Beer Cannes

the novelty of cinco de mayo

2010-03-08T20:14:00.005-05:00

on two separate occasions over the last few weeks i have allowed my obnoxious drunken bravado to write a couple of those proverbial bouncing checks that i am so fond of circulating into the world whilst inebriated. for some ungodly reason i entered into two pacts that provided that we, the pact-makers, would in turn produce actual, physical rough drafts of our long hyped forays into the world of long form authorization (a book, if not necessarily a novel)

today, the horror set in as i realized that both of my friends seem to be taking this seriously. and i say to myself, "oh, fuck..."

in most of all possible scenarios, those of you who know me understand that i am a much better idea man than executor of said idea. which is why my past is littered with half fleshed out, half written (if that far along) scripts and novels. hell, i even have a hard time finishing essays, articles, and short stories, which is probably already reflected by the infrequency of posts on this here blog.

apparently falling in and out of love with ideas in the blink of an eye isn't the best way to bring these projects to their intended fruition.

but that all ends now. i have recently started my book and i have promised that this time i'm gonna finish it. this time i have to...because the one trait of mine that exceeds my lack of follow through, it is my vanity.

because if shane and mike scott can deliver books by cinco de mayo, then i have to be able to, right? given, i'm not exactly sure upon what to base this prediction of completion, i mean, if i haven't managed to complete a major work to my satisfaction over the last 30 years, what makes me think that i can complete such a task within 60 days?

it's because i feel i have to. because i hate letting people down. and i make a policy against writing checks that my butt can't cash. and i really just feel the need to finally finish something, anything, so that i can free myself from the shackles and constraints that come with being a non-finisher, from the ranks of the un-clutch.

cinco de mayo is independence day, holmes.

jason reitman has clearly never had to work for anything, corporate fucking robot!

2010-02-14T08:48:00.005-05:00

now, even as i type this, i am vaguely aware that i am probably the only person that feels this way and that i probably won't be changing any minds or forcing anyone to reexamine their opinions, yet still i must try. even while situated amongst all the critical and public ballyhoo, i find that the film up in the air really left me cold. while i could quibble about the small stylistic things that made me want to puke (i.e. the slick, soderbergian montages of rolling luggage,) i have decided to eschew the details to delve right into the ugliness of what i see as the big picture. and the big picture is this: jason reitman's crass little slice of cynicism is terribly insulting to the same audiences that are gobbling it up.

up in the air positions itself in a world where the only loyalty left is the loyalty between companies(corporations)and their consumers. in this world people will fuck you over time and again, but it's okay because you can jump line by becoming a loyal customer of any random service. c'mon, really? this film was obviously made by someone that has never had to deal with a cable or insurance company, for if he did he would realize that these money making entities don't give a shit about the individual. unless of course, they are the first class, elite status, money men. this film just rings so false in this way as i find that the only real loyalty is that which comes with freindship. i guess it comes down to the fact that, like most real people i know, i will take my boys like zach,shane, phil, jared et al over my toyota service agreement or my blockbuster card any day of the week. and to portray the human race as putting their loyalties elsewhere is just an insulting affront to my sensibilities.

yet as is, these characters take pride in their car rental perks, even going so far as to begin to develop superficial emotional bonds over them. i remember sitting there growing quite agitated at the notion of modern romance being linked to the status of a hilton rewards card as if it were the only common ground we selfish, shallow humans could ever find. i mean, i've never even come close to snagging a member of the opposite sex with my subway fresh card, frankly i've never even thought about it as membership in the subclub holds little to no value as a cultural signifier. but hey it works for them, i guess. until of course, everything changes...

i absolutely hate it in films when one cataclysmic event brings about a complete 360 degree change of character. as if after spending two hours with this mile grubbing egoist, i am somehow to believe that the revelation that his female opposite is a duplicitous cheater is going to drastically alter his character. and all of a sudden his ten million miles are going to be spiritually deflating to this guy who has invested so much in them. and he's going to write a recommendation for someone who basically just annoyed him. i just don't buy it. i'm sure neil armstrong meeting all his goals and landing on the moon would have just been soul crushing if his girlfriend had just broken up with him, or that donald trump would suddenly become a philanthropist were he to go bankrupt. fuck off with that shit mr reitman.

but the most insulting thing about the whole deal is that even if i were to buy that old george had undergone this amazing and drastic change in character the film has positioned him in a way that the "new, improved, humanistic" guy is just a depressed sad sack shell of his former self and actually makes us long for the free-wheeling, airport scenery chewing cool guy that he started as. this film basically goes out of its way to make selfishness, vanity, and materialism look as hip and as cool as possible, while rendering interpersonal loyalty and thoughtfulness as the recipe to a sad sack existence. the only character left emotionally unscathed is the adulterous mom. and it really makes me want to puke. i hate how the downbeat ending has become the new happy ending. it used to make films seem fresher, somehow more realistic, now it just rings as hollow and as empty as the director's heart.

that, in a nutshell, is why i hated jason reitman's newest film. it just reeks of someone who has never ventured out of his millieu of rich hollywood powerbrokers and experienced the real citizenship of america. i have heard it described as "a portrait of modern america." if this is the case can we just bring on nuclear armagddon now, because clearly, for the rights to a bill of goods, we have clearly sold our souls, you know the thing that used to make us distinctly human.

changes of direction or blasphemy for beginners

2010-02-01T23:49:00.004-05:00

while i was away...

i can't stop listening to the song french navy by camera obscura. i haven't seen an art film in a really long time...call it detox for those that want to enjoy movies without overthinking them. i once read a short story by joyce carol oates where the subject of every sentence had nothing, or at least very little, to do with the previous one, yet they formed like a puzzle to reveal possibly the most complex story i could have imagined. ipod has completely changed my life as the ability to buy music one song at a time has gotten me back into a quest for new music that i thought had ended long ago.

if i were going to make a top ten list for the films i saw last year, sex drive would be #1 with a bullet, i strongly urge you to check it out. the yeah yeah yeahs turned out to be a hell of a lot better than i ever thought they would be when i first heard them. jason reitman has officially lost whatever credibility i gave him after thank you for smoking as his penchant for cynicism has rendered his characters completely unable to change their context...fuck you for that sad sack up in the air bullshit. why would somebody make movies about people when they seem to hate them,especially when it is so lucrative to make movies about explosions and smurfs with jetpacks

am i the only one really really looking forward to hot tub time machine? ricky gervais and louis ck should have a cage fight to determine which of them really is in fact god. the most amazing sound i heard last year was when brett rogers knocked out andrei arlovski with one punch; who knew my introduction to loving mixed martial arts would be an audible one? i promise that i haven't lost my mind. not yet, although pauly d. is my second favorite person in the world behind my beautiful wife.

if you want a nice ass hour on wednesday, and frankly, who doesn't check out modern family at nine on abc and then flip over to bbc america and check out the inbetweeners, the two best new shows on television. if you still don't listen to los campesinos! you are just kidding yourself. the show community started off promising, but has really fallen off as of late. is there a rule that the artic monkeys can only turn out one pop gem per album, your turn cornerstone.

jebron lames still has as many championship rings as i do, which in my book makes him more overrated than the word overrated itself. do yourself a favor and buy the album manners by passion pit. go saints.

boycott award shows. that's the situation.

the chronicles of buzz cheeseman

2009-07-08T22:58:00.002-04:00

buzz cheeseman is the coolest person in the world that ever was or ever will be. he is immortal, like the highlander, yet has found an amazing way to mentally dupe all those around him into seeing an middle aged, slightly old guy. he is pretty stealthy like that.

buzz cheeseman's adventures range far and deep. as a man walking the earth for the duration of it's existence, he has seen everything, done everything, and then gone back in time and done it again with the help of access to other dimensions. the only thing that exceeds his adventures is his awesomeness. and the only thing that exceeds his awesomeness is his legend.

and the true heroics of his actions shall be revealed one per day here, the only place large enough to handle a legend such as this.

only in america...

2009-06-27T23:06:00.003-04:00

only in america could an untimely death and a few catchy tunes get someone off the hook for being a repeat offending child molester.

only in america could two selfish fuckfaces blessed with eight little miracles exploit the shit out of their kids and themselves and still go on television in an attempt to elicit my sympathies because they fucked up their lives.

only in america could spencer and heidi exist.

only in america could a 300 pound, washed up, offensive scheme killing, headline grabbing center steal draft day from guys that are actually still talented(blake griffin, tyler hansbrough)

only in america could michael bay robot movies get sequels.

only in america could we complain about rigged elections in other parts of the world while turning our backs on our own(twice!)

only in america could i say fuck you to all the people involved in the previous statements.

and only in america could i be talking to the man in the mirror and know that he is better that all these other fucks out there.

jim jarmusch has big brass balls

2009-06-02T22:05:00.004-04:00

the success of the sort of blank generation, no wave, detachment from a world of white noise that has become the jim jarmusch trademark style essentially hinges on a rather gutsy bet. stylized minimalism, by its very nature, tends to eschew the conventions of narrative, instead choosing to systematically focus on the smaller details that make up our material world. this proves to be challenging as, without a story to fall back on, the film must make connections with the audience in different ways. the employment of such style forces the filmmaker to essentially bet that they can create a world so detailed, so interesting, and so idiosyncratic for its characters that the audience is forced to buy in and follow along with them, even if they are, in fact, going nowhere.

jim jarmusch's new film, the limits of control, does end up going somewhere, sort of.

the film essentially works like a labyrinth, in which our hero has to gain the approval of many gatekeepers to attain the keys to the next level along the way to his ultimate goal, which is never defined. it lingers about aimlessly observing the goings on while not providing much in the way of information about the plot to the audience. yet, along the way, jarmusch creates a world inhabited by quirky dialogue, un-verbalized espionage, and characters that act as if they are living, breathing, flesh and blood subjects from famous paintings that seem to chart the entire history of bohemian lifestyle. tilda swinton as a faux-glamour-puss old hollywood starlet type and john hurt as the "everything was better in the summer of love" type of aging hippie are quite magnetic and memorable, while gael garcia bernal reminds me of a joke i once heard about dirty hippies.* these are few of the many unique characters we meet on our journey through this surreal world.

and this world is so engrossing that one can't help but fall under its hypnotic spell, once we quit worrying about silly questions like, "what is happening?" this tale of a hitman's complicated path toward his target never really lets the viewer in on the plan while it is being executed, instead choosing to observe the odd traits of our solo wanderer. and it is here that we get involved, and we find that we want to watch isaach de bankole so that we can understand why he doesn't sleep with the beautiful naked girl following him around. even if we may never know, this film invites us to obsess over every detail to unlock the enigma that is this man and his circumstance.

the astute attention to detail, when combined with the ambient, hypno-guitar clashes and clangings of boris creates in its wake an almost dreamlike atmosphere that hints at our protagonists' disorientation with the unknowable world around him, its small details becoming alien although retaining slight familiarity. it is at this point that the post-modern pastiche, so adept at creating a mysterious text, also gives way to a rich subtext in which it gives a sort of symbolic nod to the day of the average workingman.

it is at the end of the film, when we see our hero return to his favored colorful zip-up jacket, shoulders loosening the tension previously carried, that we realize what a burden his sharp suits and massive responsibility carried with it. his work environment, so filled with people who all seem to be speaking their own coded language, releases from him in this one magical scene and we finally see a small glimpse of joy, or maybe relief, at a job well done. when it fades to black and the helicopter sound fills the room and, as bill murray predicted, another one(job) has filled its place, we understand that his respite will be all too brief, and he, like ourselves, will be back to the grind soon enough.

it's this ability to toe this very fine line that i find so compelling about this film, and jarmusch's work in general. while subverting standard forms of narrative (exposition and other systems of conveying information) and attempting to let the mundane features of life guide his rather flimsy stories, he still has the ability to have this over-arching bridge of symbolism that can almost be universally understood by anyone who has ever worked a day in their life. we understand the feeling that comes with being free from the control of labor. an epiphany which, ironically, bears the fruits of a small bit of labor.

by not telling us what is going on, and sometimes eschewing the idea that anything is going on at all, this film draws us in even more than most typical narrative driven films do because it makes us work for it, it makes us earn our comfort in its world. by demanding a larger investment from his viewer, jarmusch has rendered us completely willing to go all in.

*the joke: what kind of cigarettes do dirty hippies smoke?...yours.

tommorow will be our one year anniversary: yeah us!

2009-05-26T22:37:00.002-04:00

a while back, i read a book entitled the mind of the modern moviemaker by josh horrowitz. while the majority of this book reads as a refresher course on how not to go about the cinematic lifestyle, like the excerpts with the putrid mcg and equally awful john hamburg, occasionally small nuggets of worthwhile thought would manifest from thin air, most notably with david gordon green(who in all fairness was my main reason for purchasing the book)the terrible takes on film were met as equal by the shoddy, infantile (non)probing questions of the scribe. but again, nuggets of entertainment shone through, most notably in the stock questionnaire that followed the "more personal" interviews.

so...in honor of our first full year on air, and in a little better attempt to let you know from whence the beer cannes spawned, i have taken the time to fill out this inquisition and i urge all of my readers with blogs to do the same...i will be on the lookout.

what is the first film you ever saw?

i really haven't the slightest clue, but the first experience that i can still recall happened at the old castleton square mall cinemas, when they used to have the three screens in the mall, and it was watching the goonies, a film i still hold near and dear to my heart even though i haven't seen it since. last summer, mike scott and emily were going to accompany me to a screening of it down at the old artcraft theater in franklin and as we were on our way we hit a huge twenty minute traffic jam on 465 that would have made us late. as we turned away at the next available exit, my momentary disappointment lapsed under the thought that a higher power seemed to be telling me not to mess with my childhood memories.

what is your favorite film of all time?

a woman is a woman by jean luc godard has just about everything anyone could want in a film: action, secrecy, adultery, witty banter, bright colors, and musical numbers. it truly is a wonderful, wonderful film, so light and airy, yet very sneaky in its complexity. if i were you i would netflix it after you finish reading this. if it has any peer in the world of cinema, it is dazed and confused by richard linklater, which has everything i could want in a movie. netflix it too. as to which one is truly better...depends upon the day in which you catch me.

what is your favorite line in a film?

fuck you jobu...i'll do it myself. (major league)

what film made you realize that film was an art?

safe by todd haynes was a film that i rented when i was 15 or 16 because i was just getting into the whole arty thing as a way to impress girls and i had seen a review of it on siskel and ebert and i figured what the fuck...two hours or so later i began to understand that todd haynes was using this strange yet entertaining vehicle to make interesting points about the overall sterilization and homogenization of this country's tastes and mentality brought on by the overwhelming sameness of suburbia. and i was never the same again, i realized that i long to be challenged both emotionally and mentally by what i see.

what movie do you consider your guilty pleasure?

point break. a film about a quarterback punk/rookie fbi agent named johnny utah infiltrating a band of bank robbing surfers that features the holy trinity of trash movies: keanu, swayze, and busey. fuck yes! cowabunga!

who is your favorite movie character of all time?

woodruffson from dazed and confused. as portrayed by matthew mcconaghey, woodruffson exuded the laid back, 70's stoner ennui of a guy just a little bit too old to be at the party yet still trying to pull it off.

what is your favorite movie snack food?

beer.

who is your favorite director of all time?

whit stillman. a man, much like the goonies, who i am caught in limbo with, halfway hoping he never makes another picture because i saw how time rendered terrence mallick mediocre.

who is the most impressive filmmaker working today?

aaron katz and olivier assayas make films that seem like a vision of the moment we are in, as perceived by keen artistic spirits. they understand now.

what quality do the best directors share?

an understanding that a story is also told visually and that it must match the feeling created by sound(music, dialogue), that style is substance.

who is your favorite actor/actress of all time?

katherine hepburn made every movie she was in better.

who is your favorit actor/actress working today?

bill hader steals every scene he is in like he is the weenie king in the palm beach story. recently, as general custer in the new night at the museun sequel, he dropped this little gem on us: plan!?! we're americans...we don't plan, we do!

bill hader does.

who would you cast in a film about your life?

paul schneider, duh.

finish these sentences:

if you could remake one movie...i would never do that.

i never wanna watch a movie with...angelina jolie or spiderman

the perfect movie is...limitless.

thanks for a good year, we will try to do better this next...

cheers,

beer cannes.

confucius says that a man who stands on a toilet is high on pot

2009-05-19T21:42:00.004-04:00

there is an old proverb that reads something like, "give a man to fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." and while normal, responsible, well adjusted people are meant to glean from this proverb messages about the importance of learning and civic reciprocation, i feel it is fair to say that there are a great number amongst us who look at that saying and think to themselves...woo hoo! free fish!

and one of the saddest things about our society is that we long ago set up a way of being that allows for this sort of anti-social darwinism. these days, not only do we attempt to teach people to fish, but our infrastructure allows for those unwilling to learn to be taken care of by the greater collective as a whole.

this systematic responsibility for the weak is so old, so interwoven into the fabric of the processes that make our society what it is that i hardly bat an eye at it anymore. but lately, within the confines of the system i have noticed a trend that i find even more disturbing, and one that takes my angst to another level entirely.

it seems that the people being given fish, as of late, are no longer happy with eating fish...they have decided that they want hamburgers. and even though we are struggling to provide enough fish, and could in no feasible way provide hamburgers, these dumb ass, non-fishermen somehow have convinced themselves that they actually deserve it. for what i have no idea.

empathy is a dangerous opiate that plays tricks on our humanity and ends up just cutting holes into the fabric of our society. these holes, left unchecked, expand to create huge rifts between the haves and the have-nots, leaving animosity on both sides in its wake.

for right now though, we gotta start teaching everybody to make some hamburgers...and we gotta just let go of the ones that refuse to learn how.

that's how much fuck fish.

whiskers on kittens

2009-05-17T22:19:00.004-04:00

as i sit here i am looking at a copy of far from heaven that was found on the endcap of a save-a-lot register and purchased for the bargain basement price of five dollars. i remember that price strictly based on the fact that the dvd remains wrapped even though i purchased it quite a few weeks ago. what can i say, to paraphrase kip from all the real girls: when it comes to todd haynes movies, far from heaven ain't my number one best friend anymore, hell...it ain't even in my top ten. which would be helpful if i had, in fact seen ten todd haynes movies, which i haven't. either way, that isn't anything i can't overlook by sucking down another master cylinder and reminiscing about my prized purchase.

a last minute stock up for cookout supplies, i had my hands full of groceries as the save-a-lot at 10th and arlington has a ridiculous cart return system that employs the "quarter deposit system" and i found myself without proper coinage. so anyways, there i was, hands full of all meat and potato chips and buns i could carry when i look down and what do i see sitting there amongst a pile of random shit like fine tooth combs and stress balls but two brand new copies of far from heaven selling for the usual deep discount provided by the save-a-lot experience. the odd part is the fact that there weren't any other movies for sale anywhere in the store.

now usually i don't do impulse buys, but something about the mix of finding an art film on sale in a place which would best be described as leaning towards kinda ghetto made me immediately pick it up and add it to my bill. i felt that mr haynes, the semiotics major, that he was would appreciate this sort of connotation/denotation interplay in my reasoning for holding onto this object as one of a few of my favorite things. to take things further and add a new layer of symbolism to the object, i decided to keep it wrapped up, price tag proudly displayed until the point that i actually would like to see the film again.

which may be a while, especially when my original lukewarm reception to the film has kept me from going back and even attempting to rediscover it. if i need me a fix of todd haynes i will just go watch the velvet goldmine or go downstairs and pop in my old vhs copy of safe, the true masterpiece produced by the julliane moore/todd haynes dynamic. and as protective of artist's are of their work, i feel todd haynes would have no problem with this.

his education on the systems of language and symbols would allow him to see that far from being just a film that i wasn't crazy about, far from heaven has become a relic, consistently recapturing, re-framing, and resurrecting an experience that i want to always remember. it's no longer a tale of a suburban houswives rebellion against outdated social taboos, it is now about the fact that in the smallest, dankest corners of unlikelihood, an area of interest and something beautiful can be obtained.
a tree grows in brooklyn or something like that.

and i think todd haynes would be good with that. because no matter how heady, how precise and exacting, how intelligent the amalgamation of images are when cobbled together, an artist really just wants his work to touch people in some way. by any means necessary...right?

a love letter to jason statham

2009-05-12T18:42:00.004-04:00

i recently watched this documentary, french beauty, on the sundance channel about the long line of french ingenues since the nouvelle vague because, well frankly, i am a pretty big sucker for the gorgeous ladies of the continent and will gladly give up time to radiate in their impressive glow. while this documentary supplies little else other than exactly that, there was one thought presented in the film that has stuck with me. unlikely beauty jeanne moreau, when questioned about her unique look, talks about this idea that film acting is nothing more than a relationship to the camera. beauty, talent, emotive instinct all take a back seat to presence, a vibe between the actor and the camera and to a greater extension, the audience which creates sex symbols and award winners alike from the unlikeliest of places. she went on to talk of many beautiful girls whose beauty did not translate to the screen, as well as many talented theater performers whose talent also failed to translate in a cinematic way. hinting at the unattainability of this aura through the learning process, finally, she bluntly posited, "you either have it, or you don't."

and the weird thing is, when she said it, all i could think about was jason statham.

now, let's just go ahead and address the rather large elephant in the room here and say for one that jason statham is not what is typically known as a good actor. a "good actor" needs the ability to convey a range of emotions. jason statham doesn't really do...emotions, per se. the only thing jason statham is interested in doing is kicking ass and delivering sly one liners and looking cool while doing it. mission accomplished brother. he doesn't need to cry when his buddy gets killed, he doesn't need to flip out in an overly verbose manner when his chick gets kidnapped...jason statham doesn't roll like that.

but don't be fooled, viewer, into thinking that the fire is not there. because jason statham doesn't do semantics. he's not into emotional hystrionics, but that doesn't mean he is devoid of emotion. no, actually far from it. jason statham is one of those guys that swallows bitter pills, then he swallows another one. and another. and another. until he can't swallow any more, and the fuel that sustains and enlarges his inner fire explodes in a fit of rage and he turns into the ultimate johnny rebel badass.

and it is then that you understand that it has been there all along. perceptive statham-ites will note the diamond hard glare and its barometric qualities as it charts subtle shifts further and further down the wormhole. it is there that connects statham to the old time badass performances like robert mitchum in out of the past or glenn ford in the big heat. noir heroes, rugged men caught in a peril so great that they will scratch and claw and fight everything to get out, yet not let you see them break a sweat while doing it. it's the slow burn, the fact that the rather stoic, almost flippant, nature of our hero allows us to see the ignition of the long fuse that will eventually lead to fireworks.

jason statham is so good that he lets us see the process, the methodology of his acting style even as he is performing it. it is the fact that he makes this simmering cauldron seem so effortless, so droll, that leads people to dismiss him as a major acting talent, which he is.

the new version of the dark side of the moon lazer light show at the planetarium

2009-05-07T08:47:00.004-04:00

last week marked the unofficial kickoff of hollywood's dark season, and the only thing on my mind is the thought that this thing gets longer and longer every year. it used to be that sometime around memorial day weekend, the suits that entertain you would flood the market with an endless supply of re-appropriations, sequels, and t.v. shows and effectively cut my theater going year in half. but this year it seems they started a wee bit early and naturally it doesn't matter because hollywood has a pretty safe bet going in their consistent wagering on the cultural ineptitude of the american public.

while the combination of consistent hollywood grosses when coupled with the declining originality of product pretty much leaves the above statement beyond reproach, the thing i still cannot seem to put my finger on yet is the exact type of ineptitude that they are exploiting in their quest to part you with your coin. because if there is one fact that the numbers bear out, it is that no matter what kind of crap hollywood puts out, people will show. it doesn't matter how unoriginal, uninspired, or just plain bad it is, hollywood will pump up the production value, inflate its budget and put it out...and if you don't go see wild wild west with will smith or bewitched with will ferrell, you will go see something equally as ridiculous.

but what i can't figure out is, "why?" i mean, do the general public just not care about good stories or interesting characters? because most summer blockbusters are just hastily cobbled together(by 12 writers) plot lines whose narrative simplicity is covered up by whiz bang pyrotechnics. they end up like these huge, two hour bloated cgi fireworked-over music videos that have all he emotional and intellectual depth of the laser light show that used to accompany zeppelin at the planetarium. sure, it looks all bright and colorful...but there is a reason people basically only went to those things on drugs.

are people on drugs? well yeah, probably. our prozac nation is rather subdued, almost lazy, and completely willing to accept mediocrity in pretty much all aspects of life. i mean this is the same population that allows me to drive down washington street and notice a line out the door of the olive garden while the locally(and actual italian) owned italian gardens sits devoid of customers. people are afraid of a little spice these days...either that or free unlimited breadsticks really do cover up for the blandness of an entree. either way, the general population usually choose poorly.

