Why you didn’t see it: Because almost every exposé of the food industry ends up telling you to go vegan, and who needs that? Meat and cheese are delicious!
Why you should: Because this one doesn’t. Finally, a truly fair and balanced look at the food industry that yes, dings factory farming for its flaws and overreliance on antibiotics, but also tells you that it’s OK to eat meat if you’re smart about it, and…praises Walmart? C’mon. You have to see that to believe it.
It saddens me to say that I’m less interested in music now than I’ve ever been. Music used to inspire me. And I used to discover good new stuff thanks to MTV, which at one point played music most of the day. Nowadays I see them talking about making an original comedy series to try and lure viewers back, and I’m thinking, “why not play music again”?
And concerts are expensive as all hell – I remember shelling out what seemed like a massive $32 to see Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, and Motorhead at the Coliseum. Nowadays, good luck even seeing one decent act for that.
All of which is preamble to the fact that I was reading the LA Weekly over lunch yesterday, and saw that A-ha were coming to town.
Though I hope most of you at this point know to go to eonline.com every Friday to check out my stuff, and possibly geekweek.com too, I know some of you don’t want to have to keep track. So here’s a round-up of stuff I’ve done recently. Click the headers to go to the full article:
But first off: what is up with KFC’s menu these days? It’s cluttered with pictures, presumably for the benefit of the ever-growing population of Illiterate-Americans, but it makes it very difficult to find exactly what you want, since everything’s all thrown up together like a scrapbook from hell. Such is the reason why I assumed the smallest offering of the wings was the 10-piece, for 7.99. I grumbled: too much. Would rather some variety, like 5 grilled and 5 hot. Only when I got my food did I see on the placemat a coupon for a combo featuring 5 Fiery Grilled Wings and a drink for 5 bucks. I’d swear to you that it was not anywhere to be found on the wall menu, except that I couldn’t even swear that Amelia Earhart’s corpse wasn’t somewhere on the wall menu, hidden within distracting clusters of percolating poultry parts.
Charming twentysomething English actress Carey Mulligan gives a charming, breakthrough performance as Jenny, a teenager in 1960s England who must choose between the stuffiness of formal education, or the education in life that a charming older man (Peter Sarsgaard) can offer her. The script, by author Nick Hornby (About a Boy, Fever Pitch) is quite good, too.
FROZEN is more solid, no pun intended, but right off the bat, Green does something that makes it very hard for me to take things seriously – he names the two main characters after some of his famous friends. Now, maybe he figured that since this is a more dramatic thriller than straight horror, it’ll play to mainstream audiences who don’t know their low-budget horror celebrities. And yeah, WRONG TURN 2 director Joe Lynch has a pretty common name, so if that were as far as it went, I could give that a pass. But horror journalist Spooky Dan Walker doesn’t. Yes, the character is only named Dan Walker, but there’s honest-to-god a moment when his friend turns to him and goes, “That’s kinda spooky, Dan.”
If you were to take From Paris with Love seriously, it’d be easy to be offended by its portrayal of women, minorities, Muslims, Asians, and anyone who isn’t a big, loud American a-hole with a gun (i.e. John Travolta). Fortunately, it’s nigh-impossible to take the movie seriously, so just enjoy the destruction.
From sensitive, boring director Lasse Hallstrom (The Shipping News, An Unfinished Life) comes a love story featuring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried as the two most perfect people ever. This is undeniably appealing at first, no matter which lead you find more attractive, but a horribly contrived third act displaces our empathy with its conveniences.
This one was inspired by my spoiler-heavy defense of HALLOWEEN II and some colleagues’ response to my response. Here’s a portion of it:
I could just listen to Zombie’s commentary, but I’m not sure I want to. Because if I like and appreciate a movie in a particular way, do I really want the director telling me I am flat-out wrong? Especially a director like Rob Zombie, who has generally shown little patience for introspection?…
On the other end of the scale, you have someone like Quentin Tarantino who, while willing to talk incessantly, is determined to keep some things up for grabs. Any time he’s asked what’s in the briefcase in PULP FICTION, or what the title of RESERVOIR DOGS actually means, his general answer has been some variation on, “Whatever you think the right answer is, that’s it.”
Then there’s David Lynch, who draws directly from his subconscious, and in some cases probably could not tell you what his intended meaning is even if he wanted to – but it’s clear he doesn’t want to. Lynch doesn’t do commentaries, and even though there is a long interview with him on the ERASERHEAD disc, little to none of it deals with the actual content and story of the film.
