New Music: Albums

Enjoy some new (to me) music from albums I've recently purchased.

"Bloodbuzz Ohio"
from High Violet, by The National


"Dancing in a Minefield"
from Pins and Panzers, by Plushgun


"Wide Eyes"
from Gorilla Manor, by Local Natives


"Love Like a Sunset II"
from Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, by Phoenix


"Just Listen"
from Sirens of the Sea, by OceanLab

The Joneses: Movie Review

Who can resist a movie where David Duchovny is being adorable?

This movie was just okay. The premise is that four salespeople pose as a family in an affluent neighborhood and "self-market" specific products. The movie set-up some really interesting discussion topics, but didn't really push the ideas far enough. The movie ended up turning into a basic "will they get together" plot, which was disappointing.

There were a couple of ideas I wish the movie had explored further. (Major spoilers ahead.)

David Duchovny's character (Steve) spends a lot of his energy marketing all of his new toys to his next door neighbor. Steve doesn't know that the neighbor is already in severe debt and can't afford to buy a rider lawn mower with a television attached. So the neighbor gets increasingly discouraged trying to keep up with Steve Jones and his infinite ability to buy expensive things. The neighbor refuses to talk to his wife about it, and eventually drives his fancy lawn mower into the pool and kills himself. A similar thing happens with the son's friend. She gets in a car accident after leaving a party drunk on the wine juice packs the son was trying to market.

The movie suggests that the suicide and the car accident are The Jones's fault. I think the whole idea of self-marketing is at best morally questionable, but what about personal responsibility? Whose fault is it really that people buy more than they can afford? Or succumb to peer pressure and get too drunk to drive? There's no discussion in the movie, it's the Jones's fault.

Another idea I liked was about living an authentic life. If you buy all the props of success and happiness, does that make you successful and happy? How much of our identity is defined by the things we buy? The Joneses aren't a real family biologically, but they end up coming together and functioning like a real family by the end. If you pretend something is real for long enough, does that make it real? Like the other idea, the movie just hints at this idea, but doesn't really delve into it enough to say anything interesting.

Even though the tone and style are completely different, this movie reminded me of the tv series Mad Men. Mad Men explores the ideas above, but in a much subtler and more powerful way. I think what ultimately disappointed me about this movie was that it had so much potential, but it couldn't rise to the challenge and deliver.

Also, the movie seemed to think its audience didn't know the premise going in. The premise that this was a fake family was clearly spelled out by the trailers, but they wasted the first quarter of the movie trying to freak the audience out, assuming they'd think it was a real family. Creepy things... like having the daughter hit on the dad. If I didn't know the premise going in, it would have been incredibly disturbing.

View the trailer on YouTube.

P.S. I did see Iron Man 2, but I'm really not going to review it. I enjoyed it, but it's exactly what you think it will be. I'm longing for a really good movie that exceeds expectations. I'm looking forward to Prince of Persia, Inception, and The Last Airbender (formally known as Avatar).

Ramona Quimby

They are making a movie based on the Ramona books. These are the first books I remember reading, ever. I wanted SO BADLY to be Ramona Quimby. In elementary school, my friends always told me I looked just like her, but I knew I was nowhere near that cool.

Things I remember from the books: Ramona turned the letter "Q" from "Quimby" into a cat. I tried to figure out a cute picture for the letter "S" from "Saunders" but snakes are not as cute as cats. I remember the part where her mom told her to leave for school at a "quarter after" the hour, and Ramona figured that must mean 25 minutes after, because a quarter is 25 cents. I remember her friend, the blonde boy with the curly hair. (Howie!) More than anything, I remember Ramona's frequent frustration with the world around her, and her desperate need to understand it and be accepted by it. When I read stories, more than anything, I read for character. Ramona Quimby was the first character I remember making friends with. I hope the movie does her justice.

Here's the trailer:

Pandora discoveries

Contemplative emo edition. This songs may already be popular and overplayed, but they're new to me.

"Almost Lover" by A Fine Frenzy


"There's No Way" by Sam Bisbee
(no youtube video. D: sorry.)

"Roam" by Lijie
(enabling not allowed... here's the link)

...and this isn't a new discovery, but since the videos for my three new faves are so fail, I'll include it as bonus. This is probably my favorite love song.

"Amie" by Damien Rice

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Note:
There are spoilers in this post. It is less of a review and more a movie summary with some discussion. But don't worry! You can be told the entire plot of this movie and still not know what on earth is going on when/if you finally watch it for yourself. If you did see the movie (or just read the summary), feel free to comment. This movie was very unusual, and I wouldn't be surprised if I misunderstood the entire thing.

