S.P.Q.R.

Rome, Season Two. Lavish, decadent, and bloody could describe both HBO’s series and the empire it was based on, as ultimately, those characteristics led to the downfall of both. Sadly, tonight HBO aired the final episode in the all-too-brief run of Rome, ending it after only two seasons. The writers had planned out a story arc over three seasons, but were told at the beginning of this year that due to low ratings and high production values, there would be no third season. This meant that the episodes in season two often felt rushed, covering months or even years at a time as Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus (above) led us through Octavian’s vanquishing of Brutus, Cassius, Antony and Cleopatra on his way to becoming Caesar.

Despite the time crunch, Rome was far more entertaining than 95% of what’s on TV, and I’m sorry to see it go. But the people have spoken, and apparently more of them would rather watch Dancing With the Stars than a history lesson dressed up with battles and orgies. Heathen savages, the lot of them. Gauls, most likely.

Truth Is...

Stranger Than Fiction. This was a pretty good movie. Nice understated performances from Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhall, and solid contributions from Emma Thompson, Arrested Development’s Tony Hale, and Dustin Hoffman. I could have done without Queen Latifah, and I felt like the ending was bit of a cop out, but on the whole, I liked it.

Music for the Masses

Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha.
Explosions in the Sky, All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone.
Arcade Fire, Neon Bible.
Mogwai, Ten Rapid (Collected Recordings 1996–1997).

I love eMusic. Not so good for my music addiction, but how can I complain when I can download all this for $9.99 a month?

A Minor Incident

Badly Drawn Boy at the Fox Theater, Boulder. I’ve always liked BDB’s studio stuff, but never felt compelled one way or the other towards seeing him live. So when some co-workers invited me to join them last night, I figured, why not? Unfortunately, due to some rather tragic circumstances, what we saw was disappointing. Before he even played a single note, Damon Gough (that’s his real name) came onstage and announced that he was out of sorts because his grandfather had just died, but he decided to go on with the show anyway and dedicate it to his grandfather’s memory. Unfortunately, Gough’s mind was obviously not on his music, which led to a rather disjointed show, since he skipped over songs in the setlist several times, then had several conferences with his band between numbers to figure out when to go back and play what they had missed. I was also disappointed in the songs from his new album, a heavily Springsteen-influenced set entitled Born in the U.K. It became obvious very quickly into the show that Gough’s voice is much better suited to quieter numbers, and when the set switched to a bigger rock sound (i.e. most of the new songs), he was overpowered by his band. Things got much better when he played an acoustic mini-set of 4 or 5 songs, accompanied only by another band member on xylophone, and also when he put down his guitar and played piano backed by the band. Based on the bright spots, I’d be willing to give BDB another shot, especially since it was pretty clear that last night wasn’t his best performance. But it’s not like the night was a complete waste. If nothing else, I got to wander around Boulder and check out all the hot women out enjoying the warm weather. As Gough said at one point, “Usually when I introduce this song, I say ‘This one’s for all the pretty girls’ and I’m just talking out my ass. But not in Boulder. Plenty of beautiful ladies here.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega.

Mallrats: 10th Anniversary Extended Edition and Chasing Amy. Most fans of Kevin Smith can tell you all about how they were one of the first people to see Clerks, and it meant so much to them because they were working behind the counter in some shitty hourly job. Not me. I can trace my fanboy crush to Christmas 1995, when I was trapped at Tyson’s Corner mall looking for some way to avoid the holiday masses and ended up ducking into the multiplex, where Mallrats looked like they best way to kill a couple hours. I don’t know if it was the slew of comic book jokes, the foul-mouthed humor, or just a feeling of kinship for a fellow Jersey boy, but I was hooked. I’ve stayed with Smith through good times (Chasing Amy, Dogma) and bad (Jersey Girl, Clerks II). I even made the pilgrimage to his comic book store in New Jersey when I was living out there. But as I’ve gotten older, age has given me a new perspective on his films, which was well-illustrated by the mini-marathon I watched yesterday.

