Savior on a Plane
Inspired by several of my LJ pals, most specifically damonbradl, I'm going to do one of those weekend-recap posts. Except instead of organizing it by days, I'm going to organize it by topic - in my case, by pop-culture ephemera. Since Friday was such a quiet day at work for me, let's start the weekend recap with Thursday and the VMAs.
MTV Video Music Awards: After two dud years in Miami, the return to NYC should've been triumphant, but instead the show was a drag. OK Go's treadmill-rific performance - here's to you, Jamiroquai - was the night's highlight; the Raconteurs made the most of their bumper snippets; and I found T.I. surprisingly compelling live (the hook of "What You Know" is a monster). But Jack Black sucked as a host, and MTV's strenuous attempts to script spontaneity make the show awkward and poorly paced; honestly, they need to go back and make the show normal, like a regular awards telecast - maybe 20 degrees left of center - and let the acts do the crazy shit that gets people talking the next day. Worst of all (I know no one cares about this but me) the winners were almost uniformly awful: James Blunt over Kanye for Best Male? Avenged Sevenfold as Best New Artists? (They're nearly a decade old, and they suck.) Pussycat Dolls for...Best Dance Video?! (All they do in the "Buttons" clip is writhe.) Her Fergieness and the BEP's with "My Humps" - winning BEST HIP-HOP VIDEO?! Are they high? And then in the last category, the Chili Peppers and Madge videos, the best of the bunch, lose Video of the Year to that Panic! at the Disco makeup-fest. Blecch. Long story short, the VMAs mostly depressed me.
Music, Bob to Banks: I began the weekend listening to the new Bob Dylan, which I downloaded a torrent of before leaving town Friday. So far, I'm having about the same reaction to this that I've had to the other two parts of the Dylan "comeback trilogy" (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft): this is excellent, vital work by Dylan, but it's not changing my life or anything. As of now, the last song, "Ain't Talkin'," is the clear highlight for me. I later scored a cleaner copy of the Bob CD from bradamants_mom upon arriving in Wayne, Penna. for the weekend, which was handy. We were there to celebrate a milestone birthday for my man damonbradl, and the party was a surprise; so we showed up early, and I ended up pitching in with a bit of setup and, natch, iPod tunes. My "All Purpose Party Jukebox" playlist did the trick most of the way through, and it even served up a Britney Spears tune at the very moment the birthday boy - the biggest teen-pop fan we know - walked in. Later, though, it was all about the hip-hop, as prettykate helped me hunt down jams by Lloyd Banks, Fitty, and other assorted G-Unit posse tracks. I still have "On Fire" stuck in my head.
I'm so sick of these muthafukkin' tights on this muthafukkin' Christ figure: I saw two movies this weekend - both of them weeks old, and both benefiting tremendously from lowered expectations. There's a lot wrong with Snakes on a Plane, but we saw it the way it was meant to be seen: with a big group of half-drunk friends (it was the end-of-night activity for damonbradl's party). The only criticism bradamant offered was of the clearly spliced-in hard-R footage (boobs, gore, Sam Jackson's immortal muthafukkin' line), but that didn't bother me as much as the awkward pacing, lame ending and the not-bad-enough-to-be-good acting by three-fourths of the cast. Still, I give it two affectionate stars and wish, in retrospect, that I'd been not just tipsy but high. Then on Monday, back in NYC and by myself, I ventured to the hinterlands of the Upper West Side to see Superman Returns in IMAX - or should I say intermittent 3-D? It's the first time I've seen a full Hollywood feature adapted for 3-D IMAX, and I was underwhelmed: they signal you to take the glasses on and off a half-dozen times, because regular features don't lend themselves to full-length 3D and they've only 'scoped the big FX sequences. It's distracting, and the diorama-quality effects are not worth the effort. But the movie itself? Wow, was that better than I'd expected. I understand the mostly poor reviews, but honestly, with just two - admittedly, huge - fixes, the movie would've bordered on four stars: recast the whole thing (everyone but Eva Marie Saint, Frank Langella and the wide-eyed kid playing Jimmy Olsen should go) and make it 30 minutes shorter. Otherwise, it's really pretty great: the dialogue is quite a bit better than either of the Donner/Lester Superman flicks (which haven't aged well), the action set pieces range from okay to great (the shuttle-plane sequence rocked), and the Christ metaphor is thick but surprisingly effective. Actually, forget Christ: the movie is one long, obvious 9/11 parable, and it worked on me like gangbusters. The moment when Supe falls silently back to earth like The Falling Man kind of choked me up. Maybe this is how I like my comic flicks: heavy and emotional. Anyway, three very enthusiastic stars, and if Brandon Routh wasn't so blah and Kate Bosworth so dreadful, I'd be more generous.
