Really not quite the sweet romance you may have been expecting. Turns the gender stereotypes upside down. Really enjoyable and funny. Great soundtrack. Nice beats. Love the pentultimate and ending scenes.
Big Screen: 500 Days of Summer
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Author Archives: Duff
Big Screen: Public Enemies
I thought this was a good movie, but not a great one.
On the great side, Johnny Depp’s performance was brilliant. The sets, clothing, atmosphere were all well done. The dude playing the agent from Texas was great – and I loved his (kind) lie at the end. Marion Cotillard was wonderful and it was so nice to see her not looking like Edith Piaf on screen! 🙂
On the not as great side, he winds up in jail way too soon. The audience hasn’t been given enough time to know the gang, to know the politics of dealing with the other mobsters. It’s like just as the action was getting good… I thought that was a bad decision in terms of timing. A lot of the dramatic tension was lost after that. And there were a bunch of scenes that I thought felt too flat (and clearly flatter than they were intended). Not enough tension / somewhat balanced out by Depp’s bravura performance, but not entirely.
As Dad said after a re-watch of Point Break: Now there‘s a movie about bank robbers and an obsessive agent that pursues them plus a little romance –Michael Mann, take note.
Best of June
The best movie I saw in June was probably “Moon” but my favorite movie in June was “Away We Go”.
The best book I read in June was “Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem. Fantastic! I also really liked the short story collection “Emerald City” by Jennifer Egan.
The best gig I went to in June had to be a tie between Metric and Telekinesis!!! Being that I haven’t been going to shows much at all this year, I wish I could remember more about those evenings! But hello June was a long time ago. I know we were standing at the back of the Metro for Metric and it was hot and sweaty but the sounds were great. Oddly I can’t even remember who I went to Telekinesis with. Maybe I was drunk.
My favorite tunes in June were from “Back & Fourth” Pete Yorn‘s awesome, outstanding, lovely latest album. Gee, I guess I liked it.
June Album Reviews
Another month where I only bought two albums!! Kudos to me on not spending money but dang I’m sure there’s lots of awesome stuff out there I missed this year!!
Absolutely Love & Adore:
Pete Yorn “Back & Fourth” – Wow, I am just completely gaga for this album. Completely. Definitely my most-listened tunes for the second half of the year. It’s the usual melancholy swell of emotion from Yorn, soft and gentle and sad and rambling on. Which just makes it even odder that his concerts are so “all at the same volume level, arena anthem rock” sounding. Faves include “Dont’ Wanna Cry” and “Social Development Dance” but honestly I love this entire album front to back.
Favorite Singles (not on any of the above albums):
- “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” Frightened Rabbit – really the only thing I regret about canceling my trip to Monolith is not getting to see these guys.
- “H.O.T.T. (Half of the Time)” Wheat
Other Albums I Liked:
- Dent May & His Magnificent Ukelele “The Good Feeling Music of Dent May and His Magnificent Ukelele” – Totally goofy. Kinda reminds me of Matt Costa. Unusual instrumentation, styles all over the map.
Big Screen: Hump Day
A “straight and narrow” dude and his wife are paid a visit by his wildchild former college roommate. Of course Mr. S&N finds himself seduced by the wild side (again, presumably) and the weekend turns into a crazy dare situation based on a festival of amateur porn films that others plan to enter: “we should make a gay porno together. and the reason it’ll be awesome…is because we’re not gay!”
Some of it was funny and some of it was sad; some of it felt true and some of it felt fake. Overall, I’d say there were too many disconnects that weren’t solved.
The director was there for Q&A after the flick. It was interesting to here how little scripted the movie was / sounds like her process if mostly giving the actors free rein “here is what your character is about, now what do you think he would say in this situation?”. Of course, the fact that the director referred to “Zach & Miri Make a Porno” sarcastically pissed me off (she obviously did not “get” Zach & Miri”). I guess she was reacting to being compared to Z&M and not enjoying that fact.
Z&M is a better flick in my opinion.
May Album Reviews
I know – who cares at this point. I just need to get myself up to date here.
Absolutely Love & Adore:
Telekinesis (self-titled) – Poppy and Fun. Fave tunes are “Rust”, “Coast of Carolina” and “I Saw Lightning” .
Favorite Singles (not on any of the above albums):
- “Tear You Apart” She Wants Revenge (by far my favorite song of the month! and maybe the summer!)