people have become so accepting of this sort of prefabricated, cookie cutter, homogenized bullcrap that it is becoming harder to find alternatives. for every small scale, personal gem like the italian gardens or superbad or wendy and lucy, there are like a trillion soulless spidermans or olive gardens because these companies know that they don't have to make good food for the consumer to come in and lap it up.

and i don't blame them for that. i don't blame hollywood or the olive garden or the conglomerates that own and operate them. in fact, i don't blame them at all because if i can sell you an inferior product, why should i be expected to make it better?
no, i blame the idiots that are gonna line up around the block tomorrow for the pyrotechnic advancement of the star trek redux, because they have a choice to not show up. they can vote with their dollars for better product.

so my boycott of the megaplex starts now. i want better product, no more retreads, and less profit motive. i want an engrossing, enriching experience that enlivens my senses and emotions. i want them to care as much about the products that they put out as i do about the products i consume. and i'm not settling for less.

my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

2009-04-28T17:56:00.004-04:00

i realize it has been over a year now and oscar has already been bestowed on another crop of mostly undeserving pictures, but the outcome of the best picture race between the exquisite there will be blood and the trite, safe no country for old men really does need further review. still, after all this time, i wonder how this could have happened and honestly wonder if i will ever fail to feel as emotionally bent out of shape as i still do now. i imagine circumstances where i am driven to the grave like richard the lion-hearted vehemently fighting my great crusade on behalf of p.t. anderson's magnum opus. because frankly i just don't get it.

i know we rip on the coen brothers quite a bit here on the beer cannes, yet i feel wholeheartedly that they deserve all this shit which i am about to heap upon them again. as i sit here watching the beginning of miller's crossing, another coen brothers film i am almost doomed not to finish, i find myself looking it up on netflix and getting caught in a slew of buzzwords that fill the accompanying descriptions of their films. the one for miller's crossing is one that i find quite instructive as the first sentence reads, "...the coen brother's take on the 30's ganster film." other reviews roll out words like farce, revisionist, noir, screwball and a litany of other words that point to their almost complete lack of an original opinion.

honestly, what is the signature moment that points to the essence of the quintessential coen brothers opinion on life? the answer, sadly, is that there isn't one because all of their films read like two film school brats who borrow philosophy at random and believe that inverting the tropes of genre is the same thing as breaking free from the constraints of genre itself. it's all style. and this omnipresence of the structural rigidity of genre creates in its wake hollow, one dimensional archetypes that fail to engage the audience because they seem to lack emotional motive for their actions, merely doing them because it compels the narrative forward. the style comes off as derivative to the point of unoriginality. because while overt stylization in itself is not bad, it really only works if there is some sort of underlying philosophy, some type of creative idealism.

and all i can find in the coens is this vague sort of misanthropy, as if the film, and by proxy its makers, is somehow held up to be of better standard than the characters it depicts. it is as if the world, as driven by people's stupidity and vanity, must seem so precious from such lofty heights of judgment. as long as there is snappy(forced) dialogue and witty repartee, right?

wrong. fuck the coens for being vain, derivative, and simplistically dull...pretty much the complete opposite of paul thomas anderson.

the films of paul thomas anderson have been accused of borrowing styles as well, but i feel that his "borrowing" to be so much more interwoven into the tapestry that becomes his original work. hard eight borrowed from mamet(only with a humanistic heart) boogie nights borrowed from scorsese(but with a humanistic heart) magnolia borrowed from altman(who actually also has a humanistic heart) and in the middle of all these supposedly "stolen" whip pans and handheld shots and intimate framing and noisy diegesis is this utterly complex, idiosyncratic philosophy on family and human relations. paul thomas anderson gets to the messy core of human/self interaction and finds that it is kinda beautiful there if we honestly try to look at it.

there will be blood is kind of a different sort of beast, a touch apart from his others, yet still of a consistently refined and redefined notion of life. whereas his earlier films seemed to focus on the moment to moment fluctuation of life and an appreciation of its myriad manifestations of beauty, there will be blood seems to take those moments and magnify them. it seems to contemplate, while furthering, this idea that since every seemingly mundane moment has the capacity for beauty, that every moment must have some inexplicable importance. every gesture, phrase, and activity is imbued with a certain amount of heaviness as if every decision a person makes can come back and manifest itself in later life. it is an idea of no wasted motion, no wasted time. everything is huge and important and every breath is the most important thing in the world ever.

his work is intense, but it is also intensely life affirming.

dirk diggler going home again. tom cruise sharing one last cry with jason robards. daniel plainview getting away with murder. all of these moments read like some exultant, virtuoso celebration of the human capacity for the amazing, the incredible force of nature that is the human spirit.

all i find in no country for old men is a tired, played out version of bleak chic that really has nothing interesting to say about its characters at all. it plays out like some third rate aesop fable about greed that rings hollow because there is no motivation for anything. it's pure nihilism. it's absolute ugly destruction that leads nowhere and i think that existence, mine in particular, is just a little bit more important than that.

life is full...not empty. and that is why i will always believe that the oscar should have gone to there will be blood, the apex of recent cinema history and a film no doubt destined to become a classic exemplar of the current mood of the world. old men is just another piece of forgettable genre trash that will hopefully make haste in its long decent into hell.

but still, it's your call...

in the end it basically comes down to a choice:

would you rather hang around someone who will drink your milkshake or someone who ain't got no fuckin' agua?

personally i will take the milkshake, because it is better to have a milkshake that somebody else drank than to never have had any agua at all.

with apologies to kelly reichardt whose film wendy and lucy i desperately wanted to see before doing this but am sick of waiting for

2009-04-15T13:09:00.000-04:00

prologue: a lay of the land

generally, i think things such as this should be done at a nice distance. a five year wait is good before one attempts to make crass judgments like the ones that follow. but in the attempt to remain hip, to remain in the now, (although technically a few months late still) i have chosen today as the deadline for the official beer cannes review of the year that was in cinema.

2008 was a particularly lazy year for me insofar as new product goes. which is why, in addition to the aforementioned ms. reichardt, i should probably also express my sincere apology to carlos reygadas, lance hammer, guy maddin and especially to jacques rivette for taking an altogether too laid back approach and not seeking out their work in a more fervent manner. but, then again, it isn't as if you guys made your work super accessible either. no matter.

with that said, i still did manage to see quite a bit of the year's product, both import and export, at least enough to give me a pretty accurate lay of the land for the year that was. having done a recap at the halfway point, my readers will forgive if they notice a paucity of revision to my earlier list. it's just that i seem to have seen the majority of the films i truly loved and will remember in the early part of the year. but, at the same time, i am in a way cheating my readers out of the particular degree of freshness that they have come to expect from the beer cannes name.

with this in mind, i have decided this year to go an extra mile or two. and since one good idea deserves another, or at least a kind of response, i have decided to add on a second part to the post in which we, like our sibling blog my year in lists, talk about films old and new that we encountered for the first time in 2008. we really liked ryan's idea and have been meaning to do our companion piece for a while now. and since this is our designated time for the year in review, we thought that this would be an opportune time for this project as well.

the third part of this massive undertaking is set to be a small essay that will probably devolve into a rant on what we here at the beer cannes see as the current state of the cinema, our artistic medium of choice. but enough about that now.

lastly, it has always been my goal to write a post so long that it scrolls the entire length of the list of films that i have seen since i started this here blog just so you have to (hopefully) actively, mentally register the titles with the dream that my readership will be tempted to watch something and then we can discuss it on here. but either way, no worries.

chapter one: the best films of 2008

1. in the city of sylvia-jose luis guerrin---i don't really care if this film got a "proper" release or not. or if it has, in fact, actually been released yet. all i know is that i saw it and it has stuck with me ever since as the ultimate example of someone making a true work of cinema, not books on film, but cinema, that came out this year. or any other year for that matter. pilar lopez de ayala is unbelievably gorgeous and is worth the price that it takes someone to search this film out, which we highly recommend that everyone does. immediately.

2. paranoid park-gus van sant---the "true" work of art from van sant this year, i.e. not the one for which he was oscar nominated. paranoid park extends and expands upon van sant's recent forrays into temporal reality, hypnotic imagery and eliptical (non)narrative in a way that never feels contrived or arty for art's sake. van sant simply likes his characters, understands them, and uses the cinematic function to hang out with them for a bit.

3. happy-go-lucky-mike leigh---i love mike leigh more and more as time goes on, especially when he makes a happy and breezy film such as this one. this film was just a wonderful experience that i can't wait to share again.

4. baghead-the duplass brothers---no film has jumped more on my list of esteem this year than this one as it seems like i can't really ever wrap my head around what exactly it was. was it a murder mystery? not exactly, but it did have some thrills. was it a film about the filmmaking process? sorta, but it didn't really have deep shadings toward that genre. was it a romantic comedy? in a way it was. was it a character study? getting warmer. in fact, it was all these rolled into one sweet little film hybrid...getting excellent mileage out of limited resources.

5. gran torino-clint eastwood---this was the only award season release that was worth the celluloid that it was printed on. naturally it got no hardware love, but who gives a rat's ass? those peckerwood's wouldn't know quality if it spit tobacco in their face. i love walt kowalski and nominate him as the new american hero.

6. still life-jia zhang-ke---because like old walt, i have more in common with the asians(walt didn't say asians) than i do my own family. jia seems like one of the few people in the world, let alone filmmakers, who understand the true depths of despair brought onto a person's soul by industrial revolution. it is as if these products and the ability to make them have alienated us from one another and now there are just spaceship factories where trees and people used to be.

7. forgetting sarah marshall-nicholas stoller---russel brand, meet america...america, meet russel brand. fucking hillarious...and you get paul rudd as a surfer and a puppet show about vampires...hell yes.

8. boarding gate-olivier assayas---olivier assayas is your favorite director's favorite director.

9. the wrestler-darren aronofsky---it has been intimated that aronofsky's film is a stylistic rip off of the dardennes. and that is completely okay by me. i mean seriously, would you rather see aronofsky do another oliver stone style picture? or worse would you rather him redo the fountain? me neither. and beside this film rocks out, mick mars style.

10. role models-david wain---it's a simple equation really...you put paul rudd in a starring role, i come see your movie. here he proves again that he is absolutely the best comedic actor and possibly simply the best actor on the planet. a small child with a foul moth and stiffler are just a bonus.

11. snow angels-david gordon green---the better of gordon green's two efforts that unspooled this year.

12. a christmas tale-anaud desplechin---the best scene of the year is in this film, a lovely little mother-son verbal sparring match between catherine deneuve and matieu amalric on a swingset.

13. dr. horrible's sing-a-long blog-josh weedon---this is the future kids, get hip to it now.

other pretty good films that i saw that really require no further explanation or ranking were as follows: nick and norah's infinite playlist, space chimps, flight of the red baloon, ghost town, pineapple express, the last mistress, super high me, kung-fu panda, jesus castle, and step brothers.

chapter two: bonus list

hell yeah kids, we're going off the prologue's script and have decided to celebrate the occasion by shamelessly exposing the most rotten, putrid and downright bad cinematic offerings served up before my eyes this year. the worst films of 2008.

1. leatherheads-george clooney---note to george clooney: you are not not not preston sturgess, or billy wilder, or any other screwball master because those films had something relevant to say about the societies that inspired them. and yours don't. you've been a star so long that you are no longer in touch with the real world and all you can do make a bullshit, phoney, soulless version of a genre that you don't have the chops to pull off. and by the way, you also probably just made the worst sports movie of all time too. go make danny ocean's greatest hits again you unoriginal piece of crap.

2. burn after reading-the coen brothers---note to the coen's: see above and substitute your name for george clooney. your film was an absolute mess.

3. w.-oliver stone---oliver stone is soft. he is the establishment. and he is dead to me.

4. 21-who the fuck cares who directed this turd---the slickest piece of story slave bullshit that came out this year. stop your plot long enough to develop your characters, otherwise your plot rings as hollow and contrived and soulless. no doubt a money making champion, 21 was "based on a true story" in the same way that my penis is based on the john holmes model.

5. the dark knight-christopher nolan---they took the world's most bloated film and then turned the neat little trick of putting a finger down it's throat so that it could watch it vomit all over its audience a colorful stew of pseudo-intellectualism, bleak chic, and simplistic philosophy on the state of our paranoid world. like debby reynolds said about gene kelley in singin in the rain...it all a bunch of dumb show.

best to avoid this trash if it hasn't yet poisoned you mind, trust me.

chapter three: the best films i saw for the first time in 2008

i really enjoyed when ryan did this over on the my year in lists blog, for one because it was nice to see ryan actually blog(a savored rarity these days) and for two, it was kinda cool because it didn't conform to the release schedule of the movie distribution machine. it read like a personal journey through a year of cinema and that is always appreciated because cinema should always be viewed on personal terms first, and then worked out from there. i also think it is interesting that some of the same films pop up on both our lists, despite the fact that i have excluded films that came out last year(those are listed above) but anyways...

1, there will be blood-paul thomas anderson---i feel that when scholars and fans study this era in the future that this will be the film that they point to as the absolute apex of our times. when i saw this film in the theater a large crowd forces us to sit down front and at the end of the film i noticed i had sizable underarm rings as the heat, labor, grime, and intensity of this film made me sweat. it's a film so good it affected me on a physiological level...that is an amazing achievement. drainage? you ask...it sure drained some oils from me.

2. il posto-ermano olmi---this is probably both the best italian film i have ever seen and also the most sincerely humanist. the affection olmi shows his characters is immense as he never panders to the lowest common denominator during his film that is actually respectful of the sometimes ridiculous rite of young, unrequited love.

3. quiet city and dance party u.s.a.-aaron katz---if you don't like aaron katz, get the fuck off of my blog. if you haven't seen these films yet, politely put down your keyboard and go watch them right this second. yes...they are that good. over on ryan's blog he called quiet city the "d.i.y. before sunrise," but after watching it again last evening i realized that i liked katz's film so much more than linklater's. the respect he shows his audience by never having his characters verbally express the huge crush they have on each other is refreshing. he actually allows his audience to figure it out for themselves through a series of passing glances, vocal inflections, and body positions. katz is an incredible young artist whom i can't wait to watch mature.

4. requiem-hans christian schmid---this film turns the exsorcist on it's year by focusing on the mental illness side of hokey religious phenomenon. requiem is a sly nudge toward our new world policy of torture by means of religious cleansing. and it has the best club/dance sequence ever.

5. pick up on south street-sam fuller---this film is gritty, dark, and fast. it never stops moving toward it's incredible conclusion because frankly, fuller didn't want to waste your time...or his.

6. detour-edgar ulmer---this film, along with the above fuller film, really served to take any sort of hollywood sheen off of the film noir cycle. gone is the stylish chiaroscuro lighting and glamorous leads. all that is left is the dirt, the sweat, and the absolute horror of being caught in a trap from which one can't walk out. disturbing, even after all this time.

7. cria cuervos-carlos suara---i rarely cry at films, but this story of a young girl who believes that her lies are to blame for her mother succumbing to cancer got the water works flowing a bit. it is a true work of art that can push the formal envelope and engage, not the brain, but the emotions.

8. mouchette-robert bresson---god damn it...life is really fucking hard isn't it? through the story of young mouchette, bresson shows how god constantly spits in the eye of humanity and how humanity constantly gets up and asks for more...until they can't anymore. it would be absolutely horrible, if it weren't made so beautifully.

9. the puffy chair-the duplass brothers---i loved this film because it seems so fucking honest, right down to the little temper tantrums that lead us to try and annoy the world into allowing us to get our way. the duplass bros seem caught in a competition with the dardennes to see who can better step on the coen's necks and assume the mantle of the best brother filmmaking team. fuck the coens...and double fuck the wachowski's...the dardennes and the duplasses are here to stay, and they actually have something original to say and all their pyrotechnics are of the emotional variety...no doubt the best kind.

10.la jetee-chris marker---wow. this was the first of the many criterion collection dvds gifted to me by my wonderful girlfriend emily. even if it wasn't as "wow" as it was it would be memorable to me...but like i said, the film is fucking wow.

chapter four: bonus list part two

we're going off script again...this time to bring my readers a short little list of the best films of this new year(2009)so far.

1. two lovers-james gray---i've never been drawn to watch the 70's homage crime dramas that gray has previously released, but the intimate cinematography and the performance he elicits from the incredibly emotive joaquin phoenix in this film have made me change my mind and open myself to the rest of the james gray oeuvre. plus, vinessa shaw is absolutely hot like fire. gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, not unlike the film itself.

2. fired up!-will gluck---hell yeah i'm talking about that movie where the two football players decide to go to cheerleading camp. it is fucking hilarious. chock full of cuties, witty banter, and in possession of a good chemistry between the two leads, this film actually eschews the typical misogyny of the teen comedy and finds that girls tend to be much more mature and interesting that their perpetually infantile male counterparts. a good lesson for the teeming teen masses, who unfortunately didn't go to see this.

3. i love you man-john hamburg---almost any movie with paul rudd and jason segal are gonna make a list compiled from a small sample group, but as too whether or not this holds out and makes next years edition of this list...let's just say i have my doubts. first off, jon hamburg is a sophmoric(or should that be sophmoronic) hack. i mean, we get it...animals go to the bathroom. but that shit wasn't funny in meet the parents and it still doesn't fly all these films/odes to animal urination later. and the fact that that is your only original idea in a film that cops similar tropes from much better films by david wain(the kiss/rush thing) and judd apatow(obvious). grow up already. either that or stop using prime talent and go back to making mediocre crap with ben stiller already.

sadly, that's it so far. i thought about seeing laurent cantet's the class, but having multi-cultural liberalism shoved down my throat for two hours isn't exactly my idea of a good time. plus it gave off the vibe of being super self-important what can i say, the politics of culture clash don't interest me much. i'd rather go see something like confessions of a shopaholic, because at least p.j. hogan knows that people still like to see people fall in love...no matter how plastic or hokey it seems.

my philosophy is to champion bedroom clashes over culture clashes.

the heart is greater than the head.

chapter five: reasons for things that seem wrong

i blame it on margot tennenbaum. i blame her for this current cycle of mediocre/shit films like the savages and smart people because wes anderson just made that stereotype of the depressed, self doubting intellectual look so freaking cool. but the thing is wes has some talent and decided to counterbalance that with this idea that emotional instability derives from many factors, not just this self stylized bleak, narcissistic, existentialism. it just rings as so fake. if all these professor types were like poor sad sack jack-off phillip seymour hoffman, would anybody even pursue higher education. these films just read like some poor, self-deemed intellectual feeeling sorry for themselves and putting it on celluloid. stop that bullshit.

i blame it on judd apatow, for he had to put some stupid rift in all his films that splits apart the two protagonists and has to be clumsily reassembled for this pseudo happy ending. and now it seems like it is everywhere. in a short time this has become the template for modern comedy. thank god for a badass director and truly funny guy like david wain, other than his film all the subsequent shit that reeks of apatow has gotten and just gets progressively worse. just like...

i blame it on seth rogan. seriously dude, your fifteen minutes are so up. you aren't that funny, or charming. you actually kind of suck. on the knocked up dvd there is this fake documentary that has other actors playing ben stone. almost all of them, especially michael cera, bill hader, and justin long, would have been better than rogan. sometimes i wonder if the only reason he is there is to make the rest of troupe apatow look good.

i blame it on the audience that just takes whatever hollywood feeds it. if people don't demand better films they won't get them. everytime someone buys a ten dollar ticket to spiderman 14, it is like casting a vote and the studios think that their product is just fine. and if you think it is just fine, then by all means, but i have a feeling that isn't the case. most people accept them because they are there and they are too lazy to search anything else out. meanwhile...

i also blame it on mark cuban. it seems like every time something that might actually be both good(engrossing) and important comes along, i am further delayed from seeing it because mr. cuban has to fill the screens of the one remaining art theater in town with his terrible vanity projects. take, for instance, wendy and lucy. now this is a film that by all accounts has tapped into the current zeitgeist of economic peril in a way as to make it a significant cultural signpost of it's time, but do i get to witness it on the big screen in any sort of a timely manner? not without driving a grat distance, i don't. and why, you may ask. because mark cuban uses his landmark "art house" chain to distribute his crappy magnolia/2046 "art" films. that's corporate synergy, brother! and it is also the reason why what people think the know as "art films" are really just steaming piles of shit like the great buck howard served up to you a la carte by a billionaire businessman who got bored with his struggling basketball team and decided to try to entertain you in another way. ah, the vanity of the rich, putting the screws to the notion of really interesting on the bigscreen. it sucks too because landmark has the friendliest and most intelligent staff in indianapolis and is chock full of good people.

and i blame it on myself for caring too much about these pithy things.

yet still, i do care. and i an attempt to make things better i will offer some solutions to some problems i see.

epilogue: a personal view of the future

i will demand better films by seeking better films out. i will search for the most interesting films no matter what they are about or where they came from. if i go to a hollywood film, i will do so at the tibbs drive-in, so that i can vote with my dollars for better fare and i can support a truly independent theater and help a local small business. and i get hollywood trash three for the price of one, which is still a gross overinflation when compared to their actual worth.

as for mark cuban, fuck him. landmark is just like every theater really...

as film is such a wonderful artistic medium that even in the darkest of times, little rays of light shine through any bleakness, comets shoot through the darkness. it just seems that in times like these, comets come around with a little less frequency than before. so with that in mind, i urge my readers to...

go watch your favorite film right now...you will be glad you did.

the world that drove joaquin phoenix crazy

2009-04-09T15:30:00.004-04:00

due to some recent complications with her health my mother has been undergoing various forms of physical therapy. her speech therapist, who is actually pretty rad, is this mid 50's woman who just so happens to bear a striking resemblance to ursula, the baddie to the "princess" ariel from the little mermaid. the fact that she is so unbelievably nice, what the french would call "tres sympathetique," got me to thinking about the brand that is disney animation and the shit that they have been pumping into the impressionable minds of children over the years. seriously, the juxtaposition enforced on these characters in the little mermaid alone is reason enough for an outright ban. i mean, have you ever met some girl that was like ariel is supposed to be? really good looking girls with singing talent aren't usually very nice, they are actually kind of stuck-up and bitchy. as to where women who more resemble ursula are. think about it, women like ursula, bigger ladies with a penchant for overdone make-up, are usually the salt of the earth types, the type of gal that if she serves you in a diner will keep your coffee cup full while still finding the time to work in a nickname for you like "hon" or "sugar." the little mermaid is bullshit, but still kids are allowed to watch it and then we wonder why they later go on to pick on the fat kids in high school, or disregard them almost completely as adults. well, it's partially because in the disney milieu, there are no chubby princesses, there is only programmed, regimented, fascism...and that ain't no place to send your kids.

but enough about that, as right now i find myself more worried about where to send myself. it seems that the subsequent cancellations of both ed and gilmore girls have left a severe lack of places on t.v. that i like to escape to. ever since the stuckey bowl set up its last pin and taylor turned off the last light in star's hollow television has become an overly cynical cesspool devoid of the good intntioned dreamers that these shows portrayed. i miss the capra-esque, up with people nature of these slices of small town americana. their sentiment never gave way to overt sentimentality and their humility is severely missed. i just want something on television that is nice. not greedy, not self-absorbed, self-indulgent or cynical...just something nice.

recently, i have had this strange bent toward writing really quite cheesy, hallmarkish, inspirational prose and it has me thinking about what i see as the general mindset of the world around me. there seems a twinge of negativity, or at least a very blase, been there, done that type of attitude that permeates the modern american psyche. it has gotten to the point that i am beginning to think that genuine sincerity is just about the edgiest thing that an artist can do right now. and i'm not talking about that mawkish, precious form of sentimentality for (wo)bygone days employed by the likes of wes anderson. but the genuine affection for subject exhibited by someone like george will when talking about baseball. i'm talking about drawing simple, unadulterated pleasure out of all of life's offerings and sharing it back with the world at large. it is a rare thing in this day and age to exhibit an unforgiving passion for things, and even if you do, the people will probably just label you a goody-goody, or a prude, or a spaz or something.

because somewhere along the way mischevious bastards like bart simpson became "awesome" while kick ass dudes and stand up guys like ned flanders became "lame" and passe.

and that is some bullshit that would drive a sensitive soul crazy...

right joaquin?

congratufuckinglations

2009-04-07T22:18:00.003-04:00

for all that you may achieve in whatever it is that you may choose to do...

congratufuckinglations

the opposite of true luck is as follows...reality.

