The Science of Deduction

Dear Imaginary Watson:
Come in, come in, and do rest, the jet lag must have you quite distraught. How did I know? You have the pained, glazy stare of a man who's been forced to watch "Morning Glory" and feels sad for Harrison Ford. Now, I can tell by the lack of a ring in your hand and the unshaved face that you are currently unattached to a female- and I say a female because the socks that fail to match give you away as a heterosexual. The stethoscope that hangs from your neck suggests your occupation as a physician, which means you are not a movie reviewer. Since you're not a movie reviewer, gay, or involved with a member of the female species, there is only one possible explanation for your recent viewing of "Morning Glory"- you were just trapped in an American Airlines flight. It makes the term "inflight 'entertainment'" lose all meaning, doesn't it? It's all observation, my dear Watson, pure observation.



Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously failed to kill him by throwing him off the Reichenbach Falls, but Sherlock Holmes will just NOT be put to sleep. The three episodes in the first series of "Sherlock," the BBC's updating, find the sleuth about as vital as he's ever been, and immersed in three genuinely mysterious "adventures", (involving respectively a pink suitcase, a Chinese circus, and a confrontation with Holmes' nemesis, Moriarty).

Benedict Cumberbatch (from "Atonement") plays Holmes as an eerily handsome, aloof geek besieged by the 21st century. Cellphones, laptops, GPS, blogs, apps; the demonic terms of technology seem to torment a man who doesn't need them because his mind is already a computer. Holmes is trailed by his awed but competent room-mate, Doctor John Watson, (Martin Freeman from "The Office") through cases that are exciting if drawn out to feature length (an hour would have been fine).

Three complaints:
1- three shows? Too short!
2- the supporting cast doesn't get a chance to exist, even with Rupert Graves playing Lestrade.
3- less gay jokes, please. When did friendship between men become such a suspicious, unlikely proposition? I love gay jokes as much as anyone, but not in every other line.

"Sherlock" was co-created by Steven Moffat, (who was behind "Coupling" and selected episodes of "Doctor Who.") Moffat also worked on the script for Steven Spielberg's take on "Tintin." It's one of the few movies I'm actually looking forward to in 2011.

You Don't Nomi?

Henchman #21: "SO the Sovereign recorded 'Station to Station'?"
Henchman #24: "And 'ChangesOne'? I love that album!"
Henchman #21: "Could you be a bigger 'poseur'?!? 'ChangesOne' was a 'best of'!"



By the time David Bowie shows up as the Sovereign of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, accompanied by henchmen Iggy Pop and Klaus Nomi, it's clear Season 2 of the Venture Bros has worked itself up to a feverish parodic peak. Along the way, of course, almost everything has been majorly skewered, defaced, buggered, and left torn from the inside out, including-but-not-limited-to Bowie's oeuvre, 80s action movies, superhero comics (Marvel and DC), the Hannah-Barbera canon (Scooby-Doo and Johnny Quest in particular), blaxsploitation (meet Blackula-Hunter Jefferson Twilight), and the Never Ending Story. It's a manic game of allusion dodgeball.



While Iggy Pop needed no introduction, I had to rummage a little to find out about Klaus Nomi, whose biggest American triumph was as Bowie's back-up singer for a 1979 showing of Saturday Night Live. With his bizarrely stylized receding hairline, I-too-am-a-Starman sense of fashion, and castrati falsettos, Nomi looked like he'd been rejected from Der Zirkus der Sonnen for acts of flagrant camp, but his bizarre meld of rock, opera and electronic music might have proven far more influential had he not died in 1983, one of the first quasi-celebrities with AIDS. A recent resurgence of the Nomi cult has theatrically-minded types, like Lady Gaga, name-dropping him. Does Lady Gaga watch the Venture Bros as assiduously as I do now? Hmmmm.

Here is Nomi with "Total Eclipse."

There is No Teacup

One of the acting exercises that once puzzled and annoyed veteran actor Simon Axler involved a pretend tea ceremony, without tea or teacup. When, at the age of 65, his ability to perform onstage disappears over night, his mind returns to that false ritual of pouring imaginary tea into a teacup that isn't there.



What happens when the things that matter disappear? The only answer in Philip Roth's "The Humbling" is death, specifically the DIY variety. We're treated to the long list of theatrical suicides, (Greeks through Shakespeare, Ibsen through Miller), and so we wait for Axler to die like a good thespian who is aware that the gun introduced early on must be used by the final scene.

But there's an interlude, and it involves Axler's doomed relationship with a seemingly repentant lesbian 20 years his junior- who may simply be using him as a flighty exercise in heterosexuality. An even darker reading, about a destructive woman deliberately unmanning and humbling a father figure, is also possible. Roth knows, as we do, that there's no happy third act here, but he perfectly captures the way we all get swept along by lust time and time again, each time thinking it will be different- or preferring not to think about it at all.

However, "The Humbling"'s follow-the-script fatalism makes it a slight novella that offers no possibilities for surprise. It's part of a supposed trilogy with the much better "Indignation" and the more recent "Nemesis."

Tintin and the Land of Opportunity

There had been two previous geographical excursions (to crudely drawn Soviet Russia and the Congo) but most people count "Tintin in America" as Herge's first book. It already has the pleasing economy of lines, the neatness with which Herge cuts out anything that might clutter a panel, and the repetitive, convoluted sequences of assassination attempts and narrow escapes that distinguish the series.

Tintin and Snowy (a.k.a. Milou) are already grown into their designs and personalities. Inquisitive, virtuous Tintin, with his oval, rosy face and the immortal coif; Snowy, second only to Snoopy in canine comic strip history as far as providing highly intelligent running commentary.



But the fun thing about "Tintin in America" is that the United States are an exotic place to Herge, not unlike the Belgian Congo or Egypt, and is therefore ripe for the stereotyping, reduced to a tourist's cartoonish misconceptions. So what IS America, circa 1931?

-Gangsters, of course. Al Capone might as well be presiding. (Herge, whose character Captain Haddock was known to tip back a few, points to the teetotaling hypocrisies of Prohibition as the source of the rampant criminality.)
-Corrupt policemen, adjuncts to the gangsters.
-Lynch mobs. Football would eventually replace lynching as an American pastime, while retaining the same concept of a mob of angry men brutally engaged in a ridiculous activity.
-Greedy swindlers fighting for oil, while Indians (sorry, Native Americans) get screwed. In the book's funniest/saddest scene, Tintin accidentally discovers an oil well, and is quickly offered five thousand dollars by an investor. A second investor offers him double that, a third 25,000, a fourth 100,000 dollars. Tintin explains he can't accept any money, because the land isn't his, it belongs to the Blackfoot Indians. "Why didn't you say that before," one of the investors snarls, and turns to a nearby Indian: "Here, Hiawatha, 25 bucks and half an hour to pack your bags and quit the territory." The Indian is indignant: "Has Paleface gone mad? Never!" Cut to the next panel: the National Guard is forcing crying Indians off their territory at bayonet point.
Should have taken those 25 bucks, Thunder Heart!



