Vampire Weekend – “Cousins”

Vampire Weekend have a new album coming out next week. It has a single, which has a video, which is pretty awesome. It’s called “Cousins”. Here it is.

2nd best commercial?

Here’s another commercial that I’ve looked for online forever and only just now found. It might be my second favorite ever.

Best Commercial Ever

This is a commercial for E-Trade that aired during the Super Bowl some years ago. I only saw it once and could never find it online, but it has remained my favorite commercial ever since. Well, now I’ve found it. And it’s a glorious day.

Keys and Colbert

Alicia Keys stopped by the Colbert Report the other night and gave a fun interview. Then, she and Stephen teamed up for a dynamite performance of “Empire State of Mind”.

Interview:

Performance:

New Frightened Rabbit single/video

New Frightened Rabbit album The Winter of Mixed Drinks won’t be out till March, but they’ve put out a first single and video: “Swim Until You Can’t See Land”. And I really, really dig it.

Review: 2012

If Roland Emmerich was more self-aware, 2012 could have been a Shaun of the Dead-type send-up of Emmerich’s own brand of disaster films. What Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg did with Shaun was lovingly parody zombie films while at the same time crafting what holds up as arguably the best zombie film ever made. As Emmerich’s latest world-ender bounces back and forth between mediocre drama and unintentionally hilarious seriousness in its first act before adding in the heavy doses of CGI destruction we all came to see, I kept thinking he missed this golden opportunity. Alas, Roland Emmerich is not that self-aware. Still, the man gave me Independence Day, so, 10,000 B.C. aside, I always try to get out to his films in hopes that lightning can strike twice.

The basics: In 2009, scientist Adrian Helmsley (played by the still-undervalued Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers that there are too many neutrinos from the sun hitting earth (or something like that) and it will lead to something catastrophic, sir! From the trailer you know that the world governments are constructing ships for millions of people to survive in when it all goes down. Unfortunately, the end comes sooner than expected and not all the ships are built when the world starts falling to pieces. Damn neutrinos! Damn you! Coincidentally (or not?) it’s all happening in 2012, the year the Mayans predicted the world would end.

Therein lies my biggest beef with 2012. By film’s end, there’s no real significance to the mystical title other than that’s when shit pops off. Roland chooses not to connect it to any mythology, other than some stray lines about the Mayans and a pretty awesome conspiracy theorist played by Woody Harrelson. But it never becomes integral. It never ties into the primary narrative strand and that was really disappointing. It’s just a standard “world is ending for no reason can these few sets of characters survive it somehow and oh yeah there’s a bad guy but he’s not like the mastermind or anything and neither is anyone else maybe?” plot. If you’re going to attach the film to something mystical like 2012, attach it! Explore some crazy Mayan stuff, or something. Anything! 

My other big problem was the unsurprising Hollywood ending. SPOILERS COMING (but honestly, you know how this ends, right? Right?) Much like Emmerich’s own Day After Tomorrow, the world isn’t really destroyed as promised. Pretty much everyone dies, yeah, and it sure seems like the earth is hell-bent on extincting us and itself… but then it’s not really as bad as we feared and the survivors are smiling in the sun not too long into the surviving process. The final ten minutes are basically just a re-telling of Noah’s Ark. Complete with a character named Noah. Okay fine. What happened to earth dying??? And if people survive, it should be arduous. It should be hard as hell and depressing, with bits of hope shining through. Not all smiles and hugs and “oh look a cloud”s. SPOILERS OVER

That said, I actually enjoyed the flick for the most part. All I expected was to see some really cool scenes of destruction and it totally delivered that. The crumbling of California actually didn’t wow me at first, and seemed more comical than anything else as John Cusack and his fam try to outrun it all in a limo. But once they get in a plane and start flying away from it all, it’s pretty legit. And the destruction of Yellowstone demands to be seen in a theater.

Some of the performances were pretty enjoyable, too. Oliver Platt brings it as the bad guy, and Ejiofor is of course reliable as his good-hearted foil. Cusack is Cusack, which is a good thing. And Woody H. really is fun in his role as nutjob Charlie Frost. On the flipside, Danny Glover’s nice guy with a lisp approach makes him hard to buy as a president.