2009-03-26T14:02:00.003-04:00

while tagging in clothes at work the other day, my automation became disjointed when the fog of work was briefly interrupted by a the cling-clanging of metal on a ceramic tile floor. staring up at me, the last remnant of the recently passed observance of st. patrick's day existed in the form of a green coin with pictures of shamrocks and the phrase luck o' the irish imprinted upon it.

it was then that the absolute and utter stupidity of this phrase hit me. i mean, taken in a historical context, does anyone truly want the luck of the irish? we're talking about a people whose story is wrapped up in a bloody struggle for independence from colonial rule and the forced immigration brought on by a potato famine. does this sound "lucky" to anyone else? i mean, really? why don't you just wish upon me the historical plight of the african american or the "luck" of the ethiopian while you're at it? seriously, i love violent struggle for civil rights and extreme, death inducing hunger. please, wish that upon me...thanks, buddy.

the only thing lucky about the irish are the boston celtics. in fact, i would argue that in their 75 year history, the celtics have probably had more luck than the irish have had in their entire million year history. drafting bill russel, stealing larry bird by exploiting a poor rule and drafting him a year early,(in the second round! no less)hell, getting paul pierce at number 11 and stealing k.g. exhibit more good fortune than does a clover over dover. really, what the heck do the irish have to offer...bono?

now, this is no way meant to be offensive to the irish, who are, like most groups of people, a generally good bunch of folks. this short essay is merely meant to question the validity of the phrase, "luck o' the irish." after all, if you guys consider yourselves lucky, then that must mean that an average white dude in america like myself is blessed by the hand of god by comparison.

and i am not quite ready to admit that about my situation just yet.

but i will say that for now it is all good...
just so long as pricks like bono keep their hands off my lucky charms.

the best of...

2009-03-03T22:14:00.003-05:00

the best albums are mix tapes, or i pod shuffles, or a jockey spinning songs on the radio in a jumbled randomness until one reaches out and decides to define a moment in your life like when margot got off the bus to these days and the moment was so powerful that richie tenenbaum had to cut himself to try to forget. i remember the other passengers asleep, coasting down a great smokey mountain slightly out of control and scared shitless at sunrise when everybody wants to rule the world became the most beautiful song i have ever heard.

the best films are the one's that catch you at that right time when the atmosphere onscreen can reasonably mirror that in the life being lead outside of the diegesis of the film. watching all the real girls, knowing that you are dancing full on in a bowling alley because nobody is watching and you know nobody is watching for a reason. seeing dazed and confused and wanting to drink some beer and kick some ass and it always seems we are almost out of beer. the synchronicity of those moments are enough to fry synapses and crinkle memories into brain tissue.

the best television is competition, pure i'm better than you type of shit. football, racing, american idol...all of them simply call for the human spirit to rise up and give its wholehearted best like rocky and apollo duking it out at the end of three in that dingy little gym.

the best times are spent talking and listening and just getting in contact with another person in your physical plane, face to face, seperated by little more than fabric and air, pressed up in p.j.'s eric rohmer style talking about what you should be doing and tossing devices of communication and separation aside. naughty.

the best high comes from breathing in the air from all over god's greenness.

the best parties are ones without dress codes.

and the best you is in how you relate to the moment around you. do you feel it?

goals (a twelve step program)

2009-03-02T11:52:00.003-05:00

because we are switching over to u-verse, my internet access will be shut down for a few minutes so we're just gonna have to put this little chat on hold for a spell. in the meanwhile, i will leave you with my to-do list. things i intend to get to are as such...

1. watch my netflix and return them
2. shake my little toosh on the catwalk
3. go to landmark, drink a beer, and watch two lovers
4. eat a five dollar footlong with you
5. draw pictures in the margins of papers
6. take notes
7. sing in the shower
8. make two lists
9. write two blogs
10. go check in on shane'e recovery
11. stay on the grind and keep making my money
12. peace.

hoping your time is just as productive,
beer cannes.

lee greenwood

2009-02-24T15:51:00.004-05:00

while driving home today, i got behind a white service van that had a (hopefully homemade) bumper sticker that read like this(verbatim)...

if your in this country illegally your breaking the law go home

while i don't really have a fully formed opinion on the vast topic of undocumented workers, and therefore don't want this to turn into that discussion, i do have an opinion on this guy. and it reads as such...

if you're not smart enough to understand that you need an apostrophe/re to show possessive form of "you are," you're breaking the law...of grammar.

i mean really? what the hell? and to make matters worse this self appointed group spokesman placed that sticker right above an american flag decal that read, "proud to be an american."

trust me buddy, america sure as hell isn't proud of you at the moment. i mean, your entire argument (no matter what merit it may have) is pretty much nullified by the fact that you aren't smart enough to articulate, or in this case spell it, correctly.

so in the newly immortalized words of uconn men's basketball coach jim calhoun, "let me give you some advice...shut up."

why is it always the morons from the back of darwin's line, you know the knuckle draggers, that feel the need to voice their opinion the loudest?

for your next trick, i suppose you will tell illegals to learn the language.

proud to be an american, like lee greenwood.

redemption, clowns, and happy endings gasper noe style.

2009-02-19T20:08:00.008-05:00

i believe it was kierkegard, or delores o'rierdon, who once uttered the immortal phrase "everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?" with that in mind and with nuvo "critic" ed johnson-ott's horribly crap version of an oscar spectacular still gunking up the classic american muscle car fuel injection engine my brain, and since this is like a year of redemption (through buffoonery) i said fuck it, put on my clown makeup and decided to roll out my big ole oscar extravaganza...

i'll start with director, since i'm of the auteurist mind set and that's the only catagory we here at the beer cannes really give a fuck about. and since they just happen to be the contenders for best picture, and since i think the same way on both, i'll just go ahead and blow my load early too. and then we will unroll it in reverse like i am gaspar noe.

contenders

opie, umm...no thanks...but, hold your head up little buddy, i'm sure i will like you again for the next film you make directly after the dan brown bomb that you are about to drop on us again. i mean, even you would admit, that your nixon film was probably just nominated because hollywood had to have something to trumpet from an absolute clap outbreak of a year that they just had. and as to where the fincher got the token hollywood "art" nomination, you took the choice "important" film nomination. hollywood really did turn a shit spigot on their audience this year didn't they? sorry opie.

as for the aforementioned fincher....are you fucking kidding me? a gimmick like that...a man born elderly and who dies a baby, for real? you had just turned that corner where you didn't need some narrative stroke job ironic bullshit to guide your obviously lush visual style, and then you expect me to plop down ten bones to feel this c.h.u.d. baby unspool...fuck that...you are the new wes anderson, as you are in a coma, on life support, within a hair's width of being dead to me. and i fucking liked zodiac, you fake piece of shit.

and that brings me to the dickcheese eater who directed the rather trite billy elliott, the absolutely, offensively putrid oscar bait trash heap topper that was nicole kidman's prosthetic nose and now the will never be seen by me reader. the fact that this limp oscarbation ejaculate is now three for three in oscar nom's and no film comment writers have stormed the red carpet with guns really speaks poorly to the state of film fandom in this country. (self)important trash like this makes me want to send the time haters to go back in time and cap the lumiere brothers. as dead as wes anderson and david fincher without a miraculaous recovery are about to be, they will never be as dead to me as you, you fucking douchebag.

i see that danny boyle likes to move his camera. and that people react like insects to bright flashing lights and get caught in bug zappers like this...it sure was fun while it lasted, but now your body lays soulless. the combination of these two makes this my surefire, liberal, reader of the new yorker who only goes to the movies once a year and generally has no business around the business of awarding films lock for best picture...and tragically, in a suicide inducing moment, the best director trophy as well. hollywood loves it's happy endings, the more unbelievable the better.

which is a shame, because that award should go to gus van sant. in an unbelievably weak year for movies, i feel it is important to give career achievement awards when the terrible canidates for these awards don't really deserve them. it's well documented that i wasn't crazy about milk, but that's only because i have come to expect way more from the only true artist in this competition. these other hacks aren't fit to suck gus's dick(not that he'd have any of these old dried up hags anyway...ok, maybe opie. like thirty years ago.) so i beg of you oscar, don't disappoint me. go home with the guy who has meant the most to the advancement of the medium. give both best picture and best director to gus van sant. if only to prove to me that you actually fucking like movies even a little bit.

actors go like this

richard jenkins is wooden and really, really, incredibly boring to watch. christopher cross and al jureau called, they said get some soul you vanilla, supertramp listening, chai drinker. seriously, if you were the only guy trapped in a room in the latest saw film, that jughead guy would fucking forget about you because you are so boring to watch.

same for you sean penn. one of the fascinating things about milk is that the film is clearly penn's as he is in all but like four scenes, yet the supporting characters, some of which had but a few lines, remain the most memorable and serve as the most prominent imagery in the well rendered atmosphere of this film. i mean, you ought to call and thank gus every day of your life for putting you opposite the awful diego luna, therefore insuring you look good because, well, at least you aren't him. for that, you get no oscar from me, and you probably won't from them either. but if you do, if you get gus's oscar...you will have turned into mr. hand, spicolli. you're a dick.

thanks for playing...frank langella.

brad pitt, get the fuck off my stage...no, for real...who the fuck invited you?

mickey rourke will win, and that will be good as frankly this is the best of the nominated bunch. really quite sad in a way that permeates the atmosphere and causes the air to go down heavy in your lungs. on par, insofar as pure despair, with something like strozek, it almost resonates as more disappointing as the wrestler is tinged with a feeling of hope recently lost as opposed to strozek witch is less devastating because of its complete hopelessness. rourke really revels in the failure for this one, a beaten down jester, who used to be king, in tights. jarvis cocker asks if you like happy endings.

ladies...

four of the actresses in this category need to be shot for their crass showiness in supposedly depressing roles. people who are really sad, and are really that pathetic don't scream out to the world to "look at me." they hide, they are more reserved. all these bitches got caught living out loud in bullshit weepies this year and deserve no gold for it...

so, melissa leo by default...because judging from the preview there is nothing glamorous(therefore overdone and bullshitty) in that performance. i don't want any piece of that film, it looks like the female version of mickey rourke, or maybe strozek. hopeless.

but as far as the academy goes, kate winslet will get her happy ending. because she'a wanted it so dearly for so long gub'ner.

in the nuvo's infinitely simplistic oscar examination, professional dipshit ed johnson-ott states that this category isn't worth discussing, because old tears of a clown has got this sewn up like the scars on his face. but "critical" cop-outs aside, i think it is very much worth discussing. sure the bat-villain is probably gonna walk, hollywood loves to pat itself on the back for being so respectful of their fallen "talent." but he doesn't deserve it. hell, after hearing christian bale rip into that d.p., i'm not so convinced that he shouldn't have played the joker(la ti da)...that is worth discussing.

if hollywood really wanted to pat itself on the back for being ultra heartfelt and forgiving, they would throw it to old robert downey jr. i mean here is a no quotation marks needed talent and to get an oscar nom, fuckers in hollywood made him play a robot/atm machine and made him essentially do a minstrel show al jolsen style, mammy. and when he sucks it up, musters the intestinal fortitude to comletely swallow his pride and completely brings it in two films that were made even plausibly watchable only by his presence, hollywood can only throw him a supporting actor nomination in a catagory against a ghost and pat him on the back and say better luck next time. fuck hollywood cause they specialize in happy endings and they seldom get them right.

philip seymour hoffman has become pretentious in positive correlation to john c. reilly's assimilation to stupidity. i wish they would both go away for awhile.

who the hell is michael shannon? really...i have no idea...anyone?

the only way i will forgive hollywood for putting robert downey jr through the wringer in this category, is if josh brolin wins. because frankly, he did the best job. and the best part, the juicy irony, is that he portrayed the similar moral duality that the joker supposedly signified in a way that blows away ledger's histrionics with the subtlety and menace of a true maniac. truly disturbed people don't announce their presence, they pounce, like a cat, from a eerily still position, as if the true madness is created by the fact that they seem to have been stuck in the moment of moral dilemma, agonizing over their eventual spring to the utter insanity of violence forever. that's how josh brolin rolls. the best acting performance in milk, hand's down.

supporting actress works like this.

i love me some amy adams, but this film just seemed like a showcase for "actors" to "act" like assholes. i want her to win one for a film in which she sings a song.

marissa tomei has nice, non saggy breasts...unfortunately they were the only nuanced part of her one note, stock character, hollow cration in the wrestler.

penelope cruz sucks in any language.

taraji henson is usually good, but in a perfect, beer cannes world she can't win because...

viola davis has to win, just so i can see merryl and phillip seymour act like ashley tisdale in high school musicals and wear pissy faces when they realize that they got showed up in their showcase by someone as previously anonymous as viola davis. you go girl, thanks for fulfilling my dream where...

pretentios phil and old, haggard, boor merryl won't be again rewarded for their mediocrity,

robert downey jr and josh brolin tie,

happy go lucky wins best screenplay(sally hawkins wuz robbed), dustin lance bland does not.

and gus van sant wins big time,

and old heath is looking down empty handed from heaven. smiling.

yes jarvis, i believe in happy endings.

what i'm just not that into: millionaire edition

2009-02-13T09:59:00.004-05:00

recently i ventured out to the old movie house for viewings of the ken kwapis film he's just not that into you and the danny boyle award machine slumdog millionaire. and while on the surface i enjoyed these films as they are both fairly enjoyable,(i rated both three stars on netflix)both films left me with some concern as to what, in essence, they were saying to their audience as the underlying messages behind their twisting plots seems a bit dangerous in both cases.

the kwapis film based on the book of the same name plays like your standard treatise on romance. there is really no new ground broken here as it pretty much sticks to the well worn template of modern romantic comedy. aside from the performance of the incredibly honest and refreshingly nuanced bradley cooper, the bits and pieces that make up this film seem pretty mired in the traditional tropes of the genre. and i suppose that is where my problem begins.

the thing that i don't really get about the film is its insistence that as long as these rather intelligent women, most of whom are portrayed as fairly successful in their professional lives, do not have a man in their life that they are somehow failures...or at least, that is how they view themselves. i found the typically delightful ginnifer goodwin to be carrying much of this burden in the film and i found myself just wanting to smack some sense into her, to tell her that her life is not incomplete without a man and that she shouldn't let that define her self worth, but in the diegetic realm of this film that warning would have just gone unheeded.

what i find most problematic, however, is how the audience which was comprised of 90% women between the ages of 15-30 were eating this shit up. i mean really? they don't mind that this film(and it should be pointed out, male director) feel that their entire sense of self worth is caught up in the quality of man that they snag? whatever happened to "women are doing it for themselves?" it bothers me that, unlike men, the women portrayed in this film have their overall notion of their life as a success defined not by their own personal accomplishments, but by who they are shacking up with. i think that is a dangerous message to put out into the world, not to mention an antiquated one that is basically turning back the pages of feminism.

according to the social philosophy of this film, a woman could find the cure for cancer, but as long as she is single she will be an utter wreck and a failure. and that my friends, is a shitty message to send to the young ladies of the world.

for all its critical acclaim, danny boyle's slumdog millionaire is just as guilty of sending similar bad messages which reinforce idiotic cultural stereotypes. that being said, i enjoyed slumdog too. its kinetic energy and rushes of color are almost too powerful as to give me any choice other than to be arrested by his brand of cinema on the run. but again, i find some things need hashing out.

as a midwesterner(see: not worldly) i find that there is an inherent danger in the hype machines insistence that i go see the exoticised violence of films like slumdog and city of god as i feel that for a lot of film goers this will be their first taste of india and brazil respectively. with that in mind, i feel it is important for artists to fully understand what kind of ideas they are putting out there, and in this case i feel that mr. boyle does not.

boyle's film(charles dickens by way of eli roth)presents a view of india as a torture laden place where corruption runs roughshod throughout all levels of society. slumdog makes a point of showing a brutal, corrupt, poverty stricken india as it serves as a counterpoint to the improbability of his story. however for many people, who have never been to india or seen a bollywood film(let alone sampled the humanist faire of satayajit ray) this film is giving them an idea of india as reinforcing another stereotype of the third world. by eschewing the representation of the more positive aspects of the culture(bright religious ceremony, strong family ties) boyle has essentially laid out a portrait of india as nothing more than savagery to the nth degree, and that is just not the truth, at least not the whole truth.

but unfortunately for many, they will never get to understand the richness of the culture as the oscar hype machine only tends to pimp out films that take place in india once every 30 or so years(and then only by british directors...colonialism anyone?) for quite a few, this may be the only feel that they ever get of india, in a similar way that city of god is the only taste they have had of brazil (outside of the utterly tasty brazillian grill)and to judge these countries in the ways represented in these films is a tragedy.

it makes me wonder about, what, if any, responsibility an artist has to their subject and setting...kwapis and boyle obviously feel no responsibility to anything other than what serves their story best, no matter what kind of negative shit they are putting out into the world.

how many times can that bitch get married?

2009-02-12T02:02:00.002-05:00

while talking with dionne this evening, she told me that rachel getting married will be making it's third run through the landmark theatres...really? that makes me wanna punch somebody in the jeans. i want wendy and lucy, and i want it now.

this will cheer me up

go buy incredibad by the lonely island you will be glad you did.

notes on the auteur theory in 2009

2009-02-07T11:08:00.004-05:00

(note: this all started the other day when i convinced myself that i should go see spaz, sorry baz luhrman's australia at the dollar theater strictly on the basis that it was the work of a genuine filmmaker(as opposed to hollywood trash) thankfully, i have yet to do this...but it got me thinking)

there is a question posed in andrew sarris's notes on the auteur theory in 1962 that i beleive to be the second most important question facing the art after french critic andre bazin's famous "what is cinema?" sarris asks with humor, "how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee?" it seems as if this is the moment in time when film studies trancended the notion of a mere survey of entertainments and became a "serious" endeavor. by asking this question, sarris implies that there is indeed an answer, a way of differentiating a good director from a bad one. this way, which may or may not really exist, constitutes in some ways a science. the way that sarris describes has come to be known as the auteur theory. akin to the theory of montage which attempted to apply a science to the making of films, the auteur theory became one of the first major developments in the history of film theory that attempted to put a scientific spin on the value judgement of the art. by developing a system of context within which to place a film, auteurists turned the perception of cinema from that of petty, pithy entertainment into an artform, tinged with all the psychology, humanity, and beauty that life has to offer.

the auteur theory, or the politique des auteurs, started in 1950's france as an abstract aesthetic engrained within the writings of the film journal cahiers du cinema. the seminal early works of this movement were alexandre austruc's un camera stylo(the camera pen) and francois truffaut's a certain tendency of french cinema. the auteur theory at this time, however, was still rather undefined and served a greater purpose in the promotion of the young critic's burgeoning careers as film directors. the young writers of cahiers went on to direct feature films of great originality and keen understanding of the cinematic form under the monniker of the french new wave.

the auteur theory at this time was in its rudementary state. the cahiers critics essentially had only formed a few tenets of this burgeoning piece of theory. the main tenet at this point of evolution revolved around the idea that a director was the author of the film, that he used the camera as a pen to write his story in a manner similar to an author of a book. this was important to the new wavers, as at the time, the screenwriter dominated french cinema's "tradition of quality." truffaut set out to show how the writer's influence could be felt over the whole of france's cinematic output and was an ourage to a youthful movement full of enthusiasm. he contested that the same ten or so screenwriters, all of whom shared a similar, popularly assimilated stance, dominated the output of nearly a hundred or so films a year. this article argued the merits of such "cinematic" men and the films they made over the studio based "tradition of quality." truffaut held up on a pedestal directors like jean renoir, robert bresson, alfred hitchcock, howard hawks, and orson welles as directors whose art was not based in what truffaut beleived to be literary concerns, but was based in the image and all that was contained within. their films were considered better becuase they represented visions of a singular artistic statement as opposed to the films from writers jean aurenche, pierre bost, and clause autant-lara which the critics saw as nothing more than a popular, moralistic(often cynical and mean spirited) idealism transferred onto the preexisting aesthetic of the object of adaptation.

the history of auteurism served the cahier critics well. it started a shift in ideas on cinema that helped them immensely. by shifting the importance from dialougue/plot to the image/mise en scene, they made the director the most important figure in the film. they did this by giving the director the status of creator of the particular piece of art. this allows for the art to be put into context with the other pieces of art created by the same artist. this context and the greater idea that a single film is part of a larger whole served to turn film into a more "respectable" medium by providing a system of classification by which to study film and its merits. the placing of the diector as the high point on the totem pole that governed a "seious" artform gave the critics who revolutionized the theory a special status once they began making films. by placing themselves as sole cretors of a singular, individual vision, they, by default, garnered an audience that already respected them as artists instead of as mere entertainers and respected their films as art instead of entertainment.

the beginnings of the auteur theory paved the way for those who theorized to become auteurs. but in reality, what does that mean? the auteur theory, as conceptualized by the new wavers, doesn't really have shape. it eludes concrete definition. it still cannot answer the question it poses because of this lack of definition.

so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? in 1962, andrew sarris attempted to set up a criterion for answering that very question. for sarris, the director is not always necessarily the author of a film. sarris argues that a film's sensibilities can come from a multitude of places(producers, prevailing social concerns). occasionally, there are directors who will exude their will over their films to the point that they become authors. in these cases, the directors distinct psychology permeates the work and becomes the psychology of the piece. it is at this point that the director becomes an auteur.

and only an auteur can be an auteur. but what does it mean to be an auteur? how can one judge whether or not one is an auteur? in his article notes on the auteur theory in 1962, sarris offers up three things that he feels necessary in the consideration of a director's auteur status. an auteur's film must be technically sound, possess recognizable characteristics that link it with other films in the director's oeuvre, and an interior meaning. in sarris's mind these criteria exist as concentric circles placed within each other. an auteur is a director who moves beyond technical achievement and similar motifs and into the smaller circle of interior meaning.

interior meaning is what the auteur theory according to sarris hinges upon. it also happens to be the least defined of the three criteria. as to wher technique and style (technically good diecting and recognizable characteristics) can be charted easily through the occurrence of recurring motifs and their technical execution, interior meaning is an idea represented in abstract, therefor eschewing classification. truffaut describes interior meaning as the director's temperature on the set. this is a good description for what the french regard as that certain "je ne sais quoi." but i feel it is best described by another truffaut statement.

in his essay, what do critics dream about, truffaut writes, "a succesful film had simultaneously to express an idea of the world and an idea of cinema." i like this as a quasi-definition of interior meaning. (a quasi-chimpanzee's definition, no doubt) as the meshing of a director's notion of the world with how they see cinema creates within a work a complete expression which, through its dependence upon images, refuses any verbal or literal framework for defining. in short, interior meaning is an atmosphere, or rather, it is the heaviness of the air that creates what we know as atmosphere. abstracts rule.

in reality there is no clear definition for interior meaning. but auteurs have it, and therefore, it must be open to investigation. after all, we still need to be able to tell the difference between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee. critc/scholar peter wollen believes that unlocking the mystery of interior meaning is the key to answering this question. in signs and meaning in the cinema, he drafts a blueprint for trying to answer the tricky question of interior meaning. he draws from foucault the idea that an author is nothing more than a tool for cultural appropriation. the contention in this way of thinking is that the author is nothing more than a filter for the ideals and structures of the culture that surrounds them. while this would seem to turn the notion of an auteur as the author of a text upside down, in wollen's hands it becomes something much more interesting.

wollen understands that the hierarchy that dictates that a culture controls an author who, in turn, controls a work of art reduces that work of art to the role of cultural artifact. what wollen skillfully point out is that a film's creation really exists within a synthesis of culture and author. film, to wollen, seems to represent the reaction of an author to the cultural structures around them. wollen describes the films of john ford as being portraits of ford's unease with the opposing structures that pull at him from within his cultural surroundings. he points to the oppositions such as the garden vs. natural wilderness and human law vs. natural law as recurring themes of discussion in ford's films. while at first this seems like nothing more than a charting of recognizable characteristics, therefore rendering him as a mere "stylist" on the sarris scale, in wollen's world this becomes the foundation for interior meaning.

wollen finds interior meaning in the relationship ford has with the battle being waged by these recurring opposing forces. wollen finds interior meaning in the fact that over time in ford's work, the winners of these structural battles change. sometimes these battles would overwhelm a ford hero, such as when the home based vs. nomadic lifestyle battle leaves ethan(john wayne) in the searchers on the eternal quest for the meaning provided by the missing pieces of his life. but the interior meaning, wollen points out, exists in the constant war that these opposing cultural structures are fighting. over time, this collection of wars waged on film becomes, in effect, a philosophy on life. but the workof an auteur is far from being as definitive as philosophy attempts to be. rather, the work of an auteur is more of a conversation, a continuing dialogue between the director and the issue that life has put upon them. this constant negotiation and renegotiation is where interior meaning is established as life is nothing more than one's negotiation with their problems. an auteur's work, as a whole, boils down to nothing but a filmed, cinematic representation of their dialogues with problems and how they reconcile themselves with the world that caused them.