Watch the "Tintin in America" episode from the excellent- if slightly sanitized- 1990s animation for kids.

From Le Noise to Le Sigh

The word "heart" appears an appalling 36 times in Mumford & Sons' inane but sneakily popular "Sigh No More." Other repeat offenders are "love" (26); "time"- usually rhymed with "mine"- (20); "fault" (11); and "soul" (10). In fact the Platonic M&S couplet goes like this:

"It's not my fault that my love was in time,
It's just my soul and my heart on the line"

Sense, poetry? Not necessary. The cliched lyrics are there to convey the generic, tasteful, vaguely Christian mixture of confession/therapy session that soothes people while shopping at the mall. Were one to corner Marcus Mumford and his fellow band members about all the references to turning away from God and then returning to hard-won grace, they would likely say something like: "We're not 'religious,' we're 'spiritual.' Wait. Which one sells more records? 'Religious' or 'spiritual'? Yeah, we're gonna go with 'spiritual.'"



"Sigh No More" aspires to the gorgeous harmonies of the Fleet Foxes (they fail) and the muscular, sell-out folk-rock of Kings of Leon, (they nail it.) Most of the songs are agreeable if not memorable bluegrass-a-la-British, and Marcus Mumford's voice would be great if one could blot out the tortured, mind-punishing homilies of the lyrics. Of course most people DO blot them out. Who listens to music for lyrics?

Well, I do. And I have to suffer through pretentious crap like:

"The darkness is a harsh term, don't you think?/And yet it dominates the things I seek"
Those terms, dominating things in spite of their harshness!

Or:

"And pestilence is won when you are lost and I am gone"
From previous clues in that song, he doesn't mean to say that "pestilence is won" but that "pestilence will win." Which is the very opposite of what he ends up saying. Not that the line would be much improved by making sense, because it includes the word "pestilence" in it, and few love songs can recover from "pestilence."

Or:

"If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could have won."
NO, dude. What you MEAN to say is: "If only I had an enemy SMALLER than my apathy." Your HUGE apathy is (presumably) what has defeated you. If your enemy had been even BIGGER, then you would have had even less of a chance, no?

When they're not disgracing songwriting with metaphors they barely understand themselves, they merely fall into banalities, or resort to that old "let's say the F-word in a weird context" shock tactic. I barely tolerated it in Radiohead and Cee-Lo, (and I LIKE Radiohead and Cee-Lo) but it kind of works in "Little Lion Man," the sole deserving hit in "Sigh No More," in that at least it exposes Mumford & Sons' desperate bid at a commercial sort of coolness. But after this, it's time we put that old pup to rest, fuckers.

Beneath This Bold and Brilliant Sun

It's typical of the Decemberists' enamorment with obscure phraseology that when you quest online for the lyrics to "The King is Dead," you'll find transcripts like these:

-"Upon a cliff that towers toss the trees (?)"
-"Lazy Willy Loman come from his hiding (?)"
-"Dairy wheat of trillions where I be (?)"
-"Petty greed queen of surplus etc etc (? fuck, I give up!)"

The lines actually happen to be:
-"Upon a plinth that towers tow'rds the trees"
-"Lazy will the loam come from its hiding"
-"There a wreath of trillium and ivy"

and the winner:
-"Hetty Green, queen of supply-side bonhomie, bone-drab. Know what I mean?"

No, of course we don't, Colin Meloy!


ABOVE: Herewith Colin Meloy can be apprehended athwartships.

And this is the MOST accessible album from the Decemberists, who have basically invited Gillian Welch and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck to a barn for an intensive S.A.T. session, followed by the re-recording of Neil Young's "Comes a Time." This is the album you give to someone who DOESN'T dig the band, to explain to them why they should, but then you have to throw in the caveat that they DON'T usually sound so country or sunny or easy to sing-along with. And then the other person says: "THIS is easy to sing along with?" And then you say: "Their last record was a complex prog fable about a woman who turned into a deer, and included a song called 'The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles Undone.'" And then they say: "I see."

Hear "Down by the Water" and "Don't Carry it All" which would be huge hits in some other English-speaking land where "summer swells anon" didn't lead a lyric transcriber to "summer smells unkwon(?)"





And remember, Dear Imaginary Reader, the sweet moral of "The King is Dead": you must bear your neighbor's burden- within reason, of course.

Bring in "Le Noise"

Daniel Lanois nearly died in a motorcycle crash during the production of Neil Young's woefully underrated "Le Noise." Danny is 58, so that spells bad-ass to me. ("Joshua Tree"? "Time Out of Mind"? Bad-ass too.) You can see why Shakey would feel the punning nod in the album title was fitting. But even though you can feel Lanois' typically somber enhancing of mood, ultimately this album is about Young fuzzing the hell out of his guitar in his two modes (angry strumming, melancholy dawdling).



This makes for an album of eerie reverberations from opener "Walk with Me" to closer "Rumblin'." The guitar floats ghostly over simple musings about love and war, or what a songwriter is supposed to signify in the middle of all that human mess. The centerpiece is "Hitchhiker," (a stark autobiography/list of medications that is quite representative of the album). Combined with "Love and War," "Hitchhiker" is the very antonym of Dylan's "Chronicles." Who needs 3 volumes? Young moved from Canada to California; did some hash; got famous; did some Valium; pissed off Lynyrd Skynyrd; got even more famous; did some cocaine; "hit the wrong chord" by praising Reagan; then "hit the wrong chord" by NOT praising Bush; now he's old and just thankful for his wife and kids.

Oh, and this being Young, he also HALLUCINAted a LOT about Incan warriors, which would explain his trilogy of "Cortez the Killer," "Like an Inca," and "Incan Queen."



"Peaceful Valley Boulevard" equally aims for the epic, a tale of the Wild West, how it was won, and what a depressing victory that is. Young traces an American landscape through centuries of bloody conflict and ecological decay, concluding in the depressing modernity that transforms Peaceful Valley into a polluted, car-littered concrete scar: a STREET named after a valley. It may sound preachy, but Young avoids the melodrama, even when he tell us all about a sad little polar bear drifting on a shrinking floe, another victim of global warming.
Ok, maybe it IS a little preachy and melodramatic, but overall "Le Noise" is a great album from an old Young man who can still find joy in the distortions of a guitar, and it is luckily produced by ANOTHER old man who knows how to make something interesting out of all that le noise- even if he apparently doesn't know how to ride his bike all that well.

Kong Tiki

Donkey Kong is not Mario's enemy. He's Mario's id. It's lowly enough to be an Italian plumber with a fiending for psilocybin, but when Mario's basic instincts overcome him, he transforms into a hairy girlnapping monkey. If they seem two separate entities, that's just in Mario's head.



Donkey Kong and his own impish id, Diddy Kong, platform their way through the awkwardly named "Donkey Kong Country Returns" (countries don't return- you return to them.) Evil Tikis have hypnotized the animals into rebellion, precious bananas have been stolen, and the two monkeys must jump, jump, jump but always with a slightly different strategy. I remember the original SNES "Donkey Kong Country" series being amazing, with graphics that suggested volume and depth like no game had up to that point. Yes, my boyish looks may confuse you but I was alive in the halcyon days of 1994.



