brenda Lee (Vol. 1) vs. Cyndi Lauper (Vol. 3) vs. Toby Keith (Vol. 4)

14. "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" – Gene Autry (Vol. 1) vs. Burl Ives (Vol. 2) vs. Ella Fitzgerald (Vol. 3) vs. The Temptations (Vol. 4); ALL - because it's the ultimate Christmas pop song

15. "Santa Baby" – Kylie Minogue (Vol. 2) vs. The Pussycat Dolls (Vol. 3) ; BOTH - because this song's funny whether it's done well or not

16. "Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town" – Bruce Springsteen (Vol. 1) vs. B2K (Vol. 2) vs. Burl Ives (Vol. 3) vs. The Jackson 5 (Essential)

17. "Silent Night" – Boyz II Men (Vol. 1) vs. Charlotte Church (Vol. 2) vs. The Temptations (Essential)

18. "Silver Bells" – Johnny Mathis (Vol. 2) vs. Bing Crosby (Vol. 3) vs. Martina McBride (Vol. 4)

19. "(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays" – Perry Como (Vol. 1) vs. Barry Manilow (Vol. 2)

20. "This Christmas" – Joe (Vol. 1) vs. Donny Hathaway (Essential)

21. "Winter Wonderland" – Tony Bennett (Vol. 1) vs. Louis Armstrong (Vol. 2)

If you count up my picks for each, Vol. 3 appears to be the most essential for both artists and songs across the series. I stand by Vol. 1 though, because it's the only one with the original "Jingle Bell Rock" by Bobby Helms, which is practically canon, or at the very least, required listening during the holidays.

Most of the best selections from the Signature (Vol. 2) are repeated on the Essential volume: Chuck Berry, José Feliciano, Elton John and Wham! I still recommend the Signature (Vol. 2) for its Destiny's Child, Mariah Carey and Gloria Estefan tracks.

Vol. 3 is the only one to include "The Grinch" song and a punk rock version of a Christmas song. There are a couple of songs which are repeated on Vol. 3, supposedly because they're superior recordings, but they're not. You're better off with the "Little Saint Nick" from Vol. 1 and "Winter Wonderland" from the Vol. 2.

When I first looked at the tracklisting for Vol. 4, I couldn't see past all the contemporary country and top 40 pop artists on disc 1. Then I mistook disc 2 for a rehash of previous releases. While the Lady Gaga song is wrong on multiple levels, the poppy Kelly Rowland "Wonderful Christmastime" cover is an improvement over the Paul McCartney original. Last but certainly not least, I just found one of my new favorite Christmas songs, and that's "December" by Norah Jones.

The Eighth CD of Christmas

2010-12-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

Pop quiz, movie fans! See if you can match the movies listed below to the oldies tunes that each one featured:

1. Top Gun (1986)
2. Adventures in Babysitting (1987)
3. Dirty Dancing (1987)
4. Ghost (1990)
5. Father of the Bride (1991)

a. "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Going to Marry" - Darlene Love (1963)
b. "Be My Baby" - The Ronettes (1963)
c. "Then He Kissed Me" - The Crystals (1963)
d. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" - The Righteous Brothers (1964)
e. "Unchained Melody" - The Righteous Brothers (1965)

What do all of these movies and songs have in common? As unrelated as they may seem, these movies were all childhood favorites of mine, but that could be because they featured songs which were also childhood favorites. What these songs share in common is that they were all produced by Phil Spector. Perhaps you're familiar with Phil Spector and his Wagnerian "Wall of Sound," a recording technique which uses lots of reverb and over-overdubbing. When I went looking for the original versions of a couple covers that Erasure did ("River Deep - Mountain High," by Ike and Tina Turner, and "Walking in the Rain," by The Ronettes), I was interested to learn that Phil Spector had a hand in both songs. Years later I was surprised to discover that he didn't just do '60s girl groups, he also worked with The Beatles and The Ramones. Finally, I was shocked to hear that he'd gone to prison for murder. If none of that's news for you, what you may never have realized is that the album, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (1963), was released the same day as the assassination of JFK. I imagine the first few years of the '60s, before LBJ and escalation in Vietnam, looked and sounded more like the '50s. Since the Spector-penned "Spanish Harlem" (1960), my all-time favorite oldies tune, was released right at the turn of the decade, I get it mixed up with all the doo-wop that came before it. Because of its inauspicious release date, A Christmas Gift for You might similarly come off as behind its turbulent times. While it may have been wrong for the peace movement, it's so joyously innocent and hopeful that it's perfect for the holiday season.

Here's a list of the songs on the album, grouped alphabetically by artist (titles in bold are my personal favorites):

Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans
3. The Bells of St. Mary's
12. Here Comes Santa Claus

The Crystals
4. "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"
8. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"
10. "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers"

Darlene Love
1. "White Christmas"
6. "Marshmallow World"
9. "Winter Wonderland"
11. "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"

The Ronettes
2. "Frosty the Snowman"
5. "Sleigh Ride"
7. "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"

I'm sure you aced the pop quiz at the top, but just in case you have doubts, the correct answers are 1-d, 2-c, 3-b, 4-e, and 5-a.

The Seventh CD of Christmas

2010-12-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

There are two things under our tree this year that shouldn't have anything to do Christmas, but do. The snowman is representative of winter, which as everyone knows, begins a few days before Christmas. But how many people realize that the actual birth of Jesus didn't take place during the calendar month of December, or during the season of winter at all? I myself was surprised to learn that it does in fact snow in Jerusalem, but it probably didn't do so on the night that Christ was born. The nutcracker toy pictured above was a Christmas gift from my old college roommate and his wife, but it has no more to do with the true meaning of Christmas than the snowman does. It's great that both decorations are the same height and they're both equally cute. Now come to think of it, the cuteness factor must be why a nutcracker toy was the preferred Christmas gift for Marie (not Clara) in the short story, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816), by German Romantic author, E.T.A. Hoffman. Having a Christmas party in the story was just a convenient way of getting a toy soldier into the hands of a little girl before he transformed into a human prince and took her on adventures in the Land of Sweets. But The Nutcracker ballet (1892) and its music would never have become the holiday staples that they are without that Christmas party in Act I. Furthermore, if not for the success that Walt Disney had with his not very Christmasy movie, Fantasia (1940), which included The Nutcracker Suite, William Christensen might not have brought the first complete performance of the ballet to the U.S. four years later. I learned that last tidbit from my wife, who once danced with Ballet West, the company that William Christensen founded another four years after he premiered The Nutcracker with the San Francisco Ballet. Anyway, my wife thinks my Kirov Orchestra CD is too fast to dance to, but the reason I bought it was because it was the only complete performance available on a single disc. You can easily fit The Nutcracker Suite on one CD, but that's only the eight numbers that Tchaikovsky selected for an earlier concert performance: the "Miniature Overture" (Christmasy to me), "March" (even Christmasier), "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy" (the Christmasiest, in my opinion), "Russian Dance" (Trepak), "Arabian Dance" (Coffee), "Chinese Dance" (Tea), "Dance of the Reed-Flutes" (Marzipan), and "Waltz of the Flowers" (my favorite on the Suite). What's missing though are my absolute personal favorites: the grand Journey Through the Snow (Scene 8), the even grander "Arrival of Clara and the Prince" (Scene 11), the grandest "Pas de Deux" ever (Scene 14), Polichinelles ("Mother Ginger and Her Children"), and finally, the favorite of my many favorites, "Spanish Dance" (Chocolate). If classical music's not your thing, check out Duke Ellington's jazz version of the "Overture" (1960), Trans-Siberian Orchestra's acoustic guitar on "The Silent Nutcracker" (1996), or D-Pulse's house remix, "Acid Dance of the Plum Fairy" (2005),

The Sixth CD of Christmas

2010-12-19T07:33:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you bought a CD for one song only? In this day and age of digital downloads, it's not something you really have to do anymore. Maybe I should be asking a different question: When was the last time you bought an album on a factory-sealed CD from a store to which you had to drive? Anyway, I bought The Voice of Christmas almost ten years ago on Amazon for one song. My wife was looking for a Luciano Pavarotti version of "Gesù bambino" and this 2CD set, which was released the same year as the single-disc Three Tenors at Chrismtas (2002), just seemed like the best value. She wanted the song for a holiday performance that she had to choreograph back when she used to teach ballet.

Turns out all the other songs are keepers. At first I couldn't dig the Dame Joan Sutherland solo pieces, but now even the squawking traditional French song "Il est né le divin enfant" brings a smile to my face. To this day, I've never seen the CD sold in stores, nor any of the other CDs in The Voice of... series (America; France; Italy; Mozart; Puccini; Verdi; etc.). You could easily buy one of the many Three Tenors' Christmas CDs anywhere, but if you're looking for an opera Christmas collection with variety, this one's got "old" (Choir of King's College, Cambridge - established in 1441) and "young" (Vienna Boys' Choir - established in 1498), both male (The Three Tenors' José Carreras) and female (the Met's Leontyne Price), religious (Messiah excerpts by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the London Symphony Chorus) and secular ("White Christmas" by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa).

2009 has been good for opera: Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream (best-selling album of the year), Andrea Bocelli's My Christmas (best-selling holiday album of the season) and Josh Groban's 2007 Noël (now quintuple platinum). Lately the fine line between musicals and opera has become more blurred with these popular artists recording selections from both side by side on the same albums. On my iPod, I label anything orchestral with singing as "Opera" (including Charlotte Church and Sarah Brightman) and anything orchestral but instrumental as "Classical" (no matter if it was written in 1409 or 2009). If an orchestral song with singing is recognizable from Broadway or a movie, I'll label it "Standards" instead of "Soundtrack" even though I know it would be easier to use "Vocal" for both musicals and opera. Before I got the The Voice of Christmas, I might have considered The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Messiah (1959) as my favorite holiday opera album. Now it's not even my favorite "Motab" album (that would be The Joy of Christmas with Leonard Bernstein).

The Fifth CD of Christmas

2010-12-18T07:29:00.000-08:00

In "My Easy Listening/New Age/World" post (11/11/08), I wrote how my dad first got into Mannheim Steamroller with A Fresh Aire VI (1986). I know he'd always been a fan of the song "Classical Gas," but I'm not sure if he owned the Mannheim Steamroller version on an album of the same name (1987). Then there was A Fresh Aire Christmas (1988), the sophomore release in a series of Christmas-themed albums which celebrated their 25th Anniversary with a "best of" double-disc set last year. A few years after the release of Yellowstone: The Music of Nature (1989), my family went to Yellowstone and I'm sure the CD would have been featured prominently in all the gift shops. I'm not sure which year I got into Mannheim Steamroller, but based on the way it kept intersecting with my life, it was probably inevitable. I think my dad liked the folk side of it. For me, it was all about the synthesizers. "Carol of the Bells" was like the "Axel F" of Christmas songs. It exposed me for the first time to the concept that Christmas songs could "rock," (not that it was a rock song - maybe derivative of prog rock, but far from a power metal offshoot like Trans-Siberian Orchestra) yet at the same time, it was easy listening. Paradox seems to be the goal of Mannheim Steamroller, as it's always sounded both old and new and acted both silly and serious at the same time, kind of like most people around Christmastime. The traditional (and my favorite) songs on A Fresh Aire Christmas are "Veni Veni (O Come, O Come Emmanuel), "The Holly and the Ivy" and "Still, Still, Still." For a non-traditional song, check out the "Hallelujah (Remix) " on Christmas Song (2007). In case you're wondering about the other Christmas albums, don't bother. Mannheim Steamroller Christmas (1984), is almost as good as the album featured here (not as sentimental for me) but there are only ten songs from later albums that stay true to the sound and spirit of the holiday (and earlier works):

Christmas in the Aire (1995)
2. "Joseph Dear, Oh Joseph Mine"
4. "Herbei, oh ihr Gläubigen (Oh Come All Ye Faithful)"
11. "Kling, Glöckchen"
12. "Jingle Bells"

Christmas Extraordinaire (2001)
3. "Away in a Manger"
4. "Faeries (Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy)"
5. "Do You Hear What I Hear?"
6. "The First Noel"

Christmas Celebration (2004)
1. "Christmas Celebration"

Christmas Song (2007)
10. "Traditions of Christmas" (music box)

The Fourth CD of Christmas

2010-12-17T07:22:00.000-08:00

This post is dedicated to those who limit themselves to the contemporary Christmas pop music that they play in department stores and restaurant chains. Anyone who understands the true meaning of Christmas knows that the holiday is 2010 years old, but most Christmas compilations only feature songs written within the last 200 years. James Galway's Christmas Carol (1986) remedies that by including the "Chorale" and "Sinfonia" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio (1734) and "Ave Maria," which is based on a melody that Bach composed for The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722). Dates that old make "Frosty the Snowman" (1950) and its predecessor "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1939) seem like new releases. He also includes "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," which is probably older than Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) and the only other familiar carol, "Greensleeves," is older than Dickens himself. My personal favorites are the "Shepherd's Pipe Carol" (1975), "I Saw Three Ships" (first published in 1928, supposedly an upbeat variation of "Greensleeves"), "Zither Carol," "Holy Boy" and "Past Three O'Clock" (1924).

The Third CD of Christmas

2010-12-16T07:17:00.000-08:00

If I were filthy rich, there are many things that I've said I would do: buy my grandparents' cabin and live like a hermit; visit all 50 states, stopping at every national park; build a lavish home theater and organize a film festival; fund a community skate park; curate an antique music box museum. That last one's not actually true. I've never said it before but now that I have, why not? A library of golden age comic books would only be of interest to English speakers but music is universal, especially instrumental music. In the case of an unlikely but possible post-apocalyptic future without electricity, music boxes would be invaluable to music lovers without any natural musical talent. I love music boxes. The Porter Co. (surprisingly available on iTunes) Music Box Christmas, as revealed in my 12/25/08 post, was the album my parents played first thing on Christmas mornings while we opened presents. Not that I think opening presents is the essence of Christmas, but this album IS the essence of Christmas for me. It evokes a baby being born in a manger. It twinkles like starlight and almost brings me to tears. All music boxes have a somewhat melancholy sound, no matter how joyous the songs they play. Considering that my absolute favorite musical instrument is the steel drum and one of my top five things in this world is listening to church bells in the distance, it should come as no surprise that I love the sweet, simple, haunting sound of music boxes. This album straddles the line between reinterpreting Christmas classics in a new and different format and remaining faithful to the original melodies (check out the unique intro on "Greensleeves"). It also has a nice, even balance between contemporary, pop standards and traditional, religious carols. For more on the man behind this, my absolute favorite Christmas CD, click to enlarge the liner notes below:

The Second CD of Christmas

2010-12-15T06:33:00.000-08:00

Call me a Philistine. Call me fuddy duddy. Worse yet, call me a hopeless addict, but I'll be the first to admit, I'm an Enya CD collector. In my 10/23/08 post, I mentioned that I consider a fad to be anything involving upwards of 20 million people and since Enya has had over 30 million sales in the U.S. alone, she could be considered trendy, but I'm not ashamed. You may see multiple albums pictured on this post, but "the second CD of Christmas" is really just Shepherd Moons, winner of the first of Enya's four Grammy Awards for "Best New Age Album." It doesn't have Christmas in the title like some of her later work, but it was released early one November and my dad must have bought it shortly thereafter, because I remember him playing it throughout the holidays and almost till spring. The opening and title track encapsulates the season of winter more than any other song I know. The second track, "Caribbean Blue," doesn't transport me to a tropical paradise - instead, it brings to my mind the hustle and bustle of gift shopping, or of Santa's elves speedily building toys. The third track, "How Can I Keep From Singing?" sounds like midnight Mass because of the echo and organ. The tribal fourth track isn't very Christmasy, neither the popular single, "Book of Days," nor the last track with bagpipes. But I still like them all. My two favorite tracks on the album (and the most Christmasy) are "Angeles" and "Marble Halls" (which reminds my granddad of his childhood).

Enya's follow-up to Shepherd Moons was the Oíche Chiún (Silent Night) single. My dad immediately snatched that up too but I waited a few years and then bought The Christmas EP. They have different cover art but both feature the songs "Oíche Chiún" and "'s Fagaim Mo Bhaile" (very Christmasy). The reason I waited to buy the EP was that it had more songs than the single, but those songs turned out to be recycled from the albums Watermark and The Celts. Now I'm missing the song "Oriel Window" (more Christmasy), which is on the single but not on the EP, and I prefer that to the song "As Baile" (less Christmasy), which is on the EP but not on the single. I'm also missing the Target exclusive, Sounds of the Season: The Enya Holiday Collection (known as the Christmas Secrets EP in Canada). It starts with "Oíche Chiún" (which seems to be on everything including the charity compilation, A Very Special Christmas), but adds a couple new interpretations of the Christmas classics, "Adeste Fideles (Oh Come All Ye Faithful)" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Both of those versions are so-so, but the fourth track, "Christmas Secrets" is a must-have and I don't have it (the cheapest solution may be to buy the import-only Amarantine: Special Christmas Edition, an album I already own the original version of).

In my 11/11/08 post, I noted that both Enya and Mannheim Steamroller had come out with Christmas-themed albums on the same day. And Winter Came... was Enya's release that day and if you take away the song I discussed in that post, "Trains and Winter Rains," along with the rockin' "My! My! Time Flies!" (which just happen to be the first two tracks on last year's Very Best of Enya CD/DVD) what you're left with is like a new version of Shepherd Moons. The title track on And Winter Came... encapsulates the season almost as well as the title track on Shepherd Moons. The second track, "Journey of the Angels" takes me back to "Angeles" and "Last Time By Moonlight" is like the new "Marble Halls." The third track, "White Is in the Winter Night," is the new gift shopping/elf toymaking addition. The fourth track, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is the new midnight Mass carol. I'm hardly the first person to suggest that Enya's albums all sound the same and I won't be the last that honestly doesn't care. Ireland's other, bigger, musical export to the world, U2, also cranks out albums which all sound the same to me and I'm fine with that as well (I like their "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" on the aforementioned charity compilation, A Very Special Christmas). There are lots of excessive and redundant holiday traditions and I'll take them all, thank you much.

The First CD of Christmas

2010-12-14T00:27:00.000-08:00

There are lot of Christmas movies and animated TV specials with songs and instrumental scores that I like: White Christmas (1954), Babes in Toyland (1961), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), The Small One (1978) and Gremlins (1984). I only own one Christmas movie soundtrack on CD and that's Home Alone (1990). I didn't own a CD player when the movie came out, but when I started buying CDs, it was one of my firsts. It's not just a Christmas thing either. Every year at Thanksgiving, my mom's whole side of the family would get together and my uncle would offer to take all my cousins and me to the movies but it never happened. To this day, I've only ever been to the theater on Thanksgiving once, when all my aunts and uncles together took us to Home Alone. I think of that every Thanksgiving as it's one of the happiest memories of my life, plus I saw the trailer for Edward Scissorhands (another somewhat Christmas movie with a great soundtrack). I learned to comb my hair and put on deodorant from the aftershave screaming scene so you know the movie's ingrained in my daily routine. Speaking of the aftershave scenes, without the lip-synching one I might never have been exposed to Mel Tormé, and I personally think he's better than Bing Crosby OR Frank Sinatra. Unfortunately for the time being I don't own any of his Christmas albums. I just rewatched the DVD with the director's commentary and I learned that John Williams wasn't the first choice for composer on Home Alone. The director wanted Bruce Broughton, who coincidentally did lots of other holiday-themed soundtracks, including The Thanksgiving Promise (1986) and Miracle on 34th Street (1994). Nobody thought John Williams would do a "kiddie" movie, but then he followed this one up with Hook (1991). That leads me to my final point. What's so great about Home Alone is that John Williams didn't treat it like a "kiddie" movie and neither did the rest of the cast or crew. Director Chris Columbus even claims that he was inspired by Charles Dickens in Great Expectations (1860) and Oliver Twist (1837), which are both dark stories about kids in over their heads. This reminds me of an IMDb comment I read recently, by Lou Pine from Dublin, about the movie Parents (1989):

"There is an aspect to childhood that is too often (and in the case of Hollywood almost always) forgotten and that is the dark side. The world for a child does not always appear as a bright, shining place of wonder and joy; more often than not the world is strange, forbidding and completely out of our control. That appearance is not deceptive; what is deceptive is the web of fictions we build up over time to help us deal with this. For me part of the thrill of horror (real horror, not simply the slash and stack variety), is the remembrance of that childhood chill, the memory of what Lovecraft termed cosmic horror and Freud called the Uncanny. Regardless of who those people are, parents as the symbol of unimpeachable, unquestioned authority whom we have to trust regardless of their real motives, are a potent representation of this chaotic universe, a universe that could crush us at any moment if it wanted to, but which we're stuck with."

November Books

2010-11-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Art and Max - David Wiesner; "Two artists mix methods and media."

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - Walter Mosley; "The tale of an aged superhero who performs valiant deeds with the aid of a devoted young sidekick (pointedly named Robyn) may sound like the charming stuff of myth. But Mosley invests his wish-fulfillment fantasy with deeper meaning and higher purpose."

An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin; "The actor's third novel is a dramedy of manners that doubles as an immersion course in the rarefied world of high-end art."

Shadow - Suzy Lee; "More impressive than Lee's cartooning, however, is her understanding of the properties unique to the printed book as storytelling devices."

A Tale Dark & Grimm - Adam Gidwitz; "Hansel and Gretel wander through a succession of lesser-known Grimm tales."

Nonfiction

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste - Pierre Bourdieu "set out to show the social logic of taste: how admiration for art, appreciation of music, even taste in food, came about for different groups, and how 'superior' taste was not the result of an enchanted superiority in scattered individuals."

Googled: The End of World As We Know It - Ken Auletta; "Depicts the sofware company, created in the mid-1990s by two Stanford graduate students, as a game-changing behemoth that, to the dismay of many media chiefs, has become synonymous with user-friendly efficiency and has the potential to disrupt whole industries."

In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Value - Lauren Weber; "Combining personal memoir, social history and political manifesto, Weber guides readers on a history of America's complicated relationship with spending, and explores creative alternatives."

In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks - Adam Carolla; "The radio host and comedian assesses modern culture through personal anecdotes."

Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation - Ted C. Fishman; "Grew out of the research for Fishman's first book, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, and the two books share a fast pace, global scope and jaw-dropping facts."

Steven Seagal's First Ten Movies

2010-11-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

There are few guarantees in life but in Steven Seagal movies, there are exactly three. Arms will be broken, there will be not-so-subtle messages about corruption, and in the first ten minutes of each movie, Seagal will go from being an innocent bystander to verbally challenging someone a) bigger than him, b) higher up the totem pole than him, or c) he will singlehandedly take on a whole group of guys that are even uglier than him. I never liked him as much as Jean-Claude Van-Damme growing up, and while we're on the subject of hypothetical, celebrity, death matches, I never liked Sylvester Stallone as much as Arnold Schwarzenegger either. As an adult, the accents of Van Damme and Schwarzenegger deflate my suspension of disbelief every time. In retrospect, it's good that Stevie and Sly stayed a little more down to earth, never taking scripts that bend the very fabric of space and time like their contemporaries (Timecop, 1994, and Total Recall, 1990), but if they had, I can see now how '80s playground meatheads would've eaten it up.