so, how does this allow us to differentiate between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee? i mean, really, how do wollen's ideas on interior meaning help to further define what an auteur does, and, more importantly, how does it help us scientifically prove one's status as an auteur. the sad part is, that here in 2009, it really doesn't mean anything. i could sit here and say that an auteur has a consistent message, or at least that they are saying something about similar things consistently. but that means nothing. there are assholes out there(like me) who would argue that michael bay is an auteur because he has a consistent discourse about explosions and how to run from them. but, again, that means nothing. basically, auteur, as it exista today, is nothing more than a phrase like hippie, yuppie, or genius. nobody really knows what those words themselves mean, but everyone feels free to use them to label others. so i say, keep the word auteur as this. keep it as a superficial label to put upon one's favorite filmmakers. this way i can keep such "non-cinematic" men such as john sayles and whit stillman on my list of favorite auteurs, whil keeping spaz luhrman as a pathetically shallow stylist.

the auteur theory is nothing more than an abstract theory that means practically nothing to the art of cinema outside of the classrooms where theory is studied. a director can not even become an auteur until a bulk of work has been made and only then is the term auteur used as a way to historically canonize the work after the fact. so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? you don't do it with a theory. you don't do it with auteurism. you do it with your gut. because only an auteur is an auteur, and only you can decide for yourself exactly what that means.

all i know right now is that baz is not...and i still haven't made it to australia.

i can smoke like ten blunts and still smoke your ass in the hundred freestyle

2009-02-02T10:50:00.004-05:00

of all the stories emanating from yesterday's crush of coverage from the super bowl, the one that intrigued me the most was that of american hero michael phelps. for those readers that do not already know, apparently over the weekend a london tabloid posted a picture of mr. phelps smoking some weed at a party.

as anyone who knows the staff here at beer cannes knows, we don't particularly care about that as we are not really in any place to cast judgment on anyone who partakes. in fact for the first few minutes after the venerable bob costas broke the story, we were running around the old office here and touting phelps as possibly the finest american currently living.

but then something kinda bullshit happened. roughly ten minutes after breaking the story, mr. costas came back on air and read a pre-prepared press statement that found phelps asking for forgiveness and blaming his "transgression" on youthful misjudgment. and it was then that i became truly saddened.

i wish, instead of responding with remorse, that phelps would have either not responded at all or, as in my dream scenario, would have responded with a somewhat caustic, "so the fuck what?"

i mean, really? who the fuck cares? and if you do, why? seriously, the double standard in this country is absolute bullshit. twenty-three year old michael phelps takes one toke off a pipe at a party and suddenly it is world news. meanwhile, if at the same party, phelps would have attempted to destroy his liver with like 15 irish car bombs and passed out on the sofa, nobody would have blinked an eye.

while the smoking vs. drinking double standard obviously irks me, i find that i am most disappointed in the phelps response as i feel that to end this ridiculous prohibition of marijuana people, and in particular people with a certain amount of cultural cache, need to start taking a stand and being honest about their recreational use. i wish phelps would have used this public forum that his fame provides to further the discussion on the legalization of pot. after all, it is no more detrimental to a person's system, or society as a whole, than the alcohol that is put up on a pedestal in this country. nobody ever apologizes for over-inbibing, unless they get caught behind the wheel. but get caught taking one hit, and the media blitz of judgment that eventually leads to false remorse is on.

so with this in mind, i have drafted my dream response to phelp's conundrum. it follows as such:

hell yeah, i smoked weed. i'm 23, i'm the best in the world ever at what i do, i only work like once every four years and after winning a record eight gold medals this summer, i feel it is my right to blow off a little steam at a party every once in awhile. really, why the fuck do you care and who are you to fucking judge me? i can smoke a pound of weed and still kill all you fools in a swim race, because that's how i roll. i'm michael phelps, bitches! and it's just a little weed, it's not like i'm making crystal meth in my bath tub. i'm just trying to get a little high, peace out.

but then again, if he made that statement he would have to apologize for the use of profanity because our precious puritanical american values(see: hypocracy)just couldn't handle it.

america has shit on its face because its head is stuck up its ass.

reasons and reasoning

2009-01-30T11:32:00.003-05:00

as anyone who monitors my cinematic viewing patterns by perusing the the dear diary section directly to the left already knows, i have recently and very unintentionally completed a weeks worth of film spectatorship that contained three films that dealt with various themes of race relations. at this point i will concede that the discussion henceforth will not deal with my own thoughts on the issue, but instead with how well, or in instances not too well, clint eastwood's gran torino, tom mccarthy's the visior, and alan clarke's made in britain present their somewhat pre-structuralized takes on the issue.

in addition to serving as the endcap to this threesome, my viewing of made in britain also served as my introduction to the supposedly realist world of english resident genius filmmaker alan clarke. as one of a series of clarke films that deal with the structural failings of the conformity seeking mentality of the english educational system, the film started off well enough as clarke used his camera to calmly record, without much in the way of emotional hystrionics or pyrotechnics, a young tim roth's maniacal rampage against society. i begin to fall in love with the long tracking shots that casually observe the goings on with an almost bemused view of the anarchist rebellion on display and i convince myself that i am truly watching a master of the kitchen sink realism as clarke is allowing me to calmly observe while allowing me to reserve judgment for a later time, if not suspending it altogether. but then clarke does something that seems a bit out of character for the aesthetic that he has previously built. just as the film reaches the crux of it's issue, and finds itself at a point where it can finally provide some clarification on tim roth's seemingly unprovoked rebellion against society, it really seems to chicken out, allowing roth's character to babble incoherently and unconvincingly about the supposed fall of england being somehow tied to the influx of various non-native cultures. it is at this point that i am unsure whether clarke is making some blanket statement about racism being a crutch of the unenlightened or if he is just rendering his character as completely idiotic, therefore taking the stance that the rebellion has no idea what is even causing it to rebel. for argument's sake i will choose the latter, because it will allow me the room to compare clarke's ideology with that of the establishment educational system that he seems to distrust. when clarke hangs roth out to dry in that interogation scene, he essentially makes the point that these kids have no choice but to rebel because they aren't bright enough to see the systems at work that keep them in place, for only smart guys like alan clarke(or the english government) can do that. so they misplace their hate in petty things like racism until hopefully one day they see a slice of alan clarke's realism on the telly and realize the bullshit system in place and make a change. nope. clarke dips his otherwise aesthetically appealing film into the realm of smug intellectual finger pointing and therefore renders his "realism" as both artless and uninspired and he fails to reach the standards that accompany his premature annointment among the greats of british realism like leigh and loach. nice try alan, but next time save the political meanderings and intellectual superiority complex and just stick with the facts.

similar in smug intellectual approach is tom mccarthy's lackluster follow up to his heartfelt, emotionally complex station agent, the visitor. where in the station agent the battles toward forging a friendship and emotional connection are hard fought, the ones in the visitor are often times too easy. it's like, so let me get this straight, a cold, lonely, grieving, introspective prig of a professor comes back to his long abandoned old apartment in the city and finds two illegal immigrants have taken up residence and two seconds after everyone calms down from the all too quick emotional outbursts, this prig instantly becomes a neo-hippie, socialist who starts a commune for illegal immigrants in his apartment and sits around in his underwear playing in drum circles. really? that fast? shit doesn't change like that in two seconds. nerdy economists don't just adopt new personalities and become extroverted immigration law challengers over night because a few things happen to them or they witness some shit. it takes time to develop a new voice like that. it takes fighting and biting and piss and vigor. it's hardfought, like the station agent. and it's this lack of understanding of simple concepts of human personality that essentially negates mccarthy's right headed, sense of understanding between cultures as merely pre-programmed liberal agenda. this is a lite version of a film for the new yorker reading set who like to feel that they only have time for "important" films. i can't believe that the generally amiable and spot on richard jenkins pulled an oscar nom for a softball lobbing, walk in the park role like this one.

and that clint eastwood didn't for his badass turn as walt kowalski in gran torino. to be honest, i have never been a big fan of eastwood as a director, but i do love this film because it ascends to seemingly higher plane of human understanding than his usual turns at revisionist demythologising. while eastwood still relies on some tropes of genre to deconstruct the very essence of the "macho" myth of male behavior, i find that this time around eastwood id finding a bit of beauty in the gray area between violent reaction and a more peaceful resistance. whereas the eastwood demystification machine has previously stuck to the credo that violence, especially the unwarranted variety, only leads to more violence, and there is that message in this film too, this time he seems to revel in it. he seems to goad the audience into wanting an outlaw josey wales type response where clint goes in and mows down everyone. we want the violence and when we get the more intellectual resolution we are not entirely pleased or displeased. and the endpiece is more effective because of it. clint wins again with his level headed, anti-dirty harry, anti-"shoot first" mentality. but this time he does so in a way that doesn't condemn the violent reactions and responses in anyone. in clint's "shade of grey" world racists, who behave as such with a certain amount of dignity and reasoning, can be good people. people who lend a hand one minute can be bad news the next. things and minds are fluid, everchanging things, yet the essentials will always ring true. good people will find other good people even if they have to climb through all sorts of bullshit to do it. that and the mind is a better problem solver than the fists. good lessons, indeed.

is wayne brady gonna have to choke a bitch?

2009-01-21T09:13:00.004-05:00

as many of my people already know, i have become increasingly disappointed with our 44th president lately as he continues to eschew the "change" that we were promised and instead just plugs various members from the clinton administration into his cabinent. ram emmanuel? cool dude, but not change. hillary? she said it best when she said, "now that's change you can xerox!"

i suppose i am sad because i feel that, with a support camp that rival's the number of tila tequilla's friends on myspace, he could have made much more interesting and possibly better selections. that's where i come in.

so to right the wrongs of my man barry, i present to you...the dream cabinent.

secretary of the treasury: oprah winfrey. because that bitch practically prints money already. shit, oprah could buy up all the sub primes by herself and save this ship from having to bail water. as an added bonus, you know at some point there would be a photo op that would produce a picture of oprah standing next to alan greenspan...i'm practically designing the frame for it as i type.

surgeon general: dr phil. hell i don't even know if he's a real doctor, but really what the fuck does the surgeon general do anyway besides pimp out medic alert bracelets to the elderly on the tv like my guy c. everett koop. dr. phil could do that...and with a twangy drawl no less.

white house press secretary: steven spielberg. because that fuck can turn any old garbage into gold. i mean, did you see a.i.? yeah, me too unfortunately. but tis the genius of old steven, his name alone pretty much insures that we as an audience will swallow garbage and then say it's ok.

the secretary of defense: denzel washington. because when denzel gets agitated behind the podium and starts banging his fist, people listen. i dream of his "by any means necessary" speech where he states that we didn't land on 9/11, 9/11 landed on us, right before he lays waste to the desert with the nuclear holocaust. king kong indeed. (if denzel doesn't want to do it, wayne brady could also substitute)

and finally secretary of state: tony dungy. because for one, he ain't got no job. and two, if obama truly is the second coming of jim caveziel, then he's gonna need to bring along some disciples. and there is no better place to start than with saint dungy, the patron saint of one and done. i mean, everybody loves this guy, right? i think it's his muppet voice that sounds like a cross between a young kermit and an old yoda. fresh and wise simultaneously.

as for the other positions, mr. obama can handle those. although i do implore him to keep condoleeza rice around because condi is kinda foxy in an all-powerful, gap toothed sort of way.

an essay in the mold of la ronde(with apologies to max ophuls)

2009-01-14T23:17:00.004-05:00

once upon a time, long before the director known as eyebrows was awarded a "lifetime achievement" oscar for his incredibly cheesy film the departed, i remember sitting in a film class the day after eminem was awarded one for his song from his movie when out of nowhere, in the middle of his lecture, venerable professor dennis bingham blurts out, "i can't believe i live in a world where eminem has an oscar and martin scorsese doesn't." it kinda reminds me of kate winslet, who, if she doesn't get her lifetime achievement oscar for essentially playing the same characters she always plays, will probably have to resort to offing herself to join the likes of another probable oscar winner because i couldn't possibly live in a world where heath ledger has an oscar and kate winslet doesn't, right? but, who cares? she got two globes, so at least one of them has to carry through to oscar night, right? the oscars, who needs em?

kudos to the golden globes for giving one to sally hawkins. happy go lucky is one of my favorite films of the year and she is wonderful in it as a girl who very much knows the occasional darkness of humanity and still chooses to almost cast herself as an ever cheerful, do-gooder dingbat in the mold of the great comedienes of the past like gracie allen or judy holiday. mike leigh has fashioned another complex tale around a character who knowingly play other characters within the lives of the people they portray as if he understands that human beings are constantly choosing what roles to take on in social acting classes everyday. sally hawkins, as poppy, seems like someone one could possibly come across in real life, as opposed to the shattered messes who wear their constantly changing emotions all over their "actor's visage" like the two aformentioned likely oscar winners.

and speaking of real life, i recently watched the lovely little film dan in real life. and while it is does not exactly portray what i would call "real life," i did enjoy it because any movie where anybody, in this case steve carell, steals a girl from dane cook(especially when dane cook is their brother) is a.o.k. with me despite its failed claims at some sort of realism. i am, however, completely sold on the idea of having sondre lerche music ambiently play over all the poignant moments in my life. we gotta make that a reality.

real. like this jam(please read on afterward)

that video goes a long way in proving the idea that as long as their are featured artist slots open in the realm of hip hop, no artist, no matter how played out or irrelevant, is ever truly career dead. except hammer. and vanilla ice, but i said rappers. congrats andre 3000 for momentarily forgetting your rampant uncle tom-ism and stylistic posturing formula and hopping on board a good jam. i didn't know you still had it in you.

speaking of formula, laurent firode's film happenstance totally rips off the structure of max ophul's luscious film la ronde, but completely forgets to tap into an ounce of ophul's abuntant visual poetry. and as i sit back and ponder it now, i think of la ronde and how good that movie is(simone signoret...yum) and even attempting to copy it seems quite sadistic, if not downright satanic.

and speaking of satan, this is for everyone, who like myself, thinks that michael mcdonald is the devil(please read on afterwards)

i have to admit, i learned of that killer video from bill simmons, the sports guy at espn.com. it was a link in one of his mailbag columns from a few weeks ago. we here at beer cannes whole heartedly suggest that once you are done reading this, that you head on over to espn.com and check him out if you don't already do so. karate kid and teen wolf references mixed with nba talk make for some interesting columns that explode from the chemical combination of sports, pop culture and humor. his mail bags responses are the best. go read his old shit.

and speaking of old shit, how about rachel getting married resurfacing at landmark? what's up with that, frost/nixon? jcvd? nope, you get rachel getting married! again.

is it sad that when i read that it was returning, i immediately thought that it would make topical the blog about it that i have been wanting to unleash for some time now? i guess no more sad than the fact that it's wednesday and i still haven't typed it up. that sucks too, because it is pretty good as it borrows, from an incredible book called flickers by gilbert adair, this fantastic argument about modernism and how antonioni and hitchcock fell on different sides of it and then discusses that argument in terms of rachel getting married and its modernist aspirations. i hope i get around to writing it soon, but i wouldn't hold my breath if i were you. as i sit here holding mine in anticipation of the wrestler, i just can't be bothered with old shit right now.

except for this old shit, reimagined...

beer cannes highly recommends checking out flickers. even as a personal, investigative chronicle of the first hundred years of cinema, it remains a relatively light, easy read. it is easy and fun, much like the book i am reading now, acting male by dennis bingham. i have only gotten through the quite long, twenty page introduction, but i am already sure of its status among all those things that we consider as "winners."

in his introduction, bingham writes of the acting style of jack nicholson, that he was a "post-modern actor" constantly taking on roles as people who spent a great deal of their time playing roles in public, not their "true selves"(whatever that is). and that he garnered much of his cultural cache as a great actor by essentially being the actor who was "cool enough" to pull off such character within a character mechanisms. this playing of a character which knowingly "wears a social mask" reminds me of sally hawkins as poppy in happy-go-lucky, which is anothe cool performance.

and with that, anton wolbrook says, the carousel has come full circle(and then some) and the ride is over. please dismount thine steed and exit to your left. thanks for stopping by.

the beer cannes hall of awesomeness

2009-01-08T17:51:00.004-05:00

some may recall bolo yeung as the neck breaking baddie from such martial arts faire as enter the dragon and various jean claude van damme films. but we here at the b.c. feel that bolo's main claim to fame lies in the huge boulders that he carries around on his chest. big boob bolo, or b3 if you will, was the type of dude that didn't take no shit from anyone. witness the primal death scream released on ray jackson in the uber-classic bloodsport. as my bro zach said the other day, it is primal in a way that suggests "sexual release." but i think that he might just be lactating. pretty fucking badass, but not heartless.

no, despite his murderous rage, one really can't call bolo heartless. in fact, it's more like heart-loss, as his heart is probably just hidden beneath those huge fucking pectoral muscles. i mean really, has anyone else ever seen an asian built like that? it's like he has been on horse steroids since the age of five. huge boobs. i am udderly impressed.

so with that in mind, beer cannes makes its innaugural entry into the beer cannes hall of fame...erm awesomeness, and we salute the work of big boob bolo yeung: professional badass. so to the only man to have a style of necktie named after him i say, welcome to the hall, bolo.

i wanna see jcvd

a case against milk

2009-01-05T10:51:00.003-05:00

on the promotional poster for the new film milk, there is a statement (from the director of good will hunting) that i find particularly instructive when viewing and subsequently reviewing the film. with this one statement, the producers seem to be implying that the last decade or so, one of the most creative periods of output by any film director ever by the way, never actually happened. and while i find it insulting to forget films like paranoid park, elephant, and gerry, i think overall this might be a useful tool in breaking down the reasonings behind my lukewarm reaction to gus van sant's latest work, as this is by far the most commercial (i.e. linear, straightforward narrative) product that van sant has put forth in a long time.

the film begins with harvey milk offering up his story into a microphone as if conducting a self interview. this vehichle will serve as a framing device throughout the narrative, bookending the film and occasionally popping up in the middle to over-emphasize parts that don't really need any additional emphasis. this rather traditional narrative structure, which would seem completely out of place in recent van sant work, fits right in with a film from the "director of good will hunting." i think of the journal in paranoid park, which serves as the narrator in that film, and how it mesmerised the audience with it's seeming inability to get to the point, to the crux of the matter. with it, the film became not necessarilly suspenseful, but more questioning, more probing, as if the viewer were being taken further and further down to the film's/event's emotional core. in this film there is no real searching for the heart of the matter, as its complete lack of subtlety takes hold frame one and doesn't really allow for any self discovery. we know from word one that milk is fighting for an issue of great imporatance, an issue that the film seems more than happy to make him a figurehead of.

in the role of harvey milk, sean penn physically resembles a grocery bag attempting to keep a nuclear bombs worth of kinetic energy bottled up. this is probably due to his uncontained excitement at the prospect of another oscar nomination, but for argument's sake we will contend that this energy comes from a man that can be bound up no longer. and that is all well and good, if the film made me think for at least one minute that harvey milk was the type of guy that could ever be bound up like that. unfortunately the film does not, as it seems to rest on this idea of harvey milk, not necessarily being a character, or a man, but as a representation of a much larger thing.(in this case the gay rights movement) ultimately, i left the theater with not so much of an understanding of milk the man, but with an understanding that milk was representative of an important cause.

i think that is because the film doesn't allow harvey milk to transcend his gayness and develop into an individual who has much more to offer than just that. i mean seriously, is it too much to ask that this man be given one character trait that doesn't involve his homosexuality. and no the interspersed title cards that told me what milk stood for(seniors, education) are not the types of character shading i was looking for as they merely seem to be trying to pile stuff on to a one dimensional character.

it is funny, but on the ride home from the film, i started daydreaming about van sant making a film about the one interesting character, supervisor dan white. i thought about how incredible a film structured like paranoid park with white as the film's center would be. how his journal reading as narration would create an enormously arresting picture of a man that van sant already tends to shade as a closet case. now that would be a worm hole worth going into, as i feel that white, played brilliantly by josh brolin, was the only character allowed any sort of greater emotional depth in milk. that, and as a confused, conflicted, possible homosexual, i feel he would have fit right in with other latter day van sant protagonists, about whom more interesting fare than milk centered around.

but unfortunately for me, milk isn't really a "gus van sant film," but rather a film by the "director of good will hunting." it's sad, but there is a difference. good will hunting's director is forced by his cast, by his studio's need for awards, by an issue too big into a straightforward, kind of bland narrative structure that leads to a big, important, utterly forgettable film. milk feels like a film thats issues are "too important" to be overshadowed by the type of "great film" that van sant normally makes. it makes me wonder if all the hoopla and applause that followed my viewing were directed at the film, or at the championaing of a cause that anybody with a sembelance of intelligence can get behind. my belief is that people are cheering for championing the cause, and looking past the fact that it is a mediocre film doing it.

hang in there...

2008-12-29T12:01:00.003-05:00

hang in there with me, dear friends. i promise to go on a blog rampage shortly after the new years, at which time one will want to check back a couple of times a week.

but for right now, i'm still on holiday vacation, and although i spend time gathering materials, i don't do any mental lifting during the holidays.

hence, no work. at least not lately.

but fear not, nose goes back to grindstone on january 3rd.

i promise.

the only thing i want for christmas...

2008-12-07T08:45:00.001-05:00

is for this fucking guy to make a full album...

tis the season

2008-12-02T06:41:00.003-05:00

since films like revolutionary road and doubt are often cited as oscar bait, does that make the process of making such a film oscarbation.

are sam mendes and phillip seymour hoffman mere oscarbators?

cause i heard that just causes movies like blindness.

everyone's a winner...

2008-12-01T09:26:00.003-05:00

well it looks like zach wins the mix tape by default. i will assume that this is due to an unbelievable plague of writer's block that hit the blogosphere while i was gone and not to the lack of want for the prize in question. anyway zach will recieve his awesome prize sometime soon.

as for the rest of you, since i am feeling generous i will give you the info on a dope new website and on the recent upgrades to an old favorite. because here, everyone's a winner.

over at the criterion collection website they have undergone a rather interesting facelift in their attempt to spread the message of cinematic history to the masses. through the application of streaming video and a partnership with another site that i will rhapsodize about later in this post, criterion is now allowing their catalog to be "rented" for online viewing. titles can be viewed as many times as one desires over the span of one week for the nominal fee of five u.s. dollars. then, if one decides to buy the dvd hard copy of the film(with all the delicious extras criterion is famous for) the five dollars will be credited to the purchase on the site. it's a try before you buy preview that rolls over into a sort of gift certificate. how sweet is that?

almost as sweet as the site of its partners in this venture, the auteurs. the auteurs is a site dedicated to the cinephile. in addition to the numerous forums available to sound off on all things cinematic, it also hosts quite a large collection of films in high def for your viewing pleasue. some of the films cost a fiver but the majority of them are free to view simply by clicking on the play button. in addition to great films from all over the planet like the dardenne's l'enfant and jia's the world, the auteurs also includes in their selections every month a programmed festival of films from the criterion catalog for free viewing. this month the festival is titled "cruel stories of youth" and includes films like victor erice's spirit of the beehive(the best film ever made) as well as louis malle's au revoir les enfants, catherine breillat's fat girl, and peter brook's lord of the flies, which i watched last night and which looks great(much better than the similar netflix apparatus)

so if you find yourself sickened by the slew of hollywood shit like four christmases this season, and you just can't wait for the new despelchin or aronofsky's the wrestler, do yourself a favor and click on the links above. it's the gift that keeps on giving from your friends here at beer cannes.

vive la cine.

holler at your boy

2008-11-22T22:52:00.003-05:00

some of you may have heard the rumor, and let me assure you it is true. the old beer cannes is taking this highwire act on the road to the bahamas for a week of swim up bars and on site sports book. but fear not, dear readers as i am leaving you with a fair bit of intrigue.

for a while now, i have been wanting to find a way to make the good old b.c. a little bit more fan friendly, a little bit more lively. also for a while i have been wanting to distribute prizes as a way into this new, interactive frenzy of my dreams. but up until lately i couldn't figure out what to distribute. then a few posts ago i wrote an old fashioned ode to the glory of a mixtape, and it hit me. why don't i give one of those away?

so that is what we are doing. in the first of hopefully many beer cannes contests to come the prize shall be a mix tape personally made by hand from the staff here at beer cannes. and it will be awesome.

right now i imagine all my readers jumping up in amazement and asking in a fairly boisterous fashion, "how do i win this...i want it so bad."

well i will tell you how you can win it.

as great fans of the diverse voices of the myriad peoples out in cyberspace, we here at the beer cannes are first and foremost about a good read. we check blogs daily, usually in the morning as if they were the gosphel that the good old star definitely is not. we know there are many talented writers out there that we know of, and probably a million more that we as of yet do not know.

so with this in mind, we are sponsoring the first ever beer cannes short essay contest.

in the comment section of this post, beer cannes asks that you write your best essay that consists of no more than three paragraphs. these pieces can be about anything that is running through your mind and are bound by no rules beyond those mandated by common decency, not that i figure that will be a problem. the winner will be judged on content, artistic merit, and basic je ne sais quoi by the staff here at beer cannes and beer cannnes alone. the contest ends on the friday after thanksgiving at noon and the winner will be chosen shortly thereafter, most likely opening to rave reviews of their verbal virtuosity on this here site. their awesome, hand made, kick ass mix tape will be made by the czar of beer cannes and delivered before christmas. one entry per person please.

good luck. i look forward to some genius, as it will be required in the quest for this tape

i will appreciate the struggles while i am giving thanks and eating turkey on the beach.
don't freeze...peace.

is 2112 a fraternity?