Summary:
The movie starts out 3 days before Dr. Parnassus's daughter, Valentina, turns 16. Dr. Parnassus is hundreds of years old. He "won" immortality from the Devil by promising him any offspring he fathered once they turned 16. Valentina doesn't know this, and Parnassus spends the first part of the movie in a drunken emo stupor over this sad fact. Guyliner and everything. The Devil decides to make another wager with Parnassus, to give him one more chance to keep his daughter. The first person to win five souls by the time Valentina turns 16 (by now it's only two days away), gets to keep Valentina.

My life sucks. :(

To win a soul, a person has to go inside the Imaginarium, and make the right choice. The Imaginarium gets "turned on" when Dr. Parnassus goes into a trance. The person walks through a broken mirror, and they are transported inside their own imagination. Eventually, they will come to a decision. One guy has to chose to either climb a giant mountain, or have drink in a pub. Another woman must chose between spending time in a motel room with Johnny Depp, or floating down a river to be awesome and dead like Princess Di. Four other guys have to chose between joining a violence-loving, cross-dressing police force or running home to mommy. It's weird. I don't quite get what it's supposed to be, but it seems like both decisions are based off of the same desire. One is just the easy way to get it, and the other is the hard way. It doesn't quite make sense, but one choice means Dr. Parnassus has won, and the other means the Devil has won. In the choices above, the "Dr. Parnassus" choice was climb the mountain, float down the river of death, and join the cross-dressing police force. If you choose the Devil's option, you explode inside the Imaginarium, and are presumably dead. If you chose the Dr. Parnassus choice, you get to come out of the Imaginarium on a leafy swing, feeling pure bliss, having been "reborn."

Choose the river of death or get blown up!

So right before the devil makes this new bet, the Dr. Parnassus crew (Valentina, a midget, and some other guy named Anton) "rescues" a guy named Tony - Heath Ledger's character. They find him hanging from a bridge. He claims to not know who he is, but he's lying. He tags along to help them get five more souls, though I'm not sure why. He says it's to repay them for saving his life, but I think he was just using them to hide out. He charms some women into the Imaginarium, and goes in with them to help them make the right "Dr. Parnassus" choice. He eventually gets recognized by the people that tried to kill him in the first place, and runs into the Imaginarium to hide. Inside his own imagination, he's amazed by what seems possible in there. He loses the four guys chasing him (they all run home to mommy and get blown up), but has to leave before he gets to make his choice.

Step inside. I swear I won't kill you.

It's finally Valentina's birthday. The Devil and Parnassus have each won four people when Valentina finally learns what's going on. She runs away in anger. Meanwhile, Tony offers to go into the Imaginarium to be the fifth soul Parnassus needs to win the bet. As he's about to go inside, Valentina returns, very very angry. Tony convinces her to go into his imagination with him, saying they can run away and just live there forever. She agrees, despite Anton's protests that Tony is a liar. (Oh yeah, Anton found a piece of newspaper that explained who Tony really was: the chairman of a charity that was selling orphans or something. I'm not exactly sure, I thought I heard "organs," but Jill insists he said "orphans." Either way, orphans were involved. I'm just not sure if they were being harvested for organs, or sold whole. Either way: Tony = bad guy.) While in the Imaginarium, Valentina finds out the truth about Tony. She runs away, meets the Devil and comes to her choice. Still mad at her dad, she chooses the Devil's choice out of spite.

I'm tricksy and false.

Parnassus is devastated. The Devil offers to make one more bet: if Parnassus can kill Tony, he'll give him his daughter back. Tony is being chased by an angry mob. Parnassus catches up with him, and finds out how he's survived the previous hanging- he put a pipe down his throat to prevent strangling. Tony tries to explain to Parnassus that the Devil was just tricking him, that Valentina couldn't count as the fifth soul since she was the prize, and if he helps him get away, he'll pick the correct "Dr. Parnassus" choice and Valentina will be saved. Dr. Parnassus doesn't listen and helps the mob finally succeed in killing him. The Devil shows up and tells Dr. Parnassus that he doesn't know where his daughter is. He says he never really had her in the first place.

It's many years later. Dr. Parnassus is sad, and still old. He's begging for money and someone that looks like Valentina drops some money in his cup. He follows her and sees she married Anton and has a daughter. He doesn't interfere, and with his midget friend, decides to sell puppet shows on the street. The end.

Not going to lie. This movie was little bit crazy pants.

