godthedog

it's a sign that nothing else on the board is really happening & i'm idly killing time. covers edition: 1. jimi hendrix - "all along the watchtower" 2. cowboy junkies - "sweet jane" 3. beatles - "long tall sally" 4. mazzy star - "wild horses" 5. madonna and massive attack - "i want you"

thanks, yo. i would've begun a new "pimping/feedback" thread for it, but god knows how many michael moore-related threads this board can take before it collapses on itself.

i got to see that 'daily show' segment, and it kind of distressed me. i think it was an unnecessary cheap shot at a beginning filmmaker. NOBODY making their first movie knows what the hell they're doing, and about 90% of learning how to make a movie consists of learning it the hard way. it's impossible to explain all the variables you have to worry about when you're trying to get a film made with a crew of 2 and (presumably) no funding. "oh fuck, where's michael moore's office" is roughly the equivalent of "oh fuck, i didn't charge the camera battery last night" or "oh fuck, the wire to the mic was faulty, so all the footage we shot today is useless because it has no sound" or "oh fuck, i didn't white balance & now the walls look yellowish and they won't match the coverage i shot yesterday where the walls were white." i've seen and/or done every one of these. the logistics of shooting are insanely difficult, and it's almost impossible for one man to keep everything straight in his head. if you follow around any independent filmmaker for more than two hours, you'll get more than enough footage to be able to make him look like an ass. the artistry is in the final product, it makes no difference whatsoever how smoothly the shoot goes. and since we don't even have wilson's final product, it's asinine to show him as an incompetent filmmaker just because he wants to say inflammatory things about michael moore. it's EXACTLY the same logic as "michael moore says bad things about our president, so let's discredit him by saying he's a shitty director who doesn't know how to make a movie!" i have no doubt in my mind that moore himself made dozens of mistakes on 'roger and me' just like the one wilson got lampooned for. this whole thing also made moore and samantha bean just look like assholes. of course moore has a right to not respond to wilson and one can easily understand why he'd not want to talk to him, but why does he have to rub the poor guy's nose in it by doing a cheap cameo for a comedian doing a story about him? it no longer has anything to do with either one's politics, and is deliberately looking down on wilson as a filmmaker. politics aside, i would think that moore would have at least enough respect for his craft by not resorting to cheapshots like this toward a "lesser" director.

monty python edition: 1. "spam song" 2. "sit on my face" 3. "lumberjack song" 4. "always look on the bright side of life" 5. "every sperm is sacred"

in honor of the world's oldest profession, i hereby revive this discussion. content-wise that's kind of reaching, but i think the similarity of context is valid, and both films seem to work on this sub-rational level that has nothing to do with telling a story and everything to do with using every cinematic tool at one's disposal to jar & jolt the shit out of the viewer. from what i've heard, 'the passion' relies more on the sheer spectacle of a man being beaten to death than any empathy with the main character, as the characterization of jesus within the film itself apparently is pathetically flimsy. it's like eisenstein used to do, always putting babies in danger in his action scenes. in the middle of the riot scene in 'strike', you just see this baby (who has never been introduced in the film before), out of the blue, fall five storeys to its death. it's just an immediate psychological "oh SHIT" reaction that depends more on the image itself than the character. same thing with moore: narrative doesn't matter, what matters is a string of spectacle and memorable moments like embarrassing bush sound bytes, and amputee veterans who we never really get to know--they're not there because moore is focused on their character and individual struggle, they're there so that you can see images of amputees and associate them with the bush administration. also kind of cool is both directors' intention to speak to the viewer on a more direct, immediate and personal level than movies are used to. gibson wants you to know, very simply and very purely, that WE killed christ (how successful he is in conveying this is debatable, but the intention is unique). moore wants YOU to go out and dethrone the man in power. they're not movies that want you to sit back and watch and idly explore, they want you to directly participate in the discourse and MAKE the material relevant in your own life.

robert johnson - "kind-hearted mama blues"

the "songs michael moore has bastardized for his movies" version (a.k.a., the column-pimping version): 1. christopher cross - "theme from 'great american hero' " 2. neil young - "rockin in the free world" 3. bloodhound gang - "fire water burn" 4. r. e. m. - "shiny happy people" 5. joey ramone - "what a wonderful world"

top 5 songs of the morning: 1. robert johnson - 32-20 blues 2. the who - magic bus 3. radiohead - street spirit 4. seal - crazy 5. mindless self indulgence - faggot

true conservatives should vote for nader.

isn't this trolling?

Velvet Underground was just acid rock, and not very good acid rock at that. The Doors did acid rock, hard rock, pop, blues, jazz, and blended in and out of all that genres flawlessly. And, "Heroin" might be better then "LA Woman" if you are actuall yon heroin. sweet, i've hit a nerve. you don't seem to be very familiar with the VU catalog. "i found a reason"-- straight-up 50s doo-wop "lonesome cowboy bill"-- country western "the murder mystery"-- avant-garde & 20th centruy classical "after hours"-- folk (albeit a VERY scary interpretation of folk) "who loves the sun"-- beatles pop "train round the bend"-- blues-based rock "sweet jane"-- straight-up rock music, and far too stripped and simple to be anything resembling acid rock "pale blue eyes"-- sweet, tender little ballad there's very little that the VU did that can really be considered "acid rock." their instrumentation and chord progressions were too simple & basic. there's some weird viola/organ stuff going on in "heroin," "venus in furs" and "sister ray" that you could maybe call acid rock, but acid rock is generally characterized as having a muted, hazy sound; those 3 tracks (and most of the harder stuff from the VU's first 2 albums) are harsh, abrasive & dissonant in a way that the doors, hendrix, the dead, et al., aren't. EDIT: and la parka beat me to it. i blame the 'real world reunion' special that distracted me while i was trying to type this post. EDIT EDIT: and i just realized that watching 'the real world' while trying to type up a post about the velvet underground kills all my credibility. i blame myself.