It's testament to the durability of DKC's gameplay that more than 17 years later "Donkey Kong Country Returns" can borrow all the basic elements and thrill without more change than small nods to 3D (sometimes you cannon between foreground and background.) You still jump, collect bananas and try unsuccessfully not to die. This is an unforgiving game- time yourself wrong and that liana won't be within reach of your primate hands- and that too harks back to the old days, when a game had six levels but cost $60 dollars. Vein-popping difficulty was the only way to keep gamers from finishing in 2 minutes what had cost Mom and Dad two years of saving their sweatshop earnings.
Or maybe I'm extrapolating from my own pauperish youth.
"Donkey Kong Country Returns"! Good game!

Look Over Your Shoulder, Grisham

Michael Connelly is again going for that "Law and Order" effect in "The Reversal." Half the chapters are narrated by his litigating hero Mickey Haller and involve a lot of "objections" and "withdrawns"; the other half deal with Hyeronimous "Harry" Bosch and how freaked out he feels about watching "Lost" with his adolescent daughter and not being able to make out the plot-lines.

Seriously.

With the years, Connelly's novels have mellowed out, and here the gritty procedurals of old are abandoned for the comparatively sedate workings of the courtroom. A scumbag tries to get out of his child-killing sentence after a DNA test seemingly exonerates him, but Mickey and Harry team up to make sure he stays in prison. Connelly's pages practically turn by themselves, as usual. His punny names are present. The judicial back-and-forth is almost as entertaining as Grisham at his best. But the dud ending had me thinking of that Sherlock Holmes quote "The Sherlockian" picks up on: "A mystery without solution may interest the student, but never the casual reader." Connelly is not so very avant-garde as to actually propose a mystery without solution: it's more like he gives a solution void of mystery. This novel begged for a twist, or even a- yeeees- REVERSAL.

Full Speed and Funky Beat

Jay Chou actually played the lead racer in the live action adaptation of the "Initial D" manga and anime by Shuichi Shigeno. Very few things can lure me into watching anime go live-action, (to me, that makes as much sense as translating an opera into a sitcom). Until his acting coach brings out the bamboo canes, Jay Chou won't be one of these things, so I'm sticking to the successful, long-running, often parodied anime version.



"Initial D" introduced drifting to the world via intrusive PS1-like scenes of boxy cars catching corners, but there's a refreshing lack of fastness or furiousness to this story of an unassuming tofu-store driver who is really, really good at racing downhill on his delivery route. Ninjas and robots too exciting for you? Then gas-attention attendants minutely discussing surface tension and tire-grip physics might be more your speed.

The Greatest Bromance in the History of the World

Asterix. Obelix. Rene Goscinny. Albert Uderzo. It's really odd that these aren't household names in America. Francophobia? The Smurfs and Tintin were Belgian...

To Be Young, Gifted, and a Vampire

Dear Imaginary Reader:
If you happen to be a "moderately attractive" Beta-Type individual (I'm going to guess there's a 70 percent chance I got you pegged, you adorable nerd you) at some point in your life you were treated to this Calvary-worthy phone conversation.

YOU: Hey! I was just calling to see what you were doing later...
THEM (CUTE GIRL OR BOY YOU HAVE A MAD CRUSH ON): Later? Tonight, you mean? I'm not sure. You remember John/Jane, right?
YOU: Yeah..? (You shiver with premonition.)
THEM: WELL... I know you think he/she is a total dick/cunt, but, actually, we went out last night, and I dunno, it wasn't so bad.
YOU: Wait, what? (dropping the concert tickets with which you planned to start a fine romance) You went out with him/her? Last night? You told me you were busy and we couldn't hang out?
THEM: Yeah, but then he/she called me and I couldn't really tell him/her I wasn't going to hang out because that would have been rude.
YOU: You told ME you weren't going to hang out! That wasn't rude?
THEM: Awww, but that's different, because it's YOU! Anyway, John/Jane is actually really nice and smart once you give him/her a chance. That whole cocky-asshole/skank-ass-bitch act is just a facade for protection. You don't KNOW how many times he/she has gotten burned, but underneath it all, there's so much tenderness.
YOU: TENDERNESS?
THEM: Yes. During sex. The hot fantastic sex we had last night. OH, I'm so glad I can trust you with this! You're such a great friend!
YOU: But... but... but... I love you. Date me.
THEM: Haha, you're hilarious. Hold on, I got another call. Oh, oooops, it's John/Jane. BYE!

On the happy side, at least you weren't a vegetarian vampire, like Dave Miller in Jessica Abel and Gabriel Soria's "Life Sucks." Dave gets treated to the above conversation- or one much like it- and has to watch the girl he likes, Rosa, fall for a jerky, spoiled surfer vampire. Dave himself is relegated to the unglamorous, broke-ass, eternally doomed life of working the night shift at the Last Stop for his master, an ancient Romanian vampire/proud quick mart proprietor.

Combining the pangs of young romance with fangs galore, "Life Sucks" (illustrated by Warren Pleece) should feel derivative (and as painfully familiar as being dumped) but the low-key way it puts vampire chic to the sunlight and watches it burn makes it endearing.



The vampires aren't dramatic dandies full of self control and mystique like in "True Blood"; they're closer to "The Sopranos," gathering to play poker and argue about whether Bela Lugosi was a real gentleman or an embarrassing junkie. Little slice-of-life observations keep things grounded, (for instance, the way Dave and Rosa bond over a ridiculous Mexican novela, "El Amor de Los Amores.") "Life Sucks" does feel a little disappointing compared to the personal work in Abel's "ArtBabe" or "Soundtrack," slightly like a resigned dip into a trend, but, hey, everybody's gotta eat.



Now can someone please come up with something not about vampires or zombies? Werewolves are not acceptable either. Besides, I'm working on my own werewolf/ vampire/ zombie crap. Like I said, it's feeding time! Keep an eye out for "Sexy Zombie College"!

Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables"

I thought "The Expendables" (not to be confused with the "The Losers" or "The A-Team") was a pip, even if it is unable to deliver on its trailer's promise of being the apotheosis of every shitty action movie you mistakenly recall with fondness from your stupid childhood.

The reasons why a movie like "The Expendables" can't really get there will be obvious to you from the following little scene.

SOMALI PIRATE WITH MACHETE: Back off right now, or I kill hostage!
SYLVESTER STALLONE: Calm down, keep it cool, man.
JASON STATHAM: If you keep it cool, we'll all get out of here alive.
JET LI: Keep! Cool! Like they say!
TERRY CREWS: Bro, you better keep it cool, don't make me go whoopsy-daisy on your ass.
RANDY COUTURE: Exactly, you really should keep it cool, and calm down, and listen to my surprisingly reasonable tone of voice.
DOLPH LUNDGREN: UUUURRGGHHH KEEPCOOL
MICKEY ROURKE: Yeah, it's like... sigh... Sometimes you don't know where you're in life, but keeping it cool is the only thing that...you know. Makes some sense?
BRUCE WILLIS: Hey, Machete, baby, how about we cool it a notch and calm down, then?
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: CAWM DOWN!
JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME: I should have cameo in zis movie, keepin' it cool.
STEVEN SEAGAL: Ditto.