Here is my ranking for Steven Seagal's first ten movies, from best to worst (number one being the very best):

1. Under Siege (1992) this is the one where Steven Seagal has no ponytail and uses throwing knives to prepare "50 gallons of bouillabaise;" the technical jargon is what makes it for me but I can see how that might break it for someone in the know; The Hunt for Red October this is not; it's the second collaboration with director, Andrew Davis (The Fugitive, 1993); the first was...

2. Above the Law (1988) this is the one where a young Seagal has long, bushy sideburns and speaks Japanese; its ideas are loftier than those in most revenge plots and its scope spans the globe from Asia to North and South America, but that's also what weighs it down; Beverly Hills Cop (1984) still has better '80s music and more spectacle

3. The Glimmer Man (1996) this is the one where an old Seagal who's starting to put on some weight claims to be Buddhist and speaks Russian; he's partners with Damon Wayans, (the first of many gritty, urban, odd couple, action team-ups), and they make random references to Casablanca (1942) and Sun Tzu's The Art of War (600 B.C.)

4. Executive Decision (1996) this is the one where he gets killed in the first half hour, but not before he barks orders at everyone and squints a lot at Kurt Russell, who takes over when it switches to a bomb squad suspense story that was probably trying to cash in on the success of Speed (1994); Seagal was just the head fake to get people in theaters

5. Fire Down Below (1997) this is the one where he awkwardly keeps his arms folded in front and plays an impromptu guitar solo at the town dance; it features cameos by several country music stars, but they still manage to play some Jimi Hendrix right before the best truck chase scene since Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

6. Out for Justice (1991) this is the one where he wears a beret and speaks Italian; it's a mob story set in Brooklyn so you know it's got the worst language of any of the movies on this list; it also has the goriest fight scenes although not much happens in between those besides driving around listening to the Beastie Boys

7. Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) this is the only later movie without a ponytail and he lets kids like Katherine Heigl and Morris Chestnut (before they were famous) take most of the one-liners; the final knife fight is much longer than the awesome one at end of the first movie, but here Seagal also drops his knife halfway through and has to defend himself with his feet

8. Marked for Death (1990) this is the one where he starts dressing all in black and tries to quit his corrupting job because it's making him feel corrupted; there's a machine shop music montage that demands manly claps and cheers; don't ask me what's up with the dancehall reggae and the voodoo resurrection, but if it leads to swordfighting and severed limbs, it's irie, mon

9. On Deadly Ground (1994) this is the one where he wears a Native American fringed jacket and takes a vision quest with an Eskimo tribe; I would say this is the worst of the bunch because of the slow motion fight scenes but then there are deaths from collateral damage at the end which have nothing to do with Seagal and that's a breath of fresh air

10. Hard to Kill (1990) this is the one where he comes out of a coma looking like Charles Manson and he wears an American flag bandana; it's convenient that he gets rescued by a hot nurse who's in love with him and she happens to have a secluded ranch with a weight lifting gym; it's not as cheesy as Road House (1989) but it has a soundtrack like a late night infomercial

October Books

2010-11-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and various issues of Entertainment Weekly magazine) that I might like to read at some point (plus pictures I took of the Halloween decorations at our local library):

Fiction

But Not For Long - Michelle Wildgen; "Three members of a housing co-op in Madison, Wis., face a sort of apocalypse when gas stations run out of fuel, a prolonged blackout hits and honeybees disappear. Eventually people break out their bikes and begin foraging for mushrooms. The plot sounds didactic, but there is nothing preachy about this novel."

How to Read the Air - Dinaw Mengestu's "own origins inform this novel about an Ethiopian-American tracing the uncertain road once taken by his immigrant parents."

Nemesis - Philip Roth; "In 1944, a New Jersey phys ed teacher unfit for military service wages his own war against a polio outbreak."

The Odious Ogre - Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer; "The legendary team behind The Phantom Tollbooth, join forces again . . . A natural read-aloud."

Spooner - Pete Dexter; "A story about a man's struggle to help his troubled stepson by a novelist who writes about trouble better than most anyone."

Nonfiction

At Home: A Short History of Private Life - Bill Bryson; "Centuries of history dwell in every nook and cranny of your home."

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 - Dave Eggers; "A collection of the year's best writing - tweets, fiction snippets, blogs, letters to the editor, and so on - with an introduction by David Sedaris."

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary - Steven R. Weisman; "Moynihan's correspondence makes absorbing reading because his grand ideas were always driven by his internal tensions."

Listen to This - Alex Ross; "The New Yorker music critic follows up his best-selling The Rest Is Noise with this indispensable, erudite collection of his magazine essays, which span the aural universe from Schubert to Radiohead."

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream - Arianna Huffington; "The American middle class as an endangered species, from the editor of the Huffington Post Web site."

Happy Halloween, Part III

2010-10-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

On this, the third Halloween since I started this blog, I'm reviewing not one, not two, but THREE totally '80s, cheesy, "atomic" horror, B-movie spoofs. There's also pictures of my son wearing his Lil' Frankie costume for the third year in a row and the Jack O'Lanterns that I freehanded (so don't judge my witch too harshly).

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (one and a half stars total) was my personal favorite of the bunch, despite the fact that I gave it the lowest rating. I don't think I've ever pointed out here that my "scientific method" for reviewing movies may subjectively rate craftsmanship, but it has no bearing on transcendental qualities, or unquantifiable sentimentalities. Just because I consider my favorite movie of all time to be a five star movie doesn't mean that any of my other favorites deserve the same rating. Killer Klowns (1988) doesn't sound like it would be a scary movie, it isn't really meant to be a scary movie, and yet, if watched with a certain state of mind, it becomes scary for fleeting moments. Its creators, the Chiodo brothers, also did the special effects on Elf (2003) and Team America: World Police (2004). It stars John Vernon, the bad guy from such silly classics as Animal House (1978), Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) and Ernest Goes to Camp (1987). The theme song was written and performed by The Dickies, the first California punk band to be signed to a major record label. I'd go on but there's nothing I can say that's going to change anyone's mind about this movie.

The longer I watched Night of the Comet (two stars total), the less I liked it. You know a movie's bad when it has to use a cover version of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" instead of the original. It stars Catherine Mary Stewart, who was also the leading lady on The Last Starfighter (1984) and Weekend at Bernie's (1989). She plays an independently minded 18-year-old that works at L.A.'s historic El Rey theater, loves arcade games, and knows more useless trivia about Superman than her boyfriend, who becomes breakfast for a zombie the morning after a comet that killed the dinosaurs passes by Earth again. For me, the real star of the show was Kelli Maroney, the leading lady from Chopping Mall (1986), as the bubblegum-popping, younger sister. I defy you to name another movie where violence is so casually domesticized as in this one's line that goes "the MAC-10 submachine gun was practically designed for housewives." Ah, the Reagan years. I honestly do miss some '80s styles, not the shoulder pads, but definitely the big hair. Despite the fashion revival that's happening right now, Halloween is my only chance to see the best outfits from yesteryear, the oversize button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up under colorful vests. Wait a minute, maybe I'm thinking of the early '90s.

Tremors (three and a half stars total) The early '90s kinda blend with the late '80s in my mind, hence the reason that Tremors (1990) can be considered totally '80s. I mean, it's got Kevin Bacon, isn't that good enough? He did Flatliners the same year as this movie, but over the last decade he's done almost all thrillers. I was living out of country when Wild Things (1998) and Stir of Echoes (1999) came out and I still haven't seen them, but I thought Bacon definitely brought his dark Everyman thing to Mystic River (2003) and The Woodsman (2004). Anyway, you gotta love him for doing Tremors, because he didn't have to and it appears as though he had fun. Granted, it's beautiful country, he gets to do an accent, cuss up a storm, be the hero and get the girl. The only other familiar faces are the dad from Family Ties (1982-1989), the grandpa from the 3 Ninjas (1991-1997) series, and Reba McEntire as a survivalist gun nut. You gotta love survivalists, (at least you do in this movie, along with the harmonica, because they play a lot of it). The moral to the story happens to be the same as the Boy Scout motto, "be prepared." It got me wondering how many people would be able to handle heavy machinery in a pinch. It's a good skill to have in creature features where characters are cut off from the rest of the world.

Recent Supernatural Thriller Versus Classic Supernatural Thriller

2010-10-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

"One of the most important things about the bedroom is the position of the bed (or, in the case of the first movie reviewed here, the crib). It must not be placed in front of the door leading to your bedroom. This bed position is called the 'coffin position' and it signifies death. If you have a master bathroom, you should not be able to see the toilet or have the bathroom mirror reflect your bed. In fact, it is inauspicious to have a mirror anywhere in your bedroom. Full-length mirrors on the doors of built-in wardrobes are considered to be particularly harmful. Feng shui practitioners believe that the resting occupant is disturbed by spirits created by the reflection of you in the mirror while you are sleeping." (Antonia Beattie and Rosemary Stevens, Using Feng Shui: Easy Ways to Use the Ancient Chinese Art of Placement for Happiness and Prosperity, p. 72)

Paranormal Activity 2 (four and a half stars total) Add babies or little kids to any horror movie and it's automatically scarier. Top that off with a language barrier between characters, a family pet getting hurt or killed, and you can add confusion, depression and frustration to the mix. Paranormal Activity 2 (opened in theaters last weekend) isn't as funny as the first Paranormal, but I do believe a sequel can be better than its predecessor (see my 12/22/08 "Defense of Movie Sequels" post), and it has nothing to do with budget. Overall, there seem to be less effects shots this time around (no fire or footprints), although I admit the "dragged out of bed" scenes are much longer. If anything, the security cam slideshow on PA2 is more monotonous than the tripod, time-lapse photography on the original. The reason I think this sequel is better is that it has more of everything else: characters, rooms, and most importantly, ideas. It didn't make any sense for them to film each other while surfing the internet, to not have handy flashlights or a spare set of keys, but in our current economic climate, I'm still reeling over the idea of a family ancestor gambling on their posterity for wealth (for more on firstborn male heirs, see Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, 1995). It's not necessarily a novel concept to have an average, American family feeling powerless to effect change against unseen forces (global warming, the rising cost of college tuition and oil prices). Here are some sample morals I got from this movie, which you do have control over: Don't try to make contact with demons. Don't leave toys all over the living room floor. Don't fire your housekeeper, especially if she recommends abstinence to your teenage daughter. Do learn a second language.

RiffTrax Live! House on Haunted Hill (four stars total) For almost as long as I've lived in San Diego, I've seen pre-show advertising at different theater chains for live entertainment like The Met Opera, UFC matches and FIFA World Cup games. Until now I've always wondered, who actually goes to the theater to watch these events? This week I attended one of these satellite broadcasts for the first time and I was shocked to find the room filled to capacity (screen number "13" for what it's worth). RiffTrax ("we don't make movies, we make them funny!") features the later hosts from Mystery Science Theater 3000 doing comedic commentary from three, little, split-screen boxes on the side. Apparently they're based in San Diego and they've already done other live shows like last year's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) and then Reefer Madness (1936), earlier this year. I was excited to see a RiffTrax version of House on Haunted Hill (1959) because I'd forgotten most of the plot details since I last saw it, but also because I wanted to understand why other people seem to deride B-movies so much. Everybody laughed at the first jump scene, with the blind ghost rolling out of the closet, but I think that scene's scary. Maybe I like letting my imagination fill in the cracks, when budgetary constraints leave me cracks to fill in (for more on this, see my 4/5/10 "Fine Art Versus Popular Culture" post), or maybe other people just laugh nervously more than I do. The hosts made an astute observation that "the hill is what's haunted - the house is perfectly fine," but mostly they inserted current pop culture jokes about Jersey Shore, Lady Gaga, and Vincent Price's involvement with Michael Jackson's Thriller, along with the usual race and gay jokes. I came to the realization that the educational short films the comedians show before the feature presentation act as icebreakers while they get warmed up. I came to accept that audiences aren't any harder on B-movies than the characters in those movies are on each other, and I learned that the house in the movie was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in real life, so I think it's safe to say I had a very enlightening evening in a dark, old house.

Recent Japanese Thriller Versus Classic Japanese Thriller

2010-10-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

"CGI running may be faster than real running, but it never seems like anybody is really working at it. We're watching an effect instead of an achievement." (Roger Ebert's review of The Promise, 2006, included in his book, Your Movie Sucks, p. 231)

Casshern (one and a half stars total) As anal retentive as it may be, there is a difference between war and wartime movies. This movie and the other one reviewed below are evidence of that. Avatar (2009) would be a war movie. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) would be a wartime movie. What both of these sci-fi/action movies share in common with Casshern (2004) is that they all were shot with digital backlots (live actors performing in front of a greenscreen) and they all suck. My wife really likes Sky Captain but what bothered me was all the times Gwyneth Paltrow's character put the movie on pause to stare at her camera. There are lots of lingering shots in Casshern too. My complaint isn't about the overall pacing on either movie. My complaint is that some scenes just need to be left on the editing room floor/computer hard drive. They may be redundant within the context of the whole movie (Sky Captain), but more often they are devoid of any meaningful content no matter what their length or position (Casshern). I've already written about movies with video game sensibilities elsewhere on this blog (see my 8/14/10 Scott Pilgrim review), so I'll just close by saying that I have no appreciation for most video game graphics, the world doesn't need another version of Frankenstein (1818), and while I own the original Metropolis (1927), I'm less and less motivated to the see the anime (2001) that it inspired with each Japanese movie I watch.

"The first time I saw the film, I knew hardly a thing about Japanese cinema, and what struck me was the elevated emotional level of the actors. Do all Japanese shout and posture so?" (Roger Ebert's 2002 review of Rashōmon, included in his book, The Great Movies II, p. 362)

Onibaba (three stars total) Would someone please explain what's up with Japanese movies (anime or otherwise) and sex perversion? I haven't seen a lot of Japanese movies, less than a half dozen by director Akira Kurosawa, plus a couple of Cartoon Network imports (the "adult" in Adult Swim should've told me everything I needed to know). I've tried to read a fair share of (non-Shōjo) manga and all of it has included at least a passing reference to either cross-dressing, hermaphrodites, incest, striptease or supernatural rape. Onibaba (1964) literally translates as "demon woman," but the English title could just as easily be Cougar Serial Killer Mother-in-Law. An old widow throws herself at a neighbor who's half her age, but he goes after her young daughter-in-law instead. Nothing about this movie is suitable for network TV, and the funny thing about that is it's almost 50 years old. The setting alone is a horror movie waiting to happen. Two women, not blood relatives, are forced to live together in a rural swamp with no honest way to support themselves. They've taken to killing samurai and stripping them for items to pawn. When the older woman offs a samurai with a demon mask, she steals it to scare the younger woman away from the object of her disgusting desire. If you're familiar with the Goosebumps story, "The Haunted Mask" (either the 1993 book or the 1995 TV episode), you already know what happens next. Supposedly this movie (and probably the one reviewed above) are about the aftermath of atomic warfare, but not in the same way that Godzilla (1954; Casshern marks its 50th anniversary) is about the effects of the bomb. In one way or another, are all Japanese movies about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or just those that find their way to the U.S.?

'50s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

"(The leading foe of horror comics) Fredric Wertham's dishonest, bullying 'science' also had much in common with the increasingly sophisticated and cynical efforts of Madison Avenue to control the attitudes, anxieties, and consumption patterns of American women. And expanding postwar incomes was enabling psychiatry to make vast inroads into outpatient-land. The as yet unnamed category of drugs to be known as tranquilizers was already on the drawing boards, and would soon permit the psychiatric medicalization of a whole class of postwar discontents, many essentially social and economic in origin." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 237)

The Bad Seed (one and a half stars total) My middle brother and the guys we grew up with had an inside joke about the way my dad talks. We used to say that anytime he opened his mouth, he was "gettin' technical." As with most men, my dad's not big on chitchat. If you ask him a question, he'll tell you everything he knows with relation to that question and then that topic will be exhausted. Sometimes I catch myself "gettin' technical." This blog is the perfect example. The dialogue on The Bad Seed (1956) works the same way. It's all exposition. None of it flows naturally. The characters might as well be reading passages from Dr. Spock's book, Baby and Child Care (1946), like newscasters with a teleprompter. For those of us that didn't grow up with the revolution that was the antiwar protester, Dr. Benjamin Spock, he was the first pediatrician to apply psychoanalysis to child-rearing. The Bad Seed might be the first horror movie to apply the word psychoanalysis verbally to a family line of female serial killers. It was definitely the first horror movie to be nominated for (count 'em up) four Oscars, including Best Actress in a Leading Role, two for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the most surprising to me, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. The movie takes place mainly indoors and features people sitting on couches for much of its running time, so I'm not sure what cinematography it was nominated for, unless it's the "grace of God" lightning scene at the end. I've already mentioned the acting, but I must specifically mention Nancy Kelly in the leading role. Her hoarse, smoker's voice is so weak and whiny it's like nails on a chalkboard. While most audiences were probably thinking the bad seed's character just needed a good spanking, I was wishing I could grab the mother's character by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. The daughter's character, played by Patty McCormack, may act like she's been spared the rod and spoiled for sure, but she doesn't look like she's been spared the ugly stick. She has the same wild-eyed unibrow and bad teeth as Ernest Borgnine's title character from Marty (1955), which swept the Oscars the year before. Back to spankings, the moment of triumph on The Children's Hour (1961), another movie based on a play with similar themes, comes when a proud old woman finally disciplines her rotten granddaughter, who is partially responsible for a lesbian schoolteacher committing suicide. Such a scene only comes to those who wait till after the "curtain call" styled closing credits on The Bad Seed, and by then it's too late.

'60s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

"The New American prosperity of the early 1950s was won atop the largest bone pile in human history. World War II had claimed the lives of over 40 million soldiers and civilians, and introduced two radical new forms of mechanized death - the atomic bomb and the extermination camp - that seriously challenged the mind's ability to absorb, much less cope with, the naked face of horror at mid-century. And only five years after the fall of Germany and Japan, America was once again at war, this time a 'police action' in Korea haunted by the specter of the H-bomb, a looming necro-technology now shared uneasily with the Soviets. If America in 1950 was filled with the smell of new cars, it was still permeated by the stench of mass death, and the threat of more to come." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 229)

Carnival of Souls (one star total) was released two years after Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) changed everything about horror movies, three years after The Twilight Zone (1959) turned Cold War terminology into an abstract but mainstream TV series, and four years after the Saltair Pavilion (1893) was closed down on the southern shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake. That should tell you where the ideas might have come from for a young, unmarried woman driving cross-country toward a twist ending, and an abandoned amusement park haunted by Death. Having lived in Salt Lake City, where Carnival of Souls (1962) was filmed, I recognized a few locations immediately. Aside from Saltair (now a concert venue where I saw The Strokes and Third Eye Blind), there's the wall surrounding Temple Square, the most historic tourist attraction downtown, where the main character gets "ignored" by a cop. There's also a scene in the park at City Hall when she passes out, right at the corner where my wife and I used to go for bubble tea. I can't help but wonder, was the idea for a job as a church organist was inspired by the Salt Lake Tabernacle pipe organ? The "theater" organ she's hired to play (pictured below) is minuscule in comparison to the Tabernacle's, but apparently it's capable of sounding creepier. Forget the familiar story that gets recycled in Carnival of Souls because the movie's really more about imagery and a particular point in pop culture. Stained glass windows and big, empty, old cathedrals have scared me since John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987) but here, church and recreation come together in a dreamlike danse macabre. 1962 marked the "death" of the Golden Age of Radio with the final broadcast of one of its most popular programs, Suspense (1942). Whether the "TV generation" needed more sights than sounds to be horrified, or whether this transition gets indirectly referenced in Carnival of Souls is my own conjecture. The rise of TV was blamed for a lot of things, including the closure of the Saltair Pavilion. When the main character is unable to find anything on the radio but old-timey gospel music, it could just be to create atmosphere. Then again, it could be signifying the "death" of an era - the switch from swing dances to counterculture peace rallies, poodle skirts to mini skirts and "The Greatest Generation" to the baby boomers. After all, if teenage drag racers weren't hallucinating zombies before Carnival of Souls, they certainly were after JFK's assassination the next year or the increased draft to Vietnam the year after that.

'70s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

"The cinema of horror provides its highly secularized audience with their last - perhaps their only - opportunity to experience mystery and miracle . . . The great frenzies of chaos, creation, disobedience, disaster, solitude and evil which have been rendered vague or bland in the well-bred church and synagogue services of the '70s are restored to their terrifying proportions in the half-light of the movie theaters. Priests of the horror cinema still recite incantations that count." (Leonard Wolf, "In Horror Movies, Some Things Are Sacred," The New York Times, April 4, 1976, as quoted by David J. Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 386)

The Wicker Man (two and a half stars total) I had to look up the definition of "straw man" arguments. It's been too many years since high school speech and debate class. I was curious to see if it would have any correlation to the movie, The Wicker Man (1973). I admit that anything can be twisted to mean anything for argument's sake. This ties in directly with "straw man" arguments, which directly tie in with The Wicker Man, no twisting necessary. The police sergeant who goes to investigate the report of a missing person wants a "proper" Christian burial and to enforce laws against public indecency. The pagan islanders he's investigating want religious tolerance and a "miracle" that will restore their crops in the coming year (never mind their own elaborate involvement in the machinations). The policeman's "reasoning" with the islanders is a logical fallacy because he's only attacking his own "distorted" version of their position and that fails to constitute an attack on their actual position (see Wikipedia for a full list of logical fallacies). It's so cruel the way they talk down to him at the end, explaining everything in layman's terms that even a self-righteous blowhard can't argue with, but I guess it's no more dismissive than when he laughs at their custom for "supernatural impregnation" toward the beginning. As a kid, I thought the title referred to the villain's name, but the truth is much more terrifying than that. The villain is just actor Christopher Lee, dressed in purple and yellow drag.

If there were such a thing as the "Twelve Days of Halloween," they might start tomorrow. This is debatable because the "Twelve Days of Christmas" either end on Christmas Day or the day before Epiphany (see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night), so who's to say whether you should start this make-believe holiday extension by counting down from October 20 or October 31? Holiday blending like "Chrismahanukwanzakah" or "Festivus" really get to me. Christmas alone is an example, blending the displaced Nativity (December 25) and the arrival of the Wise Men/baptism of Jesus (January 6) with the ancient Roman Saturnalia (December 17-23) and the pagan Germanic Yuletide/winter solstice (December 21-22). Somewhere along the line, Halloween has transmuted into a second tier Christmas Day, probably because it's the second most commercialized holiday in the U.S. For me, Halloween will never be just an appetizer or a speed bump before Christmas. It's neither the anti-Christmas nor a dark twin to its neighbor holiday. Don't even get me started on The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Would this still have happened if Halloween were in June? Unfortunately, its proximity to Christmas has led to atrocities like Halloween wreaths, trees, stockings, pumpkin "snowmen" and "haunted" gingerbread houses. Soon there won't any distinction between holiday celebrations. Alas, it's the only politically correct way to go.