But Lynch also has given us one of the perfect examples of perception versus intent in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, a movie that topped many critics’ best-of-decade lists. MULHOLLAND DRIVE was intended as a TV pilot, designed to pay off over the course of at least one season. When that didn’t happen, Lynch added an additional half-hour or so of ultra-weird and definitely unsafe-for-network-TV material to the pilot to finish it off as a movie. Anyone knowing anything about the process by which the movie came to be would have to concede that it was not originally intended to have the “ending” (one hates to say “third act” in a movie so probably out-of-sequence) that it did.
Sirloin steak, they say. Not exactly, says I…but the irony is a name-change might actually benefit the product. Because this beef tastes a lot like the thin, tender slices commonly found on skewers in the form of Thai satays. Calling it satay would potentially create cultural confusion in a “Mexican” establishment, but it’s close to the truth.
If you’re like me, you’re burned out on the usage of “marinated” in any fast food descriptor — everything is described that way, and the word has become meaningless. This, however, tastes like something that actually has been marinated. Wonders will never cease.
As to whether they grill it like their chicken, I admit to not actually having seen it on the grill at either of the EPL establishments I visited lately. Doesn’t mean they’re lying, but I don’t know for certain if this is cooked fresh or just reheated. No matter. The taste is good.
It figures that the one weekend I’m all booked up, this happens. I’ve been wanting a wrestling convention to come here for a while, and they choose to do it on Royal Rumble weekend? I guess we can figure out who the Rumble surprise entrants WON’T be.
Anyway, for those who’ve always wanted to meet, greet, and take pictures with various legends of the ring — including Rob Van Dam, Iron Sheik, The Great Muta, Demolition, Road Warrior Animal…and apparently even Bret Hart — the show is going on all weekend at the LAX Hilton. A live show by Ring of Honor (the real-life promotion Mickey Rourke appeared in at the end of THE WRESTLER) is part of the festivities.
Sounds worth checking out. I wish it were on a less busy weekend for me.
In film school, one of the first things you learn about putting together the sound for your celluloid project is that you can never have “no sound.” Even “silence” sounds like something; if you literally put nothing on the soundtrack, it will sound like the speakers have failed, and the audience will be taken out of the movie. This is where a little thing called “room tone” comes in: the sound, such as it is, of an empty room. On most interior film shoots, the sound person will simply ask for absolute quiet on the set, and record the results.
I mention this because 7 DAYS gives great room tone. There’s no music in the film, and much of it takes place in nearly empty interiors. I found myself noticing the room tone above all else, which may be a testament to the sound guy, but it’s also a testament to how engrossing some other aspects of the movie aren’t.
Part of the new Sundance Select series, which will be playing certain Sundance movies from this year on-demand, starting the day after they play Sundance, and continuing for 60 days after that, 7 DAYS (whose French title translates directly as “7 days of retaliation”) may seem on the surface to be part of the whole new wave of French ultraviolent horror, a la MARTYRS, FRONTIERS, INSIDE, etc. But it isn’t – first off, because it’s not French, but Quebecois. And second, even though it does depict realistic acts of brutal violence, the movie almost seems to be too embarrassed to be a horror movie, though it’s written by Patrick Senecal (apparently known as the Stephen King of Canada) from his own novel. Director Daniel Grou, who uses the pseudonym “Podz” for some reason I wasn’t able to discern with a quick Google search, is trying for something much more serious and artsy…but his reach exceeds his grasp.
Now, can you make an argument that hey, Bram Stoker’s original DRACULA featured some stupid and arbitrary rules too? Yes, I’ll give you that you could: there is no decent explanation given as to why Dracula cannot cross running water, save old superstitions about demons. We give Stoker a pass on that because the vampire iconography was still being developed, and because back then superstitions still ruled the day…it was the 19th century, remember. But once the rules are established, they are consistent and followed.
Which brings us to our other fanboy examples: are TRANSFORMERS and SAW as stupid in their own way as TWILIGHT is in its? I am biased as a fan of both, but I’m gonna try to look at it as objectively as possible.
TRANSFORMERS – which we will use here to refer only to the Michael Bay movies, though certainly the property is a lot bigger than that – is, first off, pretty much DESPISED by fanboys. Don’t believe me? Read any AICN talkback on the matter, or ask Devin Faraci. Viewers of the old cartoons cannot stand that Optimus Prime now has flames painted on, or that Devastator has two giant wrecking balls hanging from his crotch area…not that the old cartoons didn’t feature massive contradictions to begin with, as they were just there to sell toys. The people who go to these are mainstream moviegoers, much more so than self-proclaimed geeks.
I’m disabling comments here, because I want you to comment there. Go read the rest.
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