Questions:
What was the Devil? He was clearly Parnassus's adversary, but he wasn't necessarily "evil." Jill thinks he was just indifference. I think he represented something closer to realism, or cynicism. A world without imagination, or faith, or story. The "Dr. Parnassus" choices (for the most part), seemed to involve a great sacrifice for something greater than yourself. For an ideal that you valued. And the "Devil" choice was the quick easy way to get a cheap imitation of that ideal.

What was Valentina's choice? Valentina chose the Devil in the end. Valentina's choice was between a door that said "his" and a door that said "hers." She clearly went through the Devil's door ("his"). When she went through, the Devil said, "Damn. I've won." But she wasn't blown up, and the Devil told Parnassus he never really had her. Did she not really make her choice? Did it not count? She left the world of Dr. Parnassus for the real world. But then, that real family-life always was her ideal dream, her imagination.

What was Health Ledger's character supposed to be? The movie played up his huge significance -- the cards don't lie, the hanging man, etc. -- but he ended up being largely inconsequential. He did help drive parts of the story, but he didn't mean anything to it. The story had nothing to do with him, he just happened to be there for most of it.

Overall impressions:
I think I liked it. It was beautifully made and well-acted, but I was never sure what was at stake, or why it was so important for Dr. Parnassus to win. It wasn't difficult to be entertained by what was happening, but it was hard to be really invested.

Pure wild animal craziness

I just saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox last night. It looks very much like a Wes Anderson movie with the book cover title cards, the bright colors, and the dollhouse side views of elaborate sets. I couldn't help but compare it to Where the Wild Things Are, another child's book adaptation uniquely rendered and meant just as much for adults as children. Fantastic Mr. Fox was much better. Maybe partially because it didn't have all the hyped-up expectations, but I enjoyed watching it much more. A character will have a mid-life-crisis-like out loud pondering, and then tear into his food like a wild animal. This movie isn't going to make you cry, but it's full of poignant moments of authenticity alongside scenes of hilarious random absurdity. The kids in the audience seemed to like it just as much as the adults. Kids or no, you should check this movie out.

The undead billionaire's virgin bride

I can't decide if I should call myself a Twilight fan. I like making fun of it A LOT. Can that be considered a fan? I'm definitely not a fan of the books, I read the first one and that was enough of that forever. But of the pop-culture phenomenon, I think I'd have to consider myself a fan. Like this video...



...how is that not awesome?

Speaking of the Twilight phenomenon, I have a semi-related rant after reading opinions of several Twilight-haters. (Here is one example, but most of the teeth gnashing I come across is done in message boards and blog post comments. Here's a small offensive sampling.) I get a little annoyed at the excessive hand wringing done over the "bad message for teenage girls" thing. It isn't the best message for girls, I agree. But I don't see nearly the same level of pearl-clutching done for the billions of things out there that are a bad message for teenage boys. Rap music, violent video games, unrealistic expectations of female beauty, Megan Fox... there are plenty of negative media influences out there polluting our teenage boys. Sure, there is some hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, but not like there is for Twilight. No one thinks the Transformers movie spells doom for our civilization.

This bothers me because the disproportionate response over Twilight suggests that teenage girls are less able to handle negative influences than boys. That their delicate girly minds aren't strong enough to be exposed to Twilight and reasonably deduce that a book about vampires is different than real life. Maybe the negative reaction to Twilight is the appropriate response and we're selling our teenage boys short, but either way, it annoys me. Let girls have their escapist fantasy. If they can't come out of it unscathed, then they had problems before reading Twilight. Let's not blame the crappy books. Mercilessly mock them instead. It's way more fun.

SNL Digital Shorts I Like

Because I was talking about them at work, and thought it would be nice to have them all in one place.

On the ground! This is endlessly quoted by me and Jill. Because we are adults!


I'm on a boat!


and finally....People Getting Punched Right Before Eating. It's exactly like it sounds, plus zombies.

Lard, mustache, huge, little, head is ice cream

I just caught up on Community this weekend. It is so hilarious. I keep forgetting how hilarious it really is. Why must all good shows be on at 7 pm on Thursdays?! At least there's Hulu.com. I missed episode 3 because I'm too slow. I guess now I'll have to buy it on dvd.

Here is a remix of a couple of this show's most hilarious clips. It's hilariousness will bite your face off.



(Hilarious count: 4. It really is that funny.)

Some of the music I like

Here are some videos of music I like that I found through Pandora or emo tv shows.

"Closer" by Kings of Leon


"Fidelity" by Regina Spektor


"My Skin" by Natalie Merchant


"Buttons" by The Weeks


"Lazy Eye" by Silversun Pickups

Sunshine

After watching Slumdog Millionaire and realizing that it was directed by the same guy that made 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle), I wanted to watch other movies he had made.