'80s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

"Popular 'amusements' have a flip side that is often less than sunny, and the very world 'recreation' has some usually overlooked connotations. Any process of re-creation or rebirth necessarily entails a death of one sort or another. This may explain the prevalence of sugar-coated intimations of mortality in carnivals and fun parks - spook shows, wild rides involving heart-stopping plunges and near-collisions, and the omnipresent, endlessly cycling wheels and whirligigs of chance, fate, and destiny. Freak shows similarly offer a glimpse of ourselves, re-created along strange physical and behavioral lines. Nothing is fixed, and everything is possible." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 30)

Something Wicked This Way Comes (two stars total) I once ran into Ray Bradbury at San Diego's Comic Con and no one else around us seemed to recognize him. That's probably my only random celebrity encounter (I say "probably" because - again - no one else recognized him as a celebrity). I've sat close to many movie and TV stars on panels and such, but never on a plane or at the store. Back when Comic Con used to put artists doing autographs in the far corner of the exhibit hall, I was standing in line for David Finch to sign some Moon Knight comics (there are some more "big" names you'd have to be a nerd to know) when I noticed Bradbury was parked against the wall right next to me. I asked him if he was also waiting and he replied: "No, I was just looking for a quiet place to sit." If I'd seen Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) at that time, I would've asked him how he felt about the casting of the bad guy, Mr. Dark. I've read that Bradbury wanted Peter O'Toole or Christopher Lee for the role, but I feel that Jonathan Pryce is scarier than either of those bigger-name actors. I can't be the only one who feels that way because he's been cast as other bad guys since then (Stigmata; Pirates of the Caribbean), even as the Bond villain on Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Pryce wasn't the bad guy on Brazil (1985; the first movie I ever saw him in), but that movie disturbed me so much that anything remniscient of it scares me.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is pretty scary for a Disney movie. It wouldn't fit on my "Unintentional Horror Movies" list (see my 10/30/09 post) because it's definitely trying to be scary. It shows a severed head and nightmare spiders, plus the usual thunder and lightning. I like movies where kids are quicker at figuring something out than their parents. It adds a layer of horrific betrayal to what's usually an impossible predicament from the start. There's extra pathos to the predicament in this movie because the narrator/protagonist's father (the old guy from Dream a Little Dream) has a weak heart and already feels guilty over not being able to protect his son (the kid from The Monster Squad) years earlier. I'm a sucker for father-son movies, and I just realized that the ones I've most enjoyed recently have all been thrillers of one kind or another: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), The Road (2009), Gran Torino (2008; "surrogate" father in this case), 3:10 to Yuma (2007; better than the 1957 original BECAUSE of the added emphasis on the father-son relationship), and last but not least, Rocky Balboa (2006). What do thrillers have to do with fathers and sons? I don't know, maybe nothing. Or maybe guys just like a little danger in movies that are supposed to be about them.

'90s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

"The symbolic flesh-eating and blood-drinking of the Catholic mass has the same ancient roots as vampire legends; when gay demonstrators ('life-eating' monsters to the far religious right) disrupted the communion service at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in 1991, primitive and unarticulated blood-themes shadowed the publicly stated issues . . . A surprisingly high number of vampire aficionados (gay and straight) do turn out to be Catholics or ex-Catholics - at least in this writer's extensive, if unscientific, observation. In The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice calculatedly imbued her ambisexual vampire with the traits of a pagan/Christian savior." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 348)

Stigmata (three stars total) For yesterday's "Recent Psychological Thrillers" post, I originally intended to review a pair that are possibly still playing in theaters somewhere, Ryan Reynolds' "stuck in a coffin" movie, Buried (premiered at Sundance), and M. Night Shyamalan's "stuck in an elevator" movie, Devil (opened 9/17/10). The former wins my award for "Feel Bad Movie of the Year" and that's all I have to say about that. The latter would've just led me to write about my theological stance on angels and demons (not the Dan Brown novel, but we'll come back to him). I didn't want to be redundant with Shyamalan's final point on Devil, so I held off. Then the same themes showed up again in Stigmata (1999), so I'm taking that as a sign, but not like "Jesus in a pancake" (an actual line from Devil). Disconcerting as it may seem, I believe the devil's always around, but I also believe that angels are everywhere. I agree with Shyamalan that "we don't need the devil because man is capable of all evil alone." I also believe that temptation only matters inasmuch as we give in to it (this is where Stigmata comes in). Bad priests (or parishioners) can't discredit the good that any given church does. The devil is powerful but God's still in charge. The devil was allowed to let loose on Job but not to take his life, and in the long-term it was all for Job's good. I don't believe that the devil was ever trying to help Job in the long-term, nor do I believe he ever tempts us with what really matters. Conversely, I don't believe that God would ever try to hurt us in the long-term, nor do I believe he ever blesses us with what doesn't really matter. God gave Jonah an all-natural punishment inside the whale but I don't believe he would ever punish a person with the unnatural stigmata. I don't believe the movie Stigmata favors science over organized religion, nor do I feel it should shake anyone's faith in a loving God. It speculates on a conspiracy to suppress truth the same way that Dan Brown does in The Da Vinci Code, and it does so with better acting but worse music (here's looking at you, Chumbawamba).

Recent Psychological Thrillers I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

"In his essay The 'Uncanny,' published at the end of the first world war, Sigmund Freud first discussed the relationship of the castration complex to macabre fantasy stories. In Freud's view, the doppelganger (the basis of all monster images) is a defense mechanism; the unconscious mind, sensing a mortal danger to the ego, eye, limb, or genital, creates an imaginative stand-in for the threatened part." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 76)

May (two and a half stars total) I've heard a psychological explanation for feeling uncomfortable around people with physical defects (amputation; blindness; cerebral palsy) which is that they make you subconsciously consider the possibility of sustaining similar defects yourself. You've probably heard that obesity and smoking are considered contagious because people feel more comfortable with their own bad habits when they have friends or neighbors with similar habits. May (2002) is all about social anxieties, like whether or not desperate advances from a gay coworker (a goth Anna Faris) can turn you gay too, whether or not it's a faux-pas to make out while watching horror movies, whether or not you should even admit to watching horror movies (Jeremy Sisto, better known as Elton on Clueless). I have a lazy eye that I know has bothered people and a teddy bear that I treat with the same respect I would a living person, so you'd think that May's eyepatch and talking doll collection would hit home for me. However, I find eyepatches and dolls just as creepy as the next person (according to this movie, talking dolls sound like glass breaking). It's perfectly natural to put yourself into fictional stories (actually, that's the whole point), but the only part of me that I could see in May was her choice in stereo equipment. Have you ever watched a movie where a character wears an outfit that you also happen to own or a scene is filmed in your hometown - perhaps down your street or at a restaurant you frequent? My coinkydink connection isn't that rare, but it turns out I have the exact same Sony boombox that May plays at her veterinary clinic (yay for me and product placement). Speaking of her job though, I would never try to compensate for a lack of human interaction by caring for animals. If you're the kind of person that need lots of attention, maybe a cat's not the best pet for you. I'm not saying that cats don't love their owners, they just do it on their own timetable, and they can't defend themselves as well as humans against sudden, violent outbursts. So to all you cool cats and kittens out there, stay away from May.

"In a horror movie-esque situation, even when the axe is about to drop, don't let the intensity get to you. Because in a horror movie, once people start to pick at each other, those same people start to get picked off. Maybe killers' dislike for fights stems from an unpleasant home life during childhood. Most murderers grew up in less than ideal situations, and arguing mothers and fathers top the list of Reasons to Become a Murderous Psycho. Alternatively, it could be a dislike for loud noises (although they've picked a strange profession if they dislike screaming)." (Meredith O'Hayre, The Scream Queen's Survival Guide, p. 146)

The clue to solving the "locked room mystery" in Session 9 (three and a half stars total) comes in the form of advice given by the first victim (played by the coach from Glory Road) to the new kid (played by the shoplifter in Empire Records) on an asbestos cleanup crew: "Just have an exit plan, dude. You stick with this job long enough, it'll mess you up, man. It gets inside you - the stress." Interestingly, the character mentions stress over the threat of asbestos exposure, but that's the tip off. I don't mention this to spoil the plot for anyone, just to show that it's a tightly woven plot and it's the little things that you glance over that come back around. Most mysteries aren't fun the second time around because they hinge entirely on the ending, but that's not the case with Session 9 (2001). I used to hate old Matlock (1986) and Perry Mason (1957) episodes where you'd think you had it figured out only for them to introduce to a brand-new character in the last five minutes and reveal that they were the killer instead. Session 9 is a "locked room mystery" and that means that the killer HAS to be one the few characters present all along. What's more, the "locked room" in this mystery is the real-life, isolated and empty Danvers State Insane Asylum (pictured above), birthplace of the pre-frontal lobotomy. Five years after Session 9 was filmed there, it was partially demolished to be rebuilt as apartments, but those caught fire the very next year. Ominous history, wouldn't you agree? In my parents' hometown, there used to be an old, abandoned hospital on a hilltop, smack dab in the center of town (that's my brother pictured below, trespassing with me on the roof). Just like the hospital in the movie, ours was a public health hazard, a hideout for the homeless and a gallery for gang graffiti. We used to brave broken glass and the threat of a police record to secretly explore this dark, deserted dungeon. As a dumb kid, I never considered the possibility of falling or getting beat up without anyone to rescue us or know where to look for our bodies. Now I'm wondering if there were any other dumb kids that might have died there and continue to haunt that hillside to this day (insert scary noise here).

Boris Karloff, Mad Scientist

2010-10-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

"Very rarely is the purpose (of a movie doctor) to save a life or effect a cure . . . The favorite purpose of an operation on the screen is either disfigurement or the creation of a monster . . . Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this pseudo and sadistic science is its immaculateness . . . The blacker the heart of the surgeon the more fastidious he is likely to be in his professional methods . . . Ghosts and goblins that used to lurk in dark corners to pounce upon the unwary pale into ineffectual shadows before the grim figure of the demon surgeon brandishing his scalpel." (The Times, London, August 4, 1936, as quoted by David J. Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 195)

The Ape (three stars total) Whenever I hear Boris Karloff speak, I can't help thinking of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966 TV special). Fortunately his role as Frankenstein's monster doesn't include too many lines of dialogue, so I can still watch that undistracted. His appearance changed more from film to film than Bela Lugosi's did on the six that they made together. Personally, I'll take his devil-worshipping widow's peak on The Black Cat (1934) or his eye hanging out of its socket on The Raven (1935) over Lugosi's consistent formalwear and supposedly "hypnotic" stare, which could be mistaken for constipation (it turns out he suffered from sciatica and that's how he became a painkiller addict). On The Ape (1940), Karloff wears a moustache so that - I'm assuming - he'll look grandfatherly and he wears glasses so that - I'm assuming again - he'll look smart. Like a medical doctor. Or like a mad scientist, because the lenses make his eyes look bigger. Why is it that crazy people are always portrayed with eyes opened as wide as can be? This was Karloff's fourth film to derive its title from an animal (the first was The Sea Bat, 1930, about killer manta rays off the coast of Mexico). Silent film fans sometimes complain about the unbelievable number of "old dark house" mystery plots involving apes (giant or otherwise, it's usually just a guy in a gorilla suit). Karloff flips that here by actually revealing himself to be the guy in the gorilla suit in a twist ending and practical explanation for the cheap special effects. If you're a Universal monsters enthusiast, you may recognize the name of Curt Siodmak on the opening credits for screenplay. The very next year he would write The Wolf Man (1941), along with the stories for Son of Dracula (1943) and House of Frankenstein (1944), plus a dozen or so other horror titles. This is the fifth film I've reviewed from Mill Creek Entertainment's $10 Horror Classics double-sided DVD collection (The Corpse Vanishes yesterday; Nosferatu last week; both The Phantom of the Opera and White Zombie last year, 10/5/09 and 10/6/09, respectively). You can look forward to Bluebeard and Carnival of Souls next week. If I never watch another title from the set, I'll still have paid less than $2 each for almost ten hard-to-find and historical hours of entertainment!

Bela Lugosi, Mad Scientist

2010-10-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

"Michael Jackson is often compared to Peter Pan, but Peter Pan is rarely acknowledged as the variation on Dracula that he is - a late-Victorian fantasy being who flew into young people's bedrooms with a problematic offer of life everlasting . . . The fantasy still flies. Rejuvenation and eternal youth are the driving illusions of the cosmetic surgery business, to which Michael Jackson's image is forever wed." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 320)

The Corpse Vanishes (one star total) This is the oldest feature film to be riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1942 to be exact). It's one of those movies that would be unbearable to watch without the mocking commentary. There's a scene a little over halfway through where the same musical phrase gets repeated over and over. Before I even had a chance to fast forward though, Crow, Joel and Tom Servo started humming along like kazoos. Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade! Granted, everything sounds funnier coming out of a robot's mouth. Say anything in a robot voice and try not to smile. That's not to say that they speak robotically on MST3K. Well, Joel Hodgson does, but I think that's unintentional (he left the series after 100 episodes because he didn't feel comfortable acting in front of the camera). On this particular episode, he does a Bela Lugosi impersonation that sounds more like Sesame Street's Count von Count and it's still better acting than Lugosi's. Out of 198 total episodes, 66 (that's exactly one-third) are available for instant streaming on Netflix. If you do attempt to watch the original, unedited version of The Corpse Vanishes without the aid of MST3K, at least do so in the company of others. You could try riffing yourself about how the movie's family of freaks looks like Dick Tracy rogues' gallery or wonder aloud why "ace" reporters and "hard-boiled" newspaper editors were so popular in the early '40s. Without a doubt, someone will make a lewd comment about the mad scientist's wife moaning all through her rejuvenative procedure and everyone will laugh when she later slaps the journalist who's simultaneously barged into her home AND into the overall plot of an otherwise serious mad scientist movie.

Gene Wilder, Mad Scientist

2010-10-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

"Dracula and Frankenstein are significant modern myths, gods that have descended periodically into ineffectual kitsch, but only to rise again, stronger than before. Each icon defines the other; they rarely travel alone. They embody nothing less than the centuries-long war between science and superstition - Apollo and Dionysus at the Saturday matinee. In the age of AIDS they have spent an inordinate amount of time admiring each other, perhaps, in part, because they both 'reproduce' as AIDS does - one through transfusion and one through transplantation. The dark twins are palpably present when the most advanced communication technology in history brings home, almost nightly, the most psychically primitive juxtapositions of blood, sex, and pestilence, a new kind of living-room war, a psychosexual Vietnam." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 351)

I'll be honest, Young Frankenstein (two and a half stars total) is the only Mel Brooks movie I've watched all the way through besides The Producers (1968), which I saw for the first time a few years ago and enjoyed for Zero Mostel. I made a friend change the channel when he tried to get me to watch The History of the World, Part I (1981) and over the years, I've seen enough bits and pieces of Spaceballs (1987) to equal a whole movie, but they never made me laugh. Recently, I started Blazing Saddles (1974) but quit early and while I have Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) on my Netflix instant queue, we'll see how far I make it. Audiences nowadays have been trained by the marketing machines to expect a movie to be all funny or all serious. Were Young Frankenstein (1974) released today, I'm sure they would call it a comedy, but to me, it's pretty serious stuff. As with William Castle's The Old Dark House (1963) and The Munsters (1964; have you heard they're remaking it on NBC?), the atmosphere and the scenery is so perfect. They're even better than the movies they're spoofing. You could almost turn the volume down, ignore the sitcom setups and dreadful music numbers ("Puttin' on the Ritz") and pretend that you're watching a classic horror movie with modern sensibilities. I expected all of Young Frankenstein to be double entendres and general '70s sleaze, but that doesn't start until twenty minutes in. Before that, it's quality time with Gene Wilder, who co-wrote the script and has the kindest eyes south of Santa Claus. If you can stand all the standard, horror movie screaming from the twenty minute mark on to the end, you'll be treated to an early Gene Hackman comedy cameo. And that's funny.

Wilford Brimley, Mad Scientist

2010-10-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

"Here, in science fiction form, is an orgy of hate and fear and futility, with no hope of escape, no constructive element whatsoever. The child with whom one is asked to identify is bereft of any security from father and mother, from constituted authority, and the adults burst into meaningless violence . . . For a time we hope there will be an answer in this projection of the formless fears abroad in our world of technological annihilation and savage ideologies, but the terror and dread only pile higher." (Transcript of 1953 PTA reports on Invaders from Mars, as quoted by David J. Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 251)

The Thing (four stars total) If you were putting together a team of adventurers to accompany you in Antarctica (I used to imagine such groups for role-playing game campaigns), the real-life Wilford Brimley might make a good candidate. Before becoming the face of Quaker Oats oatmeal, he was a ranch hand, a bodyguard for Howard Hughes and a stuntman in western movies. I like him because he's Mormon and you don't see too many of those in Hollywood. John Carpenter's remake of The Thing (1982) isn't a traditional mad scientist movie, and Wilford Brimley doesn't play a stereotypical mad scientist. He's just a scientist driven mad by the same body-snatching, tentacled, alien invader that he eventually becomes. Now allow me to interrupt this review for a word on tentacles. At a preschool age, I saw two things on TV that scarred me for life. Only one of them was definitively horror, and that was the first BBC miniseries adaptation of The Day of the Triffids (1981; a year before The Thing). When I saw a little boy my age get lashed in the face by a Triffid's tentacle, just for pruning the garden, I couldn't believe my dad saying that the horror in the book (1951) lies more with humans than with alien plants. As an adult, the most shocking horror I've seen is the alien/mecha "tentacle porn" on Meatball Machine (2005; there's so much of this crap in Japan, the term has its own Wikipedia entry). Needless to say, I wasn't too excited with The Thing when a wolf's face blossoms like a bloody Triffid flower and tentacles whip out to lasso the other dogs in a kennel. I could've easily fast forwarded through that scene but never the one with Wilford Brimley (without his trademark moustache!) smashing a computer room up with an axe.

Marlon Brando, Mad Scientist

2010-10-11T15:47:00.000-07:00

"By the mid-1920s, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol of Paris had achieved a worldwide reputation for its repertory of short, horrific plays that subjected human characters to the same kind of exaggerated violence that was formerly the province of the little guignol, or Punch-and-Judy show. The difference was that the 'big puppets' bled, or convincingly seemed to. The Grand Guignol was founded in 1897 (a benchmark year for horror, with the publication of Dracula, the exhibition of Philip Burnes-Jones' painting The Vampire, and - incidentally - the coining of the term 'psychoanalysis') by Oscar Méténier, a playwright and former police clerk. Méténier had cofounded an earlier avant-garde venture, Théâtre-Libre, which had produced some of his sensational and sordid playlets. The brief sketches presented life at its most squalid, utilizing the language of the streets and the most unsavory situations and characters possible . . . Since naturalism was deemed to be 'scientific,' Méténier's excursions into the lower and criminal classes were permissable for bourgeois audiences, who could vicariously contemplate base humanity - and their own baser selves - from a fashionable remove." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 55)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (three and a half stars total) Celebrate Columbus Day with a United Nations negotiator (how perfect is that?) whose plane crashes while headed west overseas. Edward Douglas, originally shipwrecked Edward Prendick in the 1896 book by H.G. Wells, expected to meet with foreign diplomats but was introduced to "new men" instead. Christopher Columbus expected to initiate a trade route but ran over the "New World" instead. They both learned the hard way that all disappointment stems from unmet expectations. Just as contemporary school teachers seem to hate Columbus, critics and the Razzies hated this third film adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996; the centennial anniversary of the book). Perhaps their disappointment stems from unmet expectations for stars like Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, the $40 million budget or a script that was continually tinkered with until the end of shooting. I had no expectations for the movie, no knowledge of the book and apparently I had nothing better going on because I enjoyed it all, even fifteen years after it was released in theaters. I didn't expect to hear Deep Forest, an electronic world music group I listened to in high school, nor did I expect to hear Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" performed by or for monkey-men. I didn't expect to see Fairuza Balk, an actress that's creeped me out since Disney's Return to Oz (1985). You may remember her as the bad witch from The Craft (1996 was a busy year for her). Back to those top-billed actors mentioned above, I never could've expected to see Marlon Brando in a dress or Val Kilmer doing an impersonation of Marlon Brando in a dress - in the same movie. Now those are some MAD scientists, and they're probably as scary as Columbus was to Native Americans.

Adrien Brody, Mad Scientist

2010-10-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

"The wreckage of the jazz age was a forbidding new landscape. Millions waited for a scapegoat or a deliverer. A new and controversial kind of entertainment - the gangster picture - served as a lightning rod for public anger and cynicism; audiences vicariously took part in adventures outside the law and standards of fair play that now seemed utterly irrelevant. The popular interest in gangsters wasn't an entirely vicarious identification: Prohibition, after all, had literally turned millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals. But the most lasting and influential invention of 1931 would be the modern horror film. Monster movies opened up the possibility of psychic lawlessness; a monster, for Hollywood, was a gangster of the id and unconscious. Cataclysmic junctures in history usually stir up strong imagery in the collective mind, and the years following the 1929 economic crash were no exception." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 114)

Pick a topic, any hot topic, and chances are good you'll find it in Splice (two stars total; released on DVD last week). From the title alone, you know it includes animal experimention and and human cloning, but it also tells the story of a couple making major life transitions involving abortion rights, gender roles, overprotective parents, rural relocation and sex education. I haven't even mentioned corporate restructuring and the pharmaceutical industry, which are the most important issues to the plot. All this comes during our nation's current financial crisis and uncertainty over health care reform. If that seems contrived, cutting edge or just plain relevant, refer back to the quote above, about horror movies during the Great Depression. They say there's nothing new under the sun, but I guess there's nothing new under microscopes either. I never saw Species (1995), but I get the impression it shares a lot in common with Splice (2009). Maybe this is just me, but does anyone else have a problem with only being able to see certain actors in the role that you first saw them? For me, Adrien Brody will always be the jealous, mentally-challenged, murderous psychopath that he played on The Village (2004), which was the first movie I saw him in. That's what made it so hard for me to see him as a romantic lead in King Kong (2005) or as a tough guy on Predators (2010). But I can totally buy him as an adulterous, mad scientist that listens to "über" music.

Recent Werewolf Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ginger Snaps (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to werewolf movie mythology - replacing silver bullets with drug injection as a means to end the werewolf curse

Not until I watched the movie did I realize that the title's a simple sentence, not a reference to cookies. It's a testament to its cleverness that at first I didn't like Ginger's (as in the one who snaps) younger sister, Brigitte (B for short), but by the end she was my favorite character and my sole (as in old soul) reason to seek out the sequels. She's mature beyond her years, and while we're on the subject, her lack of a menstrual cycle. She's so loyal to her sister, it's criminal. She's goth without wearing any makeup or intentionally being a bad student. Her bedroom is an unfinished basement decorated with Polaroids of fake deaths acted out by her and her sister, each picture stuck to the wall with black, electric tape. This movie has a couple of the most disturbing things I've ever been confronted with in a horror movie, and neither of them have anything to do with fake deaths. I'm referring to blood in urine (I get sick just considering it) and having more than a half dozen teats like a dog (for the first time - a practical purpose for nudity in a horror movie). Blech. Another horror staple since the '60s that gets an intelligent twist here is stoner humor. Normally it feels tacked on for the "coolness" factor, but this time it's an actual stoner that almost saves the day. Until Ginger snaps on him.