SOMALI PIRATE FALLS ASLEEP.



The understandably underrated Stallone (who co-writes and directs) quickly sees himself forced to jettison the "Magnificent Seventeen" premise, and instead concentrates on a gruesome twosome of himself and Statham, the only two actors allowed some development. By development I mean they show feelings involving, respectively, a revolutionary Latin hottie (Giselle Itie) and a replaceable L.A. hottie (Charisma Carpenter from "Buffy" and "Angel"). These feelings cause them to break bones and blow up heads with added fervor.



The rest of the voluminous cast only get one or two cool lines each, but the movie is surprisingly affecting and natural in those few "shoot-the-shit" moments. It's kind of like "Grown Ups" for has been heroes. These are veterans of our imaginary wars, survivors not of Vietnam or Iraq but of Hollywood. Too bad they're wasted as front-line infantry in a war against a Banana Republic dictator ("Dexter's" David Zayas, in a performance so terrible its campy horrors can only be truly appreciated by Spanish speakers.)

Unlike "Machete," this is genuine cheese because its director means it. It's not that "The Expendables" isn't intentionally humorous- it actually has a lot of meathead wit- but it's SERIOUS about its humor. If you can't get what I mean, it's the difference between "Hot Shots" and the Rambo movies. "Hot Shots" can never be truly cheesy, it can only simulate cheesiness. Meanwhile Rambo comes to it spontaneously.



I've always noticed an added degree of graphic cruelty in Stallone's movies. He doesn't do "funny kills"- or he doesn't intend to make them funny- because to him violence is physical, ruthless, involving deep cuts, broken bones, and deformed faces, and must be confronted as such. This is what keeps "The Expendables" from being the kick-ass laugh-a-thon most fans expected and were surprised not to get. Stallone's characters joke with buddies or with girlfriends during the down time, but when the killing starts, their faces are always contorted in a mixture of pain and primal madness.

Graham Moore's "The Sherlockian"

The sadness of seeing the gaslight give way to the electrical lamp, with its all-too-revealing glare, adds some depth to Graham Moore's "The Sherlockian," a quite decent popular mystery. Nostalgia for Victorian London and that hallowed coke-fiend's den on 221B Baker Street has never gone away too far, and Moore certainly banks on it with a tale that alternates between a present day quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's missing diary and a turn of the century investigation involving the creator of Sherlock Holmes, his friend Bram Stoker, and viciously murdered suffragettes.

In 2010, young Harold White, (a devoted Sherlockian/Harry Sue-type) gets accepted to the exclusive Holmes fanclub of the Baker Street Irregular. Soon, not very convincingly, Harold is traveling all over on a mad dash to solve a clue-littered murder and find out what's written in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's elusive journal entries. He's accompanied by a young, beautiful, funny, smart, flirty woman named Sarah. Harold has a huge crush on her but generally behaves like a seminary student confused by naughty feelings (the scene where the two "have" to share a hotel room and practically braid each other's hair instead of indulging in other stress-relieving activities is particularly baffling to anyone with a sex drive.) The characters are jokes, the chaste coziness feels out of a shy teenager's fan-fiction, and the crime and deduction methods are contrived and comically undramatic at points, but it helps stretch out the suspense for the good segments set in 1900, where a surprising friendship emerges between reluctant detective Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and ersatz-Watson Bram Stoker.





Here, establishment-approved, knighted, stuck-up Conan Doyle gets a great foil in the more easy-going creator of "Dracula." Stoker (who was apparently a real big friend of Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman, if you know what I mean) is a helpful guide to the London slums, a land of beggars, thieves, prostitutes and, seediest of all, tattoo-artists. There, the two pursue a serial killer. But detection is second to Conan Doyle's wrestling with his hatred for the fictional Holmes (an entertainment, after all, not comparable to his "serious" novels like "The White Company.") Moore's portrait of the great author (obstinate, arrogant, opposed to women's suffrage, needing to be prodded into justice) is of a welcome complexity in a novel that would otherwise tend to the fan-boyish. I particularly liked how Conan Doyle hates his readers, and would have found most of the Sherlockians to be insufferable dorks. Who knows what he would have thought of this:



The real SACD was indeed a consultant for Scotland Yard, and if his methods and deductions were noticeably less impressive than those of Sherlock Holmes, he was actually instrumental in solving several high profile murders and freeing two innocent men, (a Parsee Indian and a German Jew). Jack the Ripper, unfortunately, squeaked by.

"True Blood" Season 2

The imitations try their best, but Alan Ball's "True Blood" is still the steamiest show north of Brazilian soap operas. The triumphant first season provided a self-contained mystery and ended with some big questions. For instance, did those dead manicured toes belong to Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis)? Here we'll find out Lafayette's fate; we'll catch up with the inter-species affair between Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and Vampire Bill, (Stephen Moyer); we'll see bar-owner Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) come to terms with his animal self; we'll sigh while Tara (Rutina Wesley) falls in love with Eggs (Mehcad Brooks), a young man who is allergic to T-shirts; we'll cringe while newly-made vampire Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) fails to lose her virginity in a body that rapidly heals itself (think about it); we'll laugh while Detective Andy Bellefleur (Chris Bauer) tries to quit drinking long enough to stop the town's outburst of orgies; and we'll be witness to the way Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) tricks Sookie into a series of wet dreams.



In Season 2 is where you really get to see the incalculable influence of Joss Whedon and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on serial television. No, it has nothing to do with prosthetic dentistry, and everything to do with the pacing and structure of a season, and the way they build up to a "big bad" fight. "True Blood" opts for two of them: with Maryann (Michelle Forbes)- a Maenad who's been agitating the good citizens of Bon Temps into Bacchanalian excesses- and with Steve and Sarah Newlin (Michael McMillian and Anna Camp), the mad-grinning leaders of the fanatical "God Hates Fangs" Fellowship of the Sun- who are clearly modeled after Joel Osteen and wife.



The show lets the sympathetic characters loose between these two extremes, one of freedom, one of repression. Sookie's brother Jason(Ryan Kwanten) finds purpose as a cultist; Tara is seduced by the Maenad's promises of unrestricted pleasure. Both extremes turn out to be unfortunate choices, a premise which cannot help but please a Middle Way fan such as myself. "True Blood" is rarely preachy, though, and for all the soap opera machinations and frequent sexy moments (not complaining) it actually comes across as an intelligent, audacious piece of entertainment, which makes it hard to properly classify. It's not TERRIBLE, of course. It's not exactly GREAT in the way "The Wire" or "The Sopranos" were GREAT. It's too accessible to be GOOD like "Seinfeld" or even GOOD, BUT I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU MIGHT NOT DIG IT, like, say, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." It's not embarrassing enough to be a GUILTY PLEASURE like "The Vampire Diaries" or "Gossip Girl." It begs for some sort of new notch carved below GOOD but above GUILTY PLEASURE.
How about just "PLEASURE"?

