Review-ish miscellany
I’ve been either too busy or not inspired enough to post anything of substance over the last couple of weeks, but my media consumption has continued unabated. So here’s a summary of some of what I’ve been experiencing:
Fang Island (Self-titled album). I downloaded this off of itunes after Zach and I saw this Brooklyn-based happy metal machine open for Red Sparowes in Sacramento a couple of months back. There’s something both heartwarming and ludicrous about this quintet, which aptly describes their music as “the sound of everybody high-fiving each other.” While Fang Island on record is good, they are even more of a beer-swilling, head-banging, vocal-harmonizing guitar-soloing juggernaut live. Like Styx for hipsters…in a good way. Fang Island provided a welcome palate cleanser at the Red Sparowes show by essentially bursting the bubble of avant metal humorlessness. Also, the whole band is originally from Rhode Island and one of the guys in the band used to work at this great video rental place in Providence.
Battlestar Gallactica (the first three or so seasons of the series). Holy Lords of Kobol is Battlestar Gallactica good! Sci-fi of the highbrow/refracted mirror kind, and amazingly great considering the poor quality of its source material. Plus, Edward James Olmos literally captains the ship as Commander Bill Adama, who is about as stoic as they come, but isn’t above punching his son in the gut while sparring in the gym. BSG has all of The Next Generation’s high seriousness without its sometimes cloying moral clarity, and tackles a series of topical issues including torture, electoral politics, civilian command of the military, and journalistic ethics. And the character development is great.
Inception. Roaring Shark West Coast saw Chris Nolan’s latest exercise in self-serious conceptual weirdness a couple of nights ago. I had heard some devastatingly bad reviews of this movie, so I went in with low expectations, and was consequently pleased. The plot is ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining, though it annoyingly manages to recycle a whole lot of Freud, whose theories on identity projection, the subconsciousness, totems, etc. are ransacked for the purpose of making art (or artiness). The sets are predictably elegant and the cinematography clean, though my favorite part of the movie involves what can only be described as Nolan getting his way with a big budget and inserting a protracted ski and snowmobile-based battle in an alpine forest. This is probably the closest I’ve ever seen Nolan get to goofy humor. Nolan brings out his repertory company for this one – Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and, oh yeah, Michael Caine show up for the dreamy madness.
July 28th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
yeah i’ve been thinking about inception off and on lately. on the one hand i think yeah it’s ridiculous and the plot has holes you could fly a plane through. but on the other hand like you say it’s at least trying to make some kind of statement (even if it is 2am stoner philosophy) – and the simple fact that it’s very entertaining is something i find more and more respect for.
in other words, i think if you wanted to hate this movie you could find ample reasons to do so, but i also think it’s too cheap and easy to dismiss it for its faults while ignoring its equally many virtues.
July 29th, 2010 at 12:42 am
I agree on all counts – “Inception” has a cool but ridiculous plot, it’s basically entertaining, and it makes an admirable attempt to ask philosophical questions even if the execution is rather stoner-ish, i.e. “Dude, is this like…a dream inside another dream?!” I think that if you’d like to hate a Christopher Nolan movie, I’d go with “The Dark Knight” (which on balance I like), since it suffers from all the same flaws as this film but takes itself even more seriously. Though relative to “Inception” I prefer the cinematography in “The Dark Knight” – there’s a certain stark quality that is lost in the lushness of the new movie. Also, I found the philosophical questions asked in “The Dark Knight” more interesting…but that’s probably because they had to do with ethics and political philosophy, as opposed to the subconscious and “what’s real…dude.”
On an unrelated note, the snow battle in “Inception” reminded me much more of the Tim Burton who directed the first Batman movie than Nolan’s “Batman Begins” or “The Dark Knight.”
July 29th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
gotta see Inception. i kept hearing, particularly on CHUD.com (where my favorite reviewer gave it a 10/10) and people in San Diego over the weekend, that it was a masterpiece and the best movie ever made, but then i read a review on the Factual Opinion last week where my second-favorite-reviewer lambasted it and the ensuing comment thread was really lukewarm on the film so now i’m not sure what i’m going to think. i’m not a big fan of Nolan at all so i have a feeling i’m not going to be all that into it. hehheh, stoner philosophy. i wish Michael Caine wasn’t in the movie, i can’t stand that guy.
Battlestar Galactica starts off great, i was really into it but it peters out toward the end in the final season and starts taking itself more and more seriously until it’s so stuffy and poker-faced that it becomes laughable (for me anyway). you’ll have to post a second review of it when you finish the series, Rob, i’m interested to hear what you think.
July 29th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
I gave up on bsg pretty early on. I think right when they began introducing the whole clone threat or whatever.
don’t know if I can watch a movie with ellen page
July 29th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
The casting of Ellen Page as a brilliant architecture student tasked with designing a virtual world was a bit interesting, but not nearly as odd as Shia LaBeauf’s seemingly endless string of leading roles – next up is the “Wall Street” sequel. What gives?
Mark and Ross: I’ll definitely write a Battlestar Gallactica post-mortem once we’re done with the series. We’re currently at the end of Season 3. [SPOILER ALERT...SORT OF] By the way, what’s the deal with the “fat Apollo” subplot?! It’s such a cheap gimmick to resort to having Apollo get all rolly-polly and giving Adama a mustache to denote the stress of a particularly tough few months and the general passage of time.
July 29th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Ellen Page a great casting choice imho. Mark do you just not like Ellen Page (i.e. can’t forgive her for Juno) or would you just be too distracted by her attractiveness to focus on the movie?
July 29th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
I’m just not into ellen page. I think it was the trailers for that ’smart people’ movie that turned me off
July 30th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
mark: haha! you weren’t kidding when you say you gave up on BSG after the “clone threat” or whatever, since that’s introduced in like THE SECOND EPISODE. XD
i’m with zach, as he probably knows, i think ellen page is awesome even if she’s in some crappy movies like Juno, but who isn’t.
July 30th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
hmmm, lol, I definitely watched past the second episode. probably saw the first few discs. the main thing that turned me was how you find out that boomer is one of the cylons, she was favorite character up to that point.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
hehheh.
that’s one of the most interesting things in the series, though Cylon Boomer doesn’t go anywhere, she sticks around and has a really cool storyline. my favorite character was the other Boomer who Helo meets on the Cylon planet in the beginning, she joins the humans even though she’s a cylon.
July 31st, 2010 at 4:32 pm
I’m not so much of a Boomer fan, probably because the crew was repeatedly suckered by her. I’d say my favorites are Starbuck and Adama, though Tom Zerak has a certain sleazy charm.
July 31st, 2010 at 5:58 pm
i think Adama is second for me, although i don’t enjoy his arc as much as Athena’s (“Boomer #2″ or whatever) because Adama’s loyalties are never in question, he’s always just a good guy and he doesn’t have to deal with any identity issues so there’s less intrigue there for me as there is in Athena’s struggles. but Edward Olmos has such a commanding, intense presence that i think without him the show would have fizzled or at least been a lot less compelling. he’s the only one on the show, for me anyway, that when he shows up on screen you can’t look away.
August 1st, 2010 at 11:06 am
Ross: I agree. I think that as far as acting goes, Edward James Olmos is definitely the best of the cast.