2008-11-18T19:08:00.005-05:00

i remember walking on campus at iupui in front of the old library on my way to a class in cavanaugh hall. it was early in the semester and scribbled in chalk along the pavement were advertisements for fraternities and sororities. join alpha epsilon! rush delta nu! and as i caught myself thinking, does iupui even have frats? and if so...why? but then that thought was cast assunder in a most meaningful way when toward the end of the line read a quite elaborate(for a chalk drawing) sign asking me to rush 2112.

i thought about it for a minute. and in that minute, i decided that if i were going to ever join a drinking institution...urm...fraternity, that i would probably be inclined to join this one over all the other, more greecian formula choices at my disposal.

but then i thought, nah..fuck that. i like to drink alone.

see i guess the thing is, i don't really "get" rush. and i am writing this blog because i feel that a good portion of the people who occasionally get down on here are indeed rush fans(fanatics) and i am honestly just looking for some input. i mean, i get that they are extremely talented musicians and that they employ quite intricate song structures and all, but i just really am having a hard time finding anything catchy in their songs.

given, all i ever hear are the songs the old q95 and jack recycle on two for tuesdays and shit.(freewill, tom sawyer and what not) and all those songgs play like bland pseudo- anthems. which sucks becausea i am the type of guy that judges songs based on a first listen's instant impression and second time's singability, so i needs my songs catchy ans sig-a-longable. i don't find either of those qualities in rush, but feel that it could be that i am just not hearing the undiscovered pop gems of their oeuvre. i mean, so many people seem to love them, so i figure it has to be in their somewhere, but still i ask: do rush write poppy songs? ever?

because i might like to hear them as they will give me a reason to sing along to rush other than for the joy of knowing that i, and everyone else...ever, have a better voice.

oh yeah, and fuck the red sox!

an infinite playlist

2008-11-14T09:44:00.005-05:00

lately, i have been feeling really nostalgic for the pop culture artifacts from my past that i believed i had moved on from. i've been playing vice city(my favorite game from my college years) i've been talking incessantly with my cousin jon about the britpop that provided the soundtrack for my high school years. i've even been allowing my co-worker buzz to listen to hank fm at work on the chance that i may hear an old randy travis or george strait song that my mom used to listen to when i was a child.

but the thing i have been jonesing for the most is mix tapes.

in our ipod, cd rewriter universe the mix tape seems to have rapidly gone the way of the buffalo. and that is just sad as mix tapes often provided the best, most effective way to produce a cohesive playlist. i never really got into the mix cd thing because to make one, one didn't even need to listen to the songs that were being put on them. most mix cd's ended up as just a jumble of random songs that generally didn't have the flow or continuity that marked the best mix tapes. i don't have an ipod, but i imagine the same problems exist.

there was a very distinct artform to the mix tape. i used to make like one a week in my teens as i was on this journey , this stoned quest to find the optimal track listing. i took it as a personal challenge to my musical knowledge to find the perfect follow up to songs like big star's thirteen or suede's trash or ride's vapour trail. and while they weren't often perfect, they at least had alot of thought and alot of time put into them. and for that they ruled. i knew mix cd's basically sucked from the beginning when i realized i was putting more time and effort into the designing of the covers than i was into the designing of the playlist. hell, on most of the mix tapes i made, i never even made a cover or a track listing because the individual songs didn't matter as much as the overall feel of the tape.

i miss cassettes and mourn their near extinction. occasionally, i will still attempt to make one, but i usually give up about halfway through as i know i am doing it only for myself. you can't really give one to anybody anymore because you never know who even has the aparatus with which to play it. and that is just sad because it has led me to a time in which i may never know what song or songs could create a bridge between lil wayne and led zeppelin. taylor swift may never sit next to alex chilton. and i may never again get to use them all in an attempt to extend the olive branch of friendship to a fellow music lover.

if i were gonna make a mix tape right now these songs would be on it:

my list in lists

2008-11-04T18:07:00.006-05:00

i did my patriotic duty today, and i hope everyone else did as well.

therefore i figure, this,of all days, is the day to be positive. right?

i figure, this is the day to get out from under the funk of the negative attitude towards everything that's been exposed lately. let's just get up and brush that dirt off our shoulders. let's put good vibe out in the world.

i figure, what's the worst that could happen?
so here goes, the things i feel positive about.

has everyone read the latest post over on ryan's blog, my year in lists. that is a pretty darn good, short read. and i highly recommend checking it out. that is a very welcome edition of his often essay deprived column, and i hope he keeps them coming. as for the guy maddin vs. kevin smith argument...

i have not yet made it to the zach and miri porno film as i know, like ryan, pretty much exactly what i am going to get. unlike ryan however, this perturbs me greatly as i still long for the glory days of the original trilogy, especially mallrats which i love more as time goes by. snoochie boochies. the argument about kevin smith's lack of visual prowess, actually makes me more pissed at kevin smith because i realize that his comedy is derived mostly from the writing and the general tomfoolery amongst the film's component parts. the fact that his act has grown stale is far more disheartening than what i find from maddin, as it tends to represent a more constrained, less willing to take some serious chances style for smith. i mean, clerks 2. i almost cried after i saw that piece of shit. that donkey scene alone seemed so contrived for the post tom green generation that it about made me want to puke.

but then i remember that it doesn't matter and this is an exercise in positivity and that even if you wanted to, you couldn't cross out all the fuck you's in the world. and i don't want to try. and i definitely don't want to be just another fuck you so... on with positivity, and on to guy maddin.

a friend and i recently got drunk and watched brand upon the brain! the lush criterion packaging had this really awesome feature that allowed us to pick our narrator for the film from a list of people who had done live readings at various screenings of the film worldwide. being that we was like, under the influence and such, we absolutely had to listen to crispin glover narration. and it was well worth it. freaking awesome.

and while my man ryan raises some valid criticisms of the relative staleness guy maddin's work, i tend to see it more as this continuing exploration of his own unique style. unlike gonzales-inaritu and merelies, he doesn't just work from the exact same template of both style and emotions every time out. brand upon the brain! is not my favorite(probably dracula or the saddest music) but it is at least an interesting take on what he does. it is dreamy, it is caught up in the genre-specific workings of the late silent/early talkie film, but it is also a fascinating exploration of memory and its relation to time and place that delves deeper than any of his film's have delved before. his clever staccatto editing patterns really drove home the utter nonexistence of the differentiation between memory and hallucination, as they both become thoughts on an equal plane through their interrelation to temporal and physical properties. and keep in mind that it was made to be an experienced work of art employing orchestral accompanyment and on the spot story telling principles to help his film transcend the usual boundries of merely sitting in front of a screen and viewing cookie cutter shit.

in guy maddin, i still see an artist growing and redefining his craft. he is immensely talented and works in a style that really allows that idiosyncratic talent to shine through. even though i will end up seeing zach and miri, i believe kevin smith, at this point is just shoveling out police academy IV, a shit sequel to his two already bad sequels to a good film.

in the old days, they just got some hack off the street to put his name as the director of that shit and you took producer credit. whatever. oh well, kev...up with jersey girl 9, and go run your little college tours for all i give a fuck

huckabee/palin 2012!!!

four more beers!

president of what...

2008-10-31T08:48:00.004-04:00

man, this election season has been a letdown. all these jackasses in powersuits talking about this and that and the economy and taxes and schools and such. but nobody really seems to be talking about the real reasons behind these problems. nobody wants to do a little introspection.

honestly, do you wanna know why america is fucked up? america is fucked up because americans are fucked up. i mean look around. our populace in its current incarnation is probably the least likely in history to take up the role of the good semaritan. hell, we can't even find time in our busy schedule of accumulating things to be polite to one another anymore. everybody is so concerned with getting their one dollar double cheeseburger that they don't care who they cut in the mcdonald's line. just so long as they get to stuff their obese, uncouth faces.

face it jack, americans are lazy, fat, ignorant and above all, perfectly content to be as such. they want to work their forty hours, go out and buy big screen tv's and houses out of their budget, and then cry when the repo man comes to collect. all because they were too stupid to realize that just because you see it on mtv cribs doesn't really mean that it is necessary for survival(or that it is affordable)

and all this rampant consumerism has just made us more greedy, less fulfilled, and ultimately unhappy because our life isn't filled with the type of everything promised by our fucked up idea of what the american dream is. it is the pursuit of happiness. but in our fast food culture, if happiness isn't served up in bio-degradable paper wrapping, we want no part of it. i mean seriously, do they expect us to work for the products that should rightfully be ours as americans?

and then we have the nerve to try to tell other cultures that this is the way to live. fuck us.

america sucks right now because the average american sucks right now. learn how to say please and thanks. learn how to be thankful for the oppurtunities you have. do this and maybe we will begin to climb out of the murderous, poverty stricken, verge of financial ruin hellhole that our nation has become.

fuck obama, fuck mccain. change starts from within. change yourself first, and stop looking at others as some sort of messsiah that will make all your troubles go away. because even if they did, your greedy ass will just make new ones.

either that or learn to be a fat american living in the hellhole which we deserve.

because make no mistake, our behavior dictates that we do indeed deserve exactly what we get.

trick or treat.

have a take, don't suck...

2008-10-28T18:01:00.003-04:00

on the jim rome radio show, there is but one rule of the jungle...have a take, don't suck. i often think this mandate should be applied to basically all forms of communication. if one is talking to another on the phone, they ought be something. come correct, be original. have a take, don't suck. if one decides to waste time and watch television, don't watch some cheese ball fake shit like the big bang theory, watch something that has an idea, watch entourage, something that has a take and doesn't suck. and for god's sake and mine as well, if one is going to attempt to make some kind of piece of cinema(and i use that term loosely) then by all means, please follow the ultimate rule of the jungle. have a take, don't suck.

with his latest effort, w., oliver stone has failed miserably on both accounts. often hailed as some sort of provacateur, stone really bitched out on this one. there is no sense of detail, no underlying nuance that gave any sort of credibility to the freshman year psych/dr. phil daddy issues that stone uses to explain away the philosophical/mental defects that played into possibly the worst eight year presidency in the history of our nation. instead stone goes for a sugar ray greatest hits album type of feel, going over the "gems" of the slim bush timeline as if they aren't already played again and again on the radio "every morning" (hell yeah...a sugar ray joke!) mark mcgrath for president!

but really, oliver stone sucks now. whatever flare he had in the past is gone now. when he took all the bareknuckle journalistic investigation of barbara walters onto the set, he broke the law of the jungle. he made a movie about george w. bush, somebody everybody has a take on, and didn't even have a take. he made a shitty reenactment for the not so substantial a&e biography of bush II. and for that...

he sucks.

next caller.

a moment of zen

2008-10-18T08:45:00.003-04:00

for my boy justin, who has been in the mood to watch westerns lately...

a scene from the best, howard hawks lovely little film rio bravo.

creatures of habitat

2008-10-16T20:31:00.004-04:00

in last week's issue of indy.com or intake or whatever it is being called this month, the cover begged a rather interesting question. is indianapolis cool proof? naturally, as is normal for the same publishers of the star, a lack of journalistic integrity led not to an unearthing of answers, or an honest look at this question, but to merely a hipster friendly list of goods and services provided by towns that the rag deems as "cooler" than ours(what can we expect from a shit mag that employs joe shearer as a film reviwer) but, while the story inside proved to be bunk, the question on the cover was indeed a valid one and one that we here at the beer cannes have been mulling over for the last week, unable to find an angle from which to approach even the smallest beginnings of an answer.

and then this week's edition of the rival paper nuvo dropped into my lap the origins of a thesis on this particular quandry.

on its cover and within its pages, the issue presented the latest local "it" band of the moment margot and the nuclear so and so's on the verge of the release of its major label debut. to my suprise the story related seemed to offer a fairly interesting take on the question posed a week earlier.

the story relates the struggle between the band and their new benefactors at sony in coming to terms with a set list that is acceptable to both sides. margot wanted to put out one version, sony their own version. incredibly a compromise was reached and both sides got to release their own versions on specific formats(vinyl/cd/itunes)

and while this is a lovely little story of corporate compromise and all, it also seems to me a symptom of the greater problem of indianapolis' alledged "cool proof" ness in that when some entity,in this case margot,around these parts attains a certain level of cool, they automatically get thrust into this strange vortex where they begin to believe that they are much much cooler than they actually are.

i mean, who the fuck do margot and the nuclear so and so's think they are?

while they are so busy whining about how their songs need to go in this very particular order, there are literally a thousand bands around here that would kill to be in their position. good bands like red light driver and small arms fire would love to be reaping the promotional and touring benefits that come with releasing a major label album. yet all margot can do is whine and bitch about their "artistic integrity."

it makes me think about one of my favorite bands, van halen. i mean, can you picture eddie and david lee roth sitting around all mopey, wanting to release a different version of their first album because they wanted jamie's crying to come before running with the devil chronologically. no, they were just some future rock gods from pennsylvania that were ecstatic to be in a position to have their music heard beyond the region in which they lived. they got big heads much later, you know, after they had actually done something relevant.

margot pulls diva shit now, with marginal talent and an even smaller fan base because their songs are not memorable(unlike jamie's crying) so they try to pedestal themselves as true "artistes"

and that in a nutshell is something that is fundamentally flawed in this city. it's not that we are cool proof...it's that we are cool allergic. we get a little cool in our system and we can't handle it and we puff up like the mumps and blow things completely out of proportion.

when something becomes a big fish in our rather small pond, it goes straight to their head and they almost instantly become pretentious as all hell. like margot.

seriously, artists: just keep your nose to the grind and let your work speak for itself. if your shit is any good it won't matter what order it is placed in. it won't matter if some are b-sides and some are a's. if margot's songs are any good they will get out there. if the work on the album is any good, it will show through, no matter which version it is. just shut the hell up, and i might be able to take you seriously.

but as we here at the beer cannes are big big fans of humility, we can not in good faith recommend this trite bullshit. if you absolutely must drop coin on an album in the near future, buy the album by a tight little scottish outfit known as glasvegas. besides the fact that the singer croons like the new billy bragg, they strike me as the type of dudes who wouldn't bitch at their record label over whether geraldine comes before daddy's gone on the track listing because they are thankful for the oppurtunity just to get out of the hell hole that is glasgow, scotland. (or buy the red light driver album on itunes)shameless plug!

glasvegas-daddy's gone

glasvegas-geraldine(not the official video...but better)

red light driver

nothing that you didn't think about sex in the second grade...a question i have to ask

2008-10-13T23:39:00.004-04:00

can somebody, anybody explain woody allen to me?

because personally, i don't see the appeal.

i've cycled through the majority of his exercises in genre, be it his neurotic rom-com's(annie hall) his murder capers(match point, manhattan murder mystery), his old man fetish films(the jazz cycle-sweet and lowdown,deconstructing harry) his phony fake gene kelly, jaques demy ode(everyone says i love you) and even half of interiors(his "bergman" series) and all i see is a mere stylist, i.e. not an auteur on the sarris scale, working his neurotic way through the popular genres of his probably disheveled youth. he adds these overly-idiosyncratic touches and a grab bag of borrowed and already tired tricks from sixties european art films and mangles them into the pre-existing codes of traditional genre in a way that isn't really interesting at all.

last night i troubled myself to watch possibly his most uninspired and abominable take on the bawdy comedy when i watched the sickening everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask. seriously, did he write that piece of sophmoric trash when he was eight after his first glimpse of a playboy magazine. no, probably not as that would be far too freudian and therefore interesting on some level, as opposed to this film which is not interesting on any level.

if one were able to get over his appaling godard rip-off when allen himself breaks the fourth wall with his most unsophisticated impersonation of groucho marx musings(a privledge only granted to characters played by the egomaniac himself) then i imagine one would surely be offput by the locker room humor of a giant, blob-like breast and the terrible one liners that accompany its arrival. but, however, if one is to mercifully look past this and press on, then surely they cannot condone the vast uninclusiveness as almost every fetish is welcome just so long as it is heterosexual. the most unappealing scene being that when woody allen playing a neurotic sperm makes the most detestable face at the thought that he could be discharged in a homosexual encounter. apperantly the 70's were a time of thoughtless bigotry, either that or in woody's world it's okay to date your stepchildren, so long as it isn't a same sex courtship.

hmm...inbreeders or homosexuals? not so tough a question...i will take homosexuals every day.
they are more fun...and generally have better/all of their teeth.

and besides all that liberal-agenda bullshit that i mention above...it's just not funny. not funny at all.

so seriously, why is this ass hat revered as a cinematic god of sorts?

on a happier note: it's my jam(s) of the week(both new school and old)

new(ish) school...with all apologies to vanessa hudgens whose song i'm amazed would be here if it had an official video(damn disney!)

old school

we're caught in a trap, i can't walk out

2008-10-11T23:48:00.004-04:00

this horribly embarassing gap in publishing owes itself to the fact that the publisher in question has momentarily lost his mind. i am not sure where or when or how exactly this occurred, but i know that it has, indeed, occurred and i feel that before a solution can be engineered, we must first identify and diagnose the problem.

and what exactly is the problem, one might ask. and with the way my mind is working right at the moment, i would have to answer that the answer to that question is quite tricky. but, as i am trying now to focus this free range mind of mine right now, i will put it as simply as i can.

lately, i haven't been able to clearly, coherently judge films.

which is actually a problem when my small little sliver of cyberspace is devoted primarily to the art in question. it seems to me that, as of late, i am unable to even come up with a positive or negative opinion on the films that aren't blatently one way or the other. what i mean by this is that, unless a film has been either spectacular(rare) or spectacularly bad(sometimes), i can't seem to pull any sort of focused analasys from them that would color my opinion one way or the other. everything seems so caught in the middle, whether the work in question can be deemed to be mediocre or not.

a case study of my recent viewing activities will hopefully shed some light upon this problem, so that we may press forward and attempt to remedy this overarching case of the "blah's."

at this point, i wish everything were as easy to evaluate as the film 27 dresses. this is a film so mired in cliche, so caught up in the unexamined tropes of the most banal aspects of the genre of romantic comedy, that even actors the quality of the otherwise lovely judy greer seem to realize that they are floating in the middle of a shit andwich that only serves to attempt to enhance the box office appeal of the utterly awful and unlikable bitch princess katherine heigl. she sniffs my nuts. fucking terrible, but sadly enough the only slam dunk review that the week handed me.

beyond that garbage, everything else handed me a big bag of mixed emotions, or perhaps just thoughts that conflicted with knee jerk emotions, which in the end is what this is really all about anyway.

which brings me to the centerpieces of our quandry: the emotionally sublime, yet intelectually upsetting nick and norah's infinite playlist and the feeling deprived, thought provoking joe swanberg "mumblecore nadir" hannah takes the stairs.

nick and norah pasted a goofy, high school crush grim on my face from moment one and pretty much kept it there during its entire duration. i thoroughly enjoyed sitting through this film, but unfortunately when it was over, the details were almost completely forgotten like a hazy recollection of a great time spent drinking one's mind away. and then the old intellect kicked in, and i started chipping away at its lovely veneer with the type of philosophical gripes that often take over post viewing.

i complain, because it is another in a long line of films that portray the urban experience of youth in new york city as if it were the only urban atmosphere where youth can have a formative experience. just once i would like to see a film about young urban nightlife in a city more like the one i inhabit. not the "infinite" possibility of a vast metropolis. i bitch because of the relative objectification of michael cera's previous romance with tris and how it makes me feel that he is somehow more vapid than his sensitive demeanor would indicate. and oddly that makes me happy as i believe that that somehow vindicates my stereotypical belief that most indie rock dudes are like that and not like the sensitive, artistic types that they act like.

and all this leaves me questioning whether i should truly be recommending this film to people or not. i mean, i did have a good time...but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. what to make of this film?

and then there was hannah and her stairs. this movie elicited approximately the same response as 27 dresses as while i was watching it, i was convinced that i was watching a complete turd, with a heroine as unappealing as bitch katerine herself. i found myself counting down the seconds during the awkward interactions between greta gurwig and andrew bujalski, who was terrible in reprising his sad sack role from his own deft, touching film funny ha ha,(he should stick to directing) waiting for either the end, or the infinitely cool mark duplass to come back, or fore more gratuitous nudity. i just wanted this 85 minutes to end. and it did, thankfully.

but then i started thinking. and i really dug the fact that the entire film, outside of a few exterior shots of hannah waiting for public transportation, was shot in what seemed to be rented apartment spaces. and when i thought about it i realized that this film probably cost about two bucks to make and i really started to respect that they got all that mileage out of two bucks. then i started to be impressed with the spontinaeity of the ramdom acts of nothingness that occur in this film and how they never tried to put a humorous spin on them a la seinfeld, but merely chose to let them represent themselves of acts inspired by the often times monotonous and boring existence of the every man. and a funny thing happened. i actually started to enjoy this film in hindsight.

and that got me all fucked up.

i mean, seriously, how am i supposed to rate these films on netflix?

that is what it all boils down to. it comes down to questions. what is a film's purpose? is it meant to intellectualy stimulate, or is it merely meant as a momentary diversion? is it brain candy, or food for the soul? personally, right now i don't know and i don't really care as either way, i am no closer to sipping mai-tais on the beach with my girl ashley tisdale.

but right now i am okay admitting that i have no idea, so i think i will rate them both as a three star rating on the old netflix. because i guess i liked them both, only at different times during the process and in different ways.

i wish i could find the inverse of 27 dresses...a slam dunk masterpiece.

that would make this all so much easier.

peaches.

the top five things i'm looking forward to

2008-10-03T11:55:00.002-04:00

i know, i know. i haven't been keeping up lately. and while my audience might be compelled to call me lazy, i would first like to plead my case before judgement is passed.

i was originally going to do this week's version of the tuesday tops about my vast collection of film literature, and i even wrote a draft to that effect. but sometime before i hit the publish button, i changed my mind and decided because of it's length to leave it for a slower week down the road. i came across information that let me know that this was gonna be a big week for new releases(thanks john peddie) and i decided that i may want to save this weeks list for the purpose of running down the newest cinematic offerings to this city. this week offers numerous choices for one's viewing enjoyment. this weekend is pretty huge.

so with that in mind here is this week's top 5 things to do with your weekend...

1. nick and norah's infinite playlist looks awesome. i mean, i like cool music. i like cute girls. and i freaking love michael cera. (especially when he gets the girl) but i think what i am most looking forward to is the (hopefully) triumphant return of director peter sollett whose wonderfully charming film raising victor vargas was among my favorite films released to castleton arts during my tenure there. i expect something touchingly, sweetly humanistic, and i doubt i will be disappointed.

2. blindness, the new film from fernando merelies, is well worth a watch. thanks to heather for allowing me to take an early sneak peek. mark ruffalo is great as always in a film that goes a long way to destroy nick and norah's good feeling towards humanity. this film doesn't have a ton of faith in people, which is easy to understand yet still a turn off, but it's wonderfully gritty style carries it into that rarefied air of something that becomes both ugly and beautiful simultaneously. an infinitely interesting work that probably didn't deserve the shelling it recieved as the opening night selection at this year's cannes film festival. plus gael garcia bernal sings the most hillariously placed song for a rare moment of levity.

3. after sollett makes you think people are wonderful, and after merelies makes you think they are awful, bill maher and larry charles film religulous will do its best to make you think that people are just plain stupid. borat with bill maher on the subject of god, i'm there.

after seeing all three one will probably have a pretty good overview of all that humanity has to offer. it's glorious and heartbreaking and occasionally leads one to believe that we are spiraling toward a large scale disaster.