Skinwalkers (two and a half stars total)
Contribution to werewolf movie mythology - yee nadlooshi, the Navajo name for werewolves

Worst. Dialogue. Ever. But if you can get past the setup, you're in for a few fun twists. "Luke, I am your father," should give you everything you need to make an informed decision. Sometimes you hear a piece of fiction described as "crossing multiple genres" or "hard to peg," but Skinwalkers (2006) is easily a western, werewolves-at-war, horror-fantasy, family, action movie. If that sounds hokey to you, it's because it is. But if you like formulaic Chuck Norris TV shows or highly conceptual John Carpenter movies, here's some more cartoonish violence for you (from the producers of Resident Evil, 2002 and Wrong Turn, 2003). The practical effects look better than anything on Underworld (2003) plus the bad guys still wear black leather. The main difference between this movie and others of its kind is that there's daylight in this one, except for when that red moon screensaver pops up. When the small-town shootout on Main Street is over, you can hear - you're not going to believe this - birds chirping. I figured the forest looked a little too green to have been filmed on location in my native state of New Mexico, and I was right. What both of the movies reviewed in this post share in common, besides being about werewolves, is Canadian heritage. Ontario, to be more specific.

Classic Vampire Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-08T01:18:00.000-07:00

In general, there are three different looks for vampires. Each of the movies reviewed below depicts a different one. The first is the most human, both in terms of normal dress and appearance, but also in its desire to regain full humanity. The second is not quite human and may include claws or fangs that grow, distorted facial features and fur or wings, even when not shapeshifting. The third is the most monstrous and may stand taller than a human, with or without a conehead, or appear reptilian (like a chupacabra or a snake).

House of Dracula (three stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - Dracula seeks out a scientific cure for vampirism

Two years after Frankenstein's monster met the Wolf Man, they met Dracula for the second time in the House of Dracula (1945). It was the last "serious" Universal horror movie before the Abbott and Costello series (1948-1955). While it was the second time for John Carradine to play Dracula and Glenn Strange to play Frankenstein's monster, the only actor returning to a title role that had originally starred them was the (1941) Wolf Man's Lon Chaney, Jr. The real scene stealer though is an even lesser-known actress, Jane Adams, playing a beautiful lab assistant with a painful deformity. The way they reveal her hunchback is shocking enough that looking back, you might think she jumped out screaming, but all they do is show her face first and then zoom out. I'll never understand why Dr. Edelmann's hair has to get messy when he becomes a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like mad scientist. Nor will I ever understand why people get so excited for classic character team-ups or company crossovers, either on film or where they're the most popular, in comic books. I'll take my Godzilla without King Kong, my Superman without Muhammad Ali and my Aliens without Predators, thank you very much.

Mark of the Vampire (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a spoof of the Bela Lugosi vampire image (ironically by Lugosi himself, almost without speaking AND 60 years before Tim Burton's biopic, Ed Wood, which depicts a pathetic yet proud Lugosi in his, ahem, "twilight" years)

Say what you will about the twist ending. I loved it. I loved Lionel Barrymore's hammy acting, the foggy cemetery where a woman's nightgown gets caught on the ground directly above a grave and the scene of a vampire outside the window peering in. I loved seeing a roach infestation in a bed and a wall crawling with tarantulas. As much as I hated the Universal monster homage, Van Helsing (2004), I loved finding out that one of its unconvincing computer-generated images was possibly inspired by a very realistic effects shot in Mark of the Vampire (1935). I'm referring to a dress that transforms into giant, bat wings, worn by one of Dracula's brides in Van Helsing, or in the case of Mark of the Vampire, by Count Mora's daughter, Luna. Carroll Borland perfected the attractive-repulsive look for a vampiress at least three years before Morticia Addams appeared in The New Yorker magazine as a cartoon strip character and almost twenty years before Vampira became TV's first horror host on an ABC affiliate in LA.

Nosferatu (four stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - only a woman who is "pure in heart" can defeat a vampire, and she does this by keeping him out past sunrise

"If I were to make over the film, I should depict Nosferatu (1922) . . . not as terrible and fantastic but on the contrary in the guise of an inoffensive young man, charming and most obliging. I should like it to be only on the basis of very mild indications, in the beginning, that any anxiety should be aroused, and in the spectator's mind before being aroused in the hero's. Likewise, wouldn't it be much more frightening if he were first presented to the woman in such a charming aspect? It is a kiss that is to be transformed into a bite . . . It might be rather startling, furthermore, for the vampire to yield to the woman's charms, forget the hour . . . I can easily see him appearing a a hideous monster to everyone, and charming only in the eyes of the young woman, a voluntary, fascinated victim . . . He should become less and less horrible until he really becomes the delightful person whose mere appearance he only took on at first. And it is this delightful person that the cock's crow must kill." (Nobel Prizer winner for literature, André Gide, journal entry, February 27, 1928, as quoted by David J Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, 1993)

'50s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Horror of Dracula (three stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - after a stake is driven through a vampire's heart, it returns to whatever human state it would've been in (old but dead, decomposed or dust)

By my count, Hammer Film Productions made sixty horror movies, although three of those are just video compilations from the only season of their TV series, Journey to the Unknown (1968; what Americans call "seasons," the British would refer to as "series"). Another ten off that list could be downgraded to psychological thrillers, and a couple are more horrific action/adventure hybrids than horror, if you're a purist about definitions. I was happy to see the new Hammer logo appear before the opening credits on Let Me In (which opened in theaters last weekend). After killing itself with kung fu experimentation and soft porn schlock starting in the late '60s, the company is now back from the dead. It's interesting to note that Hammer has waited until this current era of remakes to return, because it was remakes that really got the company going in the late '50s. You could almost consider Let Me In (2010) to be like a 50th anniversary celebration of The Brides of Dracula (1960). In my opinion, those two movies have about as much in common as Christopher Lee's Dracula (1958) does with Bela Lugosi's Dracula (1931). Lee doesn't try for a Romanian accent and neither do any of his neighbors down in the village. When we first see his castle, it's sunny and clean, no cobwebs or wolves howling. He focuses on raw physicality and shocking mood swings, much like the soundtrack focuses on drum banging and cymbal crashing. Extensive liberties are taken with the Van Helsing character. Aside from dramatic changes to Bram Stoker's plot, he's pretty much allowed to steal the show from the title character. When he kills his own friend who's become a vampire, Jonathan Harker, you know he means business (and you never see it coming). Peter Cushing plays Van Helsing as a human monster, reducing Christopher Lee's Dracula to a sympathetic animal that had to be put down. In other Hammer horror, he played a rapist Victor Frankenstein while his costar played another unfortunate monster. Look no further than the Star Wars series to determine which actor is scarier - Grand Moff Tarkin (Cushing), commander of the Death Star, or Count Dooku (Lee), who gets served by a little green muppet? And speaking of actors that later appeared in '80s and '90s movie franchises, if you want to see Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, as a young man, check out Michael Gough on The Horror of Dracula as well.

'60s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck (also known as Dance of the Vampires; one and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - crosses don't work against Jewish vampires

Until I saw the Rob Lowe remake of 'Salem's Lot (2004), I'd never really been confronted with the idea that a cross doesn't work if the user has no faith. Following this logic, a cross shouldn't work against a vampire that has no faith either, but I'd never seen a movie bring this up until I watched The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Perhaps you've never imagined a religious vampire, but seeing as how all vampires start off as people, and the majority of people in the world are religious, a newfound thirst for blood shouldn't change that. Only a religious person would consider it a curse. At the end of this movie, it's suggested that the curse of vampirism gets spread throughout the world. To a religious person, that might mean something as simple as unbelief. To Polish director Roman Polanski, it could be a metaphor for Russian communists or German Nazis (all Godless). All I know is you have to sit through 45 minutes of slapstick just to get to a place where some fearless vampire killing can begin, and then it just switches from straight sex farce to gay sex farce. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind horror-comedy hybrids. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Monster Squad (1987), and that had its fair share of raunchy humor. It's not that this one's not funny, it's just not funny enough. The Professor character looks and acts just like Mr. Bean, assuming that you find that funny. The professor's assistant, played by the director himself, reminded me personally of Scrat, the "saber-toothed squirrel" from Ice Age (2002), although I'm sure I'm forgetting some well-known, wimpy sidekick. It's sweet that actress Sharon Tate got to know her future husband while working with him on The Fearless Vampire Killers. It's tragic to know that she was murdered exactly two and a half years after its release. I don't want to end on a melancholy note, even though that's what the movie does, so I'll add that it includes animated bats over the opening credits, similar to the ones featured a year earlier on Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966; you've got to see that one to believe it).

'70s Vampire(?) Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

Martin (one star total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - vampirism as mental illness and/or child abuse

You'd think that a one-star review would write itself, that out of bitterness or to get revenge I would get on my soapbox and blast this movie with every scathing criticism I could conjure. Mostly, I just want to forget it and move on. But the point of this movie review marathon is to document my experience, for good or bad, so here goes it. Sometimes it's easier to define something by what it isn't that what it is. According to my movie review guide to the right, the opposite of half an orange star and half a green would be full red, yellow and blue stars. A movie with great script, great acting and great music, but without cinematography or studio trickery could very well be just a play. But that is not Martin (1977). Martin chases his victims from room to room (not impossible to show on stage, but still) and has black and white daydreams (instantaneous costume changes are harder to pull off on stage). Cinematic technique aside, you're left with a bad script, worse acting and THE worst '70s music I've ever heard. If it couldn't work as a play, is it possible it could still make for a great movie? According to director George Romero, it's his personal favorite out of all the movies he made, and that includes Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2008) and Survival of the Dead (2009). Martin proves that Romero hasn't just done zombies (he's done exactly ten movies without), but it also shows why investors haven't bent over backwards to throw bigger budgets at his projects. He's got his own way of doing things, but I still love the thick, square glasses and the gray ponytail. If you want to see what he looked like as a young man, without the glasses or ponytail, watch Martin. He does cameos in a lot of his movies but this one's a big speaking part. If you're not interested in what he has to say, avoid this movie like your life depended on it.

'80s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Hunger (two stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a head vampire is killed because one of her half-vampire lovers commits suicide

Apparently there's a book by the same author that wrote Wolfen (1978, adapted in 1981) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004, adapted in 2007), and it clears up all the confusion that this movie causes. It's not the same book pictured here, but I found that cover to be somewhat applicable. Believe it or not, when I was in high school, I had an idea for a book about a teenage vampire living in a commune with an older vampire who's a doctor and it all revolved around whether or not to turn the protagonist's girlfriend into a vampire as well. Sound familiar? Honestly, I was so mad when Twilight went viral because I figured I'd given up a million dollar idea by not writing my book sooner. Then I realized that the timing would have been off. When I was in high school, kids weren't reading like they have since Harry Potter (1997 in the UK). My protagonist wasn't a girl and my book wouldn't have included werewolves or love triangles. Underworld (2003) hadn't yet popularized the face-off between the two species and championed vampires as the good guys. How does any of this apply to The Hunger (1983)? It doesn't, at least not directly, but the bottom line is that The Hunger was perfect for its time and still got panned by the critics, so nothing's ever a sure thing. It opens with a nightclub playing Bauhaus (and one of the first songs on "My History of Goth Rock" post, 9/2/08), it features music video style editing (just a couple years after MTV was born) and starred David Bowie the same year that he released "China Girl", "Let's Dance" and "Modern Love." Music is almost the only thing I can recommend about the movie. The soundtrack features two pieces from Bach, one of them being the "Suite for Cello" that I first discovered on The Soloist movie trailer, one piece from Schubert, and last but not least, the "Flower Duet" from the opera, Lakmé, by Delibes. A few months ago I purchased, count 'em up, SIX different versions of the "Flower Duet" on iTunes and I like them all equally. Don't ask me what that has to do with vampires but if you think about it, what better way to spend eternity than catching up on classical composers and learning to play the violin?

'90s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (two and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a war between creationist and evolutionist vampires, with Dracula taking a side

They say no one ever sets out to make a bad movie (see also my "Difference Between Craptastic and Cult Movies" post, 11/5/09), but lots of people specifically set out to make B-movies. Historically, the term merely meant the second half of a double feature. The word "less" comes up a lot when discussing B-movies, as in "less" of a budget, "lesser"-known actors and the "least" number of minutes necessary to be considered a feature-length film. Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat proudly wears its genre conventions like a B-movie badge of honor, but it doesn't exactly fit the above criteria. It's cheap if that's how you feel about claymation. It's underground if you've never heard of stars like John Carradine (Kung Fu and Kill Bill) and Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies). At 104 minutes, it's not a sweeping epic, but this horror-comedy with utopian sci-fi themes and a western setting still feels stretched thin. By giving the movie two stars, I don't mean to imply that it's horrible. Rather, it's a horror movie for people who don't like horror movies. I liked the "hemotechnics" laboratory, the umbrella impaling death sequence and the awesome '80s rock, not so much the red-flashing bat-vision, the soap opera subplot and the re-recorded versions of '50s doo wop numbers like "Earth Angel." At first it looks like it was filmed on location at Monument Valley, where John Ford use to make all his John Wayne westerns (see the panoramic picture above). Turns out it was shot just three hours north of that, outside of Moab, Utah (see the panoramic picture below). That leads me to my final observation. So much of Sundown is steeped in Americana - the old hicks swinging in overalls at the service station, the small town diner and the Manifest Destiny that applies even to vampires. It's not a period piece though. It doesn't trace vampire history back to the Wild West or show what vampires were up to during the Prohibition era, For that, you can check out American Vampire, a comic book series that was started by Stephen King.

Disneyland Versus Universal Studios

2010-10-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for bragging, but we've been to Disneyland for free three years in a row now. It's all thanks to my wife's blog. My little blog has nothing to do with it. Each year there's a Family Media Day. I found it amusing that this year's coincided with Gay Days Anaheim, so there were a bunch of people in red shirts with suggestive phrases on them. Last year we went at night to California Adventure for Mickey's Trick-or-Treat Party. It's nice to switch back and forth. The only added horror comes in the form of some mean-looking Jack O'Lanterns next to the children's petting zoo. They do change the Space Mountain roller coaster to Ghost Galaxy and the Haunted Mansion attraction gets a Nightmare Before Christmas makeover. Nothing against Tim Burton, but I prefer the traditional Haunted Mansion sights and sounds. They don't assault the eyes with as much neon or assault the ears with the same repetitive kiddie bop. The biggest advantage (and I've mentioned this before in my Legoland post, 4/17/09) that Disney theme parks have over others is density. When you're standing in line, there's always something to look at in any direction and there's room to breathe but not a lot of walking.

When my son was one, he cuddled up to Aladdin's Genie, but this year he was wary of Disney Villains Jafar, Cruella de Vil and the wicked Queen from Snow White.

My favorite Jack O'Lantern was this snowman-style Queen of Hearts.

More than the castle, more than Tom Sawyer Island, even more than the Haunted Mansion, my favorite scenic spot is in front of Monstro the whale's mouth at the Storybook Land Canal Boatride.

This has nothing to do with Halloween or horror, but there's a countdown for the new nighttime programming to promote Tron: Legacy (opening 12/17/10) at the entrance of California Adventure.

Tomorrow marks seven years since my wife and I honeymooned in Orlando, Florida and attended Halloween Horror Nights XIII, the last of such events that was held exclusively at Universal's Islands of Adventure. This year is only the fifth annual at Universal Studios Hollywood, even though they started in 1997 (they went on hiatus from 2001-2005). The one we did on our honeymoon had more varied settings. There was a street covered with "toxic waste," a jungle maze, a tour of a sanitarium and another on a haunted boat. Four out of the five mazes at this year's were named after horror film franchises and three out of those took place mostly inside houses. The fifth maze was a castle featuring a mix of all the classic Universal monsters. Every maze had strobe lighting, threads hanging in the dark to mimic spider webs and narrow halls with body bags to push out of the way. The streets in between each maze featured different masked maniacs with chainsaws. The masks varied from asylum escapees to circus freaks to clowns but the chainsaws were a consistent theme. To sum it up in two words - sensory overload.

I missed this year's backlot tour, Terror Tram: Chucky's Revenge, but I did see a lot of movie props like this knife from My Soul To Take (opening this coming weekend).

The best and most disturbing maze was named after Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. Each room showed a murder scene from a different real-life serial killer. It was gory enough that I don't feel the need to ever go to another haunted tour/corn maze. I mean, you can't top this one, and if you can, I don't wanna know about it.

I have no idea who these kids are but they provided the perfect pose as I was passing by.

This is under the Universal Citywalk outdoor shopping mall. We ate at a Brazilian steakhouse there where actual Carnival dancers put on shows every hour.

Recent Vampire Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-10-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

"How many vampires do you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the most dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fixed as they are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired and speaking in the manner they have always understood and valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible and without value. One evening a vampire rises and realizes what he has feared perhaps for decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost. That whatever style or fashion or shape of existence made immortality attractive to him has been swept off the face of the earth. And nothing remains to offer freedom from despair except the act of killing. And that vampire goes out to die. No one will find his remains. No one will know where he has gone. And often no one around him - should he seek the company of other vampires - no one will know that he is in despair. He will have ceased long ago to speak of himself or of anything. He will vanish." (Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire, 1976)

Daybreakers (four stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a world where vampires are the majority and humans are an endangered species

Basically, what we've got here is the reverse of Richard Matheson's sci-fi/horror book, I Am Legend (1954). The whole point of that title (and what was missing from the 2007 movie adaptation) is that humans come to realize they're a greater threat to vampires than vampires are to them. Instead of a sunlight-immune female vampire sent to spy on the only living human, we get a sensitive male vampire who's invited to the human's secret hideout. Willem Dafoe is a former vampire/born again human that has stumbled upon the cure for vampirism (exposure to sunlight minus oxygen for bursting into flames), but he's comic relief, not the Vincent Price or Will Smith lead character. That part goes to Ethan Hawke, a resentful vampire who's ironically still working on a synthetic replacement for human blood. I agree with most of the reviewers on IMDb that the conceptual world of Daybreakers is its most interesting aspect. Unlike I Am Legend, it's not a post-apocalyptic world and the streets are not empty during the day (tinted car windows, wide brim hats and sunglasses go from pimp to purposeful). When I first watched Ethan Hawke's other movie, Gattaca (1997), I hated to see it end because I wanted to hang out a bit longer in its near-future world with zoot suits and self-driving cars. Same goes for Daybreakers (I hated to see its ending because of the cheesy slo-mo and pounding score as well). All you get to see is that coffee shops would serve blood au lait and the homeless population would die real quick without safe shelter, but I could spend all day thinking of ways in which a world full of vampires would be different. Take accidental death and disease out of the question and the healthcare and insurance industries would be gone. Fitness gyms, food and agriculture too, except livestock might still be used for blood, but most country fields would be left overgrown. How would people entertain themselves without drugs or alchohol? What would there even be to escape from if they didn't have to plan for retirement and they couldn't procreate? I know - they would worry about the possibility of starvation without death, which is actually what the movie is about.

Let Me In (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - what happens when vampires try to ingest food and go where they're not invited

Like it or not, one of the great and terrible rites of passage in mortality is puberty. What would it do to a person, psychologically speaking, to live forever without ever experiencing those pesky hormones, eternally damned in what is commonly referred to as "the awkward stage?" That, ladies and gentlemen, is horror. The concept of an old vampire trapped in the body of a young girl is not new. It went mainstream with the book, Interview with the Vampire (1976) and even before Dracula was published (1897, exactly 25 years before), it was featured in Carmilla (1872). Nothing is really new in Let Me In, but what can you expect from a remake? Yet that's precisely why I wanted to see it. I had to know if it would have more music (it telegraphs everything, but the '80s soundtrack includes Freur's "Doot Doot"), if it would have better special effects (except for the car wreck, it has worse, actually), stronger actors (I'll come back to this) or more exposition (the storyline just jumps back and forth this time around). I could be a whiner and complain that they left out my favorite scene (the cat attack) from the original Swedish movie. What I'd rather point out though, isn't the remake itself, but the perspective I brought to it. Having heard that it's a faithful adaptation, I was free to ignore minor plot points and focus on the characters. "The father" figure, played by Richard Jenkins, exhibited more the humanity of getting old and tired, coming to terms with it and embracing death. Was he the vampire's first familiar, or did he see that he was part of a centuries-old cycle? Chloë Moretz acts more like an old lady than her vampire predecessor, Lina Leandersson. Her fictional maturity may go a little unnoticed at first, next to Kodi Smit-McPhee, seeing as how girls tend to mature faster than boys. Back to my question up top, what would happen if two prepubescent kids met at the same age, but only one grew up? How would that play into the relationship? That's something I didn't think about before. Nor did I catch a possible moral to the story - don't put cardboard up in your windows lest you look suspicious to police investigators.

Welcome October Horror Movies, Part III

2010-10-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Above are the results of an online poll, printed in the September 10, 2010 issue of Entertainment Weekly. In terms of scare factor, I agree with the order, although I'd eliminate The Strangers from the list entirely and maybe replace it with the remake of The Last House on the Left (2008). If you're thinking about watching any horror movies during the Halloween season and you haven't seen the ones on this list, it's as good a place as any to get ideas. None of them are personal favorites of mine but then the scariest movie I've ever seen isn't either. Curious? Before I say what it is, let me clarify that it isn't necessarily a recommendation. Do you believe in fates worse than death? Do you mind subtitles? I ask these questions because the scariest movie I've ever seen, Audition (1999), has both, plus it leaves a lot of things unresolved, and most people I know demand nicely wrapped, Hollywood packages. I'm not one of those people.

Before you judge me for watching a bunch of horror movies, check this out: The other day I was standing in line at a Wendy's and there was a group of women laughing behind me. They obviously did manual labor because of their blue shirts and dirty faces. One of them said matter-of-factly, "I had to call the police on my husband AGAIN" and then she chuckled. The other women made some unbelievable cracks about getting beat up and they all took turns giggling. When I finally got my food, I overheard one of them say "a nice, sharp screwdriver to the neck would do the trick" and another followed that with "but you'd have to smash your face against a brick wall to make it look like self-defense." Some people wonder where the ideas for horror movies come from, but they're all over the front page of the newspaper. And the second page. And every page after that. Morning, noon and night. It's as hard to avoid horror as it is to go through life without ever standing in a line. The real question people should ask is, "why does anyone keep up with the news?"

I can already hear people excusing the news as informative while condemning horror movies because they "glorify" violence. My claim is that both sometimes do both. The worst news is useless sensationalism that unintentionally glorifies violence by awarding it fifteen minutes of fame. The best horror movies are informative, cautionary tales, neither exploitative nor politically funded. The easy mistake to make is to define all movies exclusively as entertainment. People say, "I don't want to spend $20 at the theater to be grossed out and left feeling depressed!" Personally, I can't think of a better place to watch horror movies than on the big screen, in the dark, deafened by screaming but free from the distractions at home. However, I am as much "entertained" by all that as others are by watching the news. I used to work with a guy who said his perfect day would consist of sitting at home watching CNN. All. Day. Long. To me, that just sounded like school, which may give insight on how to think about horror movies.

Let's check the metaphor. College costs a lot of money. It causes stress and affects your sleeping habits. Hopefully, it's remembered with fondness and leaves you with a few valuable life lessons. That sounds like a horror movie to me. Consider the following reasons why people watch horror movies, then compare and contrast them with the standard college experience (I find it helps to break things down into the motivation and organization theory, or "four dimensions" of human nature, from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey):
1. Emotional - escape from mundane life and/or a euphoric sense of relief at the end
2. Mental - perspective on personal problems and/or a test of courage
3. Physical - adrenaline rush and/or an excuse to get high
4. Spiritual - a taste of forbidden fruit and/or vicarious rebellion against social norms
You could argue that people go to action thrillers or gross-out comedies for all the same reasons, but none to the same degree.

