6 posts from February 2008

Here is a link to bloggs of friends of mine which are pure gold:

http://coggblogger.blogspot.com/

http://metroville.blogspot.com/

Pure gold...

I actually sat through the entireity of Enemy of the State for must have been the 4th or 5th time.  Is there a chemical imbalance in my head that I was unable to tuen away from this schlock?  Or was the dazzling array of stars to be that were encompassed by Voights posse: Loren Dean, J Busey, J Black, S Green, Barry Pepper, Scott Caan?  Either way - I watched the whole damn film on basic cable and felt flithy afterwards.  Let me be clear - this is no John Carpenters Vampires where you at least enjoy the pleasure of James Woods assualting a priest for no (including a presesence of a Baldwin - no the, but one), this was worse with much more Bruckheimerian spin....

I guess my defense for Enemy of the State is that there are a few movies that find myself watching over and over again - other films that are terrible but fall in to the same camp:  

• The Recruit (i have no excuse),
• the Hunted (only excuse is the 10 minutes that they spend at the end of the film devoted to T Lee Jones manufacturing a knife out of stone),
• Boondock Saints (mainly for Dafoe and Rocco's character), Tombstone (no explanation needed-actually a pretty good flic),
• Forces of Nature (I know that this is complete guilt pleasure, but it's a beautifully shot film much better than the acutal story),
• Fear & Deep Blue Sea (nothing need be mentioned on how spectaculary bad these films is)

I am sure there are many others that would make this list but none coming to me now this second.  Obviously Segal and Van Damme are excluded from this because they rep a completely different type of cinema.

After some extremely hasty due diligence, I found the following population stats:

The question remains if you were part of this 4 million people, would you celebrate your b-day properly when it came around on the 29th or on the 28th of every year?  If I was blessed to be born a handful of monthes and days earlier, I would be celebrating my 7th birthday.  I can only assume that most modern governments have addressed this, but still it would make each birthday count.

Birthdays now for people in their 20s and 30s seem incredibly insignificant as if it just an inevitability.  I think that any birthday demands at a bare minimum a toast for that person surviving the previous 364 (or 5 for leap years - heck yeah).  Although I do believe that Cake wrote a song that's main purpose is to push the fact that: Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is".

What is the age where people in your life begin worring more about themselves instead of you? I don't think it's 21, but roughly in mid-twenties (this obvious changes due to the mental stability of each person - I'm pumped when a club-footed monogloid with down syndrome make 45 - I think they are already considered for the Estonia congress, although i could be wrong....)

I went out tonight much against my better judgement and discovered the following:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESvYRR1Fyug&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRrzPwmIW1c
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej8S0r6Jz8o (one of the best songs of all time)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJDsm1Y4kUk
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKDZ6yubitM

All gold  - hope you all had happy valentines' days....

I recently (last few monthes) got obsessed with music videos and that particular art medium - I feel that once MTV realized that they would get more ratings with reality TV - they forgot the one reason why they existed in the first place.  Without further ado, here are my favorite videos that are real pieces of art:

1. Dan Le Sac VS scroobius pip - "Thou Shalt always Kill"   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoN6XfyQsr4
2. Justice - "D.A.N.C.E (Version Finale)"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_QVq2lGMs
3. Queens of the stone age - "Go with the Flow" (favorite video ever)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGyZ5P4JlAc
4. OK Go - "Here It Goes Again" (i hope you've seen this)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI
5. Fatboy Slim - "Weapon Of Choice"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZwZiU0kKs
6. Arcade Fire - "Wake Up" (not a cool video - just looks like a memorable time)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8QYnxIjHWg 

What I'm listening to:

• Paul Simon - Concert in the Park - Obvious Child
• Buffalo Sprinfield - Greatest Hits - Kind Woman
• 50 Cent - Curtis - Curtis 187
• Beatles - White Album - Back in the USSR

Another complete non-sequiter, but I happen to be watching one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite actors - the scene in Lost Highway where Robert Loggia freaks out and almost beats a guy to death for following him to closely....gold 

A scene that is analogous to that is where JT Walsh consoles Will H Macy in the Bowling Alley after Macy's dinner wasn't waiting for him in Pleasantville - a highly underrated film in my eyes - good Maguire, good, Witherspoon, good, Bridges, great Walsh, and one of the only movies that Paul Walker is good in (in fact the only one that comes to mind now - feel free to prove me wrong...)

Another strange theory that I have has to do with two actors - Ashley Judd and Peter Saarsgard.  The theory is simply that Peter Saarsgard has never acted poorly in a film and Ashley Judd has never acted well.  I hear that Flightplan might be a chink in this arguments armor, but after hearing the ending from my brother I decided not to watch it (although I totally will probably catch it on TNT some sunday afternoon...)

Although on the subject,is there a better doughy faced Italian that you would rather be sexually assaulted by than Bruno Kirby in the BBall Diaries?  I can't come up with anyone better - either him or a young clemeza... Also I completely forgot that Christopher plays Jim's young friend with cancer earlier in the flic - all in all a decent flic - kind of a Hoosiers meets Blue Chips meets Requiem for a Dream....

As I have recently downloaded Norman Greenbaums' 1 hit wonder that plays in most babtist churchs in the southwest, I am curious (not how effective the 50 cent remix that involves JPJ 2 murder suicide ala the end of the natural born killers music video with Dre and Cube), about the effectiveness of religious music.

There happens to a cable channel that is exculsively dedicated to christian rock - this on one hand delights me but at the same time terrifys me.  I can only imagine that there has been marketing data on the effect of mass media on the populace, but I have not seen the related numbers.  In 1988, Pat Robinson ran for president and one can only guess that his influence came from his distribution of his sermons and his public figure as a pastor.

I guess my question is that will money always win?  It seems to dominate the consversation of eveything and seems to be the one thing that everyone measures themselves against (these days).

But what of history - what has man or ancestors of others experienced to this point and what would they say of the culture that pervades the modern US? Would they be pleaseed, repulsed, and does it matter?

How have we changed and are we learning the lessons of the past?  One of my favorite and thought provoking speechs from film came from 2001's amistad (hopkins speech to the supreme court):

The other night I was talking with my friend, Cinque. He was over at my place, and we were out in the greenhouse together. And he was explaining to me how when a member of the Mende -- that's his people --  how when a member of the Mende encounters a situation where there appears no hope at all, he invokes his ancestors. It's a tradition. See, the Mende believe that if one can summon the spirits of one's ancestors, then they have never left, and the wisdom and strength they fathered and inspired will come to his aid.

So, if what he claims, are we the culimination of our ancestors who came before us?  Can they direct us in the right direction? And what is that direction?  Step in line or not....

This sums it all up pretty well:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/patriots_season_perfect_for_rest