BONUS SEXINESS: My treacherous but still beloved ex, Evan Rachel Wood, camping it up as a queen of the damned while "The Good Life" plays in the background.

Frank Sinatra's "The Voice of Frank Sinatra"

Slow. Every syllable slooooowly wrung out of emotion. "Try a little teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen-deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer-neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeess," he sings. 1945's "The Voice of Frank Sinatra" is really his (and THE) first concept album, and the concept is Sinatra's voice. It's a youthful voice at this point, one that sometimes nods to Bing Crosby ot falls into Gallic mode as in "I Don't Know Why," but always in control and deliberate. The slowness here is an invitation to lean in and really appreciate what's going. His first LP for Columbia is rather brief (darn tiny old records) a careful compilation of 8 great songs unified by Sinatra's intentions to stay a while with each line, each moment. Arranger Axel Stordahl provides a semi-classical background of strings, the occasional plucking of an acoustic guitar, and a plaintive violin that sometimes stretches itself to the point of whining. The songs ("Someone To Watch Over Me," "You Go to My Head," "Why Shouldn't I") are all standards, but then pretty much everything Sinatra sang sounded like a standard. There's an element of remove to the lyrics. The singer's in love with the idea of love- love that has gone, or that might come, but that is never quite there. The perfect example (and my own favorite performance) is "These Foolish Things," a lover's catalog of memory prompts that, incidentally, gives props to "the song that Crosby sings." How modest of Frankie.

Robert Rodriguez's "Machete"

Quick joke: A brain walks into a bar. The bartender says: "Sorry, I can't serve you." "Why not?" asks the brain. The bartender sighs: "Because you're already out of your head."

Ok? Now this:

Professor Eric D. Brainstorm had worked for 27 years with Neuroplus Corp. It had been 27 often thrilling years of investigating the possibilities for cellular resurrection, 27 years of returning home late to a wife, Suzanne, who pitied the burden of his genius but had cooled to him after her second miscarriage had truncated her limited ideas of what family and happiness meant. When a corporate "paradigm shift" threatened to put a stop to everything he'd worked so hard for- including his Neural Support System that could hypothetically keep a brain alive long after its body had given up on the futilities of existence- Brainstorm had taken to drinking. One night, after an absurdly escalating screaming match with Neuroplus CEO Dominic Goldluff, Eric had drunkenly walked into his lab and attempted, with no more aid than his own shaking hand and a surgical saw, to put his theories to practice and transplant his brain directly into the N.S.S. That would show them all! Blade to flesh, with the alcohol pulsing through his veins as the only anesthetic, Eric D. Brainstrom ripped off the top of his skull and connected himself to the brain-handling machine, built to sever the brain from the mortal spine and drop into the N.S.S. The machine did the rest. When consciousness returned, slightly altered but unmistakable, Eric's brain now swam triumphant in preserving fluid inside a glass jar atop a small rolling robotic platform he could direct merely by willing its movement- much as he'd directed that ridiculous fleshbag body before. Feeling an inexplicable thirst, the brain directed the machine towards the nearest bar, where an astonished middle-aged bartender with an unconvincing Bosley hair-do tried to shoo him away. Eric, who had expected to be greeted like the scientific portent he was, or at least like an alarming super-villain, was shocked. "I only want a beer," he said. The bartender said: "Sorry, I can't serve you." Eric asked: "Why not?" The bartender sighed: "Because you're already out of your head."

...

You see the problem there? That's the problem with Robert Rodriguez's "Machete."


ABOVE: "Oh crap, I left my boning knife at home. I guess I'll just go with the paring knife, but it's not the same."



A convoluted, unnecessary explanation of the show-stopping
joke trailer in "Grindhouse," "Machete" is still mostly fun. Danny Trejo, who comes through whenever Hollywood calls for a busted-looking-but-full-of-character biker/brawler, carries the movie effortlessly as the titular head-chopping Chicano. Except now you'll know more about Machete than you would have thought to ask for. You'll learn about his wife's horrible murder, the reason why he lost his high-rank as a "Policia Federal," why he's reduced to migrant work, the kind of tacos he favors, why his brother turned to the priesthood, what his favorite Stooge is, which Selena song makes him cry the most.
As in the trailer, B-movie heavy Jeff Fahey hires Machete to kill a hate-mongering senator in an incredibly intricate two-timing plot involving the drug trade, vigilantes, and border-hopping immigrants. The senator is now played by a ridiculous Robert De Niro, (who was once pretty much America's greatest actor- I know it's hard to recall with all the Fockery going around.)
De Niro has fun, and so does the cast, which is almost as B-tastic as the one in "The Expendables." Fahey, of course; Don Johnson; an accented Steven Seagal; horror-hero Tom Savini; Cheech Marin as Machete's brother/Catholic padre; Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez giving some of their "best" performances, quotation marks necessary...


ABOVE: This dude is touching them, and they're pretending to LIKE it! Oscar!

Absolutely worthless: terrible Lindsay Lohan, who manages to melt an initial titillation ("She's naked throughout!") into a righteous, perverted fury ("Wait, she is NOT naked, her boobs are covered up! I can't see anything! That's a body double! WTF, Lindsay?")
Robert Rodriguez and his co-director, Ethan Maniquis, toss off some blunt political commentary about the insane rash of xenophobia in border states, but they actually obscure the issue with buckets of blood, (Tom Savini's famous '80s formula, no doubt: Corn syrup, red and blue food coloring, and zinc oxide. Mix 'til goriness is achieved.) The over-the-top action is fine, but there's something blunt at its core, and it's the problem implicit in any manufactured camp. Camp should happen organically, over time, like fungi. That imaginary "Machete" movie in "Grindhouse" wouldn't have KNOWN it was funny: in fact, it would have been a serious movie made funny by time and incompetence. But "Machete" is new, and perfectly competent, and therefore not as funny as it thinks it is.

Tom Clancy and Grant Blackwood's "Dead Or Alive"

I may be an anti-killing hippie, but I used to dig Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series. The prose and characters were less polished than a lazy jarhead's rifle, but Clancy's showy research would put you right in the battlefield and leave you with the smell of gunpowder on your page-turning fingers.



The books, which were never slim, got prohibitively thick and lost a lot of verisimilitude right around the time Jack Ryan became president in "Debt of Honor," and although I dutifully kept on trudging through the series like a brave soldier, I didn't really miss it when Clancy went into ideological radio silence after 9/11. (No, "Red Rabbit" doesn't count because it's set in the '80s, and "Teeth of the Tiger" doesn't count because Jack Ryan Jr. sucks.)
As for the tragic parody that is "Dead or Alive"? Don't call it a comeback. Because it's not. It's not even a Tom Clancy book, although it features Tom Clancy characters going after an Osama bin Laden type threat (way to capture the zeitgeist!). I'll eat this book's 950 pages if hack-for-hire Grant Blackwood didn't write most of it. (It wouldn't be the first time someone else writes a book for Tommy. It took him a while to admit his out-sourced "Op-Center"/"Power Plays"/"NetForce" were ghost-written.)