People go to horror movies to be affected on a deeper level. If that makes me sound emo, goth, or holier than thou, I don't mean it that way. And it has nothing to do with being desensitized or numb either. People who can watch the news without feeling powerless or at least partly responsible are the desensitized ones. Most action thrillers and gross-out comedies are full of flattery. This is almost the opposite of horror movies and that's why they're a surer bet if you're looking to be deeply affected at the box office. On the other hand, genuine scares are harder to come by than laughs or sighs, hence all the bad horror movies out there. It helps if you know what scares you the most, aside from death, pain or paralysis (again, the "four dimensions" work well):
1. Emotional (threats against home)
abduction/false imprisonment/identity theft
alien invasion/government conspiracy/terrorism
bullying/pedophilia/rape
2. Mental (threats against reason)
addiction/hallucination/split personalities
brainwashing/hypnosis/sleepwalking
imaginary friends/implanted memories/metafiction
3. Physical (threats against body)
birth defects/deformity/nuclear fallout
disease outbreak/mutilation/surgery
metamorphosis/nature gone wild/primitive creatures
4. Spiritual (threats against faith)
demonic possession/evil children/reincarnation
devil worship/paganism/ritual sacrifice
fortune-telling/voodoo/witchcraft

Looking back at my October 1 posts from 2008 and 2009, I realized that I've yet to specifically detail why I love Halloween and watch horror movies. I've compared Halloween to my other favorite holiday, Christmas Eve, and I've ranked my own top ten horror movies, so I guess I've already offered some indirect reasons. To put it in a nutshell, I could just say I like the way they make me feel. That leaves out a lot of descriptive words though. As for Halloween, I'll go with clichés like the crisp autumn air and the magic of playing pretend. I'd be lying if I didn't admit to nostalgia, but as a child, the reason it was so cool was the danger element behind going out after dark. Nowadays I have to supplement my holiday with horror movies to get back to that fear from yesteryear. You see, it's fun to be scared. It's obvious and simple, and it may seem like it's missing from the list of reasons above, but it's inherent in all of them.

Here is an alphabetical list of all the movies I watched for the first time during my last "31 Days of Halloween" and the ratings I gave them (titles in bold are those I had yet to see from my "100 Years of Horror" post 10/30/08):
1920 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (3 stars)
1942 Cat People (2 stars)
1994 Cemetery Man (2.5 stars)
1971 A Clockwork Orange (3.5 stars)
1954 Creature from the Black Lagoon (3.5 stars)
1993 Cronos (2.5 stars)
1944 The Curse of the Cat People (2.5 stars)
1992 Dead Alive (1.5 stars)
2009 Drag Me to Hell (2 stars)
1990 The Exorcist III (2 stars)
1956 Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (2.5 stars)
1981 Halloween II (2.5 stars)
2009 Halloween II (2 stars)
1987 Hellraiser (3 stars)
1977 The Hills Have Eyes (2.5 stars)
2006 The Hills Have Eyes (3 stars)
1985 The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1 star)
2007 The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2 stars)
1957 The Incredible Shrinking Man (2.5 stars)
2009 Jennifer's Body (2 stars)
1972 The Last House on the Left (1.5 stars)
2008 The Last House on the Left (3.5 stars)
2009 Paranormal Activity (4 stars)
1925 The Phantom of the Opera (3.5 stars)
2007 Planet Terror (2.5 stars)
1988 The Return of the Living Dead Part II (2 stars)
1968 Rosemary's Baby (4 stars)
2009 Saw VI (2 stars)
2007 Trick'R Treat (2.5 stars)
2009 Where the Wild Things Are (3 stars)
1932 White Zombie (1.5 stars)
1979 Zombi 2 (1 star)
2009 Zombieland (4 stars)

It's a Girl!

2010-10-01T11:08:00.001-07:00

For the reason pictured here I will be ending this blog sometime before February. Enjoy it while it lasts!

September Books

2010-09-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section and this week's Entertainment Weekly that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Dervish House - Ian McDonald; "Having written novels set in a future Brazil and a future India, McDonald now tackles Istanbul circa 2027 in this ambitious, harrowing, sometimes frustrating science fiction thriller."

Elephant and Piggie series - Mo Willems; "Better than Beckett . . . Elephant and Piggie are the Vladimir and Estragon of Children's Literature."

How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe - Charles Yu "must tread carefully: too much of the world-building, the whimsical invention, the armchair mathematics, the flights of philosophy, these lateral motions of the novel, threaten to destabilize it and leave it incapable of imparting a satisfying narrational truth. Too little of these intricate electron clouds surrounding the nucleus of the book and we wander into the boring hold of sentimentality and banality."

The Maze Runner - James Dashner; "A stone wall imprisons teenagers who live by their wits and remember nothing of their earlier lives."

Zero History - William Gibson; "Several characters from Spook Country return to a viral marketing and coolhunting agency; from the author of Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer."

Nonfiction

It's a Book - Lane Smith; Children's picture book that "doesn't tweet or need recharging."

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? - Michael J. Sandel; "A Harvard professor seeks to bring implicit arguments about justice into the open."

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk - David Sedaris; "Some Sedaris fans felt he had begun to exhaust his store of Homo sapiens-based anecdotes in 2008's When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Squirrel does seem to free him creatively, while still indulging his singularly skewed worldview."

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages - Guy Deutscher "who stresses the role of culture in language, treads some amusingly idiosyncratic linguistic bypaths."

A Week at the Airport - Alain de Botton; "One of our most influential essayists and thinkers indulges his somewhat freakish love of airports by spending a week at London's Heathrow."

My 31 Days of Halloween Start a Week from Today

2010-09-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

By "31 Days of Halloween," I mean my 2nd annual 31-day horror movie review marathon, so come back here next Friday and everyday through October, if that sounds interesting to you. I don't claim that Halloween is all about horror movies, or vice versa for that matter. Halloween just makes for a good excuse to watch horror movies. The fact that there's a community of bloggers who celebrate by posting something related to Halloween for 31 days just makes for a good excuse to watch A LOT of horror movies. Halloween is all about fear. Horror movies are all about fear. That's the connection - nothing more and nothing less. Now for a rant.

Halloween has nothing to do with sex. Halloween is all about children and the dead, and if either of those make you think of sex, then you should seek professional help. Everybody seems to agree that pedophilia and necrophilia are wrong, but nobody seems to mind when young people celebrate Halloween by dressing like sex objects. If you want to talk about horror, that's real horror. It's scary but not enough to scare away the dead, which you may or may not remember is the original purpose of dressing up on Halloween. Straight or gay, it doesn't matter. Halloween has NOTHING to do with sex. So don't even think about calling it "the drag queen's holiday."

While I'm on the subject, horror movies also have nothing to do with sex. At least, they shouldn't. I hate it that the line between exploitation and horror has become so blurred over the last quarter century. The terms have become almost synonymous in most people's minds. Fans that grew up on '80s teen slashers actually complain anytime a new horror movie doesn't include boobs or gore. There's an unwritten rule that says a horror movie has to be rated "R" to be any good. These people would say mood and atmosphere belong solely to thrillers. For me personally, you can take the boobs and gore out of horror but not the mood and atmosphere, else it's not horror anymore.

Back to dressing up though. Halloween costumes should be about facing fears and this is a good thing. It may not be about love like Valentine's Day, or freedom like Independence Day, but Halloween has its morals. When children say "trick or treat," they should be learning to face the fear of receiving a "trick" rather than a "treat." It's a harsh lesson, but then it's a cruel world out there, and they need to be prepared. I can't think of a more noble cause for this pagan holiday. Literally and figuratively, Halloween has always been and will always be about facing death. Don't be superstitious about taunting death by dressing up as something that could kill you. Overcome fear of death by doing so.

If, after all that, you still want your Halloween to be sexy, may I recommend the Avatar Neytiri unitard. It's not recommended for preadolescents to go trick-or-treating in high heels, but for the adult female in your life, it may work at scaring off the dead. In addition to dressing up as something you fear, I recommend dressing up as something you hate. They say that we dislike the things we don't understand, and that sounds like fear of the unknown to me. My wife hated the movie, Avatar, so I'm all about this costume. What's the scariest costume to me, you ask? Well, scroll down to the bottom of these lists (a different costume category for each day in October) to find out:

Never Scary (10 costumes that deserve tricks on Halloween)
1. Anime/comic book characters - Archie and Friends, Hellboy, Naruto, Popeye and Speed Racer
2. Celebrity impersonators - Michael Jackson (yes, so soon), Lady Gaga, Marilyn Monroe, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin
3. Cultural stereotypes - Chinese cheongsam, German lederhosen, Hawaiian hula skirt, Native American buckskin and Scottish kilt
4. Fashion styles by decade - '20s flapper, '30s hobo, '50s greaser, '60s hippie and '80s rocker
5. Food items - banana, candy corn, condiments, cupcake and ice cream cone
6. High school cliques - cheerleaders, goths and marching band uniforms (although why would you do that to yourself?)
7. Politically incorrect - the KKK, Osama bin Laden in a "I (heart) NY" t-shirt and Ronald McDonald with a Hitler moustache
8. Recent movies/TV shows - Harry Potter, Jersey Shore, and coming to theaters next year, Smurfs
9. Sports uniforms - boxing gloves, fishing vest, football pads, lucha libre mask and a sumo suit
10. Toys/video games - Raggedy Ann/Andy, Super Mario Bros. and a Twister mat

Sometimes Scary (20 costumes that may earn treats on Halloween)
11. Aliens - the picture shown here was taken at this year's San Diego Comic-Con (it could be considered both scary and funny and you can't beat that)
12. Animals - scary if a bat, gorilla or spider; silly if a bunny, cat or an ostrich
13. Career paths - construction workers, police officers, soldiers, then again, you could just include all the Village People (definitely scary), but flight attendants and UPS delivery are still personal favorites (albeit not so scary)
14. Carney folk - bearded ladies, clowns or people covered in tattoos (all scary)
15. Couples' themes - Adam and Eve, bacon and eggs, plug and socket (okay, so maybe my examples for this category aren't scary, but the rest on this list are)
16. Dead things - La Llorona, skeletons and zombies
17. Escaped convicts and mad scientists - easily confused with the "career paths" category except for that wild look in their eyes, and maybe some blood on their hands
18. Fairy tales/folklore - Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's, mermaids, unicorns and The Wizard of Oz
19. Grim reapers - Azra'il, banshees, and Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death
20. Historical periods - cowboys, dinosaurs, knights, pirates and vikings
21. Makeshift/non-costumes - bedsheet ghosts, toilet paper mummies and trash bag California Raisins
22. Monsters/mythological creatures - dragons, golem, Medusa, vampires and werewolves
23. Ninjas - air, earth, fire and water (I'm kidding, I don't really know anything about ninjas but I'd be scared to meet one in a dark alley)
24. Other holidays - leprechauns, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, the Statue of Libery and the Tooth Fairy(?)
25. Plants - a weeping willow tree swung onto the sidewalk at Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights one year and it was the scariest thing I saw there
26. Post-apocalyptic - gas masks, hazmat suits and two-headed mutants
27. Religious - angels and devils, friars and monks, nuns and priests, Satan himself
28. Robots - The Jetsons (1962), Star Wars (1977), Small Wonder (1985), Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Transformers (2007)
29. Scarecrows - when I was a kid, I thought one of the scariest TV shows ever was a Disney miniseries called Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963)
30. Slasher staples - Chucky doll, Freddy Kruegger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface and Michael Myers

Always scary (my pick for scariest Halloween costume/accessory)
31. Translucent masks - young female with lipstick and eye shadow or old male with a moustache and wrinkles; basically, it's you, but not quite you; wear it with any other costume and double the scare factor or wear it alone and try to go into a bank or convenience store; it's just as cheap and effective as putting pantyhose over your head; in other words, it hides your identity without hiding your face and people know right away that you're up to no good; these masks first stood out to me on Tricky's Knowle West Boy CD cover; they've been sold for decades during Mardi Gras and they used one with a yellow raincoat on Alice Sweet Alice (1976; Brooke Shields' first movie)

My Top Ten Movies of All Time

2010-09-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

1. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (five stars total) Allow me to reintroduce you to one of my oldest and dearest friends. He/she may be a fictional character but I've known him/her since I was three years old. According to a line in the movie, "he's a boy" - the Elliott character (Henry Thomas) being an expert on alien anatomy and all. There's another line in the movie where Elliott asserts that to "beam up" (like in Star Trek) isn't reality, but E.T. is. He's more real to me than blood relatives I've never met and next-door neighbors I hear sometimes but almost never see. My wife gave me the Ultimate Gift DVD box set for my birthday the first year we were dating and in the enclosed collectible book, From Concept to Classic, it explains that E.T. is a plant. When I was a kid, I read an adaptation that further explained he's hundreds of years old but still a child on his own planet, and that makes sense if you think of the lifespan of trees. All this makes for a more flexible and universal metaphor. Despite his healing touch and resurrection, I don't see E.T. as a messiah type. He's me and you and everyone else that we know, neither masculine nor feminine exactly, both young and old (from different perspectives), an insider but an outsider too, simultaneously ignorant (to the ways of our world) and wise (to know who to trust and how to empower them), at one with nature while still technologically advanced and last but not least, short or tall (depending on his neck). I could go on and on but I've already filled my quota for run-on sentences and this review's not even halfway done.The movie hooks me from the opening credits - plain font, black background and scary music. It piques curiousity by creating mystery where there is none and gives time for any audience to transition from whatever they were doing before. There's no exposition about where we are (some hillside at night), what we're seeing (does the creature looking down on the town like it or want to attack it?) or why men with lots of keys are in pursuit (we do know they're bad because we only see them from the waist down). In monster movies, the earlier a monster is shown, the less threatening it becomes. We know E.T. is good, not because the movie's named after him (Alien was still fresh in audiences' minds during E.T.'s original theatrical run), not through cue cards or dialogue but through images (these creatures are the only ones to appear from head to toe at first). And what spectacular images they are! Words can't describe the glowing mushrooms in a spaceship greenhouse, the hand-me-down props from The Day of the Triffids (1962), the redwood forest outside Culver City in northern California and BMX bikes flying over the police cars at the end (foreshadowed by the Peter Pan bedtime story earlier on). At first Elliott talks to E.T. like you would a baby or a dog, but soon their telepathic connection erases the need for words. Essentially we're watching the story of a boy and his dog, which precludes a lot of dialogue in favor of visual storytelling. Some people claim that E.T. is a reverse Wizard of Oz, but I'll take my last statement a step further and suggest that it's a reverse boy-and-his-dog story, where Elliott is the dog character who saves the day by helping a higher intelligence find his way home.

But wait! After nobody speaks for the first eight minutes (think WALL-E), suddenly there's dialogue everywhere. And it overlaps enough during the Dungeons and Dragons game/kitchen table scene that it could be Robert Altman movie. The sound was so bad on the VHS copy I had growing up that I couldn't understand what anyone was talking about. That's okay though, because none of it is essential to the plot and therein lies the secret to its realism. Kids swear like adults (the '80s loved the sh-word), make obscene gestures behind their mother's back and order pizza without permission - just like in real life. Later on, the Michael character (Robert MacNaughton) comes home from football practice and immediately raids the refrigerator, singing an Elvis Costello song but changing the words to complain about health food - just like a real teenager. One of Michael's friends calls Elliott a "cintus suprimus," which I finally looked up after close to 30 years of wondering what it meant. Turns out it means nothing, not literally anyway. It's just kids being kids, putting Latin words together to sound smart. Watching the movie as an adult, I'm ashamed to say I can relate more to the older teens and their annoyance at the squeaky-voiced Elliott. He's not a perfect protagonist. He joins his older brother in teasing their sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore), but we gain sympathy for E.T. through this scene because of how it makes him sad. Don't let anybody tell you that little kids can't act, because Elliott does a mean Count Dracula impersonation in that same teasing scene and Michael provides comic relief in the voice of Yoda throughout the movie. Lastly, those are real tears when Gertie sees E.T. in the incubator and those are real doctors in the background - no acting on anyone's part. Not even director Steven Spielberg knew what the doctors were saying - that was the whole point.

Speaking of Spielberg, I feel I should mention that I liked him a lot better as a kid. Sure, I love Jaws (1975), Hook (1991) and Minority Report (2002) as much as the next person, but I absolutely hate Jurassic Park (1993), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Even as a kid I was confused by Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Always (1989) and it took me over five years to work my way up to both Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) after each was released. I have yet to see and may never see The Color Purple (1985) and Munich (2005), not because I'm against heavy topics but because I feel no connection. E.T. has to be the easiest of all Spielberg's movies to connect with. It has its heavy topics but none of them are presented up front. Thematically, it's about how kids deal with separation, either from divorce, death or just moving away - things that adults deal with too. However, the divorce is in the background, the death turns out to be falsely reported and the move leaves a rainbow in its wake. What's more important than any of its themes though is its style and context. When Spielberg showed clips playing on the TV from This Island Earth (1955), Sesame Street (1969) and The Quiet Man (1952), he was not only connecting his own movie with others (in terms of genre and craftsmanship), he was putting his own childhood in perspective. You see, he was paying his respects to the special effects-laden science fiction that he'd grown up with and was now making himself. By including a children's show he himself hadn't grown up with, he was recognizing a new generation and trying to connect with it. They say that if you have to quote somebody, you might as well quote from the best, so he chose director John Ford and one of his non-western John Wayne movies about a stranger in a strange land. All this goes to show that even if Spielberg isn't the greatest director ever to live, he's humble enough not to claim to be within his own work.

Below are the rest my top ten favorite movies of all time. If I was stuck on a desert island with food, shelter and a solar-powered portable DVD player, but I could only have ten DVDs, these are the ones that I would choose. Most of them are my number one picks for various genres. Half of them make me laugh and half can make me cry. A few of them display some serious tension while most feature romance. Some are sentimental from childhood but the rest inform my future. There are 120 significant movies from my lifetime listed on the right sidebar. I haven't seen all of them and I'm not sure I would want to rewatch all the those that I have seen. I know people who never rewatch movies as a rule, but I think they might if they were stuck alone on a desert island. Each of the following movies leaves room to breathe and conversely, they're packed with details you might miss the first time around. More than any other movies I've ever seen, I'm willing to rewatch these again and again:

2. Airborne (1993) see my top five list for teen movies (10/20/08)

3. Children of Men (2006) see my top ten list for suspense/thrillers (9/29/08)

4. Where the River Runs Black (1986) see my top ten list for drama (3/9/09)

5. The Kid (1921)

6. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) see my top ten list for animation (11/10/08)

7. Groundhog Day (1993) see my top ten list for comedy (2/9/09)

8. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) see my tracklisting for the never-released soundtrack (12/16/08)

9. Gattaca (1997) see my top ten list for sci-fi/fantasy (4/20/09)

10. I know I'm cheating, but it's a tie: Babes in Toyland and The Parent Trap (both 1961) see my top ten list for children's movies (10/27/08)

Get to Know Me Getting to Know Myself

2010-09-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

I've posted "20 Questions" in the past for my wife, parents, siblings and in-laws (click on the "family" label at the bottom of this post if you're interested). Since then I've come up with new questions in the form of a forced choice survey. Who better to test them out on besides myself? Please feel free to leave comments with your answers or to debate my answers or to suggest different questions. Enjoy.

1. Beach or pool? Here's the long answer (actually, I plan to get long-winded for most of these simple questions). The summer before I started 5th grade, my family made a road trip to Disneyland. While there, my brothers and I saw the ocean for the first time. As we drove up to it, I noticed that sand had blown out over the intersecting streets and filled the gutters. Right then I grew suspicious of this "beach scene." Everything else seemed okay until we got in the water. First off, it had a mind of its own, which made it hard to walk or even stand up straight. Secondly, a wave came out of nowhere, crashed down on top of me and filled my mouth with what was one of the worst tastes I'd encountered thus far in my short life. After I escaped from the salt water's clutches, I became a glue stick for sand or seaweed or whatever else (use your imagination) was underneath my feet. My brothers seemed to agree with me about these harsh playtime conditions and we asked to go back to the hotel pool. So there's my answer, complete with chlorine, a diving board, and a hot tub nearby.

2. Beauty or truth? This is another way of asking if it's "better to be honest or nice?" My dad used to say that when you know something bad about someone, you should ask yourself two questions before sharing it with anyone else: 1) Do you know from direct experience that it's true? 2) Is it necessary for anyone else to know, for practical purposes or safety's sake? It should be obvious where I get my absolute, black-and-white sense of justice. As for beautiful lies versus the ugly truth, I guess I'm part of that generation that doesn't like things sugarcoated, the generation that was born after they started showing monks burning themselves on the nightly news. Flattery doesn't work on me because I can't take a compliment. I feel uncomfortable or automatically assume somebody wants something if they're TOO nice. I had a roommate who'd lived in France for a couple of years and he told me that Europeans hate American customer service because it's flat-out fake. He followed that by saying that once Europeans warm up to a person, they offer something far more pleasant than politeness.

3. Blind or deaf? I read a response to this where someone claimed being blind would enhance their other senses, whereas they would just rely on sight as much as a hearing person if they were deaf. That's great and all, but I'd rather be able to run across the street than listen to music, and I LOVE MUSIC. Beethoven worked off the vibrations after he went deaf. It's probably impossible to objectively compare languages, but learning to sign has got to be easier than learning Braille.

4. Body or face? I'm reminded of the Seinfeld quote where Jerry says, "A leg man? Why would I be a leg man? I don’t need legs. I have legs." Well, everybody has a body and everybody has a face, but if you wanna get Darwinian, for the sake of our offspring, I think we subconsciously look for mates that compensate for the physical traits we ourselves are lacking. Same goes for humor, smarts and wealth. Ergo, if I have flawless facial features but I also have cankles, I might be forgiving of paper baggers who happen to be foot models. Kidding! But seriously, opposites attract and that's as far as I'll take the Seinfeld quote. I know some of you are already getting defensive about all the couples you know who look like they could be siblings. I'll go with face, not because I have a great body but because I can get more specific about what kinds of faces I like: pointy eyebrows, big eyes, high cheekbones, button noses, narrow mouths and full lips. That doesn't mean I have a unibrow and can fit a wire hanger in my smile though. If you haven't pegged me as anal retentive yet, now's your chance.

5. Breakfast or dinner? Actually, I like breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. Some types of cuisine taste better the next day after a zap in the microwave (pasta, pizza and steak for example) so why not first thing in the morning? I've had sushi for breakfast but that's good anytime. I can't eat as much rice at night. Nobody really wants beans or casseroles before bedtime. If I eat pancakes in the morning, I'm done for the day. Bacon and eggs make me less queasy later on. They say if you have to have sweets, it's better to eat them early so you still have time to burn them off. Is that the same as suggesting you eat cake, cookies and ice cream for breakfast? Much to my wife's consternation, I also prefer my Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas ham around lunchtime.

6. Call or text? Text, but I wouldn't even own a cell phone if not for my wife.

7. Cats or dogs? I like plants.

8. City or country? Both. I've always said I don't care about the size of a house, but it's got to have a big yard. Obviously, that's harder to come by in the city. Ideally, you want to live in the woods on the outskirts of a big city (suburbs are where you get into trouble) or in a city with woodlands nearby. There's something to be said for not commuting but I don't mind long drives through the country. When I was a kid, I used to bike or skate all day long, from one end of a small town to the other. Do kids still do that ANYWHERE - city or country? I'm going to have to pass on this question and admit I'll never see my ideal while living in San Diego, but the weather sure is nice.

