Went to see some random flick, and saw the trailer for the new Coen bros movie, Intolerable Cruelty. Judging from the trailer, the movie looks absolutely terrible.

This French site has longer clips from the movie. Which clips make it seem slightly less awful. So enjoy the great Coen bros sellout!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's blues, folk and country, and rock like a rolling stone and all that bullshit.

I just spent way too much time working on some retarded shit for a retarded webpage about a (not very retarded) band...3 hours of transcribing, annotating, figuring out chords and different ways of writing "more noise effects" and then I get hooked into reading this fucking pitchfork article about the top 50 records found in music bins.

Except, of course, it's not about that, it's about examining in microscopic fucking detail every misstep of the great 90's alternative sellout. I fucking hate this shit.

OK, so there's tons of recorded music out there, covering all sorts of genres. And I'm not talking, "oh, there's emocore and also c86 and powerpop," I mean there are whole fucking continents of music out there with long, rich histories. You see, not only are there countries outside of the fucking US and UK, but there also was music before 1991...heck, before 1970, even! Millennia of that shit, all over the fucking world.

These pitchfork fuckers beat one fucking horse to death, the tiniest of tiny puddles formed to the side of the big ol' blues/rock river...going back as far in time as 199 fucking 1, lauding that fucking nirvana suicide as the one true genius...

Well, it bothers me. It's what's always bothered me about the music scene. It's all about the fucking scene, about making and enforcing norms amongst a very particular peer group, whoever is fucking down with the scene. What you like and dislike is a signifier of group participation, meant to exclude huge chunks of people. It's in no way about the music, it's all about fucking fashion. They're a bunch of fucking heathers, the whole lot of the fuckers.

Think fucking pavement is so fucking revolutionary? Go listen to some fucking Harry Partch, that shit'll make your fucking mild melt it's so fucking different. Better yet, go listen to some fucking Arab music, or some fucking Chinese music. That shit is made up of notes that literally do not exist in any of the fucking music you namecheck, you rotten slice of donkey fuck.

Yeah, that's right, fucko, pavement and nirvana and i don't care who the fuck else you want to name...all of em used (at most) twelve fucking notes. The same twelve fucking notes. Not everybody on the planet, though, has used those same fuckers for all of history. While your busy with your fucking emocore and shoegazing bullshit, all shit that, in the big picture, is essentially the same, there're fuckers out there making music in a totally different fucking language than all those shitty Washington, DC bands. Or Oklahoma bands. Or Whereever-in-the-US-or-UK of the week bands. You fucking suck.

Sorry, I just had to vent about that. I just get frustrated reading this stuff. I'd like to find out about interesting new music, or really about the best bands and songs that are out there in the various scenes, yet so much of what I read falls into either the categories of bitchiness (which I understand can be funny and therefore attract readers) or scene-chat. I've seen more variations on the label "emo" than I have the names of actual "emo" bands, by an incredibly significant factor. I couldn't name you a single "emo" band off the top of my head.

I'm not proud of that fact, by the way. I like to listen to all types of music, and new styles are interesting to me. But this gets to the real heart of my complaint. The writers for such publications are clearly knowledgable folks. They know a lot about the scenes I'm talking about. I would love to read some intelligent, witty writing about musicians that I don't know, about styles that I haven't heard. I'd love to soak up the new ideas and hear cool new records. Music is an incredibly broad category, and there's more there to hear than anyone could in a lifetime. When I read these articles, instead of being inspired to go listen to some neat record that I didn't know about, I feel shamed for liking what the author despises.

I like to learn about music, and a part of learning is the willingness to try different things. placet experiri and all that. Tastes being what they are, inevitably you're going to find you like something that someone else doesn't like, or vice versa. By creating an atmosphere of paranoia regarding music through snark and snobbishness, you make those mistakes crimes, and the desire to have fun, to try something new, is so much lessened.

And, you know, it wouldn't hurt to know more about music than just what happened in the death of the alternative scene in the 90's.

OK, I'm just being cranky, I guess. Bad mood after that work and all, but that fucking article dissed on New Order's Technique, which is just flat-out wrong.

Although I will give credit - Monster is a bad record, and rightfully took the number one spot. And the piece was very nice to Black Grape's It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah!, which is a very good record, I feel.

I can understand liking Dune. I can understand disliking the Bush administration. But, honestly, there are some things I just don't get.

Your FOXHOUND name is Solid Clam. Well, no, but I appreciate the sentiment.

is fucking great. Go see it. S'a horror flick, takes plot elements from some other great horror flix, like Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and throws em together pretty smartly and in what's got to be the best structured horror flick I've seen in some time. When it seems all over, it's really not. I mean, horror films go along in a pretty set structure, but this one doesn't - just when you think you're heading through the end of the flick, you get a great Shining reference (and, for once, it's not a creepy psycho kid! Woo hoo!) and it keeps on going like a fuckin champion.

