'Tis the season to B movies...

I usually get around to watching about two horror movies a year, so I like the experience to be extra horrific. Not only do I expect the thrills and chills to be spine-tingling, but I love it when the horror (as Brando would have cooed) permeates the film-making. There needs to be a certain element of cheese added to the process. Now this usually takes two forms: intentional cheese, as exhibited by such horror greats as Armies of Darkness or Bubba-Hotep (anything with his Chin-ness in it, really), or incidental cheese, as shown in any adaptation of Stephen King's work (excluding Kubrick's The Shining, which King hates, incidentally.) Often horror focuses on a group of folks enduring some sort of phantasmic tribulation. The group is necessary since a bunch of them will inevitably get killed off. In Stephen King stories, I have often found this process to be a bit morally heavy-handed, almost puritanical. King's stories are full of people getting their "come uppance."
Take the 2004 TNT production of Stephen King's Salem's Lot, starring the white-guy-in-the-leather-jacket Rob Lowe, as well as a host of others including Amy Smart, Donald Sutherland, Rutger Hauer, Andre Braugher, and that British guy from Babe. There is so much delightful awfulness in this 3 hour wreck of a TV mini-series that I never wanted it to end. From Rob Lowe's "book on tape" voice-over, to the orange-vortex flashbacks, to Smart's and Lowe's stilted dialogue ("...you came home to a town you thought you knew, and a town that thought they knew you." So basically a lot of thinking going on.) There's a great scene in a cafe where the two brainiacs discuss architecture and the "soul of buildings." Donald Sutherland is creepy enough sans beard and even moreso avec le barbe. Oh yeah, there are delightful little outbursts of French in the film, too. And this is all before the VAMPIRES even start showing up!
The movie seems to mix up vampires and zombies a bit because there are scenes where alternately there are junior vampires are crawling upside down on the ceiling of their school bus while at the same time there are vampires night of the living dead-ing it out in the street.
Braugher actually turns in the best performance of all next to Rutger Hauer (but all Hauer has to do is play the evil master vampire and how hard is that if Tom Cruise can do it?) Braugher's character neatly portrays the "minority" character in the small white Northeastern town. Conveniently for the script, he is both black and gay. And an English teacher. It says all the more for Braugher's acting prowess that he was able to elevate his acting above the token-level of his casted role.
Despite the movie's moments of supreme awfulness, or perhaps because of them, I didn't even notice the three hours of my life slipping away.... The horror, the horror.
So like Nosferatu at dusk, I am off to seek my second B movie of the season....

Rug Dancing, vol. 2

I heard once that Americans consume more calories in the months between Thanksgiving and New Years than the rest of the year combined. This makes sense for alot of reasons, the least of which being (for us hearty Northeasterners) that it is really, REALLY cold outside. It's definitely not the season for leisurely strolls. When you go outside, it is equipped and with purpose. When you walk, you move. Now, I just recently got an ipod (I hear they are all the rage with "the kids" these days), and this most recent album by the Smashing Pumpkins (aka, Billy Corgan & Jimmy Chamberlain) has gotten me through both the shopping season and other the winter walking that I have had to do. It actually makes me want to go out in the cold and walk around for an hour. This is the kind of album that you haven't heard from Corgan since "Siamese Dream." The melodies are catchy and unexpected, the guitars are huge and shredding, and the drums, my god, the drums. Jimmy Chamberlain is the rock upon which Zeitgeist is built. The lyrics aren't profound or mind-blowing- they sound alot like the way I remember they did in junior high, only then they were both profound AND mind-blowing, so I guess it's 5 o'clock somehwere. If you still need convincing, check out the track "Bleeding the Orchid," my favorite track. You may have already heard "Doomsday Clock" on the Transformers soundtrack, and you know Optimus Prime can't be wrong.

Moby Dick - An American Mess(terpiece)

For the last year, I have done battle with the great American literary Leviathan: Herman Melville's Moby Dick. The journey has been a long and strange one, much like the Pequod's tale, often filled with wild chases, more often floating through tedious doldrums, and occasionally transcending the reading experience altogether. I would liken this novel to a huge mansion, or a museum with an ambiguous title, like the Smithsonian. The chapters are like the rooms of this museum; some are huge corridors, others are tiny closets. Some of these rooms contain fascinating objects which cause you to slowly stroll through, mouth agape. Others find you staring at your feet, scuffing your way through the flotsam and jetsom of boredom.
What Melville could have used in this whole process of creating Moby Dick was an editor. There are large chapters which go on and on about ... "The Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales"? That is the title of one of the "doldrum" chapters, as I would call them. Though, when I consider it, an editor, while he may have been able to trim some of the excess blubber, may have also hacked away some of the best chunks of writing I have ever read because much of it does not directly relate to the chase of the whale.
"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expence but his own... That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke... Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeve of my frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost."- Chapter 49, "The Hyena"
After a season aboard Melville's chaotic ark, I learned to push through the bewildering rabbit trails and footnotes that litter the architecture of this great house, and content myself with the richness of the language. While I don't fall in with the literary camp that deigns this the "Great American Novel," I have enjoyed the voyage immensely.