9. Coke or Pepsi? It depends. Coke products (Barq's, Dr. Pepper/Mr. Pibb, Fanta, Fresca/Squirt and Sprite) are better in bottles and Pepsi products (Mountain Dew, Mug, Sierra Mist, Slice and Tropicana Twister) are better in cans. In general, Coke products don't as taste good without a lot of carbonation and bottles do better at maintaining that. Pepsi products seem to have more carbonation from the get-go and they don't taste as bad flat, so a can's not going to hurt. But it's more than that. The recipes for both seem to differ depending on the container. Either that or the plastic and aluminum react chemically with the sodas, changing the flavors during distribution. Moving on, Coca-Cola pairs better with lime while Pepsi cola pairs better with lemon. If you're adding grenadine, it's gotta be Coke because Pepsi's already too sweet. I haven't compared orange Crush to Sunkist, but if I had to cast an overall vote, it would be Coke because cherry Coke is my only vice (ha). I do miss Pepsi Holiday Spice, but not caffeine-free Crystal Pepsi.

10. Conservative or liberal? Conservative.

11. Discussion or lecture? The sad fact of the matter is that there are people who like the sound of their own voice (I have the gift of gab from my mom's side). I personally try not to give answers to questions that haven't been asked. On the other hand, I feel restricted by rituals like always answering "fine" to "how are you?" I restrict my comments in Sunday school to quotes that I can cite and stories from my own experience. I feel that opinions are outside the realm of spiritual edification, and besides that, everyone has one so there's not enough time. Speaking of church, one of my fellow attendees says he'd rather give a boring lecture than have to listen to one. Such is the danger of lectures. Both discussions and lectures can go over their allotted time, but you can get up and leave a discussion less conspicuously than a lecture, and you don't have to worry about directly offending anyone. Unless of course you're trying to offend someone, which is often the case during a discussion when a person won't shut up.

12. Do or see? I am a visual learner. Last week we were on vacation and each day I asked my wife what we had planned multiple times throughout the day. Had I seen a calendar I could've asked once at the beginning of the week and been done with it. When I put together a product out of a box, I have to know what the final stage looks like. I like graphs, lists, maps, tables and timelines. I enjoyed diagramming sentences in English class and I preferred geometry to algebra. I feel like seeing gets a bum rap next to doing because "doers" get things "done" while there's somehow laziness involved with only having "seen" something. Usually, these words are used together with relation to tourism. One side says, "if you've seen one museum you've seen them all." The other says, "if you would just stop and look around, you might not be so tired after your vacation." When I consider items for a bucket list, there's nothing I want to do like skydiving or a marathon, unless you count driving a car through a redwood tree, but mostly I just want to see a tree that big.

13. Indoors or outdoors? There's nothing I hate more than humidity except for maybe the wind. Ironically, when faced with humidity, there's nothing better than a breeze. I have to feel constant air movement. In that regard, I would choose the outdoors over staleness indoors. When I was a kid, I had a newspaper route and sometimes I had to ride my bike against the wind or try to toss papers into it. In those moments I chose the indoors over the outdoors, but my problem is with "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night," just the wind. Now for a somewhat unrelated tangent: When I lived in Brazil, my fellow Americans complained about how much they hated being served water without ice. They declared that boiling water to drink was a sign of a Third World country and that air conditioning paid respect to ancestors that had labored and sweated without for 6,000 years. I didn't know how to respond because at the time because I hadn't missed either of those "crowning achievements for civilization." It did get me to thinking about why people will spend their entire lives in bug-infested swamps and on bone-chilling plains.

14. Job or money? Technically, this is an abbreviated version of a job interview question to which there is no right answer. If you say "job," you might be offered a lower salary. If you say "money," you might not be offered the job at all because they'll think you're passing time till a better offer comes along. I say a job is half what you do and half who you do it with. You gotta say "the job" and then just work on your negotiating skills. The other loaded job interview question is "work alone or with others?" Either they'll think you're not a team player or you're incapable of producing on your own. If you love the work then you can say "it doesn't matter" and you're absolutely right.

15. Noise or silence? And by silence, I mean deafening silence. My answer is noise, no question about it. I once lived in the ghetto with music and screaming right outside my window all through the night and I've never slept sounder. The very next place I lived was in the middle of nowhere. All you could hear was crickets. No cars, no neighbors, and I used to lay in bed staring at the ceiling for hours. Want to know what the best music to fall to sleep is? Heavy metal, because classical or jazz changes tempos and volumes too much. Heavy metal just loudly drones. I'm trying not to fry my brain mulitasking as much anymore, so I turn off music when I read now. When I used to study for school, I had to have people talking around me or a TV going in the same room.

16. PC or Mac? My wife recently bought a Macbook. I keep meaning to play around with GarageBand, iMovie and Keynote, but I have yet to work with anything but PCs.

17. Salty or sweet? My sweet tooth will be the death of me.

18. Save or spend? Alas, I spend.

19. Shiver or sweat? The thing with being cold is that you can always put more clothes on. When you're hot and naked, you're screwed. You don't see me getting angry when I'm cold. I sleep better when I'm freezing. I can't sleep at all when I'm hot. I can't think. I can't breathe. There's a reason Hell is portrayed as hot.

20. Sunrise or sunset? Nothing to do with the sun, but my favorite time of day is dusk. It's not wet like dawn and there's no dread about school or work or the sun, for that matter. I don't have scientific proof in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that sunsets are consistently more colorful. I've got backup with this saying: "red sky at night, shepherds delight; red sky in the morning, shepherds warning." Thanks for reading.

Two for the Road

2010-09-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

I guess I lied when I wrote that I wouldn't be posting another pop mix playlist, but I just couldn't help myself. With the first year in a new decade almost behind us, I thought it might be nice to stop and think about some of the pop-rockinest songs that sped us up to this point. Before grunge came along, I was rocking out (or not) to Stevie B's "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)" and Timmy T's "One More Try." All that changed after my brothers and I first heard Sublime on the Videogroove (VG1) inline skating video magazine. We started listening to a lot of music from skate videos, most of it pop-punk, but it began and ends with Bradley Nowell for me, and he's still my favorite singer to this day. The following lists are neither comprehensive nor do they contain the finest examples of music from either of the last two decades. Granted, they're mostly the artists you'd expect to find but maybe not the first songs that come to mind for each one. I'd be interested to hear which "alternatives" I could've used.

My 1990's Pop/Rock Mix (not including boy bands, industrial, Lilith Fair, nü metal or ska-core)

1. "Stop" (1990) - Jane's Addiction; I never went to a Lollapalooza but I did discover Perry Farrell on footage from the first one, shown in the MTV video for "Jane Says (Live)," released at the tail end of the '90s on the Kettle Whistle rarities compilation; it's the soft-loud-soft dynamics that do it for me

2. "Lithium" (1991) - Nirvana; I didn't even get MTV at home, and yet my introduction to Nirvana was their "In Bloom" video (in the '90s, MTV still played music videos, kids); there's those soft-loud-soft dynamics again

3. "Breath" (1992) - Pearl Jam; from the Singles movie soundtrack; also, I've said it before on this blog and I'll say it again - if you haven't seen this movie, stop whatever you're doing and go get it

4. "Sin" (1992) - Stone Temple Pilots; probably my favorite rock song from the '90s, not counting Naughty by Nature's "Feel Me Flow" (1995) or The Beastie Boys' "Super Disco Breakin'" (1998), because those aren't rock songs

5. "Them Bones" (1992) - Alice in Chains; I'm sorry to keep bringing up MTV, but Alice in Chains' Unplugged concert really was a bigger deal to me than Nirvana's; I dedicate both of these lists to my new reader who gave me her Alice in Chains' Sap CD back in the day and years later introduced me to blink-182 and The Shins

6. "Today" (1993) - The Smashing Pumpkins; when I overheard that my first and longest major crush liked this band, I went to the store right after school and bought myself the Siamese Dream album; it was unlike anything I'd heard before - loud but not heavy and pretty but not light

7. "How" (1993) - The Cranberries; no other band takes me back in time like they do; this song's on the movie Empire Records, but not on the soundtrack; I like the drum pattern

8. "Introduction/Hey Betty" (1993) - Dramarama; not counting "Through and Through" by Life of Agony, this was the hardest-hitting song I ever heard on a skate video; for a power pop band (see my "Prog to Krautrock to Power Pop" post), there's so much distortion and a lot of lead guitar action too

9. "Spoonman" (1994) - Soundgarden; in high school, I carpooled with a guy whose older brother was a metalhead, so he was somewhat a metalhead by default; but sometimes he would surprise me by really getting into a non-metal song like this one or "I Got a Girl" by Tripping Daisy; these songs make me think about stopping for donuts in the morning and a particular occasion when my friend spilled chocolate milk all over himself but continued on to class without changing clothes

10. "Welcome to Paradise" (1994) - Green Day; alright, one last MTV story: I was at an underclassman's house getting my hair braided (ha ha) for a football game (ha ha ha) where we would be playing in the marching band (I'm crying now) when the "Basket Case" video came on; I remember thinking, "these guys will never go anywhere;" flash-forward 15 years to a backstage interview I heard on the radio where the DJ asked some headlining band what young band they'd seen before going big and hated; lo and behold the lead singer named Green Day, so I'm not the only one who couldn't predict the future

11. "Violet" (1995) - Hole; this reminds me, I have yet to listen to Courtney Love's new album

12. "My Name Is Jonas" (1994) - Weezer; came out a year after Beck's "Loser" but for me, this was the song that proved rock didn't have to be macho or shallow (like the punk or hair metal before it)

13. "Clean" (1994) - Helmet; another skate video find

14. "Possum Kingdom" (1994) - Toadies; someone once told me it was about vampires, or at least appealed to wannabe vampires, and that made sense to me, but the bass guitarist has been quoted as saying it's not true; I used to put their instrumental track "Mexican Hairless" on a lot of mixtapes I made for friends

15. "Machinehead" (1994) - Bush; I like "Alien" better but this one's harder

16. "Natural One" (1995) - The Folk Implosion; my first taste of lo-fi

17. "Simple Lesson" (1995) - Candlebox; I have a friend that I've known since I was two; we were practically raised together but he moved away the summer before we started junior high; in the summers that followed, we would switch off spending a week or two at the other's house; his new friends got him into "moderate" rock like this band, FireHouse and Toad the Wet Sprocket so that's what I listened to my first summer at his place, and then every summer since then

18. "Everlong" (1997) - Foo Fighters; I like "Big Me" (1999) better but this one's harder

19. "Inside Out" (1998) - Eve 6; after being out of country for a couple years, I came home and heard this song for the first time, thought it was pretty catchy and asked my brothers if they remembered it; never have I received such a verbal lashing over my taste in music as I did that day, but I've had time to heal

20. "No Big Thing" (1999) - Lit; the epitome of that "alternative" rock sound they try for on teen comedy soundtracks

And that sound was all you heard on horror movies and the Disney channel alike until 2008, when Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist was released and on an unrelated note, I started this here blog (I have nothing to do with the underground rock scene). I don't mean to take away from the Garden State soundtrack (2004), which paved the way, but it took America another four years to embrace a sound that well, didn't work AS well in skate videos. Before I go any further, let me just say that I love The Shins but I hate The Killers. What both of those bands (amongst many) share in common is that their influences can be heard more in their music. "The future of rock" went really retro throughout the last decade - a lot more than it ever did in the '90s. Ironically, it sent me back to the '90s to catch some stuff I missed the first time around (see my Nick and Norah's movie review, complete with a personalized "Brit Pop & Shoegaze" playlist). One '90s group, Oasis went back to The Beatles, but compare that to nearly every rock band now sounding psychadelic or taking something from The Beach Boys. Other '90s acts hearkened back to a '70s classic rock sound, but they never matched it exactly to the degree that recent pop stars have with '60s soul (Amy Winehouse) and '80s electro (La Roux). What's funny now is to ask kids what "classic rock" means and have them tell you Metallica and Nine Inch Nails. I mean, did you ever imagine? Come to think of it, there's a line about Nine Inch Nails in the '90s movie Clueless and it applies perfectly to this generational rift. Here's to teen comedy rock soundtracks for keeping us in check.

My 2000's Pop/Rock Mix (not including American Idol contestants, baile funk, crunk rap, indie folk or reggaeton)

1. "The Authority Song" (2001) - Jimmy Eat World; I guess this would be my introduction to "emo" although I've never associated this band with the term as much as Dashboard Confessional or The Used (see also "screamo;" funny thing about those about two bands - at their height, I was working graveyards stocking shelves in a grocery store and it was the lowest point of my entire life, so now "emo" means emotional to me for different reasons)

2. "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (2002) - The Darkness; bringing back rock falsettos; from my youngest brother's wedding favor mix CD

3. "Crackin' Up" (2003) - Caesars; for offshore acts, I'll take them over fellow Swedes The Hives or Australia's The Vines

4. "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" - (2003) Jet; a guilty pleasure, for sure

5. "Hysteria" (2003) - Muse; before they became synonymous with Twilight, they just reminded me of AFI

6. "The Way It Is" (2003) - The Strokes; this list could and probaby should be filled with their songs

7. "L.S.F." (2004) - Kasabian; I went to the Coachella music festival in 2005 to see my favorite band of all time, New Order, but I came away with new love for The Secret Machines, Hot Hot Heat, Idiot Pilot (featured on a Coachella's giveaway CD), this band and the next four on the list (of which I only saw The Bravery)

8. "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" (2004) - The Arcade Fire; when I drove out to San Diego to look for an apartment, I heard Modest Mouse for the first time and it became "California" music in my mind, but as with Canada's Arcade Fire, what I was hearing was less a regional thing and more an artsy-fartsy way of thinking about rock, mainstream for the first time since the hippies peaked

9. "AFK" (2004) - Pinback; San Diego local band

10. "Swollen Summer" (2005) - The Bravery; I've heard people say they didn't like them live, but they weren't naked when I saw them, plus they did a U2 cover, so that's pop-rockin' in my book

11. "Love in a Trashcan" (2005) - The Raveonettes; I bought their new album while at Coachella and truth be told, it didn't quite live up to this radio single, but I still love me some gothic surf rock

12. "Sugar, We're Goin' Down" (2005) - Fall Out Boy; I have yet to hear another decent song from them

13. "Gold Lion" (2006) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs; I used to picture a bleach-blonde lead singer in my head and I considered this music for sorority girls, but now I would to apologize for being so far off base

14. "Flathead" (2006) - The Fratellis; ba da bop ba da da da da says it all

15. "Hang Me Up to Dry" (2006) - Cold War Kids; it's got the surf guitar of "Love in a Trashcan" but not all the way through and I don't like the bicycle pedal clicking at the end; anyway, it's so noisy for being so clear and minimal, therefore it rocks

16. "Objects of My Affection" (2007) - Peter Bjorn and John; this is my pump-me-up, can't-not-smile song; actually I think I got choked up the first time I heard it because life is beautiful

17. "Ruby" (2007) - Kaiser Chiefs; distinctly British and invites anyone to sing along like they're standing in a pub

18. "Flourescent Adolescent" (2007) - Arctic Monkeys; each part gets a chance to shine and I love that such young men are pondering a woman's mid-life crisis; well I guess cougars are all the rage these days

19. "Shiksa (Girlfriend)" (2007) - Say Anything; brings us full circle to the emo beginning of this playlist and connects with bands I discovered last year at San Diego Street Scene: Cage the Elephant, Los Campesinos! and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

20. "Salute Your Solution" (2008) - The Raconteurs; released three years after "Blue Orchid" by The White Stripes, but as far as I'm concerned, they're the same song; go on, play them back to back and see for yourself

August Books

2010-09-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

"To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can't really multitask reading a book. You're either reading a book or you're not." (Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times Book Review, August 29, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Bad Things Happen - Harry Dolan; "This first novel is full of tricky reversals and dry academic humor, as a killer picks off contributors to a literary mystery magazine to the consternation of its editor."

Far North - Marcel Theroux; "Postapocalyptic road novel will inevitably be compared to that other postapocalyptic road novel Oprah liked, and while Theroux (son of Paul) is not the existential stylist McCarthy is, he is a superior plotter."

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen "cracked open the opaque shell of postmodernism, tweezed out its tangled circuitry and inserted in its place the warm, beating heart of an authentic humanism. His fictional canvas teemed with information - about equity finance, railroad engineering, currency manipulation in Eastern Europe, the neurochemistry of clinical depression. But the data flowed through the arteries of narrative, just as it had done in the novels of Dickens and Tolstoy, Bellow and Mann."

Meeks - Julia Holmes; "In the dystopia of this wry first novel, a hierarchical society forces young bachelors to find brides - or else."

My Hollywood - Mona Simpson; "But the nannies know that one wrong move could land them on a plane back to Manila. Ignoring that specter, they jockey for position like trophy wives, aware at all times of the risk of divorce, rupture, reversal."

The Pages - Murray Bail; "A philosopher and a psychoanalyst travel from Sydney to a remote sheep station to evaluate a manuscript in this novel about different ways of thinking."

Star Island - Carl Hiassen: "A paparazzo attempting to kidnap a drug-addled pop star grabs her stunt double by mistake."

The Surf Guru: Stories - Doug "Dorst's acclaimed debut, Alive in Necropolis, folded sci-fi, horror, and noir elements into a layered coming-of-age story, and a similar mix of lively imagination and love of craft are on display in this excellent collection."

Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart; "A tender but doomed love affair in a future America on the verge of collapse." (See also: Can America Survive? - John Hagee; "A pastor sees 10 signs that we are the terminal generation.")

The Thousand Autums of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell; "Reinvents himself with each book, and it's thrilling to watch. His novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas spill over with narrators and language, collecting storylines connected more in spirit than in fact."

Nonfiction

97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement - Jane Ziegelman; "Keeping faith with their native cuisines, the newcomers made a series of counteroffers - sauerkraut, spaghetti, borscht - that changed the national palate forever."

The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture - Nathan Rabin; "I found my lasting family in the art and junk that has sustained me."

Encounter - Milan Kundera; "Illuminating essays on the arts in the context of a 'post-art' era."

The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English - Ray Peter Clark; "A manual for the 21st century endorses breaking rules that make no sense."

Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture - Thomas Chatterton Williams; "Transformed from a skinny teenager who shoots hoops, gets into bloody brawls and smacks his girlfriend, into a philosophy major and author."

Memoir: A Memoir - Tom Grimes; "His memories are steeped in the writerly process, but the book also encompasses more universal themes: expectation, disappointment, and the need to impress your heroes. What Grimes does, beautifully, is emphasize the communal elements of a solitary profession."

Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities - "Surveying Socrates, Rousseau, Dewey, Rabindranath Tagore and others, she investigates the key insight of progressive pedagogy through the ages."

Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language - Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman; "Take on the 'linguaholics' who rigidly follow meaningless restrictions, like the ones against splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions."

The Self Sufficient-ish Bible: An Eco-Living Guide for the 21st Century - Andy and Dave Hamilton; "Making your own deodorant, baby wipes, dandelion wine, cough syrup and more."

Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens - Andrew Beahrs; "This is a culinary stunt book fixated on the nostalgic list of American foods Twain included in his 1880 travel memoir, A Tramp Abroad.

Book Versus Movie, Part II

2010-08-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (three and a half stars total) As far as movies with video game sensibilities that don't look like The Matrix (1999) go, it's all up to Tron: Legacy (2010) now. Watching the trailer for Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), it saddens me to think that a more than decade (that's right, over ten years!) have passed and we're still seeing action movies that look and sound and feel like wholesale rip-offs of The Matrix. Children have been born and already reached puberty during this time span and we have yet to see any originality in the action movie genre. Then thankfully, Scott Pilgrim came along. For an adaptation of a graphic novel series, I had really high hopes that Scott Pilgrim could break the CG-Matrix-style kung fu mold, but then it went its own direction in the final half hour and replaced the original subspace ending from the books with an unoriginal light saber duel (may Tron: Legacy avoid any comparisons to The Matrix OR Star Wars). There were things that the movie did that books could never do, like play an 8-bit beeps and blips version of Universal's theme music (and beeps and blips over Julie's profanity as well), turn 180 degrees to show that Scott's childhood home is across the street from his current basement apartment and add a TV sitcom laugh track. Music and sound effects are what this movie's all about, and it's not for people that don't have favorite bands. And by bands, I mean rock bands - no sure-fire, trendy but cheesy '70s funk or disco here, and how refreshing that is I might add (nothing against cheesy '70s funk or disco, but enough inundation already). I would've given Scott Pilgrim four stars (same as I did other polished popcorn fare this year: Iron Man 2, The Karate Kid and Inception) except I disagreed with most of its acting and casting choices. Michael Cera's long hair made his eyes look even smaller, not manga-style big like they were originally drawn, and his high-pitched voice made Scott's character seem effeminate, which I never got from books. The actor playing Young Neil would've made a better Scott, which is ironic because that character is like a copycat Scott in the books. Kieran Culkin is not the epitome of cool, which is what I saw Wallace's character as. If anything, Kieran is the opposite of coolness. Finally, as much as I like actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead and loved Ramona's character in the books (even though she gave me no reason to), they made Knives prettier and more likable, so I guess that's one point for the movie, unless you take a point for Ramona. At Comic-Con this year, I went to the panel with Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan O'Malley and someone in the audience (not the costumed person pictured below) asked him if he realized that the book series could be just as much Kim's story as Scott's. He agreed but I bring it up here to point out that the same couldn't be said for the movie. For having such a large and diverse cast of characters, only one perspective is made possible on the big screen. But I'll still give you a taste right here. Let's take a look at my very favorite lines from each book in the series:

Vol. 1 (an edited version of this quote is used in the movie)
RAMONA: "It was in the seventh grade. It was football season, and the little jocks were in high gear. For some reason they all wanted me... Matthew Patel was the only non-white, non-jock kid in school. Probably the only one for miles around, or in the entire state, for all I know. So, of course... We joined forces and took 'em all out. We were one hell of a team. Nothing could beat Matthew's mystical powers combined with my brute strength. Nothing but pre-adolescent capriciousness."

Vol. 2 (aside from the Seinfeld scene, there is no cooking in the movie)
SCOTT: "Chopping vegetables keeps us out of trouble with the law."

Vol. 3 (Envy gets a lot more backstory in the books, plus she looks better)
ENVY: "You unbelievable-"
RAMONA: "BELIEVE IT!!"
ENVY: "Wow, Ramona, isn't this kind of unfair? One swing of your burly man-arms and my little head is pasta salad."

Vol. 4 (an extended version of this quote is used in the movie)
SCOTT: "Who's the guy in bed? Just a guy?"
WALLACE: "Just a guy. Presumably you saw his junk, and I apologize for that."

Vol. 5 (Kim gets a lot more backstory in the books, plus she looks better)
SCOTT: "Do you know anything about cats?"
KIM: "I know they smell like cat pee."
SCOTT: "Cool, I'll make a note of that."

Vol. 6 (Knives gets to turn 18 in the books, plus Scott almost fights her dad)
SCOTT: "So... uh... how's it feel to be... uh... no longer a child in the eyes of the law?"