4. and that disaster is taking place via the chicago cubs this weekend. it's sad, but i really am looking forward to another offseason of dissapointment for cub's fans, especially the one's who have insisted all summer that this is "their year." it isn't. and it won't be next year, or the year after that, or the year after that or any year in the entire future history of years to come.

they are the cubs. they lose. get used to it and become a happier person.

i have.

monday's piece of advice

2008-09-29T12:40:00.002-04:00

this week, we here at the b.c. strongly endorse getting together with some old friends. it's a good time of year to do that sort of thing. tonight i will be engaging in a battle of the gambling arts with this old married guy and this shady character, both of whom i haven't seen in a while. and that will be awesome.

it reminds me that sometime in the near future i need to sit down and have a meal with this dude.

make this week like a high school reunion for your life.

this is good

2008-09-28T10:09:00.002-04:00

oh yeah, and don't roll the new spike joint miracle at st. anna until he adds a white soldier to his quartet of heroes.

looking forward to seeing the (w)hole of asia

2008-09-25T18:04:00.004-04:00

i mean, c'mon, it's a catherine breillat film after all. which means you will see more lips and assholes and wieners than at a hot dog factory. and instead of all this amounting to eroticism, the last mistress will most likely engage your brain quite a bit more than it will your libido. which is good for the facet of my personality that zach proctor refers to as "femnazi."

with that said, i will most definitely be checking out the last mistress when it plays landmark this week because frankly, breillat has never failed to entertain me despite the often flawed philosophical/politcal reasonings behind her exploration of sexuality on film.

we're rolling this way this week.

rick dees circa 1989... you know... before montell jordan saved the world

2008-09-23T19:37:00.003-04:00

this weeks edition of the tuesday tops starts like this...

depending upon your amount of social life, you may have recently come across the story about one of the homely white guys from the much underappreciated, early nineties pop sensation color me badd being arrested for creating what can best be called a public disturbance.(he hit his lady in public...not cool)

now if you are anything like me, you probably immediately asked yourself the questions you normally go through internaly when faced with a wonderous tidbit such as this, "do i care?" or my new personal favorite, "is this news?" and your immediate response was probably much as mine was, a resounding "no, not really." and you forgot about it and went about your day.

and that is actually kinda sad because i used to love the song i wanna sex you up as well as the follow up jam i adore(mi amore) but that sadness nowhere near compares to the amount of sadness that comes with the fact that when i wrote the above sentence i felt compelled to use the phrase "used to."

"well..." you ask, "why didn't you just say that you loved it?"

believe me... it's not because i don't love those songs. and it's not because i feel ashamed to admit it, because clearly i don't. i got over the fear of the cool music police along time ago and just started going with my gut. and my gut tells me that color me badd are good.

so why did i state that i used to love their songs?

color me badd came into existence in this odd nether world that has been nearly completely abandoned by today's retro radio. they came to the fore in a time that is almost looked upon as a musical wasteland, nestled somewhere between the eighties stardom troiga of madonna, prince, and michael and the grunge kids that killed the dance in rainy, crap music town seattle before montell jordan sprang up to save the world again for dancers by showing how we do it. this entire era of pop hits has been systematically swept under the rug by a crap system of radio formatting that over romaticizes crap new wave vomit like the human league while eshewing totally the pre grunge era.(and sadly the era that shaped my pre teen mind) seriously the only things you hear from that era are easy rock songs like bruce hornsby and walking in memphis, already established(fading)artists rare offbeat hits (river of dreams, call me al) and the awesome country songs like randy travis, alabama, and i got friends in low places.

every form of non danceable music has done a great job of never lettting the era completely slip into obscurity. other than the occasional bone thrown our way in the form of bobby brown's exquisite every little step, dance music fans from this era can't find any trace of it on the radio. and sadly i played my glen medieros tape until it popped so i can't roll with that either. i mean what zpl, you can rock rhythm is a dancer, but you can't hit me with salt and pepa's none of your business?

that's sad...
or at least it was until i decided to use the tuesday tops as a forum to try and bring that era back.

without further ado...the top 5 hits from when i was ten that need to be brought back

1. this is the coolest song ever

2. a novelty if ever there was one...with prophetic words form my girl downtown julie brown

3. as in, timbuk 3. a jam that in a fair world i would hear everyday. also featured prominently in one of my favorie episodes of head of the class in a video generated on computer by dennis blunden and arvid engin.

4. the aforementioned mr. medeiros

5. another all time fave

where for art thou rick dees...we need some friday night videos. stat.

beer cannes selects...

2008-09-22T23:01:00.007-04:00

this week we here at the beer cannes advocate:

choosing life
choosing a job
being nice to your neighbor and the person on the other end of the drive thru speaker
taking a little time for yourself
blasting lil wayne and summer breeze
not speeding because people in hurry are annoying
only being condescending to your friends and even then not really meaning it
did i say get a job...well then ask for a raise
you never know...it might work
always taking the oppurtunity to hold a baby(squishy)
never drafting a running back in the first round of fantasy football
voting for anyone or anything
leaving, if pacers enter the club where you are
watching trainspotting one more time...for the good old days gone by
watching a woman is a woman for the same reason
watching your mouth in front of kids
choosing a favorite huxtable offspring
taking the time to ask a legitimate "get to know you" question
listening for the answer
kissing somebody that's pretty
watching the umbrellas of cherbourg because it's pretty
not shopping at wal mart
smoking in a non-smoking bar
holding the door open for an old person in a brown sweater
always wearing tennis shoes...you never know when you may have to run
watching cartoons in imax
eating at locally owned resturaunts
going to bed early
and waking up earlier
being funnier
being better
now

looking forward to ghosts and kisses at midnight

2008-09-18T22:15:00.002-04:00

i am a sucker for black and white. and i don't care if something appears derivitave of jarmusch and before sunrise, as i can think of far worse things to emmulate. so with this in mind i will be checking out the film in search of a midnight kiss this weekend. what can i say, when they put out a preview like this i am almost sure to watch.

i will also try to check out the new ricky gervais film as i think that guy is pure gold and hearing his laugh alone is worth the price of admission. plus i saw him on regis and he described the film as "capraesque" and i am in the mood for something good natured, and tactful at the tail end of this cynical summer.

and the lack of tact will probably be what keeps me from watching lakeview terrace despite the fact that it is directed by one of my more beloved misanthropic and local favorite director neil labute. well, a lack of niceties, and an utter desire to avoid another overblown show from samuel l., of course.

whatever you watch, just go watch. it's important.

putting down the haterade

2008-09-17T08:00:00.006-04:00

it seems as if lately all i have been doing in the blogosphere is spitting awful bile into the face of some of the more vastly overrated portions of popular culture. batman, the coen brothers, coldplay and the colts have all felt recent dossages of my wrath, and even though i'm in a much softer, cuddlier mood today, i still must say that they all still deserve the verbal beatdowns that they have each recieved.

but today, with the onset of cooler weather and the first inklings of autumnal winds, i want to kind of turn over a new leaf, so to speak. for a short time i will attempt to unveil a kinder, gentler troy. one whose celebratory mood will hopefully permeate the atmosphere and hopefully cause my readers to turn a nicer glance on those things that they may normally overlook. after reading ryan's most recent blog in which he espouses the virtues of the hugely under rated and often completely under the radar nicky katt, i decided that i should be doing something differently. instead of spewing hate toward the overhyped, i want to shine the spotlight of my love down on some people and things that normally do not seem to get the credit which they so richly deserve.

with this in mind, i am again going to jump headlong into another(belated) version of the tuesday tops...

and present the top 5 most underrated examples of genius.

1. kevin nealon doesn't get half of the credit he deserves for being not only a great comedian, but also a really skilled actor. often labeled a poor man's chevy chase, i find it inconcievable that this guy gets no love after doing what i consider to be the best stint of anyone who has ever read the news on weekend update. his glib timing is far superior than chase's and his occasional forrays into sarcasm never smack one in the face as so many "drippers" of the craft often do. he is steady, and easy going, often times not even trying to appear funny, but letting the audience figure it out for themselves. check out his pseudo straight man turn in happy gilmore or his acceptance in being the constant butt of jokes in the show weeds and just bask in the soft glow of his hysterical, yet good natured comedy. in a chris rock comedy world where performers feel the need to hit the audience over the head with punch lines, nealon is a true master of subtlety. and he deserves more respect.

2. billy ocean is the only black singer in history to convince all the eighties, wall street coke monkeys that he was white, therefore allowing them to buy his albums in good consience. i used to get him and rick astley confused all the time when i was a kid, which is not a bad thing as rick rules too. but nobody beats billy. the songs loverboy and get out of my dreams are undeniable classics that seem to be forgotten by nostalgia buffs who fawn all over huey fucking lewis. billy ocean is badass, and he can get into my car anytime he wants.

3. paul thomas anderson gets credit, but it is not nearly as much as he deserves. sometimes it seems as if he is perpetually treated as the wunderkind that made boogie nights and that people just think the brilliance of his films arise out of "just another day at the office." as if it were that easy. this is because he often makes it look that easy. but it isn't, otherwise i wouldn't eagerly anticipate and await the next p.t. anderson offering. seriously...just the fact alone that there will be blood did not carry away the oscar proves how underappreciated this guy truly is. the coen brothers should make the first good move in their careers and give it back to him, where it rightfully belongs. he freaking deserves it.

4. dennis bingham is a great, great film professor who has the innate ability to discuss old hollywood films in a way that makes them pop with more relevance today than they had when they were released originally. his absolute love and adoration seeps into each of his lectures, but in a way that still allows him to cast a sharp critical eye towards them. i occasionally go back to the mecca of nu103 so that i can sit in on his lectures and feel refreshed and renewed in my dealings with the cinema. as a matter of fact, i probably need to get back soon as i feel it slipping away again. i highly recommend that everyone do the same. seriously just slip in the back and listen to him for awhile, he won't mind as long as a genuine interest is displayed. and if he asks, tell him that troy sent you to see what all the buzz is about. a true icon, and a completely undervalued educational resource in our city.

5. boz scaggs used to get no love from me in my teenage years because his name reminded me of the vile purveyor of ass-jazz named dave koz. but then i actually listened to what boz was offering me. and it was awesome.

6. evelyn "champagne" king has the most perfect nickname ever as her songs make me feel bubbly drunk like the carbonated concoction for which she is cited. she is by far the greatest of all the disco divas, turning at least 45 revolutions per minute worth of circles around bitches like the vile donna summer. enjoy.

and lastly i want to give a shout out to cover bands. cover acts get no freaking respect as they are relegated to the wedding/dinner party circuit even though if we are honest with ourselves we would admit that we would rather hear a cover of something like the stones or son of a preacher man than some shitty local band's crappy songs that contain no hook whatsoever. i was in columbus ohio last week basking in the warm glow of another ohio state beatdown when i heard this awesome band called the conspiracy band whose arsenal included songs as diverse as the aforementioned preacher man and a truly rocking cover of beyonce's otherwise putrid crazy in love. if you are ever in c-bus, perhaps visiting the wexner center, i highly recommend seeing if these guys are playing near you. check them out and imagine our city being overrun by good cover bands like this as opposed to all the "original" shitty local acts that we have. because singing along to a good earth wind and fire cover makes for a better time anyways, if not a better world.

a better world indeed.

monday suggestions(belated)

2008-09-16T06:46:00.003-04:00

this week beer cannes reccomends weeds.

and my readers say...no shit?..not you, bro...

and then i say that i mean the show, the show weeds.

get your mind out of the gutter.
even though the colts defense(not to mention special teams) enjoys company.

seriously colts...stop the run...and i will stop saying "you suck"

until then...watch weeds...it will cheer you up.

looking forward to some haagen dazs

2008-09-11T23:44:00.004-04:00

i don't want any of that bullshit ice cream...i want haagen dazs.

baghead was really fucking good.

this week not so much. i am probably in the minority here, but i hate the coen brothers. they are just kinda boring to me and frankly i have never been able to understand why they engender so much love from people. this new one looks like "no country for intolerable cruelty"... unfortunately the intolerable cruelty is probably directed toward the audience(most likely in the form of brad pitt's hammy as all hell performance) with malkovitch along for the ride and the always overwrought dialouge of the coen brothers, you can rest assured that this one will be a horriffic pork festival. i don't understand how these dudes continually get away with doing this terrible mix of thirties slapstick mixed with fifties gaeity with a crap dash of horse poo surrealism(generally when they work themselves into a corner) and critics still kiss their ass and can't manage to see through this bullshit for what it really is...sampling. seriously the critics that love this shit probably hate the newest kid rock song all summer long even though it does the same exact thing in its invention of a redneck rap over the piano of werewolves of london and the guitar of sweet home alabama. but then again that's the supreme hypocracy inherent in today's criticism. it's okay to steal so long as the theft occurs from approved areas. either way it's derivitave. and since i really only have time for one set of filmmaking brothers at a time (duplass) i will have to say that i like the kid rock song way better than any coen brothers movie i have ever watched. and that is sad as i already understand its novelty status.

fuck the coens. hacks.

seriously...burn before watching

and then watch this(something really awesome)

and if you thought that was as awesome as i do...
check this out

good times.
now go have a nice weekend. cheers.

quality, it's all about the logo...logo

2008-09-10T11:43:00.005-04:00

i know i'm slipping. this is supposed to be the tuesday top five(or as i am now calling it the tuesday tops), not the wednesday or thursday versions that i have been rolling out lately. but in my defense, i haven't really been partaking in the cinematic arts(or any arts for that matter) so i haven't necessarily felt that i have anything relevant to say concerning them.

frankly, my brain has been turned off since i got back from vacation. and then football came along and stole my attention. but i didn't want to drop another blog about sports so soon as i dont want to turn into a sports blog.

i was really strugling to find an interesting list hidden in the recesses of my largely empty brain so i just kind of let yesterday roll by me and failed to post the tuesday tops. i was pretty sure that i was gonna skip it all together until i was eating an early lunch today and it hit me when i opened up a bag of delectable potato chips.

now i'm not a foodie and even if i was i would leave that sort of thing to a good food reviewer like john peddie. no actually this isn't really about food at all. what hit me when i opened the chips was the idea that i really liked the pre eating joy that i experienced because i knew that i was in for a tasty treat. i knew this because the product came from a company that i truly trust to always deliver the goods. and it hit me...

the top 5 brands that beer cannes trust...(quality)

1. cape cod potato chips make my mouth water just thinking about their crunchy, kettle cooked goodness. i used to be all about the jalapeno and aged cheddar, but lately i have been feeling the robust russet. they are the only company whose non-flavored chips i will even deign to eat and they do wonderful things with flavors like not letting them completely overwhelm the natural potato flavor of the crispy nugget of taste gold.

2. jack links beef jerky makes my mouth water just thinking about its chewy, beefy goodness. i used to be all about the sweet and spicy, but lately i have been feeling the black pepper. they are the only company whose beef jerky will enter my mouth and they do wonderful things with flavors like not letting them overpower the natural taste dried of lean beef. as a former, decade long vegetarian, i am sometimes amazed at how much i love this stuff.

i know at this point readers are asking themselves if i really said this wasn't about food, but i had to mention both of those products as they generally make up my lunch at work and i love them.

3. the schick quatro like all razors is a little pricey, but completely worth it. i shave like once a week tops, but i find that every time i do it with this razor it is smoother than it was when i was twelve. i used to rock the mach 3, but once i went quatro, i chose a path that will never take me down the rough patchy trail of gillette again.

4. nascar and the nfl always bring the goods and give me something to idle away time with on a sunday afternoon. i find it funny that i can barely sit through a film over two hours in length, but that i will routinely be perfectly content to give upwards of four hours of valuable weekend time to the above brands. but unlike films, these two always always always deliver the goods. even a bad game or a bad race is still a heck of a lot of fun to me. plus its sunday, what the hell else are you gonna do.

5. k swiss tennis shoes are the bomb. when l.a. gear lit their last heel light, i became a k swiss guy. i love the all white look cause even when they are a little dirty they still feel so fresh and so clean. and the crest is dope. now if they could just get those lights into the heel.

6. the national baseball hall of fame and the town of cooperstown new york is the most awesome place that i have ever been to period. and i don't even like baseball that much. but since baseball has done a better job than almost anything else in human history of archiving its history, the place becomes magical. it transported me back to being ten years old, when i really liked baseball, and i even almost got a little emotional at the plaques of ryne sandberg and kirby puckett as i was smiling so big. i truly encourage everyone in the world to make the pilgrimage and get in touch with a little bit of the american mythology that is baseball.

quality abounds at the tuesday tops.

recommendations revise into recaps(so and so sucks!)

2008-09-08T21:20:00.006-04:00

it's monday and supposedly time for another film recommendation from the good folks here at beer cannes. but since nobody seems to actually go out and try to digest get these inspired nuggets i put forth, and since i am a lifelong obsessive over the national football league, i am going to switch gears for a minute and use my normal monday column to recap what it is that we have seen over the weekend on the gridiron.

week one always gets me a little fired up, and yesterday was no exception. there were very few players and coaches who managed to escape the label of "sucks," as i was in a particularly fired up mood over the half assed effort that i saw displayed by a few of the "players" that i saw play.

my very, very, very long list includes but is not exclusive to:

rams coach scott linehan sucks! and for that matter mark bulger sucks! as i cannot imagine a situation in which a team finds itself down by a ton of points and still only manages to target one of the best, most consistently productive recievers in league history(tory holt) only once for nine yards. but then again you were too busy being down by thirty and still handing the ball off to steven jackson so he could get tackled behind the line of scrimmage again and again. but then again we all knew that the rams suck!

randy moss sucks! more as a person than as a player. how would you know if bernard pollard's hit was "dirty" or not, as i recall you were too busy putting the ball on the carpet to have a good view of matt light pushing pollard into your beloved quarterback. do us all a favor and just start phoning it in like you did when you were in oakland. unless of course you need to roll up a parking patrol officer's knee with your car(a la tom brady)like you did when you were a viking. just shut the fuck up you ignorant piece of trailer trash and play football.

peyton manning sucks! there i said it. since when did this dude become jeff garcia dinking and dunking with a complete inability to throw the ball accurately over ten yards. that mutherfucker was shit yesterday and he was constantly leaving my man reggie wayne out to dry over the middle. he was lucky that reggie didn't get hurt...because that would have derailed this season in a real quick hurry. step your game up or sit on the bench, cause last night he hurt the colts more than he helped.

and since we are on the colts...marvin harrison and anthony gonzalez suck! drops and fumbles...or is that fumbles and drops...hell i don't know, both names probably fit both guys. remember the good old days when marvin used to just fall down when he caught a ball over the middle instead of getting stripped while trying to make a play. marvin, you are not t.o. or andre johnson, or any other 6'5" 225 lb behoemeth. you are a little dude who needs to play as soft as all the rest of the colts not named wayne or sanders so that we can keep the chains moving in our new 3 yards at a time offense. i mean it's not like you were playing the colts defense or anything.

and speaking of the colts defense(not that there is much defense to speak of) keyunta dawson and ed johnson ssssuuuuuccccckkkkk!!!!!!!! matt forte ren it straight through those non existent defensive tackles only to find huge holes because freddy keiaho sucks! too. mind your gap and stop giving up the big play you dipshit.

saints wide reciever marques colston sucks! he plays so soft(coming out because of a thumb booboo) that i am suprised he doesn't wear the blue and white.

there are a ton more that i just don't have the energy to mention now(derek anderson)

on the college side of things i was really pulling for san diego state to beat notre dame because, you guessed it, notre dame and especially charlie weis suck! fat bitch. i was also pulling for emily's alma matter ohio university to knock off the sweater vest...but i will leave this one to my alpha dog lendale white...

hell yeah...they suck! more than the two of my readers who voted that they would rather hang out with screech than urkel. screech sucks!

urkel rules...a lot like these dudes:

former indiana university and current new orleans saints cornerback tracy porter who had a huge first game in the nfl completely locking down joey galloway and providing nice physical run support. like marlin jackson(who also doesn't suck)

drew brees was huge too. unlike peyton, when he dumped it down to his running back, he found reggie bush with enough space to pop some big ones and reggie bush did exactly that. i haven't been so impressed with that guy since he was on the usc payroll.(or at least since he tagged the bears for that one in the nfc championship a few years back) i wish he would have flipped into the endzone.

i want to see brandon jacobs and marion barber start at opposite ends of the field and run full steam until they collide at the fifty yard line. thos guys are like the running of the bulls and the force of that big bang might start a whole new universe.

and did i mention how much i love reggie wayne...badass.

and finally in my recap, i feel i have to make an open plea to colts fans on this one.

please...show at least a modicum of class about the tom brady injury. i realise that class is hard concept for the obese, ignorant population of this city to grasp sometimes, especially considering that in the wake of the injury most colts fans were running around like we had been annointed super bowl champs before the bears came in and rolled us up in our new house. just imagine if the shoe was on the other foot...actually last night that might not have been half bad.

top five things shane white doesn't care about

2008-09-06T08:48:00.002-04:00

you asked for it...

1. personal hygeine...smell for yourself

2. books...can shane even read?

3. beers 4,5, and 6 of a six pack...because the first three get him ripped. lightweight.

4. anything cool...i mean you've seen his dvd collection right?

5. baghead...i don't know if he cares about this at all, but i wanted to mention it because it would have been the subject of my typical thursday "what i'm looking forward to post," but those jackasses who book films at landmark hate young people and only chose to schedule it twice a day because fifty five year old carmel bitches don't want to drag their bloated, browbeaten husbands to go see it.

and it depressed me so much that i just couldn't blog all week, until i listened to the wu-tang.

after laughter, comes tearz...

cinema is for the children

and as for monday's berr cannes selects...watch the duplass brothers awesome and hillarious puffy chair...especially after you go out and enjoy baghead as much as you will.

there that takes care of my weekly business in one nice concise package. i will be back at full force next week to hit you off with the raw.

beer cannes is for the children.

looking forward to getting out of this place

2008-08-28T06:32:00.005-04:00

cue that really awesome animals song right now.... as occasionally we gotta get out of this place. and this weekend we are doing that in upstate new york.

we encourage you to do the same. take a nice long weekend for yourself. after the olympics and right in the middle of our nation's dualing propaganda festivals, you deserve it. so relax.

if you happen to be sucked into all this "obama as savior" nonsense go watch hamlet 2 so you can learn the words to rock me sexy jesus...or is that big eared jesus?

and if you're waiting for next week's john mccain festival, well, frankly that's even more depressing, but since you're already in that mood...go watch isabelle coixet's new film elegy as it is practically guaranteed to make you even sadder.

if you're like me and see nothing but two politicians(and i use that word as an insult) duking it out for the ultimate prize in the padded resume contest, you probably already feel like this world is completely screwed and might as well just plop down the sawbuck and go to the megaplex and see disaster movie.

talk about depressing...where for art thou michael phelps?
america needs you back.

the top five films to make out to...

2008-08-26T19:10:00.004-04:00

as promised...the innaugural tuesday top five

a long, long time ago, before this formerly fair city of indianapolis became the crumbling empire that exists before one's eyes today, there stood a beacon of hope and a pillar for all things cinematic known as castleton arts. one day, while immersed in a conversation about hal hartley, because this was the special time and place where one could do as such, a "naturally charming," yet infinitely tactless projectionist extrordinaire named ian yee bounded over the top turnbuckle like a third party wwf participant and joined the fray with this soon to be timeless nugget of wisdom:

the amateur, which isn't even its actual title(its just amateur) the amateur is my makeout film...well that and 2001 because you make out during the boring parts.

and thus this list was born...a good place to start the newly implemented tuesday top 5, and hopefully hopefully an essay of such quality that it becomes a fitting tribute to the enigmatic, yet generous spirit that is ian yee. these are the top 5 makeout films of all time.

1. amateur-hal hartley
when you're right, you're right...and ian pretty much hit it over the fence with this pick. hal hartley is mad cool, kinda like assayas, but in this one he eschews his normal over the top level of detachedness for a more cool, attainable level and thus allows for a massively erotic amount of sexual radiation to come through. this film has got amnesiacs who used to direct porn, a starlet of such product, and an ex nun who wants to break into the field all being chased by organized crime. sexy and tense, it is a film that warrants a little french kiss release.

2. blow up-michaelangelo antonioni
i don't like the idea of trying to make out to 2001(or any kubrick for that matter) because i don't feel like science, specifically the cold, precise nature of it employed by kubrick, belongs anywhere near the bedroom. so i go a tad more humanistic and put on blow up. there are still a fair amount of "boring parts" to make out during, but with a more natural, green hued freshness that works itself up into an desire, almost a need, for passionate outburst.

plus i always talk about how i think this is like a zombie movie in reverse, as david hemmings spends the whole film completely removed from participation in the emotional side of human existence. he slides down a bustling, sixties carnaby street, occasionally stopping to fuck hot models in between adventures into the public sphere like when he enters the hedonistic, animalistic ritual of the yardbirds concert. and he moves through completely unscathed, until he becomes interested and engaged and allows himself to transcend to the emotional level beyond merely fucking and in to lovemaking. and then he becomes one of us, his humanity doing him in after all. tell this to a smart girl...it's like the key to the city of smooch-ville.

and then tell them you copped my idea...you plaigaristic fuck :)

3. sense and sensibility-ang lee
anything with those sort of merchant-ivory, dignified repressed passions, is good. and since this isn't merchant-ivory and it's actually made by a good director, this one is even better. a film where the highest moment of romantic lust's release is when emma thompson tells hugh grant, "i very much esteem you." to which hugh stutters and stumbles his way back with,"i...very...much...........es..teem...you." practically makes you want to fuck right then and there because you're practically itching for something to happen and someone to just explode. plus the lush english countryside estates and kate winslet constantly pressed up in a corset give this film an air of freshness that belies the begining of any truly great romance.