It's very, very funny, the characters have some really good dialogue. The best dude is probably the asshole jock guy, who goes out to the cabin with his friends, and then takes out a rifle, explaining that he's going to shoot squirrels. Why? "Because they're gay." When the others object that this makes no sense, he replies, "Look, gay or straight - it doesn't matter to me. I'm still going to annihiliate the motherfuckers." This movie is funny enough to be worth seeing as a comedy, but please do stay for the horror movie parts, which, while pretty gruesome, are quite good themselves.

28 Days Later was an exercise in counting horror movie references. Cabin Fever is probably even more derivative, but so fucking funny and inventive it's a delight to spot em. Go see it, it's great.

Oh my god does Once Upon a Time in Mexico suck ass. The action is horribly confused and confusing. Sequences blur, devoid of context. Several gunfights consist of a lone gunman standing as out in the open as possible, against an army of hidden assassins which he promptly defeats through his deft strategy of walking forward, slowly, into oncoming fire with his arms spread wide and pouting effeminately. One of the gunfights turns into a motocross rally over cactuses. The plot, epic in scope and hyperactive in execution, offers little in the way of coherent storytelling or compelling characters. Instead, we have jokey sketches of characters with one sentence motivations. Each actor does well, with the possible exceptions of Cheech "I stabbed Chong in the fucking back" Marin, Enrique Iglesias, and the oddly girlish Antonio Banderas. Selma Hayek is fucking awesome, despite being relegated to flashbacks.

The film is supposedly RR's homage to Sergio Leone. It does feature several plot threads of characters with clear stories and motivations, but lacks all the subtlety, grace, and careful pacing. The story also and inexplicably changes from a tale of delayed revenge to one of Mexican pride. There are perhaps two to three (potentially quite interesting) movies uncomfortably crammed in here and presented with as brashly and annoyingly as possible. The advantage claimed to shooting on video is its speed in filming and editing, requiring little of the elaborate planning necessary for filming analog. Having seen the results, I think this is time that ought to be spent.

While on the western tip, if you haven't picked up Air/Baricco's City Reading, do so immediately. It's really good. Air are the real deal. You really do have to pay attention to the record. I recommend taking the time to listen to the disc while reading the English translation. I have Latin and French under my belt, and from what I can tell, the translation is pretty much line by line. If you have any Romance language experience, you should be able to follow the Italian pretty closely. Once you've done this, you'll have the basic stories in your head and can listen again and again, letting your hazy memories of the tales mix with the gorgeous soundtrack and Baricco's tasty reading. I've listened to this disc over and over.

Pitchfork reviewed it and said, basically, "I don't know no italian, this is a fucking book on tape. fukit." What an ass. There's also something known as talking blues, you fucking ignorant jackass. Oh, but there's plenty of time to mention Looper in one of indie music's most annoying tradition - the fucking name drop. If one spent more time in concentration and thought and less in yanking your indie rock trivia cock, perhaps you could write something worth reading, you lazy cunt.

Just like fucking george bush, "ooo-I'm so proud that I'm stupid and lazy!" Fucking dickmonkey.

Thank you, I'm finished venting now.

I drove out to the Rocket Bar to see Essex Green tonight. Essex Green are 60's style pop band, their first record was released through Elephant 6. It was a good show. Before EG played, there was this heavy alterna band playing - very heavy metal, screaming, etc. very crap. Anyway, when the band was over, a dude tapped me on the shoulder and asked to bum a smoke. Turns out that this was the drummer for Essex Green. Extremely fucking cute, I must say. I think that I was a bit offensive, unfortunately, because instead of asking his name, I asked who he was. Alas. We bitched a bit about the shitty opening band. Essex Green went on and were really good, they sounded dope, extremely pretty music. On a personal note, the "who are you" incident aside (what can I say, I'm an asshole), I felt pretty good about being there. A testament to paxil, I guess. Normally, I would be sweating and nervous about being there, afraid that people were looking at me and thinking I'm awful and such, and this would just snowball into nervousness and panic. But I didn't really feel that way until the show was over, when I felt very self-consciously alone. Of course, I had had a coupla beers at this point. Anyway, the whole show was a hoot, the band is tight and there wasn't a moment of music that left me wanting. I only wish that people danced as opposed to standing around. Amit tells me that the Rocket Bar is the indie rock bar. I didn't recognize anybody on their upcoming shows list, but that means exactly dick. Anyway, peace out.

Here's an article about what Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel's up to these days.

9/16/03 - update - fixed the link, it now points to the article in creative loafing's archive.

Recently I rented My Life as a Dog. I watched maybe 40 minutes of it, got thoroughly bored by its "My interesting life as a Swedish boy" plotline, went out to smoke a cigarette and never finished the movie. Honestly, if you're going to do a movie about adolescence, have something happen for chrissake.

Now Kids, that was a movie that had some shit going down. A bunch of 12 year olds getting high and fucking. That's entertainment, dammit. Harmony Korine wrote the screenplay, Larry Clark directed. Both went on to do more movies about the young'ns, and those actually tended to be better, pretty much because sex and drugs was the only thing that happened in Kids, and it really just felt like porn - all shock and nothing else.