I started with the 10th Anniversary edition of Mallrats, which Smith and producer/sidekick Scott Mosier re-edited from the original dailies. The addition of a new opening scene and some extra dialogue extends the film by 15 minutes or so, but unfortunately it mostly serves to expose the biggest weaknesses of the film: Some pretty horrible acting by Jeremy London and Michael Rooker, and an overwrought build of the main plotline. Instead of extending this film, Smith might have done better to re-edit the original and remove some of the unnecessary scenes. Some of the moments that used to make me laugh still earn a snicker, but mostly, the movie feels dated and stiff to me, and nowhere near as funny as I used to rank it. On the positive side, in an example of life imitating art, Mallrats’ biggest contribution was to expose the talents of Jason Lee to the world (much like the game show scene that ends the film), and to bring him together for the first time with Ethan Supplee, who now plays Lee’s dimwitted brother Randy on My Name is Earl. Also, thanks to Mallrats, I developed a crush on Joey Lauren Adams, which brings me to the next movie.

To put this in a frame of reference, I have a soft spot for romantic comedies, but not if they’re just the typical Hollywood crap. If a filmmaker can do things a little differently by putting a twist on the traditonal rom-com formula, then I usually enjoy it, which is why Chasing Amy is one of my top 3 favorite movies. I mean, how many other films boast a plotline of “boy meets girl, boy discovers girl likes girls, they fall in love anyway and everything is going great until boy finds out about girl’s pre-lesbian sexual history and his crushing jealousy and insecurity ruin everything”? We’ve all been there, right? Sounds like a bit of a downer, but this kind of story plays right into Smith’s wheelhouse. Instead of a bunch of throwaway dick and fart jokes, here he applies his wry humor to what ultimately becomes an examination of sexuality in mid-90’s slacker America, and how in the end, sexual preference is outweighed by being able to get past the prejudices we’re all conditioned to believe. As the tagline for the movie reads, “It’s not who you love. It’s how.” But in amongst all the pseudo-psychological subtext, there’s also a very sweet and heartbreaking love story, featuring a pre-action-hero-phase Ben Affleck in the last role I enjoyed him in until Hollywoodland, Jason Lee in a great role as Affleck’s homophobic friend who doth protest too much, and Joey Lauren Adams (*sigh*) as the gorgeous lesbian who might just like guys after all (a little too much for Affleck, as it turns out). Unlike Mallrats, outside of some obvious 90’s fashion, Amy doesn’t feel dated at all, mainly because love and heartbreak are universal themes. But for me, the power of the movie is this: Every time I watch it, I always end up feeling drained, like I just rode the same emotional rollercoaster that the main characters did. It’s not often in this age of slick special effects that movies suck you in so completely. When one does manage to connect emotionally, that makes it something special, and that’s why Chasing Amy will always be one of my favorites.

A Bit of the Old Ultra-Violence

300. As comic-book movies go, this should be the pinnacle. Every bit of this movie is lovingly rendered in CGI with the expressed intent of creating a three-dimensional version of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s graphic novel, and the result is a visual treat. From the backgrounds to the weapons and armor to the overall color palette to the overly-stylized violence, painstakingly detailed decapitations and spurting fountains of blood in the battle scenes, nothing in the film goes untouched. Unfortunately, all this concentration on the visuals doesn’t leave a lot of room for human emotion in the film. Granted, these are Spartans, who were trained from a very young age to shun emotions as weakness, but I found it a bit difficult to be concerned about the fate of the main characters, especially when I already knew the outcome of the battle. I found myself wishing for one major player (be he sympathetic or enigmatic) to identify with, which is the strength of some of the better comic book films like Spider-Man or Batman Begins. Instead, I got stereotypically cardboard action heroes and villains, and it was hard to care much about either. That said, I’m glad I saw 300 in the theater, as I think this is one of those movies that’s really going to lose something on a TV screen. In the end, I’d rate it like this: Visuals—A+ / The rest of the movie—C / Overall—B+.