- “How Your Heart Is Wired” Bell X1
- “Hypermode” A Shoreline Dream
- “The Last of the Melting Snow” The Leisure Society
- “We’ll See the Sun” Houses
- “More Time” Needtobreathe
- “Crazy Bitch” Buckcherry
- “Magic Show” Electric Owls
- “Percussion Gun” White Rabbits
Other Albums I Liked but Frankly Have Barely Listened to AT ALL:
I don’t know what was up with me in May, over the summer, or really this year, but all the below albums are 1) by artists I like and 2) decent albums and 3) I have barely listened to them at all. WTF? I guess it just wasn’t the right time for me with them.
- Eminem “Relapse” – Especially love “Bagpipes from Baghdad” “Deja Vu” and “Careful What You Wish For”. “We Made You” has a total Dick Tracy feel. And I’m pretty sure that is (actor) Dominic West on the “Dr. West” skit (I hate the skits on rap albums. My most unfavorite thing about them!).
- Green Day “21st Century Breakdown” – Not the tour de force their last album was but still really good. Fave songs are “Last of the American Girls” and bonus track “A Quick One While He’s Away”.
- Phoenix “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” – oh so cheeky that title. I usually listen to this one straight through (the few times I have actually listened to it!); it’s so (consistently) upbeat and fun. But I guess “1901” and “Lasso” do stand out to me.
- Red House Painters “Songs for a Blue Guitar” – an oldie I bought after my friend Craig tweeted about it a zillion times in one week.
Fiction: The Death of Sweet Mister, by Daniel Woodrell
Woodrell’s later book “Winter’s Bone” was one of my very favorite books read in 2007 and I’ve finally gotten around to reading one of his earlier works.
This novel has a similar focus on a downtrodden, lonely teen in a harsh poverty-struck landscape. But this book is a LOT creepier than Winter’s Bone and you are not (at all) left with the same sense of hope. That’s not a denigration / more of a gentle warning.
Lovely lyrical rhythm to his writing. But woah to come to that end…
Nonfiction: In Defense of Food; An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan
Some of this book is entertaining, some of it’s really impassioned about things I have a hard time feeling much oomph about, and overall it just really, REALLY made me want to eat a crapload of sugar. Which was not the authorial intent. 🙂
It was interesting and thoughtful, on one hand. On the other, isn’t it a little sickening how intensely we insist on (over)analyzing each and every choice we make in every aspect of our lives these days? Sometimes a girl’s just gotta LIVE, ya know.
Fiction: Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Our challenge book for July and what a behemoth it was. As DadReaction described it: “Some gremlin keeps adding chapters to this sucker, so no matter how much I read there’s still more to go. and more, and more, and more…”
It’s weird how what we all remember / socially think / this book to be about is Becky Sharp yet in fact she disappears for chapters at a time, as sometimes do Dobbin and Amelia as well. (You could easily abridge about several hundred pages out of this thing and lose nothing of the main plot lines.) There are passages about which members of society are at a party that read as thrillingly as the genealogical sections of the bible.
GirlReaction: The problem with most of the older (in terms of when they were published!) books we’ve read this year is insipid heroines. I just get bored by the helpless female (Amelia) and the crafty female (Becky) is just as one-dimensional in her own way (although a bit more entertaining). I sometimes feel that as you read “old classics” you can pick out a bit of WHY they were so renowned in their time (or shortly afterward) but it seems very old hat now (i.e., the things that were original about them don’t seem original if you happen to have read their (many, and later) imitators first).
DadReaction: Reminded of what Samuel Johnson said of Paradise Lost: everyone can see its value, but no one ever wished it longer. Amen. Becky, the one live wire, keeps vanishing–didn’t you think it would be more about her? And the old men–Sedley and Osborne–are just monsters!! It’s like suddenly you’re in a Eugene O’Neil play. Very much an 18th century feel to the book, though. More like Tom Jones than, say, Great Expectations. Names too are tres 18th siecle: e.g., Castlemouldy. Dobbin’s a complete idiot.
À la Nick Hornby, books in/books out for September.
Bought:
- Evil at Heart, by Chelsea Cain (iphone/kindle)
- Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (iphone/kindle)
- Sweep 10: Seeker, by Cate Tiernan (iphone/kindle)
- Sweep 11: Origins, by Cate Tiernan (iphone/kindle)
Read:
- Evil at Heart, by Chelsea Cain (iphone/kindle)
- Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (iphone/kindle)
- A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy
- Sweep 1: Book of Shadows, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 2: The Coven, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 3: Blood Witch, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 4: Dark Magick, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 5: Awakening, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 6: Spellbound, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 7: The Calling, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 8: Changeling, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 9: Strife, by Cate Tiernan (sarah’s)
- Sweep 10: Seeker, by Cate Tiernan (library)
- Sweep 11: Origins, by Cate Tiernan (library)
- Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour, by Scott Westerfeld (library)