blah. the doors didn't do anything that the velvet underground hadn't done better 2 years before. lou reed was light-years better as a lyricist, and the reed/cale combination founded experiments darker, more real and more daring than anything the doors even attempted, much less succeeded in doing. and "heroin" is a better song than "LA woman."

the "last laugh"/"masters of the universe" combination is one of the most bizarre that i've ever seen. i see you've got 'carabiniers' in your collection, which i've never been able to get my hands on. is that one worth picking up sight unseen?

for the record, pauline kael wrote better reviews. nobody could spin webs of rich, convincing criticism as effortlessly and as intricately as she. she was a little nuts, but god could she ever write a spell over me. <faraway sigh>

if i were a mod, i'd move this into classics immediately, just to piss him off.

rains holds his own admirably in 'casablanca' and gives probably the best performance in the movie. he owns 'notorious' over cary grant and ingrid bergman in every way possible, and comes from having the weakest-written character in the film to commanding the screen whenever he's on and generally being one of the the coolest bad ass motherfuckers ever.

I've noticed that about you. So this does carry some weight. That's good. huzzah. nice to know that i'm doing good for others with my higher standards. i still like him. i could care less what his individual opinion of a given movie is, and i don't put much stock in what any one person says about a movie anyway. the man writes great reviews, and i enjoy reading them. he's easy to read, and he's generally good about backing up his shit with some kind of justification within the space limits of his column. he's a hell of a lot better than somebody like peter travers, who i tend to agree with more, but who often gets so caught up in his own rhetoric that i'm left thinking, "wait a minute, his point was...what, exactly?" none of that shit from ebert.

Many more aside from these people need to go, but these are the most urgent ones. why does claude rains need to go?

i'm a snooty little shit who can hardly be bothered to see anything that's even in the english language, much less something from hollywood, and i loved it.

dan baird - "i love you period" restless heart - "when she cries" sunscreen - "love you more" tasmin archer - "sleeping satellite" richard marx - "take this heart"

i liked orton for a little while. when he would face batista & batista would KILL him with a clothesline. happened 2 for 2 straight weeks on smackdown, and it was great. then at a house show batista knocked him unconscious with it, and i stopped seeing them together.

bank does not equal legend. legendary status requires the respect and admiration of your peers. schwarzenegger was bank, and ten years from now no one in their right mind is going to march into julliard and say, "i want to be a great actor like schwarzenegger was." they won't say that with harrison ford. they won't say that with tom cruise. they won't say that with mel gibson. for my money julianne moore is the best actor working today, male or female, but she's vehemently hated by too many people to be another brando. macgregor's got a good chance, but he's not very high-profile. he might become a big cult "actor's actor" like karl malden or something. norton is good, but the only time he really knocked me on my ass was in 'american history x'. i think at times, he tries too hard to not try too hard, if that makes any sense. frances mcdormand is fantastic, but doesn't have a huge noticeable body of work. very precise and very true. i think tim roth has a great chance, as he's got a fuckton of charisma & lots of intensity in his eyes, but i haven't seen him do anything in years. liam neeson can be great, but he hasn't shown it very much. there's 'schindler's list', 'husbands and wives', & maybe 'suspect', but that's it. i'm just rambling off the top of my head now, so i'll stop.

his unprofessional attitude from the 70s onward was a pox upon the craft of acting, but god damn if he couldn't command a scene like nobody else. the only guy who could ever match his effortlessness was jimmy stewart, and i don't think anybody since him has graced the screen with so much pure, raw talent. i talked some shit about him earlier in the week before his death, but seeing his picture and reading his obituary in the paper did make me sad. this wasn't a totally unexpected happening (since he was 80 and all), and as an acting legend we really lost him a long time ago, but this is still something momentous.

concerning quentin tarantino and charlie kaufman, two indie favorites of the board and poster boys of screenwriting cleverness. i try to argue why a movie's being clever isn't as important as its being genuine, and i say some not-nice things about 'kill bill'. it's also very long and academic-sounding, with sentences like, "This gives the stylish breaks the opportunity to mean something and to say something about what it means to create and write; if Charlie Kaufman is earnest in letting us in to the conflict of Kaufman the character (not Kaufman the screenwriter of the film), his pain of being stuck and his joy of finding the right ending can really resonate, and the cleverness becomes a tool used in aid of making the film more resonant and meaningful." so, read it and feel smarter. and feel free to argue with me. it's too often that a person sees a clever stylish device in a movie, and thinks that the effect on him came just from that stylish device, when there's a lot more to it than that. any nimrod can put subtitles in different colors or write himself into his own screenplay; i argue that their effectiveness comes not from the devices themselves, but how they are used. and i argue it in 2,200 words with lots of examples and such. feedback, discussion, and complaints are welcome.

since sonic youth counts for you, i'd check out cowboy junkies, portishead, & especially early pj harvey.