UPDATE: I just noticed on the website that they released an IMAX version of 300, and it’s playing in Denver. I may have to go check it out just for the experience.

Lion’s Share

Pride of Baghdad, Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Henrichon. Damn. Every once in a while, I get lucky with an impulse buy that turns out to be so much better than I expect, and I wonder why I didn’t buy it sooner. This graphic novel has been out for a few months, and I’ve heard plenty of good things (not to mention Vaughn is one of my favorite writers in modern comics), but I just got around to picking it up today. The “based-on-a-true” story follows a group of lions (freed from the Baghdad Zoo by an American bomb) as they struggle to survive in the devastated city. The art is lush and cinematic, the writing is original and inventive (the lions serve as allegory for the people of Baghdad, but it’s handled with subtlety), and I’m kicking myself for not buying this sooner. Definitely worthy of a spot on my bookshelf.

Man, Superman

Hollywoodland. This film about the mysterious death of TV’s first Superman, George Reeves, has lots of good performances and a pretty interesting plot, but all I kept thinking was, Ben Affleck really can be a decent actor when he’s not in full-on action hero mode, hamming it up for Kevin Smith, or filling pages in Us Weekly. Too bad we don’t see that side of him more often.

Hoop Dreams

Foul Lines, Jack McCallum and L. Jon Wertheim. This novel by a couple of my former co-workers has been languishing on my “To Read” pile for over a year now, mainly because I can’t say the idea of a novel about a fictional pro basketball team really piqued my interest. I’m ashamed to admit what finally got me to read it was, I was looking for some reading material for the bathroom, and this was the first book that came to hand. I figured it would at least be good enough to help pass the time. But 3 hours later, long after I had left the bathroom, I found myself halfway through the book and enjoying the ride.

The story follows the Los Angeles Lasers of the NBF (see what they did there? so clever), tracking a tumultous season through the eyes of the Lasers’ star player, their fresh-out-of-college PR director, and the young female business writer-turned-beat reporter at the LA Times assigned to the team. Despite the obvious hyperbole and players who are changed just enough so they don’t exactly match up with any real people, there is some serious craft in this book. McCallum and Wertheim know their stuff, drawing on their many years of experience covering basketball themselves. Once you peel back some of the layers of satire, the story really does offer a good look into the warped dynamic of pro basketball, where overpaid, undereducated and spoiled players are supposed to be watched over, coached, and in many ways, babysat, by people who make 1/100th of what the athletes are getting paid. The authors use that situation to full comedic effect, and in several cases had me laughing out loud, especially in the scene where a routine practice turns into a brawl. Foul Lines may not be Nobel Prize-winning literature, but it was still an enjoyable read, and sometimes, that’s all a book really needs to be.

Knowledge is Power

5 Things You Don’t Know About Me. Apparently there’s this game of blog tag (aka “a meme”—whatever that means) going around the internet (check out the results of a Google search), where folks in the blogosphere are compelling each other to list 5 things people may not know about you. Well, my friend Jenny tagged me, but given that most of you who read this thing know me pretty well, this may be a stretch. But I’m game, so I’ll give it a shot.

1. My family came very close to moving to Australia when I was in middle school. So close, in fact, that my friends threw a fantastic surprise going-away party for me which I enjoyed immensely, and never felt guilty about enjoying it when we didn’t end up moving.
2. I had the idea for the movie Reign of Fire 5 or 6 years before it was made, even down to specific details like mining activity waking up the dragons. And no, I don’t have any proof. If I did, I would have sued those bastards a long time ago.
3. If I was good enough to make it drawing comic books, I’d give up a limb to work on Spider-Man or Conan.
4. I’ve been to Atlantic City plenty of times, and gambled in casinos in several other states, but I’ve never been to Vegas.
5. Despite my position as arbiter of musical taste for many of my friends, I get an extreme amount of guilty pleasure from cheesy late-90’s girl rock: Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, The Corrs...