My Son's First Collection

2010-08-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we happened into a coin shop (it was next door to my wife's new favorite baby supply store). They had these collector's maps for state series quarters and the upcoming national park quarters. I knew there were people who collected the the 50 State Quarters® but I guess I missed or forgot the news that there was a 2009 District of Columbia and U.S. Territories Quarters Program, much less a new series starting this year. According to their official website, "the United States Mint will issue 56 quarter-dollar coins featuring designs depicting national parks and other national sites as part of the America the Beautiful Quarters™ Program. Each year, the public will see five new national site designs depicted on the reverse (tails side) of America the Beautiful Quarters. The United States Mint will issue these quarters in the order in which the honored site was first established as a national site." The first three release dates have passed but the biggest, most recognizable one is coming up next month:

Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas (4/19/10)

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming (6/1/10)

Yosemite National Park in California (7/26/10)

Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona (9/20/10)

Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon (11/15/10)

This is very timely because we just watched the Ken Burns documentary series, The National Parks: America's Best Idea and we've decided to visit as many national parks as we can. Also, my son is getting old enough that he can get excited for holidays and family vacations and maybe even keep up along the trail. Already, one of his favorite things to do is to put quarters in the machines at the laundromat. Anytime he finds change on the floor or in our furniture, he brings it to us and announces it's "money for washing clothes," so saving quarters for these collector's maps should come naturally. Actually, I plan to make a weekly activity out of going to the laundromat, changing dollar bills into quarters, and stopping to separate the ones we have yet to collect. After only one night we have 18! (Alabama, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming) As we get closer to filling our map, we may ask for help in finding rare states and territories that we haven't been lucky enough to score while doing laundry.

Better on Blu-ray(?)

2010-08-07T07:53:00.000-07:00

"Most consumers may not have realized this, but there is no organization in charge of quality control or standards in the high-def market, issuing stamps of approval to companies who are achieving the high-quality products that one would expect with Blu-ray." (Nathan Hanneman, Horrorhound: The Horror Fan's Magazine!, May/June 2010)

I'll come straight out of the gate with it - I'm a harsh critic of Blu-ray in general. In words credited to P.T. Barnum, "there's a sucker born every minute," and getting people to repurchase what they already own is the perfect example of that. If it walks like a DVD and talks like a DVD, it must be a DVD, right? My brothers would go off about specs right here, but what they can't argue is the start-up cost. I don't currently own a hi-def TV and I've never played a Playstation, nor do I want to do either anytime soon. Maybe my real gripe is with the government-sanctioned conversion to digital TV, as I've yet to see an aspect ratio that doesn't look off to me, but I digress. Going back to Blu-ray, let's say you already own the DVD version of your favorite movie and then they come along with a BD version that's not remastered and has no new bonus features. Who really subsidizes that, and why? When VHS came along, it was a complete lifestyle change, being able to start and stop a movie when and where you wanted (unless you already had a projector and a large collection of filmstrips). Laserdiscs introduced bonus features a long time ago, but the lifestyle change with DVD had to do with storage space. Videotapes led the way by taking up less space than filmstrips and DVDs followed that by taking up less space than VHS and laserdiscs. If the best lifestyle change that Blu-ray can offer is online communal viewings, then I can patiently wait for the next technological advancement. In the meantime, I'll just invite people over or go to theater together and listen to them talk about the occasional bonus features that I'm missing out on. In fact, here are some BD horror titles, either unavailable in the US as of April 2010, or that Horrorhound's "Ultimate Blu-ray Buyer's Guide" gave at least four out of five "paws" for picture/sound and bonus features (none of them are going to make me drop a few hundred dollars on a player, but in conjunction with my last post, I might buy some if I had a few MILLION dollars):

1. An American Werewolf in London (Full Moon Edition)
2. City of the Living Dead
3. The Company of Wolves (Non-USA Format, PAL, Reg.2 Import - UK)
4. Dawn of the Dead (Unrated Director's Cut)
5. The Day the Earth Stood Still (3-Disc Special Edition)
6. The Descent
7. The Fly (Cronenberg)
8. Friday the 13th (Uncut)
9. Halloween (2-Disc Unrated Collector's Edition)
10. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
11. The Host
12. Hostel
13. John Carpenter's The Thing (Non-USA Format, PAL, Reg.2 Import - UK)
14. John Carpenter's Vampires (Non-USA Format, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Germany)
15. Let the Right One In (Non-USA Format, PAL, Reg.2 Import - UK)
16. The Mist (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
17. My Bloody Valentine 3D
18. Night of the Creeps (Director's Cut)
19. The Nightmare Before Christmas (Collector's Edition)
20. The Omen Collection
21. One Missed Call (Non-USA Format, PAL, Reg.2 Import - UK)
22. Pan's Labyrinth
23. Phantom of the Paradise (Non-USA Format, PAL, Reg.2 Import - France)
24. [REC] (Non-USA Format, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Spain)
25. Repo! The Genetic Opera
26. Resident Evil
27. Shaun of the Dead
28. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
29. Trick 'r Treat
30. Zombieland

My Dream Collection

2010-08-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

This year I discovered a magazine called Horrorhound ("movie retrospectives, timelines, toys, DVDs and more!"). In the back of each issue, there's a "Collector's Spotlight" which features one loyal reader and pictures of all their Dia de los Muertos statues, latex Halloween masks or whatever else that they own. This week I wondered what my horror collection would look like if I was filthy rich and had office space to store it all (I wouldn't keep it at home). Much as I would love to drive a hearse and live in a High Victorian Gothic Revival house with a checkered tile floor, secret passageways, and a spiked iron gate, in this post I will focus only on the horrors I could fit along one wall. First off, I would frame the record jacket for Quiet Riot's album, Condition Critical, because that was the first media image to freak me out as a kid. The most recent media image that still freaks me out is the comic book cover of Se7en #5 (May 2007), so I'd also frame that and various movie posters: The Changeling (1980); The Company of Wolves (1984); The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Strangeland (1998) and The Wasp Woman (1959). For further inspiration, I looked up websites about hosting haunted tours and corn mazes and I realized that props like fake cobwebs, foam Jack O'Lanterns and a plastic witch's cauldron could cheaply cover any open spaces and serve practical purposes around Halloween as well. Aside from an expensive candlelit chandelier hanging over an extremely rare Splatterhouse (1988) arcade game, the most atmospheric pieces I thought to combine were a life-size skeleton wearing retro, hypnosis glasses and a black cape with a stand-up collar. As a final touch, I just thought to add a big, rubber snake, coiled in the skeleton's ribcage and crawling out of its mouth (thanks, Indiana Jones). All of this "artwork" would surround the pièce de résistance, a coffin-shaped bookcase I figured I was the first to imagine, but it turns out there's plenty of them for sale online (see the pictures below of one being sold on ebay by "carfax_abbey in Halloween Town, CA"). Put some "mad scientist" lab beakers, flasks and retorts on the shelves for bookends, fill them with glowing, neon liquids and I'd be set to scare.

I'm no expert when it comes to the horror genre in literature. I've read some King, Koontz, Rice, Stine and Stoker, and while I don't own anything by them, I do have some books I would consider to be horror-related (see my 10/16/08 post). I've collected comics like Courtney Crumrin, Doc Frankenstein, The Haunted Mansion, Hellblazer and Tales from the Crypt, in addition to trade paperback collections of Boneyard, Emily the Strange, The Goon (being made into a movie by director David Fincher), Hellboy and Swamp Thing. My dream collection would include the recent Creepy, Doctor Spektor, Eerie and Solomon Kane archive editions from Dark Horse Comics, DK's Vertigo Encyclopedia, Showcase Presents: House of Mystery and Jonah Hex volumes from DC, along with Marvel Essentials collections for Ghost Rider, Man-Thing and Tomb of Dracula. I have the GURPS versions of Deadlands: Weird West, Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse role-playing games, but I would add Call of Cthulhu: Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, 6th Edition and the soon-to-be-released Dungeons & Dragons' Castle Ravenloft boardgame for display on my coffin-bookcase. Before I get to my lists of movies, there are a few books about movies that are worth mentioning. Back when I did a college term paper on horror, I came across a rather academic book in the library called Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie by Andrew Tudor, so I've been interested in buying that ever since, plus these reference guides: 100 European Horror Films, by Steven Jay Schneider; The Book of Lists: Horror: An All-New Collection Featuring Stephen King, Eli Roth, Ray Bradbury, and More, by Amy Wallace, Del Howison, and Scott Bradley; Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen: A Celebration of the World's Most Unheralded Fright Flicks, by Adam Lukeman; VideoHound's Horror Show: 999 Hair-Raising, Hellish and Humorous Movies by Mike Mayo.

Horror DVDs I currently own (you can debate my comedy-hybrid definition of "horror")
1. The Addams Family/Values
2. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (Walt Disney Gold Collection)
3. Arachnophobia
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the funny movie, NOT the unfunny TV series)
5. The 'burbs
6. Eerie Indiana - The Complete Series
7. Garfield Holiday Celebrations
8. King Kong (1933)
9. The Monster Squad (20th Anniversary Edition)
10. The Munsters - The Complete First Season
11. Roseanne (Halloween Edition)
12. Signs/The Village (2-Movie Collection)
13. The Tingler (1959)
14. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
15. What Lies Beneath

Horror DVD series sets (that would double my current collection)
1. Alien Quadrilogy $60
2. Amazing Stories - The Complete First Season $50
3. Creature from the Black Lagoon (The Legacy Collection) $30
4. Critters Collection (4 Film Favorites) $15
5. Dracula (The Legacy Collection) $30
6. The Fly Collection $40
7. Frankenstein (The Legacy Collection) $30
8. Friday the 13th - From Crystal Lake to Manhattan (Ultimate Edition Collection) $80
9. Masters of Horror - Season One Box Set $80
10. Nightmare on Elm Street Collection $50
11. Psycho II/Psycho III/Psycho IV - The Beginning (Triple Feature) $15
12. The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection (animated series) $180
13. Ringu Anthology of Terror $30
14. Scooby Doo, Where Are You! - The Complete First and Second Seasons $65
15. The X-Files (The Complete Collector's Edition) $330

Horror DVD value sets (that would triple my current collection)
1. Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection $120
2. Evil Animals (Triple Feature) $20
3. Fright Night/Urban Legend (Double Feature) $20
4. Fright Pack - Campy Classics $25
5. Fright Pack - Walking Dead $25
6. The Hammer Horror Series (The Franchise Collection) $30
7. Icons of Sci-Fi (Toho Collection) $25
8. John Carpenter - Master of Fear $20
9. The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 $25
10. Predator (Triple Feature) $30
11. Tales From the Darkside: The Movie/Stephen King's Graveyard Shift/April Fool's Day (Triple Feature) $7
12. Troll/Troll 2 (Double Feature) $15
13. The Val Lewton Horror Collection (with Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton documentary) $60
14. Vincent Price: MGM Scream Legends Collection $45
15. The Wes Craven Collection $20

Horror available on VHS only (that would quadruple and rarify my collection)
1. Beetlejuice (1989 animated TV series)
2. Class Reunion Massacre (1978)
3. Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1986)
4. Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors (1986)
5. House of Dark Shadows (1970)
6. I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)
7. My Pet Monster (1986 live action movie)
8. The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)
9. Spookies (1986)
10. Swamp Thing (1991 animated TV series)
11. Terror in the Aisles (1984)
12. Ticks (1993)
13. The Uninvited (1944)
14. Walt Disney Cartoon Classics - Halloween Haunts (1994)
15. Zone Troopers (1985)

Some of the Horrorhound "Collector's Spotlights" feature individual fans that own over a thousand different video titles. I haven't even seen a thousand horror movies, nor would I ever want to own that many, with or without a few million dollars. My lists above contain seminal and sentimental titles, nothing more, and hopefully not too much less. Here are some other movies that have freaked me out, not included with any series or value sets, that I would maybe want to own and share with others: Audition; The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; The Blob (both 1958 and 1988); all four adaptations of The Body Snatchers novel (1956, 1978, 1993 and 2007); Candyman; Cape Fear (both 1962 and 1991); The Cremaster Cycle; Cry_Wolf; all three adaptations of The Day of the Triffids novel (1962, 1981 and 2009); Death Proof; The Descent; Eyes Without a Face; Helter Skelter (both 1976 and 2004); The House of the Devil; Jacob's Ladder; Jaws; Lady in White; The Lair of the White Worm; Let the Right One In; The Lost Boys; Night of the Living Dead (both 1968 and 1990); The Orphanage; Paranormal Activity; Poltergeist; Pumpkinhead; [REC]; Silver Bullet; The Stepford Wives (both 1975 and 2004); The Watcher in the Woods and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (both 1962 and 1991). There is an equally long list of dark comedies and thrillers that aren't horror movies per se, but they would go well together on the same shelf: Action Jackson; The Black Cauldron; The Brave Little Toaster; The Care Bears Movie; Cobra (1986); Constantine; Death Wish; Dirty Harry; Harold and Maude; The Illusionist (2006); Interview with the Vampire; Labyrinth; Last Action Hero; Legend (1985); Mad Max; Masters of the Universe; The Matrix; Michael Jackson's Thriller; The Missing; Monster House; Phantom of the Paradise; Planet of the Apes (both 1968 and 2001); Raiders of the Lost Ark; Return to Oz; Robocop; Sin City; Sleeping with the Enemy; Summer School; Superman III and Teen Wolf. Finally, just add all the David Cronenberg and Ray Harryhausen movies that I haven't included anywhere else in this post.

My mom used to confiscate anything horror-related that was brought into her house. She took my first copy of the Dracula novel which I bought for a school book report and while my brother was actually given Ghostbusters on VHS by my parents, they later changed their minds and hid it in the closet. It took me years to finally see Edward Scissorhands, Ghost and Gremlins, all because they had supernatural elements. Now those movies are some of my personal favorites although I'd probably built them up in my mind after they were suppressed for so long. As bad as I had it, there was a kid across the street that had it worse. He wasn't allowed to play with He-Man action figures because the villains looked, according to his mom, "like Satan." I taunted him for that but he got me back by telling me that the Temple of Doom was inside Carlsbad Caverns National Park, right before my first visit there. I had a bit of fear that my heart might get ripped out of my chest until my mom made me ask a park ranger about it, and then I just felt stupid. Decades later, the first vintage action figure I bought on eBay was Hordak (subconsciously in honor of my former neightbor, for sure), lead villain from the She-Ra cartoon, and mentor of Skeletor. The '80s saw a lot of monster dolls and I wanted them all, especially Gizmo and Stripe from Gremlins. The closest I came to that was getting a green backpack like the one Billy wears in the movie, and then PRETENDING I had Gizmo inside it. I hear the foot-tall Stripe doll goes for hundreds of dollars now, but if I was filthy rich it would look really cool on my coffin-shaped bookcase. Same goes for the Boglins hand puppets. My favorites are Vlobb, Snish the Fish and the two Halloween-themed ones, Blobkin and Bog O'Bones. Similar in appearance to a Boglin was the Pull Speed Ahead Ghost from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, which I wanted almost more than the fully functional toy Ghost Trap (I say "fully functional," but it didn't actually open a force field, go figure). From the Inhumanoids cartoon, I wanted Redwood, Tendril, possibly D'Compose, but definitely Metlar. Most likely, I'll end up buying all the newly-released Sick Series Madballs, but as a kid my favorites were Screamin' Meemie and Oculus Orbus. I did inherit a My Pet Monster stuffed animal in high school, but I gave it to another kid a couple of years ago. Aside from the Super Naturals Rags "ghost warrior with double-channel holograms," the only other slightly monsterish thing I owned was a Prince Dargon action figure and Dragonflyer (a giant bug that's a hand puppet), from the Sectaurs: Warriors of Symbion cartoon. I'd love to get Skulk and Trancula from that same series. If a giant, walking tarantula wouldn't complete my dream collection, I don't know what would.

July Books

2010-07-31T15:51:00.000-07:00

"If you're like me, you tend to regard plot summaries as a necessary boredom at best. They're the flyover country between a reviewer's landing strips of judgement, revealing almost nothing about the way a book actually works, almost nothing about why it succeeds or fails. If plot were the crucial measure, there'd be no difference between a story about the fish that got away and Moby Dick. Reading such summaries (or writing them) is usually as beguiling as listening to some addled fan of Lost explain what happened on that botched ruin of a show." (Will Blythe, New York Times Book Review, July 11, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and various issues of Entertainment Weekly magazine) that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power - David Pogue "is the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column and an online video. His daily blog, Pogue's Posts, is the Times's most popular blog. David is also an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News and a frequent guest on NPR's Morning Edition. His trademark comic tech videos appear each Thursday morning on CNBC. With over 3 million books in print, David is one of the world's bestselling how-to authors."

American Music - Jane Mendelsohn; "A series of haunting impressions trace the story of a family, the history of 20th-century America and the evolution of its music."

Citrus County - John Brandon; "With a smart hero somehow mean and bighearted at once, Brandon grippingly hybridizes the crime novel with the novel of rural adolescent longing, even as he subverts the expectations of both."

City Dog, Country Frog - Mo Willems; "What are you doing?" "Waiting for a friend. But you'll do."

‎Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories - Michael Sims; "Beginning with the supposedly true accounts that captivated Byron and Shelley, the stories range from Edgar Allan Poe's The Oval Portrait and Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla to Guy de Maupassant's The Horla and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Good Lady Ducayne. Sims also includes a nineteenth-century travel tour of Transylvanian superstitions, and rounds out the collection with Stoker's own Dracula's Guest — a chapter omitted from his landmark novel."

The Frozen Rabbi - Steve Stern; "Starts in a small Polish village, where Rabbi Eliezer is so blissed out during a pond-side meditation that he doesn't notice a storm lifting the waters around him. In one of the effortless liberties the master fabulist Stern takes with reality, the rabbi survives underwater until winter comes and he's encased in ice. This all happens before Page 7, testament to how rapidly this book chews through plot, characters, decades and continents."

Shark Vs. Train - Chris Barton; "Who will win the face-off between two favorite toys: the shark or the train? (A dinosaur must be waiting in the wings.) Lichtenheld's high-energy drawings are the main appeal in a series of contests that could have built to more drama. (The opponents bowl, trick or treat and... make lemonade?) At the end, two boys drop the game and break for lunch.

Still Missing - Chevy Stevens; "Blistering debut follows a kidnap victim from her abduction to her escape - and the even more horrifying nightmare that follows. One moment, realtor Annie O'Sullivan is taking one last client, a quiet, well-spoken man with a nice smile; the next moment she's being marched out to a van at gunpoint, unaware that it's the last time for months that she'll see the sky or breathe open air."

Nonfiction

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error - Kathryn Schulz; "Case histories of a Klansman who became an unlikely advocate for civil rights, of a doomsday prophet whose apocalypse wasn't now, of a sexual assault victim whose mistaken testimony jailed an innocent man."

The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements - Sam Kean; "The best science writers, like the best science teachers, bring an enthusiasm for the material that infects even those of us who wouldn't usually give a flying photon."

Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language - Katherine Russell Rich "responded to job setbacks and cancer by travelling to India - not to spend a few months at an ashram, like some people, but to study Hindi seriously. "This book both recounts her experience and presents the research of linguists about what happens in the brain when we learn a new language."

Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour - Rachel Shukert; "Scrap your preconceived notions of travel writing. We're not talking The Innocents Abroad here; this irreverent, profane journal of Shukert's college trip comes off like a cross between David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk. Nothing escapes her eye - not the cute boys or creepy older guys, not the booze, not even European culture."

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India - William Dalrymple; "The stupefyingly diverse religious world of the subcontinent, explored through nine remarkable individuals."

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness - Oren Harman; "Covers the entire 150-year history of scientist' researching, debating and bickering about a theoretical problem that lies at the core of behavioral biology, sociology and evolutionary psychology: Why is it that organisms sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others?"

Suck It, Wonder Woman! - Olivia Munn; "The first lady of nerd, and newly minted Daily Show correspondent, has written a book that covers everything from sex to videogames to her undying love of pie."

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut - Rob Sheffield; "The author of 2007's Love Is a Mix Tape reaches back to the '80s in his second collection of music-themed memories."

Best and Worst Movies So Far This Decade

2010-07-08T00:54:00.001-07:00

The following lists count movies released prior to Independence Day this year.

The Best (in order of personal significance; although I enjoyed Babies, Toy Story 3 and Winter's Bone, I wouldn't call any of them favorites; I still look forward to watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, Fish Tank, and Oceans)

1. Edge of Darkness (January 29) People who don't watch Mel Gibson movies because of his tirades need to learn to separate. If you miss all the mature, meaningful dialogue of '30s screwballs, or want more of the adult exchanges you heard in the recent Inglorious Basterds and State of Play, you owe it to yourself to watch this.

2. How to Train Your Dragon (March 26) The ONLY thing I didn't like was Gerard Butler. I was a little concerned because even though I knew Hollywood would ensure a happy ending, I wasn't sure how it was going to happen - I was THAT tense.

3. Collapse (June 15 on DVD) Because it just screened in New York and at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, I'm counting it for this year. Here are the REAL "inconvenient truths."

4. District 13: Ultimatum (February 5) I don't know if I'll go so far as to say it's better than its predecessor, but driving a car through an office building takes the purpose of parkour to a whole new level.

5. Knight and Day (June 25) People who don't watch Tom Cruise movies because of his tirades need to learn to separate. Want to see a James Bond movie turned on its ear, where the character is an actual gentleman and the calmness under pressure is shown for the insanity it really is?

The Worst (in order of offensiveness; keep in mind that I kinda liked Best Worst Movie, Human Centipede and The Wolfman; call me a masochist, but I still look forward to watching Frozen, The Last Song and Sex and the City 2)

1. A Nightmare on Elm Street (April 30) In the original, Freddy's motive was to get revenge on the parents for killing him, and I could get behind that. In this remake, he wants revenge on the kids for telling on him, and that's overkill. Wasn't it enough that he molested them in life? Anyway, it's definitely not horror. It's more like a Lifetime movie about pedophilia.

2. A Prophet (February 26) I went into this expecting Goodfellas, but what I got felt twice as long (and Goodfellas is a LONG movie) and half as interesting.

3. The Losers (April 23) Having an accent in and of itself doesn't make a villain. Being mean in and of itself isn't funny.

4. Jonah Hex (June 18) The way the first 15 minutes were edited, you'd think you were watching a trailer.

5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (March 19) As much as I laughed at the books, I worry about them teaching kids to be sore losers. Just because the movie went against the ending in the book doesn't make the main character a better person. Also, what was up with bringing that girl character in from nowhere? She added nothing. Lastly, when the movie shouldn't have been cinematic, it was, and when it should've been, it wasn't.

