|
|
| Thursday, October 27, 2005 11:13 AM |
| Shocks and Starts |
 by Fëanor |
- It got posted a day late (grumble, grumble), but here's my review of the Death Cab for Cutie show, complete with a photo taken by me!
- Speaking of shows, I saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah last night with Steak Knife. They were very cool; I'm excited to listen to the CD of their tunes SK graciously gave me.
Unfortunately, there were two opening bands on before CYHSY, and while the first one (Dr. Dog), was a pretty good sort of '60s-style Southern rock outfit, the second one was...well, bad. I've been really lucky with opening bands this month, but the Stooges Brass Band, or whatever they were called, were what I normally expect from such things - odd, unimaginative, and untalented. Their music was a weird mix of hip-hop, rap, pop, and brass band (they had a tuba, a trombone, and a trumpet in the mix). They were pretty good on the brass instruments, but their singers were no good at singing (they had a very narrow range which they kept straying out of), and their rhymes were dull, uninspired, and over-obvious. Also, despite the fact that the crowd had come to see indie rock, and were unprepared to get excited about brass bands or hip-hop, the Stooges kept trying to make us participate by clapping and singing along. They managed to get most of the crowd into it by the end of their set, but it was a little embarrassing for a while there.
Still, I had to feel kind of bad for the Stooges, because (as they continually reminded us) they were from New Orleans and had lost a lot during the whole Katrina tragedy, including one of their bandmates! He was shot and killed by the police when they mistook his trombone for a gun. That's terrible and all, and I really feel for them, but did they have to write a really bad song about it, and then play it for us? They're just compounding the misery.
The best thing about the Stooges was Satchmo. Satchmo was their professional dancer. Seriously, that's all he was there for - to come on stage and shake his thang. He shimmied and shook and swiveled, and joined in on a song praising Heineken. He was something, that Satchmo.
- The film of Alan Moore's Watchmen could be back on track. On the one hand, this is exciting to me, because I love the book Watchmen, and I love movies, and a movie of Watchmen might be really cool. On the other hand, if I remember correctly, Moore himself was against the idea and critical of the project. And past film adaptations of Moore's work have been severely disappointing (four words: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Anyway, we'll see where this goes. I'll be hoping against hope.
- The Nintendo DS is getting handwriting recognition technology! I don't have a DS, and I doubt I'd need to write with it if I did. But still, I just think that's cool.
- Jean-Claude Van Damme and Wesley Snipes might be teaming up for a new action film called The Hard Corps (hee hee! Get it??). The fellow at Movie Blog is rather inexplicably excited about this project. Setting aside for the moment the fact that Van Damme is an abusive asshole, when has he been in a good movie? You could make a case for Universal Soldier, but that's about it. Plus, this movie is going to be about Van Damme's character assembling the titular "Hard Corps" of tough guys to protect a professional boxer from his dangerous rap music mogul enemy. Greeeat. And on top of that, his character's name is Patrick Sauvage. I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like top shelf material there.
- I've got another "one hand/other hand" thing going on with this news that Lucasfilm's new animation studio is going back to work on the "Clone Wars" series, expanding the original super-short episodes to half hour length. On the one hand, I love the series and I'd be excited to see more of it. On the other hand...I like those episodes the way they are - quick, concise, packed with action. Why go back over old material and stretch it out? Still, I trust the team who worked on this show, so if they're still on the job, I'll keep my hopes up that this will turn out cool.
- Costner as a serial killer! To quote the man himself, "Neat."
- As usual, there's a couple of really interesting bits in Cinematical's Variety run-down:
- First of all, Pete Jackson's Kong is going to be released, over its budget and over its length limit, at a whopping 207 million dollars and three hours. Jackson paid for the extra $32 million worth of effects out of his own pocket. Crazy! I hope it's worth it, man. The trailer for this movie kind of brought me down a bit, but I'm still anxious to check it out. I like Pete, and this is his dream, so I'm going to support him.
- Second, Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table is apparently going to be made into a movie by Dreamworks!! Crazy. That's my favorite novel by Lethem, and the one that made me fall in love with him. Sadly, I've been disappointed by all of his other books since then, but I still respect him. I'm excited that his best novel is being recognized like this, but at the same time, I can't imagine how anybody could possibly turn it into a movie. There are few books I can think of that are more unfilmable. It's just so essentially a book; so essentially a part of its medium. I don't know...
- I'm a big fan of the Narnia series (though not as big a fan as the author of this Cinematical article; I mean, whoa), so this idea of having a wardrobe-shaped entrance into a recreation of the frozen Narnia set from the new movie sounds really incredible to me. Probably not incredible enough to actually get me down there to see it, but still.
- As usual, I didn't listen to these NPR stories (I'm just subscribed to the rss feed for the headlines), but I really enjoyed the written summary of this story on a questionable Wal-Mart memo on their employee health care program. Apparently, part of their plan to cut costs was to "[discourage] unhealthy people from taking jobs at Wal-Mart." Brilliant!
- Hey, Miers finally actually withdrew her nomination! I really thought Bush would get her through somehow, despite all the opposition, but apparently not. Of course, now he'll probably lay somebody really disgusting on us, and we'll all wish we could have Miers back. Sigh.
- Those jokers at Wired! What did they entitle their story about scientists who are training wasps to sniff out concealed explosives, drugs, human remains, and maybe eventually even diseases like cancer? "Sting Operation Targets Terror." Ha ha ha! Ha...oh, boy.
Anyway, it's a pretty interesting article. The scientists have already built a little wasp detector, which is basically a tube with a fan at one end, wasps in the middle, and a computer that keeps track of them and sets off beeping and/or flashing when they react in a certain way. Cool. It's about time we got insects to do something useful for us. Now we should grow them abnormally large and have them plow our fields and kill our enemies for us! Mwa ha ha ha! Oops, did I just reveal my evil plans for world domination? I hate it when I do that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
