A Tale of Three Cities (Part 4): Insane City!

Miami! It's crazy! Well, it's all for the best in Dave Barry's "Insane City". It really must have taken him all of two minutes to come up with that title.  It's Miami, right? So he had to go with "Crazy City" or "Insane City." You ask me, he should have gone with Crazy City! Alliteration solves the situation. The book itself is basically "The Hangover" in Miami but I had a blast listening to it. (I heard it as an audiobook and I was that lunatic bursting into laughter in the middle of the Insane City because, hey, Dave Barry is saying funny things in my ears!)

A Tale of Three Cities (Part 3): Astro City!

So I've been revisiting Kurt Busiek's "Astro City." It is a pocket universe, it is a wonder, a place that one would like to live in, much nicer and much more real than Metropolis or Gotham. Health problems and commercial considerations kept Busiek and artist Brent Anderson away from the series for longer than most fans liked. But their hearts were always there. I hear there's a movie in the works. I will watch. And OH, those Alex Ross covers!!!

A Tale of Three Cities (Part 2): "Whores' Glory"

Here are three more cities, stripped of glamour, reduced to unsatisfying carnal transactions on the fringes of the night.

Bangkok, Thailand. Faridpur, Bangladesh. Reynosa, Mexico.

"Whores' Glory" is a marvel of a documentary. I can't even imagine how Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger managed to infiltrate the secrecy of prostitution in those places, but this a voyeuristic treat. Oh, not in the ways you think: two of the three stories in this tryptich have absolutely no sex or nudity. When we finally do observe the sex itself in the third act, it is hard to imagine anything less erotic. This is what the cinema does best: it's not so much about escaping reality, but about EXPANDING your reality. Here's something you haven't seen, an aspect of human experience that you're lucky to avoid in your everyday life, but foolish to ignore.

And you come out a  better, more compassionate person for getting a glimpse of what it's like to be a dolled-up girl behind the glass of a Bangkok sex shop (it sorta sucks, but I think I could deal optimistically, maybe get a cute cell phone out of it):

Or a crack-addicted Mexican whore monotonously bored by a shy worker who just wants to pop a load (it really sucks and it's dreary but I would struggle just to stay alive):

Or a teenaged Hindu girl being belittled by her madam in a ruined brothel (it REALLY REALLY sucks. I would just throw myself on front of the first elephant I see, honestly.)

Fascinating documentary. GO WATCH NOW.

A Tale of Three Cities (Part 1): Woody Allen's Tourism Trilogy

                                     Dear Imaginary Reader:

Over here at HALLUCINA we love Woody Allen a tutto cuore. He's the charming grandpa that recycles the same stories again and again. So when grandpa wants to go on a tour of Europe, we're not gonna complain if he doesn't exactly get a "feel" for the places he visits! He just wants to look at the pretty things on the brochures, and doesn't it all look lovely? Here's some good old Woody shots from "Vicky Christina Barcelona," "Midnight in Paris," and "To Rome With Love." 

Auteur theorists, enjoy.  

Good Luck, Nick Cave!

ABOVE: It's always the guy with the clothes, and the girl has to go nude. I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing it out. No one wants to see Nick Cave naked.

Nick Cave is back with the Bad Seeds for "Push The Sky Away." I'll say the title track is sublime.  The rest of the album is a little like a turtle: small, solid, slightly lethargic. It gets to you slowly but then it has quite a snap. Prophecy and idiocy mingle freely in the lyrics. Mermaids on Jubilee Street shake their fishy asses with fetuses on their leash. Some lines are splashy, some just flounder; some are ghostly, but others just hazy. Cave's allusiveness seems a little cursory this time: the apparent Gwendolyn Brooks nod in "We Real Cool" is about as meaningful as a regrettable Hannah Montana reference. Everyone knows "Good Luck, Charlie" is where it's at these days.