So I started with Trainspotting. My first mistake was trying to eat dinner while watching the movie. I'm trying to think of the least crude way to describe the point at which I decided to turn it off, but I can't. It involves poop, and it's about ten minutes into the movie. It may be the best film ever made, but I just don't have the stomach for it.

Next Danny Boyle movie on my Netflix queue: The Beach. I was a little wary of this one. I remember seeing it advertised when it was in theaters, and specifically remembering that it looked stupid. I figured that at the very least it had Leonardo DiCaprio, so watching it couldn't be a total loss. I got through the whole movie this time, but it really bothered me. DiCaprio's character (Richard), is this spoiled rich kid in search of "meaningful life experience," but he ends up completely destroying just about everything he comes in contact with. He never seems to come away with any kind epiphany. He is responsible for the death of several people, wrecks at least two relationships, and destroys an entire society that had existed for 5 years. And at the end of it all, he's sitting in some internet cafe looking at pictures from the whole experience as if he's reminiscing about summer camp. Maybe his character's toxic superficiality was the whole point, but it didn't feel like the movie was in on it--like Richard was still the unironic hero of the movie.

So then Sunshine came in the mail, and I let it sit on the shelf for a while. I wasn't sure I was up for another Danny Boyle movie. Jill and I finally watched it a couple of nights ago. It gets a little weird at the end, but we both loved it. I love sci-fi thrillers. There were a couple of plot points I wanted explained a little more; Jill and I worked some things out in our post-movie discussion, but I think I would have liked to know if we were right. I don't need a movie to spell out every little thing, but in this case I would have liked a few more pieces of the puzzle. I'm being vague on purpose, because if you haven't seen this movie, I think you should. At least watch the trailer.



Also: When I become ruler of universe, I will decree that every movie cast Cillian Murphy, preferably as the lead. And every movie trailer must incorporate that song, somehow.

Prank Wars: How to kill about half an hour at work

This is latest video hilarity I discovered during my regular 3 am Sunday night insomnia. If you don't have headphones, these aren't safe for work. Even if you do have headphones, you'll start laughing which isn't safe for work either. View at your own risk. ;)

Here are a series of escalating pranks between two co-workers (Amir and Streeter) at collegehumor.com. Start from the bottom and go up.

How real girls would react to Edward

Ok, so some girls would probably react just like Bella. I'd just like to think that most girls would react more like Buffy.

Jim! You don't ask the Almighty for his ID!

I'm still watching the Star Trek movies in order, and must say that out of all the odd-numbered (bad) Star Trek movies, Star Trek 5 is by far the most hilarious.

Highlights:

• Spock's rocket boots and heroic mid-air handstand
• Attack of the three-breasted catwoman
• Uhura dancing with an oversized feather fan on top of a sand dune, while dressed as a Vegas showgirl (She was distracting a bunch of bald bed-sheet wearing aliens so Kirk and crew could steal their horses. I'm sure it was all standard procedure.)
• God's laser eyes
• The man-eating Stonehenge that ate Spock's brother (uh...spoiler alert)

If you're in the mood for a so-bad-it's-good movie, definitely check out Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier.

Wow. Trailers have certainly evolved. It's amazing anyone ever went to movies with trailers like that.

In Extremely Slow Motion

I can't wait for Watchmen, March 6. It's my (2-day early) birthday present, from me to me. Well, from Jill to me, she did buy the tickets. But you should always try to quote Scrubs whenever possible.

While I'm sure the movie will be awesome, it could never be as awesome as this trailer promises. But then anything without Tobias can never reach perfect awesome-ness.

You have elected the way of pain!

I'm getting my wisdom teeth out this afternoon. :(



Luckily, my dentist seems nicer than that one.

Some things that should not have been forgotten

Like the orange that sings Carmen, from Sesame Street.

Need some motivation?

I remember crying during way too many of these moments.



"They may take our lives, but they'll never take our Independence Day!" [Insert Free Willy epic jumping here.] The last 15 seconds are the best.

Oh YEAH!!

I spent way too much time last night cruising youtube, watching clips from classic kid's tv. I've seen enough clips from Yo Gabba Gabba on The Soup to realize that kids tv today is still just as creepy, but nothing is ever as good as what you watched as a kid. It's fun, hilarious, and somewhat unsettling (in a good way) to rewatch the songs and images that had been burned into my developing brain over 20 years ago.

I kept watching this one over and over again. It's still just as entertaining now (if not more so) than it was when I was 5. Classic Sesame Street rules.



It that doesn't make you happy, nothing will.