CHAPTER 128: BITTER HONEYMOON

Lorenza Feliciani (Monica Bellucci) knows three states of being. When conscious, she's a superstitious Italian country girl who longs to escape Joseph Balsamo's grasp; when in a trance, she's an all-seeing soul capable of flitting through the astral plane but wanting nothing more than to return to Joseph.
There's also that third, even deeper state of immobile helplessness, reached at by Joseph's command of "SLEEP!"
It's sort of odd that, in all his persistent wooing, Joseph hasn't had the skull-crashingly obvious idea of just keeping her in an artificially loving trance 24/7 until now. But that's the new tactic, and it's a whole new world for Joseph and Lorenza, magic carpet and all. There are no more betrayals, escapes, or attempts at stabby-stabs. In honeymoon bliss, the two forget about Freemasons and Ministers of Police. And if this love is an illusion, as Joseph knows, isn't love ALWAYS an illusion?
He has snatched his wife from hatred, and for the next three days all he does is lie next to her, and stare at her ecstatic face, a man prolonging an absurdly beautiful dream.
They call each other "hunny-bunny" a lot.
It is only with mild scolding that, at one point, Lorenza points at his forehead:
"I can tell you're thinking of someone else, Acharat, a Frenchwoman. Should I be jealous?"
Balsamo half-smiles: "I suppose if you can read my thoughts, you know there are only two women who matter to me. You as you are now, and the other you, the one whom I've hidden away. I can't think of anything else. I've even given up on my work with all this happiness."
"Giving up is a mistake," she says. "Let me help you with your work! I wanna be your lab partner!"
Balsamo pats her head: "Hunny-bunny, you're very beautiful, but you're also, you know, FEMALE. You can't do SCIENCE!" He promptly realizes this conversational path might end up on TWO Lorenzas who hate him, so he coughs: "Then again, your soul, spreading itself across the globe, might help me find the Lost Ark and the Temple of Doom and the Holy Grail and even the Crystal Skull. Actually, I think we should probably stop with the Holy Grail."
Lorenza pokes him on the side: "Then show me the way to your lab."
He warns her: "I have a furnace in there, it gets pretty hot."
"Some like it like that," she smiles.
And up go the two honeymooners to the laboratory. Joseph even sweeps his newly compliant wife in his arms as they cross the lab's threshold. "This is where I try to transmutify lead into gold with varying degrees of success," he says, pointing at the furnace, the crucibles, the beakers and vials, the myriad accoutrement of magic transforming into science.
Casually, Lorenza walks around, surveying it all, then says: "You should concentrate on creating diamonds. It might prove to be convenient for future plot points."
"Diamonds?"
"The shiny rocks of no intrinsic value? You get them from pressurizing carbon. Much easier to make than the equally worthless but more cumbersome gold."
Joseph smacks himself: "DIAMONDS come from CARBON? Why didn't Althotas tell me that?"
Lorenza's eyes seem hazy: "Because a gentleman named Antoine Lavoisier is discovering it just about now."



Joseph's happiness seems to expand even more at this new discovery and, hugging Lorenza, he walks her out of the lab: "If I let you stay in there much longer, you'll solve all the world's mysteries for me and I'll spend the rest of my life in boredom." Ignoring a creaking noise overhead, the two return to what was previously Lorenza's cell- now a honeymoon suite.
"I can't believe we've almost killed each other before," he whispers as they sit side by side on her luxurious couch.
"Teehee. That would have been a bummer."
He caresses her cheek: "It definitely would have been. But we let love triumph, didn't we? And working together we will accomplish anything we want! Whatever secret there is, your soul can reach out to it. I will be a new Adam, and you will be the new Eve, and you will hand down to me the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge!"
Lorenza wags a finger at him: "With analogies like that you're begging for trouble! Also, how does the other woman fit into this new order?"
Joseph moves slightly away: "The other woman?"
"I can see her name... A... Andree de Taverney."
He grabs her hand: "Enough of her. She's just a pawn in my schemes. I said I wouldn't do this, but, one more time, can I ask a vision from you?"
She sighs: "I'm not exactly shocked." They close their eyes at the same time. She continues: "You're thinking of a hill. Is that where you want my mind to go?"
"Yes!"
"The place... there is a chateau by the hill. In the antechamber, I see a little black boy having an eclair. His name is... Zamore."
"Yes! You're at Luciennes, and I want you to look for the Countess Dubarry."
"I see her... reclining on a sofa much like us. She does a lot of idle reclining, and now her thoughts are on you, Acharat. She's thinking of a philter you've promised her, a potion to undo the scratches left by the claws of time."
"That's pretty poetic, Lorenza!"
"Si, I know! Anyway, this woman, Madame Dubarry, comes to a decision, and calls a shorter lady to her aid."
"That must be Chon, her sister. What do they say?"
"They're making arrangements to come here, to the Rue St. Claude. In two hours they will be here."
Overcome with happiness, Joseph says: "Oh, this is all too good! Just as I'd hoped! Thank you, Lorenza, thank you! And I suppose that we have two whole hours for kissing."
She blushes: "You have been gentle with me and I appreciate that. I'm still getting used to this perpetual trance, you know, and there are so many complicated emotions within me that I..."
"I said kissing, not talking."
And for two hours they kiss.

As Lorenza prophesied to the minute, Madame Dubarry stands outside the dark, forbidding door of the house in the Rue St. Cloud. As she knocks, Joseph Balsamo leaps up from the make-out spot.
Lorenza stands up with him: "Must you go? Let me at least accompany you to the stairs before you go see that woman."
A spark of suspicion is reignited in Joseph's enamored head. Could Lorenza have plotted all these days of submission as a way to lull him into safety- and then try escaping again? Can it be that he has less control than he thinks over her states?
But her wounded look sways him:
"This is your Lorenza," she says, "the one who loves you and does not want to be away from you. But that loving Lorenza can not always be imprisoned."
He nods at the fairness of that.
The two walk out of her room, into the hallway, the slow amble of lovers hesitating to part. Overhead, a creaking noise is heard again. (Some floors below, Madame Dubarry grows impatient.) Joseph reaches the stairs that lead to the less hidden sections of the house and, unable to contain himself, turns to Lorenza:
"I can't. I'm sorry. I can't quite trust you entirely. Let me get there, even if I have to crawl slowly. Once I do, why, you'll come with me everywhere, my wife and partner in all. At this moment, I just can't put my suspicions away. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you to SLEEP and leave you standing here. It's how I know you can't run away, and it's a halfway point, isn't it? When I am done talking to Madame Dubarry, I'll come and wake you. Not ALL THE WAY, you know, just wake you into the sleeping trance."
"It IS confusing, isn't it?" She admits sadly.
"Everything is confusing in dreams," he says. "SLEEP, Lorenza!"
And with a wave of his hand, all emotion vanishes from her face. She stands, pure in sleep, her eyes half opened but seeing only the haze of a half-perceived world, looking like a venerable statue. Joseph kneels before her: "I am sorry, I really have to go now."
And he runs down the stairs, leaving Lorenza in that regretful state of catatonia that Joseph always leaves women in. She's dreaming, and not the expansive astral trances that allow her to travel through reality, but an oppressive dream, a dream in which she imagines, while darkness closes in, that a crack appears on the ceiling over her, as though a trapdoor is descending.
And then something drops down from the trap, a misshapen creature that drags itself on the floor with cackling laughter, a dead thing whose eyes are very much alive, fiery leering eyes in an impossibly old face. Its hands, skeletally sharp, claw at the floor and then at her dress. Its nails hook on her flesh and pull her into a hideous embrace.
Lorenza can't scream or move or do anything but let herself faint into the tangle of bones that is this old laughing madman. He carries her inert, defenseless body up the trapdoor and into a nightmare.