So there's a flick out now called Thirteen which is kinda similar. It's about a 13 year old girl who hangs out with the wrong crowd, starts stealing, doing drugs, getting laid...all in all, having a helluva time. Unlike Kids, Thirteen focuses on one person, making a much more coherent and watchable film. The film also has several nice scenes of manipulation on the girls' parts (jesus, they were just plain nasty to the mother, played by Holly Hunter). Anyway, the movie was cowritten by a chick in the movie, who based the story on her life. It's well worth watching.

So what's Larry Clark been up to? Wondering this myself, I flipped through the imdb to find that he had done an interesting little film called Teenage Caveman. Yes, you read that right. Larry Clark directed a remake of Teenage Caveman. Now, I've seen the original on mst3k, and it's pretty fucking bad, so I of course ran out and rented this one right away. Larry even has a little cameo at the beginning. The film starts out fairly faithful to the original, but since this is a Larry Clark film, about halfway through all the kids get naked, do coke, and fuck in a massive orgy. Only, because this is a horror film, they then blow up. Literally. The only actor (other than Mr. Clark) that I recognized in the flick was the guy who played the douchebag in 10 Things I Hate about You - Mr. Black Shirt/White Shirt. This film was extremely entertaining, though I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's good.

And finally, I just watched John Carpenter's Christine. Not bad, the guy who plays the buddy in the movie grew up to make Blue Crush (I did not know this prior to renting the film). It's a pretty good thriller and it looks fucking a plus. Wonderful camerawork.

So there you fucking have it, another fucking set of fucking movies.

Ringu is a lot like The Ring. They're both based on a book, but the Japanese version invented some plot points which The Ring kept. The US Ring also nabbed some color choices, set designs, and camera setups from Ringu. Ringu focuses more on the supposed psychic powers of the girl and her parents. In fact, whereas the spooky backstory of Ringu deals largely with psychic powers, the US Ring jettisons most of this, its only concession to the possibility of ESP a semi-psychic little kid a la The Sixth Sense, itself a one note ripoff of The Shining. Ringu has a college professor who has some psychic sensibility and who boasts of his ESP awareness. Which is fucking retarded, of course, but hey. The American film, since it dumps most of the Japanese backstory, instead invents an elaborate tale of child abuse to fill out the story of the evil videotape. What this says about American psychology is left as an exercise for the reader. I offer only this: Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.

Blue Crush is a cool surfing movie. Man, that surfing looks cool. Oh, and there's an apple used by a 14 year old for smoking herb. And that surfing looks great. Nowhere does the movie use the Beach Boys song "Little Surfer Girl," but I can excuse that. Nice surfing scenes.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 - Not as good as the first, very different in tone. It's a lot more of a comedy, this one. Dennis Hopper is the uncle of two of the kids from the first film, and he's out for justice, which means that, once he finds the killers, he buys a few chainsaws, puts on an ammo belt holding extra chains, and goes after the cannibal clan. Some notable points - the opening kill is of two yuppie dudes drinking and shooting out road signs as they speed down the highway in a convertable with the license plate "FAH Q." This is my favorite joke in the movie. The main thematic advancement over part 1 has Leatherface falling in love with the female victim. He performs a perverse little courtship ritual with her which is quite amusing - he cuts off the face of her coworker, makes her wear his face and cowboy hat as they line dance. This film is probably the finest Golan-Globus film I've ever seen, but I think that I've only ever seen other Golan-Globus films on MST3K. Anyway, TCM2 was directed by Tobe Hooper, is pretty good, but not as good as the original, which is a very different type of film - much scarier.

The Kid Stays in the Picture - Robert Evans produced a bunch of films for Paramount in the 70's, including Love Story, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Godfather. Eventually got busted for coke, had some hard times, came back to film production to a mixed record (Sliver and Jade are two of his), wrote a book that people found entertaining, and then they went and made a documentary-ish film out of it. The thing is essentially Evans reading his book while slightly animated still pictures move across the screen. It's basically a Flash movie. Very much like those Salon tv commercials back in the day, where they used pictures of famous people and scooted them around the screen. Howard Stern was one of them. Anyway, shitty film in the "film" sense of the word, but Evans has enough charm to make it entertaining. His book is probably better. Best is probably the audiobook reading he did of it, which was supposed to be quite popular in certain circles.

Beyond the Mat - I had thought this was a WWF-approved wankfest and so avoided it, but now that I've seen it I know it's not and it's pretty good. Well, in the "film" sense, it's kinda shitty and has this retarded 1st person perspective from the filmmaker's POV...."Gee, I loved wrestling as a kid and I love it today, let's all go watch this film I make about it!" Not surprisingly, El Douchebag here is a writer. Anyway, the film transcends this by virtue of the wacky characters in wrestling. By far the best is the crack-addicted Jake The Snake who has a tearful (for the audience and the participants) reunion with his daughter on screen, from which he recovers by...you guessed it...smoking crack! Intriguing guy.