I even thought a lot of the moral pleadings hit the mark. The idea of keeping people alive by carrying their culture across to a new world struck a chord, as did similarly (however sentimental it may have been) that it’s an unsuccessful piece of writing that ends up inspiring the moral foundation for that new world. And you have to appreciate Emmerich’s outrage at the probably accurate notion that the way to get aboard the survival ships would be to buy your way in, meaning humanity will have to start over using a fat, privileged, useless collection of politicians and socialites as its base. There is your disaster, folks.

But, really, you’re just going to see an entire national park explode.

 

I promise something ridiculous just happened.

 

 

Say it ain’t so, ‘Noke

I am very, very disappointed in my hometown. Seriously.

Link: Thousands line up to see Palin at Roanoke B&N.

Look, I’m about as politically moderate a person as you can find outside of Sweden, with equal amounts of contempt for the Left and the Right. But I still think Sarah Palin represents a new low for American politics. She’s terrible.

A Serious Man

When the truth is found to be lies

And all the joy within you dies

Don’t you want somebody to love?

Based on what I’ve seen so far this year (and, of course, I’ve missed some films and haven’t had access to others quite yet) this poster is pretty accurate. The Coen Brothers have knocked it out of the park. Again. After the highly enjoyable but undoubtedly screwball Burn After Reading, the Bros have returned with a more serious film. A very serious film. About very serious things. Big things. Like what It all means. What God’s plan is. Why bad things happen. How to be good. How to be… A Serious Man.

And of course it’s really, really funny. And really, really Jewish.

The basic idea is a very loose adaptation of the story of Job, set in 1967 suburban Minnesota. Larry Gopnik is a physics professor who has tried to be a good Jew his whole life. He’s always tried to do the right thing. He has a wife, two teenage kids, and he’s about to be granted tenure at his university. Everything’s alright.

Then one day, his wife is asking for a divorce out of the blue, a Korean student is simultaneously bribing and blackmailing him, his neighbor is imposing on his property line and dropping not-so-subtle hints of anti-semitism, his brother is wanted by the police for a variety of things, his daughter wants a nose job, his son is living in fear of a bully to whom he owes twenty bucks for marijuana, etc. etc.

But at least his smokin’ neighbor Mrs. Samsky has taken to sunbathing in the nude, right?

All Larry wants is advice. He wants someone to tell him what God is trying to teach him, but all his rabbis can offer is musings on the parking lot and inconsequential stories about dentists. All anybody else can offer is encouragement to seek the advice of said rabbis.

It all has the Coens’ trademarks: the specifically quirky midwestern side-characters, the rich set and costume design, the ultra-tight-fistedly controlled editing, the always-great Roger Deakins cinematography, the ominous score reminding us that, though we’re laughing, this will probably all end very badly… But it also has the personal details of a world that usually mark a first work, when an artist has compiled so many specific touches of memory and loads them into one story. So, the film feels fresh in spite of its creators’ familiar trimmings.

A Serious Man also feels like the Coens’ most “indie” film since Barton Fink, perhaps most attributable to the lack of any recognizable names in the cast. You’ll recognize some faces, but you won’t really know from where, and there certainly isn’t a “Clooney” or “Pitt” or “Jones” to put on the poster. No matter, the cast is pretty much perfect. Michael Stuhlbarg kills it as the confounded Larry, striking the right balance between the trying everyman and the laughably pitiable. Fred Melamed is a scene-stealer in his frustratingly calm performance of Sy Abelman, the arrogant bear of a man for whom Larry’s wife is leaving him. You don’t know whether to laugh at, feel sorry for, or just be creeped out by Richard Kind as Larry’s brother Arthur Gopnik. The answer is all three, and then he delivers one of the film’s most affecting scenes.

In the end, it’s a film about the Absurdity of faith. Or, rather, the search for faith. Err, the need for faith. At least, the need for Answers. Life presents us with Big Questions. These Big Questions demand Answers. Life demands We come up with Them. But Life doesn’t make Them available to Us. What, then?

Then, the Coens present us with what I truly consider one of the most astounding endings a film has ever had.

And, apparently, it all has something to do with Jefferson Airplane.

Reservoir Turtles

Just a little slice of awesome for the day.