Boys II Mandarin

I felt bad about my little Western-centric Jay Chou crack. After all, (as an upset, culturally informed Dear Imaginary Reader learned me), he's about the biggest international star of the 2000s, some kind of R&B/hip-hop/metal/pop combo monster, like Justin Timberlake and Eminem and Linkin Park and Coldplay in one convenient, horrifying package. SO I checked out "Initial J," a mid-career "Greatest Hits" collection, and dutifully expanded my mind by exposing myself to basically the same play-by-the-rules pop shit I avoid in American radio, with the added joy of lyrics I can't understand. I have to say, he's catchy and inoffensive, the second best path to musical success, (after the preferable catchy and offensive). Chou is respectful of tradition, government officials, and his ancestors: I don't think even Justin Bieber would sound as committed as Chou does in his epic rap ballad "Wai Po" ("Maternal Grandma.") As a matter of fact, the only American song I can think of that even acknowledges the existence of elderly relatives involves them getting run over by reindeer. Be moved by Chou's filial love, and remember to put some warmth in your grandma's pocket.

"Shadow of the Colossus"

When you meet your first Colossus, you don't know what to do. You let the awe wash over you and you try not to piss all over the beautiful black horse that has been so loyal to you. You know you must fight 16 Colossi to revive a woman you've loved and lost. But you might as well have been sent to assassinate a mountain.



If you ever catch someone speaking about 2005's "Shadow of the Colossus," you'll hear odd adjectives like "poetic," "beautiful," "mystical," "haunting," "inexplicably sad": you would think it was a Miyazaki movie, and not a PS2 game that's basically an extended boss fight. Team ICO's masterpiece, (so far) is bound to pop up in any decent argument about whether videogames are art, and it's kind of a winning card. How can something be so epic, so influential, be so counterintuitive? There is absolutely no word building here, practically no dialogue or explanations, and no colorful back-stories. There isn't even much COLOR: it's all ugly faded browns, greens and grays in an expansive but largely empty landscape. There are no coins to collect, no towns to visit, no people to meet, no minions to hack at, no weapons to acquire, no skills to learn. You have a sword and a bow, there are 16 Colossi, you kill them one by one.
That is all.



And it's somehow unforgettable. The Colossi are towering, lumbering creatures, their bodies half fur, half ruins, as though they were the ossified ghosts of a world that has passed. Defeating them will involve slightly different strategies, each kill will be a heart-pounding action scene that dwarfs anything you've seen in one of those cute "motion pictures." But it's not excitement that you feel when the game ends, just sadness for the things you've done and your eventual fate.
SPOILER?
I clog my keyboard with tears just thinking of that final scene: so much emotion and it has no words. Only a woman's eyes, opening, and a half-broken battle horse finally finding some rest. Sometime this spring "SotC" is being re-released in HD, 3D and who-knows-what-D, with the closely-related PS game "ICO." A long-in-the-works spiritual continuation to those two, "The Last Guardian," should be released by the end of this year.

"The Sly Collection"

Sly Cooper is a raccoon, a thief, and a gentleman; a smooth criminal that almost seems to share parentage with George Clooney's "Fantastic Mr. Fox." Although Sly's trilogy of platforming adventures for the PS2 doesn't elicit quite as many nostalgic sighs as the mention of Daxter and Jax (or Ratchet and Clank), the games ("Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus," "Sly 2: Band of Thieves," and "Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves") have just been repackaged for the PS3. The last one even sports 3-D compatibility, as if Sly's worlds didn't already have the colorful depth of a Saturday Morning Cartoon you wish someone had thought to make.
Ah, Saturday Morning Cartoons!
Remember waking up to those? You, a bowl of cereal, perhaps blankets, eyes too close to the TV, tons of toy ads, and no mention of school to chill the soul?
Does Saturday Morning even exist anymore?

Guest Blogger: Sarah Lynn Dawson on Her Film Faves

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Most years I include a "best movie" list. Not 2010. You probably cried when that didn't materialize, but I just haven't seen too many of the big contenders, so I asked my good friend, L.A.-based actress and producer Sarah Lynn Dawson, to come through for me.



Here are some of Sarah's favorites:

Black Swan
Gripping, psychological and at times pretty crazy, "Black Swan" is a film that really had never been made. Breaking the boundaries between fantasy and reality with director Darren Aronofsky's clever use of mirrors and symbolism, it was hard to see where life ended and dream began (or is that another movie?) Natalie Portman steals the show with her performance as a prima ballerina dancing on the edge. Mila Kunis is dark, sultry and convincing as her love interest/rival, while Vincent Cassel provides the male stamina pushing the dancers to their limits.

Inception
An achievement in terms of scale as well as thought, "Inception" is a movie that will stand the test of time, with its classic characters, futuristic ideas, and mind-bending visual tricks, it really raises the standard popcorn flick to another level.

How to Train your Dragon
Let's face it, having a dragon would be pretty cool and in this movie we learn just the sort of character it takes to train one. The movie's hero is a young Viking boy named Hiccup, who, failing to live up to an over-zealous father's expectations, turns to his brain and spirit to help him train his pet, the mysterious Night Fury dragon.

Tangled
A Disney movie 40 years in the making: After all, the question was how to make a heroine trapped in a tower socially relevant. Well, they succeeded with "Tangled"'s feisty heroine and modern terminology which brings Disney squarely up to date.

The King's Speech
Could this movie have been any better? Both Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush provide us with superb performances as does Helena Bonham Carter. King George VI struggles with a stutter and overcomes his personal problems for the greater good of a country at war. See it now!

The Fighter
This film is a standout due to fantastic performances by Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo. Mark Wahlberg's passion brought the project to life and it's easy to see why he fought so hard for it.

Michel Gondry's "The Green Hornet"

James Franco is on "The Green Hornet" as well. He plays a bemused meth dealer called Danny "Crystal" Clear, berating an incumbent criminal named Chudnofsky ("Inglorious Basterds"'s Christoph Waltz.) Clear mocks Chudnofsky's ambitions, age, Euro-styled outfit, and particularly that monicker. Chudnofsky does not react well to the criticism. It's a hilarious, tense scene that lets you know you're in for a smart thrill ride.
Then, unfortunately, the movie starts.