Songs I Discovered in 2010, Part III

2010-07-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

This may be the last pop music mix I post here. My old desktop computer at home is officially out of memory and adding more memory would only make it run slower. My CD burner is dying but I don't really need tangible copies of my MP3s anyway since my car has an iPod jack. Over my last ten mixes, I started to notice that I've cycled back through a lot of the same artists I first discovered five to ten years ago (see my 8/19/08 & 9/9/08 posts for artists featured again below: MGMT, Robyn, Diplo, Flying Lotus & Daedelus). It's going to be okay though. I think I'm finally going to get around to just researching 20th century composers like I resolved to do at the start of this year. That being said, the following songs are (still) the ABSOLUTE best songs I have come across in the last couple of months. I GUARANTEE they're all worth downloading, and for each artist featured, there are many more songs to check out. Don't get bogged down by the sheer volume of artists though - each one is different from the rest, so variety is the spice of this playlist:

1. "Absolute Beginners" - The Jam; I discovered this song on a recent, direct-to-DVD movie merely called Coach, then I borrowed a greatest hits compliation CD of The Jam from a coworker who was raised in London in the late '70s punk era; funny thing is that when she hears The Smiths, she thinks of young, American me, and that makes me proud

2. "As We Enter" - Nas & Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley; I loved Nas' "Hip Hop Is Dead" and Marley's "Welcome to Jamrock;" combine those and add cartoon sound effects and you get the best rap song out there right now

3. "Blessa" - Toro Y Moi; will get me through till Panda Bear's next album becomes available

4. "Dancehall Queen (feat. Diplo)" - Robyn; I don't know why her stuff takes so long to come stateside

5. "The Eraser" - Christian Scott; you may think jazz is boring, but what I think is boring are the stagnant basslines on most pop songs; everything else can act as the rhythm section (piano or even sax included) but the bassline has to MOVE

6. "Exodus Honey" - Honeycut; also from the movie, Coach; white boy funk; opened for Cake; this song was used in an old iMac commercial

7. "Gone Forever (Robin Guthrie Version)" - Ulrich Schnauss; see also "My Top 20 Cocteau Twins Songs" (6/20/10)

8. "How Are You? (feat. Nellie McKay)" - David Byrne & Fatboy Slim; after Rosalia de Souza introduced me to electro-bossa, my wife has been so into it

9. "It's a Shame" - Paul Jackson, Jr.; a smooth jazz radio staple here in San Diego; I prefer this to the original by The Spinners

10. "Jail La La" - Dum Dum Girls; the thing with them & Vivian Girls is that it sounds so joyful to me

11. "Just the Same But Brand New" - St. Vincent; compare the warble here to the one on Local Natives' "Shape Shifter"

12. "Moses" - Elizabeth Fraser; normally I don't like the accordion, but this is the lead singer from the Cocteau Twins gone solo; can you tell what I've been mostly listening to lately?

13. "Nothing But Change Part II" - Harlem Shakes; also from the movie, Coach; can you tell I listen closely to soundtracks?

14. "Nyckel" - Loess; stands here as a representive of all the electronic artists my youngest brother has introduced me to over the years (Andrew WK, Ferry Corsten, 4 Strings)

15. "One Plus One Equals Three or More" - Mahogany; I've listened to this song I don't know how many times & I still can't think of anything to say, but I like it

16. "Ready to Start" - Arcade Fire; from the forthcoming album, The Suburbs

17. "Rill Rill" - Sleigh Bells; did your parents ever tell you that your kids would play music that would sound like nothing more than noise to you? Well, I've finally heard what they were talking about but I kinda like it (not so much on this song but definitely on "Straight-A's" & "Tell Em")

18. "Someone's Missing" - MGMT; reminds me of Grizzly Bear but without any of the disturbing lyrics

19. "Table Tennis (feat. Laura Darlington)" - Flying Lotus; Laura Darlington is the wife of Alfred Darlington (AKA Daedelus); I liked her on the song, "The Art of Kissing" but this one's more chill

20. "Tired of Being Alone" - Al Green; I can see how critics of Macy Gray may not get into his falsetto here

June Books

2010-07-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

"That time has perhaps come. Tired of buying bookshelves and anxious about the economic downturn, my wife recently instituted the First Law of Literary Thermodynamics, otherwise known as the conservation of libraries. No book can come into our household without another book leaving it. I am loath to give up any books. So I've been dipping more and more into my unread stock, which still numbers in the hundreds." (John Feffer, "Essay" in the New York Times Book Review section, June 13, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Magicians - Lev Grossman; "After attending sorcery college, a young man lives the hedonist's life in Manhattan, dealing with crises existential and otherwise."

The November Criminals - Sam Munson; "Both a thoughtful coming-of-age story and an engaging teenage noir. Think of it as an existential murder mystery for the stoner pre-college set."

One Day - David Nicholls; "Checks in year by year on the confused, halting romance of two children of the '80s, she an outspoken lefty, he an apolitical toff."

The Overton Window - Glenn Beck; "A public relations executive and the woman he loves fight to expose a conspiracy to transform America."

So Cold the River - Michael Koryta; "If all good mysteries make ideal summer reading, what does a mystery fan turn to for true escape? How about a supernatural mystery that intensifies the suspense by thickening the atmosphere."

Nonfiction

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter - Tom Bissell; "Video games have created what must be the biggest generation gap since rock'n'roll. Sure, a generational rift of sorts emerged when the World Wide Web showed up near the end of the last century, but in the case of the Web, the older cohort admired and tried to emulate the younger crowd, rather than looking down on them with befuddlement or disdain. With games, a more traditional 'get off my lawn' panic has reared its head."

Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share - Ken Denmead; "Projects to share with children, from electronic origami to home hydroponics."

Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession - Dave Jamieson; "Details early tobacco cards, stuffed into packs to keep the cigarettes from crushing; kitschy nonbaseball series like Mars Attacks; and the rest of the history."

Planet Barbecue! - Steven Raichlen; "Blazing grills, exotic seasonings, expert grill masters, renowned restaurants, cool fuels, tools, tips and techniques from all around the world. Plus 600 full-color photographs."

The Seasons on Henry's Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm - Terra Brockman; "By far the most informative and earnest of the back-to-the-land memoirs; anyone thinking about farming as a way of life should read it."

My Western Movie Review Marathon

2010-07-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

"Since pictures began moving in Tom Edison's lab at the turn of the 20th century, more than 4,600 Westerns have been shot. They come rolling down the trail in every imaginable size and shape: shoot'em-up shorts and cliffhanger serials, melodramas, satires, musicals, noirs, costume dramas, comedies, tragedies and epics; sweeping historical narratives filmed in widescreen and 3-D; and small-budget, tight focused B-movies pumped out in a few days. And don't forget the thundering postwar TV herds like Gunsmoke (1955-75), Bonanza (1959-73), Rawhide (1959-66), Wagon Train (1957-65), Have Gun Will Travel (1957-63) and Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958-61). What all Westerns share is wildly varying doses of history and hokum stirred into stories that have thrilled the world. (Gene Santoro, "Parables from America's Promised Land," 100 Greatest Westerns, 2010)

I blame my western movie review marathon on the video game, Red Dead Redemption. I'm not into video games, nor have I played this one, but if not for its recent release, the IGN website wouldn't have posted a list of their "Top 25 Westerns of All Time." My coworker showed me this list, and the two of us proceded to fill up our Netflix queues with all the "top westerns" we hadn't seen. I probably took it a step further by evenly selecting three or four movies from each decade going back to the '30s. Then after I was over halfway through watching those, I ran across the magazine pictured below. By that point, I had seen all the titles listed on its cover except for Fort Apache (1948) and Stagecoach (1939; recently re-released on Criterion Blu-ray), but it led me to discover the two best westerns I've ever seen: The Big Country (1958) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972). In case you're interested, the two worst westerns I've seen are The Great Silence (1968) and Little Big Man (1970). Here is an alphabetical list of all the movies I watched for the first time last month and the ratings I gave them (titles in bold are "Top Westerns" on IMDb):

2008 Appaloosa (3 stars)
1955 Bad Day at Black Rock (2.5 stars)
1994 Bad Girls (3.5 stars)
2006 Bandidas (2 stars)
1972 Buck and the Preacher (3 stars)
2008 The Burrowers (3 stars)
1965 Cat Ballou (4 stars)
1939 Destry Rides Again (4 stars)
1966 Django (2.5 stars)
1971 Duck, You Sucker (2.5 stars)
1948 Fort Apache (2.5 stars)
1956 Giant (2.5 stars)
2008 The Good, the Bad, the Weird (4 stars)
1903 The Great Train Robbery (1 star)
1999 Grey Owl (1.5 stars)
1950 The Gunfighter (3 stars)
1917 The Heart of Texas Ryan (1.5 stars)
1963 Hud (3.5 stars)
1992 Last of the Mohicans (2 stars)
1989 Lonesome Dove (3.5 stars)
1976 The Outlaw Josey Wales (3.5 stars)
1943 The Ox-Bow Incident (3 stars)
1995 The Quick and the Dead (3 stars)
1954 Red Garters (2 stars)
1940 The Return of Frank James (2 stars)
2008 Seraphim Falls (3 stars)
1985 Silverado (3 stars)
1968 Sons of Great Bear (2 stars)
1939 Stagecoach (4 stars)
1925 Tumbleweeds (2 stars)
1970 Two Mules for Sister Sara (2.5 stars)
1937 Way Out West (2.5 stars)
1999 Wild Wild West (1 star)

Recent Western Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-07-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

"The Western depicts a struggle between good and evil in a setting where civilization and wilderness are in transition." (Melinda Corey and George Ochoa, The American Film Institute Desk Reference, 2002)

"Dad's appreciation of movies was less theoretical but also resonant. Two decades of watching war movies with a detail-oriented retired army reservist - 'Look at that, walking on a ridge in silhouette!' followed by Dad making a machine-gun noise to indicate he'd just killed all of our heroes - bred intolerance for flagrant inauthenticity." (Michael Adams, Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest To Find the Worst Movie Ever Made, 2010)

The Burrowers (three stars total) The way I interpret the first quote above is that in a western movie, good and/or evil can come from either the civilizations OR the wilderness that is in transition. The Burrowers (2008) is a horror-western where the horror comes both from "civilized" Union soldiers' treatment of Native Americans and from wilderness creatures that turn to man for a source of food after the near-extinction of the buffalo. If that sounds hokey to you, know that it comes from the tested tastes of the paying public. On the DVD special features, the director says that he always wanted to do an old-fashioned western, but he didn't think anyone else would be interested unless he added monsters (and evidently not just any monsters, but giant, carnivorous, humanoid prairie dog monsters). As for the second quote above, my mom once told me that she hates fiction that tries to rewrite history as politically correct. Fortunately, The Burrowers doesn't claim that the Irish were treated any better than African-Americans or women OR buffalo. It leaves history as both good, evil, and well, horrific. Speaking of horror, it's been over six months since last October's horror movie review marathon so I felt refreshed enough to start a two-week western-themed marathon. Back to The Burrowers, I was surprised to see that the lead character, an Irishman, was played by an actual Irishman and that Sean Patrick Thomas (from Save the Last Dance) was in a western. I don't agree with those who say the movie got off to a slow start and after they did finally show the creatures, I wished I could've gone back to the quick cuts and sheer suspense of the first half. Why is it that all monsters these days look like something on a video game and sound like the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park? For the record, people walking like spiders wasn't scary way back on The Exorcist and it's still not scary now.

'90s Western Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-07-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

The '90s saw a lot of good westerns (City Slickers, Dances with Wolves, Far and Away, Legends of the Fall, and my dad would say Quigley Down Under). The following movie isn't one of them:

I can't say that Wild Wild West (one star total) is the worst movie I've seen recently because a few months ago I had the displeasure of mostly fast-forwarding through Gentleman Broncos (2009). I can say, however, that Wild Wild West (1999) is the worst movie I've ever avoided the temptation to skim in fast-forward. The entire production seems to be have been made with nothing more than the theatrical trailer in mind. Every line of dialogue serves no narrative purpose other than to become a possible blurb. The bad guys are all dirty and unshaven or have physical deformities because, you know - they're the bad guys. The sexual innuendo is even less subtle than the good guys' disguises, which are transparent, lest any audience member be made to feel stupid. The whole movie caters to the lowest common denominators of comedy - name puns, race and redneck jokes, Will Smith getting frustrating and yelling. The only thing that could've made it more moronically accessible would've been a laugh track, like in a TV sitcom. Then lo and behold, I discover that this movie is actually a remake of an old TV sitcom! Turns out the '60s show was some kind of James Bond spoof with a western setting, but this remake is no Austin Powers (1997) in the Old West. Nor did director Barry Sonnenfeld repeat the success he'd had previously with a movie remake of TV's The Addams Family (1991; an improvement over the original, in my opinion). If you're looking for a good example of the "weird west" subgenre (horror or sci-fi with a western setting), try Back to the Future Part III (1990). If you're looking for a bad example that's still good, cheesy fun, try Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). But no matter what you're looking for, do not watch Wild Wild West, not even to say you've watched the worst western of its kind.

'80s Western Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

2010-06-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

"All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream." (T.K. Whipple, Study Out the Land, quoted at the front of Lonesome Dove, 1985)

"I've always wanted to do something like this . . . bring back the balls of the Western but also taint it with this absurdity and anything goes." (Josh Brolin in an interview with Robert K. Elder, Wizard: The Magazine of Comics, Entertainment and Pop Culture, July 2010)

I just started Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning book which was adapted into the TV miniseries, Lonesome Dove (three and a half stars total). I was surprised to learn that Larry McMurtry also wrote the books which were adapted into the movies Hud (1963), The Last Picture Show (1971), Terms of Endearment (1983), their various sequels, and most recently, the Oscar-winning screenplay for E. Annie Proux's Brokeback Mountain (2005). It's also noteworthy to me that the two main stars of Lonesome Dove (1989) went on to make the two best western movies so far in the new millennium - Robert Duvall in Open Range and Tommy Lee Jones in The Missing (both 2003). I've always liked Diane Lane but until now, I'd never seen her in anything worth sharing. Finally I have proof that she's better than the roles she's taken since Lonesome Dove. Speaking of Diane Lane's character, I never realized how much of a staple the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold is in the Western genre. When it was first announced that Megan Fox would play the romantic interest of Jonah Hex (out in theaters June 18), I was a little upset that the best way they could think to squeeze her in was by making her a prostitute. Turns out that might be the only historically accurate part of that movie (minus the Moulin Rouge meets MTV costume). Tying the second quote above into Lonesome Dove, there's a scene where cattle get struck by lightning and their horns glow blue. I'm not sure if that actually occurs in nature, or if it's just "absurdity and anything goes" like Jonah Hex. If you're not too upset by that, or by a slo-mo snake attack, or by a story where all the men solicit the same prostitute, then you'll enjoy Lonesome Dove just fine.

My Top 20 Björk Songs

2010-06-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

It's official: Björk is no longer my favorite female singer. It's not because my wife hates her voice, as does everyone else that I know (parents, siblings, college roommates, current coworkers). It's ironic that I think of my wife whenever I hear Björk, because I got into them both around the same time. I heard the song "It's Oh So Quiet" at one of my wife's ballet showcases and bought the Japanese version of the CD single shortly after my wife and I started dating. I remember listening to the Debut album for the first time from start to finish in her dorm room and I'm sure she hated every minute of it. Going back to my initial statement, I've recently decided that Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins is my new favorite female singer. She doesn't have the aggressive vocal range of Björk, but her indecipherable lyrics pack more punch (and undoubtedly grind on others' ears like nails on a chalkboard). Sometimes Björk gives me chills but only Fraser has brought tears to my eyes. If you're wondering what howling animal is my pick for favorite male singer, it's Sublime's Bradley Nowell (replacing childhood fave Michael Hutchence of INXS). If you're interested to hear more picks, my favorite electric guitarist is Kevin Cadogan (formerly in Third Eye Blind). On bass guitar I like Peter Hook from New Order and on drums you can't beat (pun intended) The Smashing Pumpkins' Jimmy Chamberlin. As a general rule, I like music that can't be easily ignored, but whether that implies the fashion-forwardness of Björk or dynamic rhythms with noisy hooks, I'll let you be the judge. Now for my top 20 Björk songs:

1. "Birthday" (1987) - The Sugarcubes; from the album, Life's Too Good (see also the "Justin Robertson 12" and "Tommy D" remixes)
2. "Motorcrash" (1988) - The Sugarcubes; from the Europe/Asia-only version of the album, Life's Too Good
3. "Ruby smábarn" (1990) from the album, Gling-glo
4. "Ooops" (1991) - 808 State; from the album, Ex:el
5. "Leash Called Love" (1992) - The Sugarcubes; from the album, Stick Around For Joy
6. "Crying" (1993) from Björk's Debut album
7. "Venus As a Boy" (1993) from the movie, Léon: The Professional
8. "There's More To Life Than This (Non-Toilet)" (1993) B-side of the single, Venus As a Boy
9. "Big Time Sensuality" (1993) from the single of the same name
10. "Hyperballad (Brodsky Quartet Version)" (1995) B-side of the single, It's Oh So Quiet
11. "I Miss You (Dobie Rub Part One - Sunshine Mix)" (1996) from the remix compilation, Telegram
12. "Sod Off" (1997) B-side of the single, Jóga
13. "Hunter" (1997) from the album, Homogenic
14. "Lilith" (1997) - Plaid; from the album, Not for Threes
15. "Alarm Call (Radio Edit)" (1998) only on the single of the same name; my absolute favorite Björk song
16. "It's Not Up to You" (2001) from the album, Vespertine
17. ""Who Is It (Carry My Joy on the Left, Carry My Pain on the Right)" (2004) from the album, Medúlla
18. "Army of Me (Dr. Syntax & CB Turbo v. Rivethead)" (2005) from the remix compilation of the same name
19. "Innocence (Mark "Spike" Stent Mix)" (2007) from the single of the same name
20. "Dull Flame of Desire (Mode Selektor Remix 02)" (2008) from the single of the same name

My Top 20 Cocteau Twins Songs

2010-06-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

"I was working at this record store on Melrose (Vinyl Fetish) and these two vaguely goth girls were arguing over whether Liz Fraser was actually singing 'Sugar Hiccup on Cheerios.' I told them I had heard that she was actually saying 'Sugar Hiccup, on she reels' and that Sugar Hiccup was the name of a horse that had died. They looked at me as if I'd revealed the secret of the universe." (Steven Schayer, of the bands Clay Idols and The Chills, quoted in the liner notes of the CD, Postpunk Chronicles: Left of the Dial, 1999)

With the recent comeback of dream pop, shoegazey guitar layering and ambient soundscapes, the name Cocteau Twins gets thrown around a lot now. You might recognize lead singer Elizabeth Fraser's voice from The Lovely Bones movie trailer (they used the band's final B-side, "Alice") or from the House M.D. TV show theme (which is an edited sample of Massive Attack's "Teardrop"). I remember seeing Cocteau Twins in my BMG and Columbia House CD catalogs back in high school, but I never knew what they sounded like until I got Rhino Records' Left of the Dial box set (quoted above). After I heard "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" for the first time, I felt compelled to listen to every other song they ever made. If you're already more familiar with the band than I was but still looking for something similar, may I recommend early Lush, some Mahogany, or guitarist Robin Guthrie's remixes for Olive, School of Seven Bells and Ulrich Schnauss.

1. "Feather Oar-Blades" (1982) from the EP, Lullabies
2. "In Our Angelhood" (1983) from the album, Head Over Heels
3. "Sugar Hiccup" (1983) from the album, Head Over Heels
4. "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops (7" Version)" (1984) from the EP, The Spangle Maker
5. "Another Day"(1984) - This Mortal Coil; from the album, It'll End in Tears
6. "Lorelei" (1984) from the album, Treasure
7. "Sultitan Itan" (1985) from the EP, Tiny Dynamite
8. "Lazy Calm" (1986) from the album, Victorialand
9. "Fluffy Tufts" (1986) from the album, Victorialand
10. "Love's Easy Tears" (1986) from the single of the same name; my absolute favorite Cocteau Twins song
11. "Orange Appled" (1986) B-side on the single, Love's Easy Tears
12. "Eyes Are Mosaics" (1986) from the album, The Moon and the Melodies
13. "Ooze Out and Away, Oneshow" (1986) from the album, The Moon and the Melodies
14. "Suckling the Mender" (1988) from the album, Blue Bell Knoll
15. "A Kissed Out Red Floatboat" (1988) from the album, Blue Bell Knoll
16. "Cherry-Coloured Funk" (1990) from the album, Heaven or Las Vegas
17. "Bluebeard" (1993) from the album, Four-Calendar Cafe
18. "Seekers Who Are Lovers (Mark Clifford Remix)" (1995) from the EP, Otherness
19. "Eperdu" (1996) from the album, Milk & Kisses
20. "Hypo-Allergenic" (1996) - Spooky; from the album, Found Sound

May Books

2010-05-31T20:04:00.000-07:00

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and Diamond Previews catalog) that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Billy Hazelnuts - Tony Millionaire; "Transmutes nursery rhymes and the golem myth into a storybook about Becky, girl scientist, her friend Billy Hazelnuts (who was created from cooking ingredients by tailless mice), and their journey to find the missing moon while battling an evil steam-driven alligator with a seeing-eye skunk."

Elliot Allagash - Simon Rich; "Saturday Night Live writer's first novel (after two humorous collections) is a hit and miss riff on Pygmalion in which genial high school loser Seymour gets a life-changing makeover after meeting Elliot, a fabulously wealthy malcontent who has transferred to Seymour's Manhattan private school. Elliot's lessons on the power of money and the fine art of popularity are given in exchange for chubby Seymour's agreement to do whatever Elliot tells him to do, and, sure enough, Seymour transforms from consummate outsider to a Harvard-bound, straight-A class president."

Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s - John Benson and Greg Sadowski; "Of the myriad genres comic books ventured into during its golden age, none was as controversial as or came at a greater cost than horror; the public outrage it incited almost destroyed the entire industry. Yet before the watchdog groups and Congress could intercede, horror books were flying off the newsstands."

Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer - John Grisham; "Theo knows every judge, policeman, court clerk—and a lot about the law. He dreams of being a great trial lawyer, of a life in the courtroom. But Theo finds himself in court much sooner than expected. Because he knows so much—maybe too much—he is suddenly dragged into the middle of a sensational murder trial. A cold-blooded killer is about to go free, and only Theo knows the truth."

Wally Gropius - Tim Hensley; "Wally is the human Dow Jones, the heir to a vast petrochemical conglomerate. When the elder Thaddeus Gropius confronts Wally with the boilerplate plot ultimatum that he must marry 'the saddest girl in the world' or be disinherited, a yarn unravels that is part screwball comedy and part unhinged parable on the lucrativeness of changing your identity."

Nonfiction

Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself - David Lipsky; "A few weeks after Infinite Jest was published in February 1996, Rolling Stone magazine sent a reporter to accompany its author, David Foster Wallace."

The Beats: A Graphic History - Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor; "This comic book treatment is celebratory and not in any way definitive, as it acknowledges."

Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets - Cadillac Man; "Thomas Wagner, known as Cadillac Man, became homeless in 1994, when he was 44."

Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, A New History; "An Englishman, had what is perhaps a more alluring idea: to devote himself largely to the prehistory of the men and women who founded the colony. His book roams through archives and repositories in the British Isles."

This Time Together - Carol Burnett; "The comedian describes her rise in show business and the people she's met along the way."

Family History Map

2010-05-23T19:19:00.000-07:00

I want my son to know at least four generations of his family history by heart. For me, it's easier to associate people with places than it is with names. Just in case he's the same way, I'm marking the birthplaces of his ancestors from the last century on a world map. That comes out to 30 different birthplaces, and because the biggest box of pushpins I could find only had 14 different colors, I used one color for each set of parents. Geography was my favorite subject in grade school so that's partly to blame for this project. I'll probably have my son memorize his continents and the locations of a decent number of countries before he starts Kindergarten as well.