4. beauty and the beast-jean cocteau
actually any version of this tale will do as it points out that you have looked in the mirror and seen your hairy disgusting ass and know that your rather lovely significant other will have to look past that to find a prince within. it sends subliminal messages that make her think you "get it." i chose this version because once in college i showed it to a cute girl who didn't even really like me very much and she ended up making out with me just as a sort of thanks for sharing with her this lovely celluloid experience.

5. any film that you yourself have made...
or anything that i have made for you...on second thought just go with the one i made, especially if you have a copy of le genou de b(the knee of the bee). its brilliant pastche of gorgeous romantic images and awesome, adoration inspiring music have all the qualities of a freshman year mixtape in that their sole purpose is the attempt to smatch a kiss...or was that to kiss a...nevermind.

6. any film by that fuck nut ken burns
not that i advocate watching them, but if one has to watch one of these windbaggy piles of poo, it better end with making out with a hot chick. and it follows the ian yee rule, in that there are usaually copious amounts of boring, terrible parts during which to make out. witness his latest, greatest travesty to the art of documentary...the democratic national convention film that he did for ted kennedy and all its un-objective glory whoring. i mean, leni riefenshtal was completely ostracized from society for making propaganda bullshit like this. i mean honestly, i hope ken burns remembers that when barack obama rides the ted kennedy, democratic sympathy train all the way to the white house and becomes just another stuffed suit in a long line of proved false prophets that he was a key cog in our nations machine like march towards the book of revelations. that, and that by doing so you commit an even greater sin and prove richard kelly right. you're a douche ken burns.

i gotta calm down...i'm gonna go try and make out.

beer cannes selects #1: the adventures of sebastian cole

2008-08-25T20:05:00.005-04:00

a short while ago, emily and i watched the film definitely maybe because she likes movies like that and because i am a sucker for ryan reynolds even though he makes movies that tend to suck. we both enjoyed it, as it is another fairly well done, amicable piece by the people at working title productions. a few days later we saw phil in the lobby of landmark and when he asked us about it, emily replied that she liked it, but that she liked it even more because one of the characters was named emily.

i started thinking about it and i started to agree with her on the notion that people tend to like films better based on characters sharing their name. perhaps it helps us relate better, who knows? it got me thinking about the various other troys i have encountered along my journey into cinema's vastness and how it doesn't seem that there are too many that i have seen or that are that memorable.

the only two i could come up with off the top of my head pretty much make up for opposite ends of the gamut from awesome to vile. when i say vile, i mean that ass troll elfin mutherfucker zac efron, who of course plays troy in the similarly ass troll high school musical films. that choice actually made me like that film less...why couldn't corbin blue be named troy? as sad as that would also be, at least that would have made it a little better.

but it still wouldn't come anywhere close to topping the greatest troy in the history of cinema. he lives in a supporting role, in a film that is not even named after him, but that still seemed to deserve some sort of love from the bc. and since i wanted to start this column with something out of left field, and since it is coming up on its ten year anniversary, and since everybody just loves vinnie chase these days, i feel like the time is right to present to you...

the adventures of sebastian cole-tod browning jr.

a minor coming of age story that is thankfully light on plot and very big on rich, well drawn, likeable characters. taking the time to occasionally linger in beautiful moments, this film isn't in a hurry to get anywhere or do anything as it manages to show the rarest of creatures in today's american cinema, nice people.
netflix it, or rent it, or find another way to get it...just get it.
and be wowed by the power of troy.

to serve you better

2008-08-25T11:13:00.003-04:00

in my probably futile attempt to become appointment reading for those out in this here blogosphere, i have been tinkering with a few new ideas that will hopefully get me onto more of a schedule that will keep the beer cannes full of fresh material. in addition to my weekly thursday column that details what it is that we here advocate seeing during the weekend, i have ideas for two other columns that will hopefully become staples of both my writing and your reading diet.

the first new segment, which will appear later today, will be my monday pick of the week. each monday, we will profile an older, available to rent film that occasionally might be a little obscure, but that has nonetheless come to help shape the cinematic landscape of the beer cannes world.

the second new feature, which will publish tomorrow, will be the tuesday top 5, in which we here at the bc will riff on any old sort of pop culture list that we happen to be thinking of at the time. occasionally we will take suggestions from our readers that want to come to a better understanding of the beer cannes take on a certain aspect of pop culture, but for this week we will be publishing the top 5 films to make out to...so look for that tomorrow.

hopefully, these ideas will come to fruition and become great successes in the bc universe.
hopefully they will get me back on track writing wise and eliminate some of the annoying gaps in publishing.
hopefully.

looking forward to reflection

2008-08-21T18:52:00.010-04:00

honestly, this weeks releases look like poop. and sadly, that is okay with me as i'm still trying to catch up with last weeks haul of new releases and i am a little bit too preoccupied/infatuated with the new, breezy sounding pop gem from jesse mccartney to worry about it. i may check out the zombie festival at key cinemas...i may not. it really depends on how convincing mike scott is.

so without anything to sink my teeth into this week, i feel it might be a good time to go through some things i have been meaning to go through for a while.

we here at the bc, because of our proximity to film purgatory, feel that the film calendar really tends to begin about march as it takes the indy theaters about two months after new years to cycle through all of the "important" films that tend to drop late in the year to remain fresh in the mind of oscar voters. with these parameters set for a filmic cycle, august is roughly the halfway point of what i would call a year in cinema. with this in mind, and with nothing whetting my appetite for a theatrical visit, i thought it might be good to take a moment to reflect on the first half of the year and maybe kind of come to some sort of consensus as to the greatest shit we have seen thus far. after all we promise "the greatest shit in the world"(it's in the header) and by god we are gonna deliver.

plus we want to get it out before the good people over at my life in lists because we have a feeling that theirs may be similar and we don't ever want to be labeled as unoriginal.(not that ryan would be if our lists do end up to be remarkably similar...he's a pimp)

so without further ado. beer cannes selects 2008

1. in the city of sylvia-jose luis guerrin
in the recent edition of film comment this film was in the distributor wanted column which unfortunately means that it is currently without u.s. distribution. that is a tragedy as this film is beyond gorgeous and infinitely engaging. it's so good that i can't bear to cast a critical eye upon it and become reduced to hyperbolic blabberings whenever i am confronted with the mere idea of it. i was lucky enough to have caught it at the indianapolis international film festival, which, despite my slaggings, i am forever in debt to for this providing me with this little gem.

2. paranoid park-gus van sant
another year, another gus van sant film on my top ten. there is nobody in the world who does it more consistently great as this guy. and this one is among his best. another film that reduces me to flights of fancy such as this: netflix it right now and become caught up in its glowing flourescent rapture.

3. forgetting sarah marshall-nicholas stoller
i can't decide if this is the funniest great movie i have ever seen or if it is the greatest funny movie. but either way it is well worth multiple viewings as it holds up in a way that alot of apatow product does not. my only question for how i met your mother fans is, "does that make segal marshal marshal?" plus it has kunu and aldous snow! winner winner, chicken dinner.

4. still life-jia zhang-ke
i caught this one at the indianapolis arts center and found it to be jia's most mainstream and most comedic yet. a tad slow, but that is because it wants the viewer to feel the supreme beauty of urban decay and experience the slow death of a particular way of life. at times, it is as funny as sarah marshall, prompting similarly inane questions like "can any dude in china afford a shirt?" and "what the fuck is that spaceship doing here?" a think piece about awesomeness. netflix this one too.

5. snow angels-david gordon green
a shot of whiskey into the beer cannes system. this film is sad in a hard way. only the beauty of olivia thirlby keeps one at ease with the somber lives being led on the outskirts of rust belt decay. michael arangano freaking rules and this is by far the best david gordon green picture released into theatres around here this year.

6. dr. horrible's sing-a-long blog-joss whedon
i'm generally not a whedonite, but we here at the bc sincerely support anyone who says fuck the man and releases their work on the web.(during a strike no less) that is boss pimp. and nph and fillion blow it up like trained circus seals. it truly does rock your sorry ass.

7. boarding gate-olivier assayas
olivier assayas is just cooler than us, to the point where he can make corporate espionage the most appealing thing in the universe. his stylistic choices are unbelievably solid from the music to the clothes and beyond. his camera is ever moving like one's heartbeat, and although it's occasionally choppy, it never seems to lack coolness. plus asia argento's abs are off the hinges(better than kerri walsh even) this film would undoubtedly be sitting higher if i hadn't seen it on dvd which obscures for me its release date and i don't truly know that it was released theatrically within this calendar year.

8. step brothers-adam mckay
another year, another will ferrell film. he is almost as consistently good as gus van sant. shit, even semi pro wasn't as bad as you think it was. this movie rules because i can't believe the shit these two say to one another. and that comes from me, who recently called one of his best bros tyson gay.(sorry shane-o...but you know the bc loves you)

9. ????
this is probably getting into honorable mention territory, but for number nine i just cant decide between jon favreau's iron man and hou hsiao hsien's filght of the red balloon. after all they are so similar, i often wonder how one could even tell them apart.

10.
i also liked the pineapple express, kung fu panda, what happens in vegas, and harold and kumar escape from guantanamo bay...which sadly kinda made me like president bush.

oh well i'm leavin'...another day another dollar...sleep tight bitches and have a good weekend.

i hope i didn't just give away the ending

2008-08-20T19:57:00.004-04:00

(ed. note that is the title of the best new radicals song...check it out)

many of the readers of this blog work at or exist on the periphery of movie theatres and therefore often recieve free admittance to features. such as occurs with a privledge like this, occasionally the delight of seeing films inside the confines of a theatre designed solely for the experience escapes said workforce and they begin to take for granted their access to theatrically screened movies. at times like this, we here at beer cannes like to find a way to bring them back to the realm of the uninitiated and perhaps allow them to remember momentarily what it is like for the unprivledged masses.(not that we really think they forgot)

going to the movies without the aid of the occasional free admittance that i am often afforded is freaking expensive. and by this i don't necessarily mean just in dollars.

we live in a time where the proliferation of a myriad medias has allowed for an almost infinite amount of options for entertaining use of our free time. it used to be that going to the movies was pretty much the bomb as there was a time when all they had to compete with was the fledgling programming of no more than three television networks and the outdated and outmoded offerings of narrative driven radio programming. in the face of this competition people would just about go see anything, often without knowing what it was beforehand.

but today there are many more options. films have to compete with the internet, video games, a million television stations, etc. people don't seem to deem it worth their time to get into something that could possibly have an unforseen outcome. in short people don't want to waste their time going to films that might suck because they know there are other options that could provide a similarly fulfilled sense of entertainment. they want the safety net of knowing approximately what they are getting into before they get into it.

and that jason maier is part of the reason that, in today's business model for film distribution, trailers that give away pretty much everything are a necessary evil. people simply want to use their preciously valuable free time in a way that is sure to satisfy them.

and unfortunately, the great masses don't consider the sometimes splendidly entertaining viewing of a truly horrible film as satisfying, much less as entertainment at all. cinema has become another commodity that is sold on its familiarity. the new batman is essentially nothing but a name brand like coke or mcdonald's in that it serves its purpose of filling us up in a way that is familliar to our senses because we have built a stockpile of past experience with the product. in this sense trailers are nothing more than the advertising for said products and therefore take on as their goal the building of a brand name or image. we then in turn go to see the new batman film and know what it is that we are getting into much in a similar way to that in which we order a coca cola and know with fairly accurate certainty beforehand how it will taste.

think about the average filmgoer(not one who like theater workers has a veritable buffet of oppurtunity) the average american will probably go to the theater no more than once a week. they will plop down ten bones during peak hours(twenty if on a date, more for kids) just to see the film. now when you factor in concessions or cocktails(thanks landmark) that price becomes somewhat astronomical to a non six figure salary, taking a large percentage of monies set aside for leisure activity. if such a large portion is being paid, one would imagine that the financier of said output would want to have an idea of what his investment will be like. and as you can tell by looking at the grosses lately, nobody is going to the films with trailers that don't promise a specific sort of experience. nobody goes to the european film with the trailer that begs the question, "what the fuck is going on?" because frankly, it is often too expensive, both in terms of time and money, to gamble on something that is vague and undefined.

now i love films and i suppose that because most of my readership works around them that they do as well. part of the allure is often the excitement that comes with not knowing exactly what one will get, and we often get angry when we see trailers that destroy that sense of wonderment. but we are a rare, special breed and most patrons of theaters are not like us. unfortunately, these people are the ones that ratchet up the profits putting films like batman over the trillion dollar mark while the european art film with the tricky plot languishes in obscurity. the studios, which are pretty smart, understand that they already have us, the cine-geeks, and therefore utilize their resources in cultivating another segment of audience, the audience it needs to thrive, the kind that needs to be told what they are about to see before they see it. and that is why trailers usually give away the ending.

nice question maier...i appreciate it.

i am billy walsh...

2008-08-20T11:38:00.003-04:00

or wally balls or whatever alias one could attribute to the man. but that doesn't mean that i know a vince...or drama...or even a turtle. i see right through the loaded nature of this question, shane. and i understand how badly your desire to see yourself compared to eric from entourage, or sawyer from lost, or marshall form how i met your mother or macgyver or some shit would lead you to ask it of the beer cannes. but as you well know we here at the bc aren't really in the business of giving one shane m. white what is expected and especially not what is desired.

so with this in mind, i will almost send you the ultimate hipsteresque "fuck you" and say that i haven't really watched tv in the last couple years, at least not enough to have some idea of what show my friends are most like the cast of. no sadly, the most in-depth i have gotten into television programming lately is the beijing summer olympics, which is actually an interesting place to start.

i am michael phelps or kobe bryant...because i am the mutherfucking best...ever.

phil goul is shawn johnson because he is short, totally solid, and always tends to make me smile. phil is totally adoptable the same way in which an orphan shawn would be.

ryan micheel is bob costas...maybe he doesn't participate in the traditional sense, but his sharp, witty commentary always makes the proceedings better.

jason maier is nastia liukin because of the solid all around nature of their beings. he is maybe not as high flying as others but he does what he does with percision and grace and never looks like he breaks a sweat. a character of great tact.

michael maier is dara torres because frankly he is just a little too old to be hanging out with us, but he is alright(at best) so we let him hang.

jenny proctor is mary carillo in that while the olympics are going on, she seems to be travelling around doing her own thing. iconoclastic in a way. and an eater of scorpions.

zach proctor is bela karolyi. a big teddy bear that is a little bit of a blow hard and always feels someone, somewhere is being cheated and it makes him red in the face. plus he is humorous.

emily stage is usain bolt because she is always going a mile a minute.

and finally shane white is alicia sacramone because he had a golden oppurtunity to ask a genuinely interesting question(like jason maier) and he blew it. and that just makes him (tyson) gay.

but to answer your question about you, shane...you are like mona from who's the boss?
and i am the boss.

one week only...

2008-08-18T19:27:00.004-04:00

as some of my readers who have already been contacted through netflix already know, lately i have kind of been in a funk. i wouldn't exactly call it writer's block, as i am able to write fine. no, more i would call it a severe boredom with my current slate of subject matter. frankly, for the time being, i've grown weary of talking about batman and apatow and art films that nobody really goes to see anyway. i'm sure i will regain my zest for these things shortly, but in the meantime, i have a proposition for my readers.

for a short time only, in the comments section of this post i will be taking questions and requests for topics that my readership would like to have beer cannes address. it will be a sort of "dear beer cannes" if you will, in which i will answer any and all requests for information or opinions about subjects which don't even have to be within the realm of our usual popular culture musings. feel free to ask anything. please give me some subjects to post on before i rip my hair out and start posting about how i disagree with dylan kidd about the supposed failures of his sophmore effort p.s. i don't want that, and frankly, other than ryan, neither do you. so help a brother out.

and as a post script i will show my readers some love for getting a poll question right and seeing through the bullshit because you know as well as us here at the bc that my man reggie miller is, was, and will always be the king of the nap. boom baby. go reggie.

gonna get burned again, and looking forward to it

2008-08-14T20:19:00.004-04:00

this week's thursday roll call has left me in a pickle. i am excited about a number of films opening our fair city even though my pessimistic heart wonders why. this week i will see american teen at the landmark, not because the kids documented are from indiana, but because emily wants to. and she usually gets what she wants, so that's easy.

but that's not the pickle. no the vinegary brine enveloping me is provided by two people that continue to disappoint me, yet, nonetheless still occasionally get me to the theater to see their movies.

tropic thunder is another ben stiller comedy that i am pretty sure will fall flat despite the fact that my guy robert downey jr. is portraying a white guy acting like a black guy for a film within the film. but then again iron man is not my reason for doubt. it's his costars, as ben stiller has pretty much been nothing but a disappointment since the awesome as hell zoolander and jack black is basically only good in things directed toward kids.(school of rock, kung fu panda) those two cast some serious doubt about how good this piece will actually be as these guys both tend to ham it up in ways that just aren't quite as funny as they think they are. but regardless, i will still probably see it soon...hopefully at the drive-in so that if it sucks i will have anaesthetic to numb the pain, or if it happens to rule, it will become an instant classic based on the atmosphere of tibbs. i will give it a shot.

after the debacle of match point, i told myself i would never let woody allen burn me again. and i was doing a good job too, staying far away from scoop and the ewan mcgreggor/colin farrell one that just looked dreadful. but then that semi-incestuous fuck had to do something that to this viewer is almost damn near irresistable and base his next film in the fantabulously cinematic setting of barcelona. fucker. i mean seriously, just the word barcelona makes me drool at the idea of eigeman and nichols trapsing their way through the gorgeous scenery in whit stillman's ode to the city, barcelona, a great film i really really really encourage my readers to check out.(even if they have already seen it) plus the girls in allen's film look amazingly beautiful, which is par for the course in spain.

beautiful city, check. beautiful girls, check. me in line, reluctantly check. i know i am signing up for something emotionally grade schoolish and intelectually vapid, but i don't care.

this one is shame on me, but we won't get fooled again...unless his next film takes place in prague. fuck you woody allen...here's my ten bucks. fucker.

putting out the invisible fire

2008-08-12T20:26:00.005-04:00

every once in a while, we here at the bc like to put out little lists of things just to kind of let the people know where it is we are coming from. after my last blog entry i really started to marinate hard on the apatow universe and how one man and his merry band of prankster kids have basically come to dominate the scene of what it is that i like about hollywood. i mean for real, like eugene its got me straight trippin boo...i hope you look at this list and say i'm trippin too. not being a huge action/adventure guy, i find the only things hollywood is releasing with any regularity these days that even remotely peak my interest are apatow films.

so without further ballyhoo, beer cannes presents its big list of all things apatow to perhaps somehow come to a better understanding of what we like about them and in a greater respect, hollywood in general.

the best things apatow(and by extention hollywood) over the past some odd years.

1. the trailer for the pineapple express. yeah...i know it's just a trailer...but deep down we all know that this incredible trailer is the reason that the express just doesn't seem to hold up. and in all fairness, there may never have been, in the history of cinema, a film that could live up to the expectations brought on by this preview.

2. the scene in freaks and geeks where bill(martin starr) gets drunk on keg beer while drinking it out of one of those mini mlb batting helmets from baskin robbins while watching dallas when a party is going on. nothing is more geek yet soooo fucking badass cool simultaneously. the moment when i realised how dope that show actually was.

3. sex-panther. according to paul rudd sixty percent of the time, it works everytime. and that works for me.

4. michael cera singing these eyes in superbad is classic because when michael cera speaks with his cracking voice it's funny, but when he sings with it...it is pure gold. and it's a great song.

5. knocked up....rogan "you look like a cholo all dressed up on easter sunday" rudd "you look like babe ruth's gay brother...gabe ruth." i laugh as i type. well played indeed.

6. aldous snow. no particular scene...just aldous as he is....which is awesome

7. and you can't talk about sarah marshall without mentioning bill hader aghast at segal trying to "put his p in a v" or segal wanting to "b his l on some t's" i will never think of a blt sandwich in the same way again.

8. and then there is kunu, hawaiian for chuck, who stopped wearing a watch when he moved to the island...because he has a cell phone.(betcha can't tell my favorite apatow film so far)

9. red falling asleep at the end of p. ex. "i'm like the lame guy at the party, fallin asleep at nine o'clock" i love danny mcbride.

10. but not as much as paul rudd, whose turn as a beatle gave dewey cox its only non horrific and memorable scene. really...this list could have been wholly made of paul rudd, but we wanted to mix in some flavor.

11. and by flavor we mean darrel from the office telling leslie mann and that bitch to go home in knocked up. "i can't have no pregnant bitches running up in my club"

12. the singing of afternoon delight in anchorman. they do the harmonies so well and i too want to know what love is like. "more than anything in the world, ron." thinking of it is working up my appetite.

there are like a trillion others, just nice little moments that really are the apex of what hollywood has to offer right now and i no doubt forgot at least a million that i probably like better than even these. but this is where i will start...with a mangled albeit humorous skewer of the current state of humanity. feel free to relive your own favorite moments in the comments section...i guarantee it will make you smile. i am and i didn't even touch the infinitely quotable ricky bobby or his invisible fire.

severely lacking some kunu

2008-08-11T09:50:00.004-04:00

first thing first. buy the mgmt album oracular spectacular.

second. the pineapple express is good. it's funny. it's pretty entertaining. it is a helluva lot more than what bill goodykoontz describes as "minor apatow" in his indaianapolis star review. but with that being said, it's not great and i think it's annointment into the pantheon of "new classics" should be held up for just a second so that a steady reflrction over time may build.

one problem i have with the film is its use of marijuana as a scapegoat for stupidity. as if the only way the audience will believe that these three morons could survive an attack on a drug warehouse is if they stop smoking just long enough to regain their "lost" intelligence. really? so that was just the drugs talking when james franco was rambling about piranahs and heat seeking missiles? i mean, the scene where rogan goes all gung ho against weed and franco was actually kind of insulting, as if all their problems could have marijuana as their epicenter, and that it was somehow making them dumber. no sadly...while marijuana slows down the decision making process(sometimes a good thing) it does not impact the intelligence behind the decision. if one is a dumbass regularly, they will be a dumbass whilst high. that the express seems to forget this perturbs me. and i think it's kind of lame to put that on a movie which spends its first hour celebrating the practice.

a few days after i watched the express i found that not a ton of it had stuck with me. and i know all you assholes out there are probably attributing that to the weed, but fuck you. i was way higher for forgetting sarah marshall and walked away being able to sing aldous snow songs for days afterward. no, i think the problem lies in the fact that its almost too put together. it plots out very quickly, which i don't think plays to the strong suits of either david gordon green or the judd apatow players. it seems that alot of what i truly enjoy about projects as diverse as sarah marshall, anchorman, george washington and all the real girls are the scenes which almost work as asides to the main plotline. really awesome scenes like making fun of the beard in knocked up, or the pig slaughter in sarah marshall(no im not...you're crying) or the dancing in the bowling alley scene from all the real girls had only one real mirror in the express. the getting the caterpillar high while swordfighting in the woods scene is fucking gorgeous and memorable and right out of the dgg/tim orr playbook. it looks like a nice fuzzy memory even as its unfolding and honestly it is the heart of the entire film. but there isn't enough like it through the rest of the film until the last scene(which is also pretty fucking good)

there just seems to be something missing. maybe it's the m.i.a. song. maybe its the playfulness in the farly straightforward plot. maybe it was missing women. but my bet, because he makes all apatow films better, is that this film struggles to be memorable because of its lack of paul rudd. the pineapple express just needed some kunu. as a matter of fact...fuck dale and saul...just show me red and kunu and bill hader getting high all day(with my guy damascus as a drug thug) now that would be worthy of david gordon green.

looking forward to puttting a boot in someone's ass

2008-08-07T22:17:00.005-04:00

it's thursday...and if you haven't already hitched a ride on the express, i sincerely urge you to do so.

if you want to clown and really pull a doober-ific double feature and go watch pineapple express with the new werner herzog film encounters at the end of the world and watch how he handles the phenomena of men alone in the vastness of nature. it'll probably be like the p.x. only without jokes and instead of stoners they have scientists. me, i'm gonna opt out and hope i have sattelite by the time this plays 100 times on the discovery channel. make me another strozek and i will get in line.