Fall TV: New shows

I’ve always found it odd that if you go to a site like Metacritic to see all the reviews coming in for a new TV show, they’re basically just judging it based on the pilot and maybe one more episode. I, on the other hand, prefer to give the shows a little time. Unless the pilot really sucks.

Anyway, a quick rundown of the new shows I attempted to get into this season…

“Modern Family”

Easily the best new show this season. I didn’t expect they’d move beyond the single note jokes that are built into each family situation (the gay parents, the old guy with the hot young wife, the “cool” dad, etc.), but they’ve really made it work and each episode feels pretty fresh. And the jokes almost always land.

Ed O’Neill slides into his role as the family grandfather with the aforementioned hot younger wife, played by Sofia Vergara. You know a role is working when you stop calling the character by their name from a more famous previous role. For instance, I call O’Neill’s character by his name, “Jay”, now instead of still referring to him as “Al Bundy”. I think the real show-stealer most of the time is his step-son Manny, played by Rico Rodriguez. Comedy gold star for that kid. But honestly, there isn’t a character on the show I don’t like.

What takes the show even a notch higher is that the more tender moments work well, too. They’re still funny, but they’ve got a lot of heart without being sappy. This final scene from the pilot is one of my fav moments from the show. Cameron and Mitchell have adopted a Vietnamese girl and this is how they let their family know…

“Community”

I wasn’t sold on this show after the first couple episodes. I had tuned in mainly because they used a Matt & Kim song in the teasers for it and Donald Glover from the Derrick Comedy Group was in it. But the characters seemed a little over the top for me and I only laughed hard a couple times. However, it quickly hit a stride and has secured a spot in my regular schedule. It’s a very funny show and the best character is Abed (Danny Pudi). For example…

“FlashForward”

Based on a Robert J. Sawyer book, brought to the screen by David S. Goyer, touting “Lost” connections in its cast, and boasting a fantastic mysterious premise, I was pretty pumped for this new show as something to get into and then have down the road when “Lost” ends in 2010. So far….pretty good.

The pilot was great and the episode quality has remained steady, but short of fantastic. The characters’ approach to everything is often a bit dim and repetitive. Their are some philosophical questions not getting their due attention, which is most unfortunate because when they do, the writers show they can knock it out of the park. (See episode 7, “The Gift”) There is an over-reliance on the motif of cutting to someone’s flashforward whenever it’s mentioned, so we see these time and time again and I just don’t want to see certain ones anymore. I’ve got it. No need to see it again. Also, Dominic Monaghan is performing his potentially villainous role well enough, but his conversations almost always involve some really, really clunky dialogue.

Still, the show maintains its potential. It’s probably not the replacement for “Lost” that I’d hoped for, but I plan on sticking with it for now. Even if Joseph Fiennes does look completely ridiculous in this promo pic:

 

“V”

I was also really excited about “V”. Big-budget sci-fi reboot with “Firefly” cast connections? Okay, sir. There were also a number of glowing reviews coming out in the weeks before the premiere. And then the show actually, you know, premiered.

And it’s a frakking mess. “Battlestar”-quality this is not, friends.

Talking with people afterward, the best description of how the pilot felt was that it was meant to be two hours, but an hour had been cut. It was seriously one of the worst-written and worst-directed pilots I’ve ever seen. There’s no build-up for the mysteries. They’re just revealed left and right. And don’t even get me started on the world’s ridiculous response to the aliens’ arrival in general. When Roland Emmerich’s films better understand humanity than your show, it’s in trouble.

Perhaps the most striking aspect, though, was the pointed aim it seemed to take at the Obama administration. A stray line about the Visitors hoping to provide “universal health care” would appear to leave little doubt. Don’t get me wrong, I wish there was more popular and intelligent criticism of Obama-mania than the elephant-shaped media outlets like Fox and Drudge provide. No administration is without fault. But it’s hardly fair to compare a well-meaning but over-hyped politician to reptilian predators bent on destroying mankind. How this got on Obama-criticism-free realm of network TV is beyond me. I almost want to congratulate abc for having the balls to do it, but the assertions are so outlandish and the show is so bad…that I won’t.

And yeah, I know I said I try not to quit on things after a pilot, but I lost all interest after this one. I still do plan on running through the four-ep mini-season at some point this winter, though. Just in case.