Tag. You’re it.

Western Vengeance

Maybe it’s the move to a “cowboy town,” but I seem to have gotten on a Western kick without really knowing it, as the last two pop culture items I’ve consumed turned out to be violent modern-day Western stories.


No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy is slowly becoming one of my favorite writers. In the past few months, I read his first book (All the Pretty Horses) and his last (The Road, an amazing novel which I have yet to write about here—I’ll wait until I buy the paperback). Both very enjoyable books for different reasons, so when I saw Old Men at the Strand, I decided it was time to start filling in the gaps of McCarthy’s body of work. Old Men takes place along the Mexican border, as do most of McCarthy’s books. It begins with a drug deal gone bad and the theft of a suitcase full of money, the pursuit of which leads to a spiral of violence on par with The Departed or any Tarantino movie of your choice. But unlike those and most other bloody Hollywood films, in McCarthy’s work, the violence never feels gratuitous—just a fact of life for the paths his characters have chosen. As always, his terse prose lends itself well to the urgency of the situation the characters find themselves in, and he avoids the temptation to take the easy way out, going with the inevitable ending rather than a happy one. I was a little less absorbed by this novel than the first two novels I read, but it was easily good enough that I’ll continue reading the rest of his works.

Down in the Valley. I have to admit, I struggled with this one a little bit. If you’re a Netflix member, you’ll recognize this scenario. A movie arrives and sits by your TV gathering dust for a few weeks because you never feel like you’re in the right mood to watch it. That’s been the case with Valley for me, so finally, I decided this weekend I would either have to watch it or send it back. Yesterday I popped it in and was surprised at what I found. First surprise: It takes place in modern-day California. Given all the cowboy imagery associated with the marketing, I was expecting a period piece. Second surprise: I should listen to my gut. Although there were some strong performances, Down in the Valley is a pretty mediocre movie. No wonder I was in no rush to watch it.

Ed Norton (who I almost always enjoy, and still did somewhat in this film) plays a cowboy who drifts into an unnamed Valley town and begins an affair with Evan Rachel Wood’s teenaged ingenue. Norton begins to insinuate himself into her family, befriending Wood’s younger brother (Rory Culkin) over the objections of their father, a conflicted corrections officer who is struggling to maintain control of his children (David Morse). Despite the modern setting, all the standard Western archetypes are there: The mysterious drifter, the sheriff, the young boy who looks up to the stranger, the girl who falls for him. But Valley gives these archetypes a good twist, and no one is quite what they seem in this film. Tempers flare, events spiral out of control, someone gets shot, and the film culminates in a bloody running gunfight to rival the best Peckinpah western. All that’s missing is an Ennio Morricone score. Norton and David Morse both played their parts well, and Wood showed that Thirteen was no fluke—she’s an acting force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, I felt like the film’s payoff was hollow, and Rory Culkin’s lack of any ability to show emotion hurt some of the key moments. I only wish I hadn’t waited so long to find this out. I could have watched five more enjoyable movies by now.

Lost in Translation

Captain Alatriste, Arturo Pérez Reverte. I spent a few days in New York last week and while I was there, I made some time for a trip to my favorite bookstore anywhere, The Strand. After wandering the aisles for an hour or so, I left with enough books to keep me busy for the next month or two. I started my stack with Captain Alatriste, the first in a series of swashuckling adventures from Spanish author Arturo Pérez Reverte. A few months back, I wrote about how much I enjoyed his book The Club Dumas, and the quality of that book led me to read some more of his work. Reverte has written several books about Alatriste, a Spanish soldier and sword for hire in the 16th century who finds himself becoming involved with the politics of the day, which of course leads to a lot of dangerous situations that can only be resolved with cold steel. This book was an enjoyable read all around, but as with The Club Dumas, I was highly impressed that Reverte’s prose, originally written in his native Spanish, is just as beautiful and enthralling when translated to English. It’s hard enough to be an outstanding writer in your native tongue, but his books hold up despite the change from the original language.