Robert Kirkman, creator of "The Walking Dead," used to write this great little comic, "The Irredeemable Ant-Man," about a superhero who was a dick, a tiny tiny dick but a dick all the same. It worked because Kirkman wrote from a moral point: he KNEW the character was doing shitty things- that was the fun of it. "The Green Hornet" is also about a guy who's a total dick. Here's the problem: Seth Rogen, who co-wrote the screenplay, doesn't know his character, petty, cruel, bratty millionaire Britt Reid, is a total dick. He thinks Reid is FUNNY. That's partially because Reid is pretty much Seth Rogen, and Seth Rogen doesn't know that HE himself is a total dick.
The audience of 13 year olds won't notice or care- being a bagful of douchery passes for "cool" these days- but I noticed. I intensely disliked the character Seth Rogen plays, a millionaire superhero who makes Robert Downey Jr's take on Tony Stark seem like a paragon of correctness, character, and social responsibility. I can't sit here and count all the ways Bitt Reid repelled me, because I would have to reference practically every second of the movie and that's not worth anyone's time. Let's just say he's a malicious, spoiled, ungrateful, brutal, violent, self-centered, shallow, disloyal, sexist moron unworthy of the friendship/servitude of martial-artist chauffeur Kato (Jay Chou) or even the passing attention of secretary Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz). But the script believes this uncaring asshole is CHARMING, and director Michel Gondry is too busy trying to figure out how to stage 3D action scenes, (not necessarily something he's known for) to reconcile Rogen's "acting" with the needs of a superhero story, even one as dumb as this one. (I suddenly realize how badly I treated "Kick-Ass"- a cinematic titan by comparison.)



I'm a big Gondry fan, but he is as far here from "The Science of Sleep" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" as possible, and visibly uncomfortable with the many moments that require him to put away the preciousness of his style. Two or three effective scenes pop out with the use of his trademark music video techniques- he's otherwise turned into an indifferent action director. The only person who escapes unscathed here is Rogen, because what could possibly scathe him? This is what he's always done. It's just that in this context, it's unbecoming. Diaz should have pretended to have some dignity and rejected the script right at the line where Rogen mocks her for being unfuckably old at 36. Waltz should be embarrassed- is this what an Oscar gets you?- although it's really no different than when Anthony Hopkins or Ben Kingsley slum. And Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou will just have most people wondering why Harold from "Harold and Kumar" suddenly has an accent.
Oh, was that racist? I guess Rogen's crap is rubbing off on me.



Not all of "The Green Hornet" is bad, but the parts that are bad are abysmal. Those expecting explosions and people punched might feel content. Those who love Gondry's movies will cry. As for those who like superheroes of this particular hue... well, there's always "The Green Lantern."

The Rolling Stones' "Between the Buttons"

"Between the Buttons" benefits from unfamiliarity to these ears. Aside from "Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday," the two ubiquitous hits tacked on to the U.S. release, these are all less-played (but not lesser) tunes. Coming on from "Aftermath" in my chronological catch up with the Rolling Stones, "Between the Buttons" feels giddy with the genre-be-damned possibilities pointed at by the Beatles, an album clearly recorded with Keith's lazy eye kept on "Rubber Soul." It doesn't quite get that high, although potent chemicals were probably beginning to be passed around in between sessions.
Did I really say "probably"? "Connection" is not about telephone reception, and "Something Happened to Me Yesterday" (something oh so groovy!) sounds like enough stamps have been licked to put the post office out of duty.
No two songs are alike, but they're all assured even as Brian Jones throws in recorders, marimbas, kazoos, accordions, harmonicas, theremins, dulcimers and harpsichords/clavichords/whatever. Oh, how I'll miss him when he leaves the Stones and DIES! Charlie Watts' drums are memorable throughout, stop/starting in "My Obsession" and accelerating into mayhem in "Cool, Calm, Collected." The lyrics are so contemptuous of women that one wonders if the chicks screaming orgasms at Jagger actually ever heard anything he said, but this is misogyny as an art form. "Yesterday's Papers" is quite succinct in its point: "You don't read yesterday's paper, why would you need yesterday's girl? Get a new one! It doesn't make SENSE!" And "Backstreet Girl" has Jagger cooing his rules of engagement to a groupie who's getting ideas:
"Please don't be part of my life
Please keep yourself to yourself
Please don't you bother my wife
That way you won't get no hell
Don't try to ride on my horse
You're rather common and coarse
Please don't you call me at home
Please don't come knocking at night
Please never ring on the phone
Your manners are never quite right
Please take the favors I grant
Curtsy and look nonchalant,
Don't want you out in my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

All you need is NOT love, apparently.



The Jagger/Richards songwriting team and their exaggerated bafflement at women ("Why is your mouth talking when it should be sucking my dick? I don't get it!") is so different from anything else at the time, though, that you put aside the emotional questions for acceptance of their cool transgressions. And then again, they sure could make it all up with a gorgeous, inexplicably underrated song like "She Smiled Sweetly"- which parallels Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" in structure, but it's- irony- much more tender.



Watch Mick eye-rolling his way through the Ed Sullivan censored version of "Let's Spend the Night Together" (re-titled "Let's Hang Out at the Church Picnic Together.")

Danny Boyle's "127 Hours"

Dear Imaginary Reader:
This one time my elevator froze between levels. By the time it stuttered back to life, eight minutes later, I had eaten my T-shirt, was collecting urine in my shoes, and had made friends with a HALLUCINAted polar bear named Bronski. I am NOT Aron Ralston, the resourceful climber who remained trapped in a Utah crevice for 5 days until he decided to painstakingly cut through his own arm with a blunt, Made-in-China trinket of a knife.


ABOVE: "When I get around of this situation, I will write a book imaginatively called 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place.' I wonder if people will get that."

"127 Hours" is a testament to the human ability to do really gross, crazy shit. (It's not just humans: animals, politicians and plants will also do horrible things to stay on top.) Celebrated author James Franco plays Ralston as a genial if careless daredevil, who sets out to climb a remote canyon without alerting anyone. Along the way he does meet two climbers (Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara from "Happythankyoumoreplease") who flirt with him while bathing in a gorgeous underwater lake. They even (cue quick-cut trippy visuals) invite him to an epic Scooby-Doo-themed rave! But the girls soon abandon him to his hideous/life-inspiring fate, and are really only there because director Danny Boyle, ("Slumdog Millionaire," "Sunshine") is all too aware that engaging as Franco is, we need some cute girls in bikinis to remind us why anyone would want to cling to life. It's very little to ask for, and Danny comes through.


ABOVE: "Are you sure you don't want to go back with us to the party, dude? Awww... Well, you'll be fine here in this desolate canyon. What could possibly go wrong?"

It's no spoiler to say there is never any doubt as to the audience-relieving outcome, (this isn't Floyd Collins" or "Ace in the Hole") but the way Boyle keeps throwing surprising shots at you, and the nitty-gritty particulars of Ralston's escape, will have you vomiting with joy.


ABOVE: Kate Mara in the best scene in the movie. Or ever.