Oh, and for fans of our much-admired, much-spoiled kitty: Hetty didn't like us leaving for half the weekend and let us know by berserking around the apartment all evening Sunday. But by Monday night she was sleeping on bradamant and purring away again.
MTV Video Music Awards: After two dud years in Miami, the return to NYC should've been triumphant, but instead the show was a drag. OK Go's treadmill-rific performance - here's to you, Jamiroquai - was the night's highlight; the Raconteurs made the most of their bumper snippets; and I found T.I. surprisingly compelling live (the hook of "What You Know" is a monster). But Jack Black sucked as a host, and MTV's strenuous attempts to script spontaneity make the show awkward and poorly paced; honestly, they need to go back and make the show normal, like a regular awards telecast - maybe 20 degrees left of center - and let the acts do the crazy shit that gets people talking the next day. Worst of all (I know no one cares about this but me) the winners were almost uniformly awful: James Blunt over Kanye for Best Male? Avenged Sevenfold as Best New Artists? (They're nearly a decade old, and they suck.) Pussycat Dolls for...Best Dance Video?! (All they do in the "Buttons" clip is writhe.) Her Fergieness and the BEP's with "My Humps" - winning BEST HIP-HOP VIDEO?! Are they high? And then in the last category, the Chili Peppers and Madge videos, the best of the bunch, lose Video of the Year to that Panic! at the Disco makeup-fest. Blecch. Long story short, the VMAs mostly depressed me.
Music, Bob to Banks: I began the weekend listening to the new Bob Dylan, which I downloaded a torrent of before leaving town Friday. So far, I'm having about the same reaction to this that I've had to the other two parts of the Dylan "comeback trilogy" (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft): this is excellent, vital work by Dylan, but it's not changing my life or anything. As of now, the last song, "Ain't Talkin'," is the clear highlight for me. I later scored a cleaner copy of the Bob CD from bradamants_mom upon arriving in Wayne, Penna. for the weekend, which was handy. We were there to celebrate a milestone birthday for my man damonbradl, and the party was a surprise; so we showed up early, and I ended up pitching in with a bit of setup and, natch, iPod tunes. My "All Purpose Party Jukebox" playlist did the trick most of the way through, and it even served up a Britney Spears tune at the very moment the birthday boy - the biggest teen-pop fan we know - walked in. Later, though, it was all about the hip-hop, as prettykate helped me hunt down jams by Lloyd Banks, Fitty, and other assorted G-Unit posse tracks. I still have "On Fire" stuck in my head.
I'm so sick of these muthafukkin' tights on this muthafukkin' Christ figure: I saw two movies this weekend - both of them weeks old, and both benefiting tremendously from lowered expectations. There's a lot wrong with Snakes on a Plane, but we saw it the way it was meant to be seen: with a big group of half-drunk friends (it was the end-of-night activity for damonbradl's party). The only criticism bradamant offered was of the clearly spliced-in hard-R footage (boobs, gore, Sam Jackson's immortal muthafukkin' line), but that didn't bother me as much as the awkward pacing, lame ending and the not-bad-enough-to-be-good acting by three-fourths of the cast. Still, I give it two affectionate stars and wish, in retrospect, that I'd been not just tipsy but high. Then on Monday, back in NYC and by myself, I ventured to the hinterlands of the Upper West Side to see Superman Returns in IMAX - or should I say intermittent 3-D? It's the first time I've seen a full Hollywood feature adapted for 3-D IMAX, and I was underwhelmed: they signal you to take the glasses on and off a half-dozen times, because regular features don't lend themselves to full-length 3D and they've only 'scoped the big FX sequences. It's distracting, and the diorama-quality effects are not worth the effort. But the movie itself? Wow, was that better than I'd expected. I understand the mostly poor reviews, but honestly, with just two - admittedly, huge - fixes, the movie would've bordered on four stars: recast the whole thing (everyone but Eva Marie Saint, Frank Langella and the wide-eyed kid playing Jimmy Olsen should go) and make it 30 minutes shorter. Otherwise, it's really pretty great: the dialogue is quite a bit better than either of the Donner/Lester Superman flicks (which haven't aged well), the action set pieces range from okay to great (the shuttle-plane sequence rocked), and the Christ metaphor is thick but surprisingly effective. Actually, forget Christ: the movie is one long, obvious 9/11 parable, and it worked on me like gangbusters. The moment when Supe falls silently back to earth like The Falling Man kind of choked me up. Maybe this is how I like my comic flicks: heavy and emotional. Anyway, three very enthusiastic stars, and if Brandon Routh wasn't so blah and Kate Bosworth so dreadful, I'd be more generous.
Oh, and for fans of our much-admired, much-spoiled kitty: Hetty didn't like us leaving for half the weekend and let us know by berserking around the apartment all evening Sunday. But by Monday night she was sleeping on bradamant and purring away again.