A Painting for the Advent Season

One of the great masters of the Renaissance and one of my favorite painters of all time is Peter Bruegel the Elder, a Flemish artist who lived in the 16th century. He was often called "Peasant Bruegel" because of his honest, epic portraits of peasant life (this was uncommon during the Rennaissance when, unlike the rampant sophistication in today's culture, the patrons mostly wanted to see beautiful celebrities or naked people...)

One of the popular themes in large scale paintings of this time was the Massacre of the Innocents, the oft-overlooked Christmas story where Herod goes Wack-an-Infant on Bethlehem after the Wise Men spill the beans on Baby Jesus (it just never makes it into church pagaents... I guess nobody wants their kid to be on the Infanticide Patrol) Bruegel's take on this is subject is my favorite of all the Rennaissance masters because of the detachment in his handling. Bruegel was a master of pastoral painting, and he does a great job of showing us that no matter what the atrocity, the world at large remains unaffected by human affairs. While Bruegel was heavily influenced by Flemish peer Hieronymous Bosch, he infuses his work with much more subtlety and natural qualities.

Rug Dancing, vol. 1.

The catch phrase amongst hipsters when you ask them if they like a certain musician is to shrug non-chalantly and mutter: "I like their early stuff." Not so with David Byrne, former frontman for the Talking Heads. I was never a big TH fan, but when it comes to DB's solo albums... YOWZA! While my favorite remains 1997's "Feelings," his 1989 release Rei Momo (or "Carnival King," for those of you who dont hablar...) is damn good. Its not a campy "take" on salsa, meringue or the other Afro-Caribbeo-Latino styles it incorporates, its David Byrne getting his own special brand of weird sauce all over some great booty shakin' tunes and servin' it up extra picante. I am not a dancer of any kind, but I would challenge anyone to listen to this album and find their ass to remain sedintary.

The Role of Centrism in Variety Packs

And the winner is ... the Dundee Craft Pack. When it comes to variety packs, I am all in. I love beer in all its permutations and am also easily bored, so there's nothing like a good variety pack to give you options. Because really, thats what makes good booze. Say what you want about single malt whiskey (love it), but why is vodka so damn popular? Options. There aren't many things you should put into a single malt (besides ice cubes), but with vodka, the possibilities are endless. Its the same with beer. Who wants to drink a Stout all night (besides the Irish)?

Now, the reason why I ultimately chose Dundee over Magic Hat (my favorite mid-range brewery, other than Flying Dog- more on that later...) as the best in variety packs is two fold. The first is that it is local (brewed and bottled in Rochester, NY... on the 'other side of the tracks' from Genny Cream Ale!). The other is its Wheat Beer. I don't like Wheat Beer, and the Circus Boy Heffeweisen in Magic Hat's variety pack is just too much. The Wheat Beer is Dundee's craft pack plays more towards the center, and that way I can handle it. They still end up being the stragglers in the fridge, but at least they don't become permanent residents like the Circus Boy.

The art on the bottles is also whimsical and engaging, and the pithy blurbs on the back are fun to read. So ... THINK GLOBALLY & DRINK LOCALLY!

Livin' the Dream

I love films about America. I think that as a subject, you would be hard-pressed to find a grander and more beautiful subject to study through images and characters. The very best cinema in this country has been self-reflexive, inquiring into the nuances of the mythic American Dream: no matter where you come from or who you are, here you have a land that if you can imagine it ... you can have it. Of course there is The Godfather trilogy, Gone With the Wind, Legends of the Fall, Casino (anything by Scorcese, actually)... and then there is this gem, Giant.
It has been a long time since I was so gripped by such an epic tale. I had always known of it only as "Jame's Dean's last film." The shot of Dean in the back of the convertible with his feet up has become an iconic image. The context of that shot makes it even better. Dean is the rags to riches dandy in this film, the poor outsider who makes it to the top of the social echelons but never gets what he really wants, the girl. The girl, in this case, is Elizabeth Taylor, the wife of Texas Rancher, Bick Benedict (a stellar performance by Rock Hudson, who would have made a fantastic Bruce Wayne). Taylor and Dean were both only 23 when they starred in this film, but they play their characters into their 60's with the kind of certainty that makes them timeless in the pantheon of American actors. Dean's final drunken soliloquy in an empty ballroom is disarmingly real, like something that you would expect in a PT Anderson scene. Taylor plays a fiercely gorgeous strong minded Eastern woman who is layin down the "women's lib" line on the Texan patriarchy 40 years before the advent of bra burning...
This film deals with topics as broad as sexism, racism, politics, and class warfare without ever losing its focus on its characters and their own inner turmoil, familial dissapointments, and joys. The cinematography is at once epic in its scope and tender in its detail. The wide angle lens and long shots make for some greatly framed scenes. In one of the films later moments, the family is assembled in a hotel suite, the characters placed assymetrically balanced from the background on the hotel balcony to the foreground,at a desk and couch where a young Dennis Hopper argues with Rock Hudson about institutionalized racism in Texas.
I would recommend this film to anyone who misses a bit of substance with their cinema. Its a bit long: at 3 hours, you get the feeling that this could have been a good mini-series, but to me every moment is necessary. I even found myself looking back and wanting to know more about certain characters, feeling that there were pieces missing still. An incredibly under-rated film. A trio of the screen's finest actors in their prime. Texas. The American Dream.