Spring Cleaning

The windows are open, the sun is shining, and it’s time to clean out the clutter. In that spirit, here’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to review but just haven’t gotten around to:
iConcertCal. This plugin for iTunes has become one of my favorite technological advances of recent months. Install this puppy, enter the city where you live, and it will look at all the artists in your iTunes library and tell you when any of them are playing nearby. Unlike some other concert calendar plugins I’ve tried, this one actually covers all the major (and nearly all the minor) venues in Denver and Boulder. It’s also a timesaver, since I don’t have to go through and manually enter artists I’m interested in, and I no longer have to constantly browse multiple websites in search of shows to see. In the two days since I downloaded iConcertCal, it’s already led me to upcoming shows by Bloc Party and Rush (at Red Rocks!). Sweet.
The Wire: Season One. It’s taken me a while, but I finally started listening to everyone and their brother who have been telling me how amazing this HBO series is. You were right, OK? It’s a great show, and it’s eating up all my free time lately. I hope you’re happy.
Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Johnny Marr (formerly of The Smiths and The The) climbs on board for the latest (and poppiest) Modest Mouse album, and the result is a rollicking rock album that makes me want to dance every time I listen.
Citizen Kane. I picked this special edition up at Costco for the criminally low price of $8.99. It had been a long time since I had last seen this movie (universally accepted as one of the greatest films ever made), and this crisp restoration gave me a new appreciation for it. At first glance, the movie seems to be full of clichés (lighting, storytelling, camera moves), until you realize that in 1941, nobody else was doing this stuff. At the time, Orson Welles’ masterpiece was incredibly groundbreaking, and set the template for decades to come. (Apparently, the making-of documentary on the second disc is pretty good too, but I haven’t gotten around to watching that yet.)
Conan, Volumes 1 and 2, Dark Horse Comics. When I was a little kid, my dad used to tell me stories about Conan to put me to bed. I’m not sure what his source material was, but as far as I can remember, they always followed the same basic pattern (Conan comes to a village, a beautiful woman/village leader asks for his help from the monster/bandits/tyrant threatening the village, Conan defeats them, gets his reward, and continues on his way), and that since I was 4 or 5 years old at the time, they were about as G-rated as a Conan story can get. But thanks to Dad’s stories, interest in the barbarian’s adventures always stuck with me, and I’ve continued to read and watch Conan’s various incarnations through the years, mostly with differing levels of disappointment. So when I saw that Dark Horse was going begin adapting Robert E. Howard’s original stories in comic book form, I was a little skeptical. After all, Marvel Comics’s ongoing series in the 70’s and 80’s left a lot to be desired. But Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord have done a masterful job with this current incarnation, and have treated Conan rather faithfully to Howard’s original vision: A thief and a warrior, a lover of wine and women, at heart a bit of a country boy often confused by civilization, but never afraid to let his sword do the talking. More than any other version since Howard’s original stories, this series is truest to the spirit of Conan, and the gorgeous art only helps to make it an enjoyable read.
Hellboy: Blood & Iron. I’ve said before that Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy is one of the most underrated comic book movies ever made. Thankfully, a sequel is in the works, but until then, I’m happy to watch the latest in a series of animated movies from Cartoon Network starring the voices of nearly all the actors from the live action movie. For a “cartoon,” this movie (featuring a host of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and the goddess of death), is pretty damn creepy.
It’s Superman!, Tom de Haven. A reimagining of the Superman origin myth, set against the backdrop of 1930’s America (no “Metropolis” here, only real cities and cameos from plenty of historical figures). I’m not sure I agree with all of de Haven’s characterizations (Clark Kent as a intellectually “simple” farmboy?), but it was an interesting revisionist take on how Clark, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor came together for the first time.