no, incredibly the only film i will probably venture out for this weekend will be one that will set in place a family tradition as it will be the second time that my mom and i have gone out to see a toby keith film in the theatres. she's a fan. and i am amused. and honestly, how could i not be rooting for a movie called beer for my horses?(we are beer cannes after all)and since i am not surrounded by the sort of deserving criminal element necessary and since i am an adult and we don't do that sort of thing, for now i will have to live vicariously live through my guy toby keith and wave the red, white, and blue in that way as i make my mom happy and find something that we can both enjoy. bonding, wfms style

because even here at the beer cannes, we occasionaly want to put a little boot to ass too.

everybody knows this is nowhere

2008-08-06T10:00:00.005-04:00

the new jia zhang-ke has made me sad. not the film, mind you, as it is excellent and jia's most accessible work to date. no, what has me bummed was the screening. the turnout was pretty good and i am not complaining about that per se. the attendance of around 100-125 people was pretty awesome for an art center(not megaplex) screening of a chinese film shot by a dude who doesn't get state funding like other more traditional(martial arts/geisha) film makers in his country, but still, the demographics within this cross section of viewers were a little bit sad.

i was shocked by the sparseness of people my age. me, mike scott and his friend peter who he dragged along made up roughly half of all the people under 40, as i did an unscientific poll of fresh faces as they exited the theater. i counted six youthful glances counting our own and that is just sad.

the middle aged people who grew up in the 70's with the incredible domestic cinematic output came out in droves, as they seem to still have some adventurous tastes when deciding what to screen. i was very impressed with their turnout and even more impressed that many of them stayed for the lecture afterwards. that i cannot say the same for my generation and those gens younger than mine makes me sad.

film culture is lost on the youth of our city. there isn't even an effort to see non-hollywood/non-mainstream indies these days. nobody goes off campus for a little slice of different anymore. i commend peter(even though he admitted he "didn't get it"...that's okay) for having the adventurous spirit necessary as i find most young people have never even dared to check out a non-martial arts film from china, like jia's still life, as i guess they are too busy waiting in line for the new batman or star wars. there's nothing wrong with those, just mix in a little spice every now and again and go see something that seems off the radar. peter did. and he sat patiently through it and he earned my respect in a way that is not sad.

i recommend all my readers take a cue from peter. go forth and find something that isn't apatow or isn't even in english(gasp!) otherwise, hollywood will be all one in this city knows. now that would be sad.

summer babe

2008-08-02T14:50:00.005-04:00

over on the my year in lists blog they recently posted some songs new and old that have been the soundtrack to their summer. now i am definitely not as current(or as serious) about music as ryan, so with this in mind and in tribute to his awesome list i present my jams of this summer.

not exactly the guess who, but you get the point

pavement

justice

the jo bros

aldous snow

mgmt(not the real video)

and one hard core bitch

enjoy the rest of summer...

don't get used to it

2008-08-01T19:26:00.003-04:00

for the first time in the history of this blog(and probably my life) i was wrong.

according to the indianapolis star, the jia zhang-ke film still life is playing at 6:30 on tuesday at the art center as opposed to the 7pm start i had previously posted about. oh well, misinformation happens occasionally(just usually not to me)

i still urge you to go see it or else i will have to do this to you...that's just how i roll...

oh and by the way, the joe wisner video for manimal narrowly edged his work bacon as the favorite of the readers of this site. cheers to all that voted, and cheers to joe...keep up the good work.

looking forward into the past

2008-07-31T17:00:00.006-04:00

well it seems that after a rather wretched summer movie season, things are getting back to normal. this weekend landmark is opening a brittish costume drama custom made for the "discerning" older crowd that they covet as well as a liberal guilt documentary that will show us just how great we are at being sympathetic americans. and by some stroke of miracle, they are actually opening something that i want to see.

but before i can get to that i have to ask one question...has enough time passed that we as a community are ready for a cinematic representation of nostalgia for way back in the day of 1994? i mean what's next, a period piece about the birth of the backstreet boys in good ole 96?

but all joking aside i want to see the wackness(dir. jonathan levine) i mean honestly, i remember the good old days of tribe called quest and the beginnings of biggie smalls. and while i am not so sure i feel old enough yet to put on the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, i am interested in a film where the protagonist loses his virginity roughly around the same time i did.

and that's not all you get with this one. no, you also get little awesome goodies like sir ghandi smoking bud and making out with an olsen twin. rock! and i must say that much like the preview to the film, i too often spend far too much of my time daydreaming about a dancing olivia thirlby. this weekend i fully intend on beating the heat and getting into the air conditioned indoors for this one and i encourage you to as well.

other than that i am looking forward to the controversy sure to be caused by my public (hopefully) taking the time to read this, as it is the type of objective, thoughful review that my (probably well earned) reputation as a rabel rouser wouldn't allow my people to see when i tried to do similar. try to keep an open mind and enjoy!

and after reading adam nayman's baller article, hopefully you will have a mind opened sufficiently enough to get really adventurous and go see a film that shows how the other half lives. (and by the other half i mean china, roughly half the worlds population) go see still life by genius jia zhang ke at the indianapolis art center on tuesday at 7pm. jia is incredible and his unflinching eye toward humanism caught in the teeth of impending industrial revolution is heartbreaking, yet also often breathtaking to behold. i will be there and if i see you there we will definitely discuss afterwards. good times.

and lastly, i am looking forward to showing you this, the best trailer ever for a movie i have no chance in hell of seeing.

have a nice weekend.

the warrior of glamour vs. hollywood

2008-07-29T17:44:00.007-04:00

on the comment board of the jonas brothers post, it has been suggested that we here at the bc are "anti-hollywood" and that we are predisposed to disliking any product that comes from it. although we sometimes are a tad overcritical toward hollywood pictures,(because we think with the talent and the method of production they could do better) to say we are anti-hollywood really couldn't be further from the truth.

see, i have pretty much spent the last ten years educating myself on film and film history and one of my primary tools has been the turner classic movies channel(with uncle bob osbourne) now anyone who has ever seen the lineup on a normal tcm evening should be able to see that what they offer is a small sampling of some of the best(and worst) of what hollywood has to offer. it is during the past decade that i have cultivated my love of the classic hollywood style and in particular the first golden age(roughly 1930-1945) my love for artists such as ernst lubitsch and george cukor and howard hawks and the like has grown to the point that i revere each of these men and their work as if they are gods in my own personal mythology.

what i love about these films is the fact that they weren't trying to sell themselves, they were just films sent out to theaters so that in two weeks they could be replaced by new ones. there is a sense of anarchy in the films of someone like preston sturgess, as if they were simply throwing ideas against a wall to see what stuck. films like his incredible palm beach story are zany, madcap pieces that often remind me of the best scenes from the recent output of the apatow gang in that there is such spontinaety that the viewer senses that alot of it was made up on the spot by really creative people in the moment(all the beard jokes in knocked up) this to me is the best of what hollywood has to offer, talented people using their talents to make really interesting works.

but that was old hollywood, and that still doesn't mean that i can't be anti hollywood now. this is true for the most part as it often seems to me that the work coming out of hollywood right now is meant for either product placement or merchandising rights, as if just making a good movie is not enough. and that is what it comes down to most of the time, hollywood pumping out trash for public consumption so it can make a buck. but like all things there are various sides to it, and i have to say that occasionally hollywood puts out some good material. right now i dig the apatow productions, although dewey cox makes me fearful that like their idols such as hal ashby they are losing touch with the audience that they seem to portray so effectively in knocked up. i also really really dig pta and respect guys like scorcese for being able to bring unique personal visions to the screen while still within the confines of the studio system.

but all that doesn't really answer the question, "is beer cannes anti-hollywood?" the answer to that is a little tricky because i feel that for one to be anti something, they must have its structural opposite accounted for and therefore must be pro something. we here at beer cannes are pro-cinema. and that is about it.

usually, i try not to make judgements based on labels given to films like hollywood, indie, french, bollywood...etc, i prefer to enjoy them in the moment which in a way is like a vacuum that allows for a world where only the piece in question and i coexist. we begin the viewing process with no real sense of judgement about what we are watching.

and this is glorious as it allows us to put all forms of the medium that is electronic pictoral representation on the same plane to start. that is why here at the bc we can hype a film like joe wisner's structuralist masterpiece bacon or zach proctor's historical leaning johnson county fair and put them right next to a pan of the new batman or praise for aaron katz or hou hsiao hsien.

because to us, these things are all the same. just because bacon is not playing at the local multiplex does not make it less relevant in our eyes, as it is a work like any other that deserves its own specific careful consideration of its merits.

it took me forever to come to this point, as i too, used to kind of sneer at local films and video art and treat them as if they were somehow second class citizens in the abundantly large world of cinema. but then a funny thing happened...i started to try to do something.

some of you might remember a while back when mike scott and myself were forcing all of our people into viewings of our to date video masterpiece esteban sunglasses:the warrior of glamour. it was around this time, when viewing it with friends that i began to realize that the line i believed existed between home films made with one's buddies and standard studio fare in fact did not exist. i began to notice that at points during our film, we were eliciting the same types of laughs that something like ron burgundy does. we had made something for public consumption(however small the public) and it was being viewed and hopefully being thought about.

it was at this point that all the labels put on films became irrelevant to me. it was at this point that i became an advocate for going out and making your own low budget original shit, because it was no longer hollywood's latest release vs. shane white's reunion because those things are on the same side, they are the same thing. they were made with the same purpose in mind and that is to simply be seen.

so in answer to the question, no we are not anti-hollywood because hollywood doesn't come into our realm of consideration when dealing with film. when i say the names hawks, hitchcock, proctor, nolan, berg, wisner, godard, myers, hou, the one thing they all have in common is that i have seen their films in the last year. it's like, i can look at the art of picasso and then look at the work of scott grow and judge them both as works of art, because they are. ultimately in the beer cannes universe it's a simple equation:

batman=bacon.

so no we are not anti-hollywood because to me and my relatively small viewing public, i like to believe that esteban sunglasses is right there with them. the warrior of glamour is hollywood, baby. and we here at the bc don't ever hate ourselves.

so what does all this mean to the reader? probably not a whole hell of a lot other than i urge each and everyone of you to pursue your particular creative passions and i will as always offer thoughtful criticism without the slightest hint of snobbery because what you are doing is on a smaller scale. on this slice of the web universe there are no scales...because everything is phat to us. keep working and the beer cannes will keep working to blow good, interesting shit up.

why the jo bros kick batman's ass

2008-07-25T23:30:00.007-04:00

batman is a little like woody allen to me. every few years or so, i will get sucked into the hype swirling around, believing comments like "a rare return to form," or the "best work in years" only to end up completely disappointed in the formulaic and ultimately uninspired retread that unspools in front of my eyes. the new batman is a little like match point to me, in that after watching what has been reviewed as a "great piece of cinema" i left the theater feeling just as empty and unfulfilled as when i walked in. both films fail to deliver anything more than a rehashing of themes and motifs already covered in previous similar works. much like match point is essentially a remake of other woody allen crime films(like the one with martin landau), the new batman is essentially just another batman film in a long lineage of bad ones since the first tim burton directed piece with jack as the joker.

my complaints are as follows:

first, it's way too long. now i know regis got killed for saying that, with people saying that he was "too old" and all. but regis was right. this movie is about an hour or so too long. it really could have ended with the dual explosion. it could have killed maggie gyllenhaal(a good thing) and set the stage for the next film's villain. but it didn't. no, this film instead decided that it wanted to be like an elementary school research report speech. it beleves that if it keeps on adding information on top of information that we won't notice the lack of cohesion in the narrative and we wont recognize what it is doing, which is rambling. it's like one incredibly long, and ultimately pointless, run on sentence. and i am not sure why it chose to do this.

ater all, if heath ledger is as freaking good as everyone says he is in his portrayal of the joker(which he really isn't...sorry...r.i.p.) then why does nolan feel the need to tack on another villain to the end of his film.(as boring a last houe as there ever was) as opposed to the "original" retelling that nolan's series has aimed to be, i find that this is a recurring motif in all batman films after the first burton. why is that? are batman's villains too insufficiently drawn as characters to warrant carrying a film by themselves? which brings me back to the question: if heath ledger is so "oscar worthy" why not let his performance carry the film? the answer to that is hopefully this: deep down i think nolan understands that ledger is really just doing a shitty, not nearly as funny(or as menacing) version of the frank booth character from blue velvet. now that muther fucker was crazy. he was chaos. ledger's joker just seems like a one note, sadistic clown that completely lacks the depth that the continual explanation of his scars strives for. maybe he needs a hit of the gas, but it seems alot like the guy at the party who talks louder than everyone else and laughs at his own jokes. he just wants attention and that in itself kind of makes him pathetic. so pathetic that in a failed attempt to glean some sort of emotional resonance, therefore giving the joker's character more depth/importance, they tack on another villain that they try to explain as some sort of joker protege.

and that is harvey "twoface" dent. admirably portrayed by the often fire aaron eckhart, who frankly has very little to work with here. character deficiencies aside, my real complaint was his face after the burn accident. it was like one half was eckhart and the other side was the face from the evil dead 2 video box. seriously was that eye bruce campbell's? and anatomically speaking, if one's muscular tissue is exposed wouldn't that a: be bleeding and b: get infected in a way as to cause death or at least lots of puss? not in the batman world...where apparently batman can be shot and stabbed but a man can walk around with muscular tissue and burnt flesh exposed and everything is okay. for real?

and while we are on the subject of mangled flesh, i have to ask, is christian bale's throat okay? in his (few) scenes as bruce wayne he seemed to be speaking fine, but when confronted with the criminal element his vocal inflection seemed to be channeling the vocal register of louis armstrong singing what a wonderful world. seriously he sounded like satchmo with a dick/cum bubble caught in his throat. what's up with that? i mean he sounded like buster poindexter singing hot hot hot.

in all i found this film to be almost exactly like every other batman film starring val kilmer or george clooney. batman fights his way through a convoluted plot much to the chagrin of a two headed monster that acts as his antagonists. there are explosions, gadgets and ultim ately the unfulfilled hopes and dreams for better film inspired by the countless good reviews of the piece in question.

and ultimately, like the title of this entry states, that is why the jonas brothers(the jo bros for those in the know) kick batman's ass. see the jonas brother's come to you with hype, but it is the right kind of hype. far from being dubbed as the savior of an otherwise uninspired season, the jo bros are touted merely as brotherd that play music for preteens. no reviewer has ever told me that they are great, or a return to form for the "boy band" or that they are the new greatest band in rock and roll. no, the hype machine merely informs me of their existence(and the fact that young girls scream for their existence) and then i hear them and i say to myself...damn these dudes aren't half bad, a little like a the maroon five without the racy lyrics, but generally pretty poppy and most likely infinitely dancable. and that is really the best we can hope for with a disney channel band. ultimately it comes down to the fact that the jonas brothers deliver the goods that were promised to me, while batman surely does not.it's a little bit like the guess who and the doors argument. i groove to the jo bros on the radio and want it to play all night as opposed to the new batman, which i just wanted to end.

looking forward to something

2008-07-24T17:46:00.003-04:00

it's thursday...and therefore time for the official rundown of what beer cannes supports doing with your free time over the next week.

kicking off the list is the opening of stepbrothers, the new will ferrell, john c. reilly joint(not directed by spike lee) will ferrell is one of the rare actors that always manages to drag me to the screen. i've seen all his "dumb" comedies in the theater(not stranger than fiction, which sucks) and stepbrothers will be no exception as it looks quite a bit better than semi pro, which despite being dogged out by just about everybody, actually went down smooth with this watcher.

and then there is saturday. personally i have been waiting for a while for saturday as it is the day i take my burgeoning love of nascar to the next level by attending my first race. the nationwide series race at o'reilly raceway park is going to be huge and i am expecting big big things from my man clint bowyer is currently leading the series but is only 200 points up on that cool dude/cheater carl edwards. i will be rooting big time for clint and i hope that all the bc faithful will keep their fingers crossed as well as clint rocks the wild mile at orp.

another thing that is getting me hyped is the fact that the landmark megaplex...urm...arts theater is opening two films that are actually in limited release as opposed to the recent run of blockbusters it had been booking. and while i personally don't care about hunter thompson(outside of the ben fong torres joke in almost famous) or about chinese orphans, i am happy that these films are being booked as i think it is a step in the right direction to getting the art film train back on the tracks.

but sadly, all this hype pales in comparison to the image i just saw flash across the screen on one of those celebrity trash shows. today, a man chose not to sport his trademark daisy dukes, and while speking to congress about an initiative to incorporate physichal fitness more fully into the lives of (fat) american children, friend of beer cannes richard simmons wore a power suit. and i knew immediately that that is the best shit i am going to see all week. i will post a picture as soon as i can find one, but i urge you to see this for yourselves.

happy viewing.

coolest person in the world contest: round one

2008-07-21T23:15:00.008-04:00

(disclaimer) because of feared judge tampering and attempts at bribes, all frequent contributors and friends to this place are out of the running. not that it matters as only michael maier(who doesn't even read me) would have made the first cut. thank you for understanding.

these people are cool.

neil patrick harris. over in the comments section of another blog, a person wrote that they didn't like nor seem to get the appeal of joss weedon and neil patrick harris. joss is okay, some good, some bad and i can understand that, but nph. n-p-h! got to be kidding me, right? neil patrick harris is freaking awesome and here's why. first that dude was a teenage doctor. badass. what the hell was i doing at 14...i guarantee i wasn't pretending to be a teenage doctor. sadly i was probably trying to figure out a way into some poor girls underpants. second, on that episode of the simpsons where bart gets implicated by the mob, guess who plays bart in the made for tv movie...oh yeah, neil patrick harris. third, harold and kumar. all i gotta say. fourth, he went out and made a show without the help of corporate money and put it on the net for everyone. viva la revolucion! and its a musical. and lastly give him props for being one of the few openly gay actors who doesn't constantly accept the role of "gay friend" like that stupid cracker from will and grace. and he kills the regis impersonation. totally cool dude.

stephan pastis does this awesome comic strip called pearls before swine. after the boondocks dude quit doing strips, there really wasn't alot going on in the comics section of the indy star. and then like heaven's gate opening, this little golden nugget chose to shine its brilliant light upon us. and from the first day's strip, which i haven't taken the time to find as i have it committed to memory, i was hooked. now like most strips, it isn't always good. but like the good ones, when its on, it becomes unforgetable. this jerky rat and stupid pig and smarmy zebra and ignorant ass crocodiles inhabit this world where the stupidity caused by vanity is the ultimate sin, and when one finds their way to it, they will be knocked down with jokes. these animals lay their pearls of wisdom before the swine of humanity and cut to its core with a deft precision not often found in comic strips.

gus van sant can do anything. he can do hollywood(good will hunting) he can do off-hollywood(drugstore cowboy, idaho) and he can do absolute unknown indie(elephant, paranoid park) and all of his work will be carried off with massive amounts of class and an undeniably precise and personal vision that he manages to execute perfectly almost every time. his style is impeccable, from handheld scenes of shared, if flawed, intimacy, to slow tracking shots that lull the viewer into that dreamlike feeling where time slows down and awareness(especially self-awareness) is heightened. the scene in paranoid park with the kid gliding slow motion down the locker lined hallway of his high school to the sounds of the song let me help is a work of art that makes me believe that the oscars need to start a new catagory for best use of a preexisting song in a film, just so paranoid park can be the first recipient.

beer cannes doesn't really do...political

2008-07-19T09:19:00.005-04:00

but for this we will try. possibly, the greatest music video ever.

also watch dr. horrible's sing-a-long blog. it does kind of rule.

sitting on the dock of the bay...

2008-07-18T21:17:00.006-04:00

in the comments section of the entry directly prior to this one, the nicest person i've ever met jason maier and i both professed a guilty passion enjoyment of the films of michael bay. now, i rarely feel guilty when it comes to any intake of art, but sometimes that which is in question is so diabolical(like michael bay) that one has no choice but to feel a little pang of shame alongside the otherwise flawless enjoyment of the piece. take pearl harbour, the michael bay film, not the actual event. i mean if i were to distill a narrative theme from this film(a tricky proposition no doubt) i would have to say fire. michael bay is the ultimate purveyor of fire, and in particular people running from it, in the entire history of cinema. seeing how i like to see things on fire (like cuba gooding's performance in pearl harbour) i easily succumb to the rampant gunshots and bombs(the island) that help to create bay's grand symphony of flames. obscenely stupid with cinematic flair is still cinematic flair. betcha you thought i was gonna say stupid, but i can't because i kinda dig michael bay and i am not ashamed to admit it.

at least not as ashamed as i am to admit that i love taylor swift. even though she kinda looks like she is perpetually caught in that half state in the middle of transformation between human and werewolf, her songs still make me smile everytime i hear them in the car. at first i thought that tim mcgraw was just a bubblegum country novelty song by an underfed teenage hillbilly as if its catchiness was some sort of fluke. but then i heard teardrops on my guitar and it felt like my soul wanted to well up and i wanted to immediately be transported back to the first girl i ever had a huge crush on(anne butler) just so we could listen to taylor swift and awkwardly slow dance in the gym/cafeteria at our 7th grade prom. yeah, i love it that much...and it made me love the tim mcgraw song that much too. taylor swift, like the film the virgin suicides, takes the tenderest feelings and best bits of dreamy, teenage, girly poetry and packages them in a way that distills its very essence while creating a safe world which it and its appreciators can inhabit. today, when i heard our song on the radio, i smiled big and started to love taylor swift as something more than this silly guilty pleasure.

my ultimate hope is that by admitting my love for radio disney's newest pop-country pre-teen princess, that i can summon the courage to go out and buy the album that has as of now eluded me in part to the silent judgement i am sure to recieve from behind the register of k-mart or wherever the hell i buy it from. maybe i will buy it along with bad boys, as i want to show...

that i love michael bay and taylor swift.

what there is to look forward to

2008-07-17T19:04:00.005-04:00

as you may have seen on the my life in lists blog, next week there will be a public screening of the sam fuller film pickup on south street at the mass ave videostore. if you have not seen this film, we at beer cannes implore you to take the time and do so, as it is a reminder that having a quick pace and developing characters well are not mutually exclusive qualities of action oriented films. it really is just a real strong, tough, anti-everything, balls out, sweaty, winner of a movie, and that's from a guy that usually doesn't enjoy action/adventure/crime cinema.

another big positive and something i am most definitely looking forward to is that the indianapolis museum of art is opening a new theater which we here strongly endorsed as it is important to inspiring a more interesting/educated culture if there is an intersection of history, art, and the cinema available for public consumption. look at what the cinematheque francais did for the french new wave...and i know...it's indianapolis...but...i'm just saying.

i will only see batman if i go watch it at the imax or at tibbs drive in, the greatest place in town. i think i'm gonna have to opt for the imax on this one seeing how its like 326 degrees outside right now and it's huge running time would throw off any attempt at the tibbs triple feature. and, of course there is the fact that outside of the prestige, which was actually pretty good, i really couldn't give a crap about christopher nolan's entire slick huckster output, and might opt out entirely. this dude really is one step from brett ratner, mc g territory here; he's definitely in the waiting room with luke greenfield to be in the club that isn't fit to lick a good hollywood director like doug liman's ball sack.

seriously though, its hot as heck, you have probably been working way too hard and over the next week you should sit back and get yourself a netflix. beer cannes recommends boarding gate. it's another huge winner from the most prolific producer of winners working today, olivier assayas, a man i need to start remembering when i make my best of lists. he is awesome. period.

a shout out, a dream, and the beginnings of a credo

2008-07-14T20:40:00.004-04:00

i have some pretty fucking talented friends. if joe wisner's baller breakout bacon didn't prove that to you, then perhaps a new work by zach proctor entitled johnson county fair will. it is what we here at the bc like to refer to as pure cinema. what we mean by that is that it is a marriage of sound and image as opposed to the plot driven, literary type of film that we are used to coming from hollywood. there are very few examples of this left in the world as audiences have gotten past the act of jumping out of their seats fearful of the train coming toward them as they did at the initial lumiere screenings ages ago.

that is what proctor's work reminds me of. the parade line forms a slow progression moving into and out of the frame in a manner similar to the train entering the lumiere factory. this is what cinema intended, a clever mashup of sound and image that makes one feel, that makes one see. unlike the "book on film" type of movies that we have come to know that have story arc and character development and various other tropes of other, "lesser" art forms like literature, these slices of pure cinema do little besides represent ideas, give us something to look at and listen to, and above all make us think. i guess these films do quite a bit after all, and without the large scale methods of production that the proletariat(i.e. not beer cannes readers) has come to expect from movies.

and that ladies and gentleman brings me to my dream. sometime toward the end of the year, october or november, i would like to hold the first annual beer cannes film festival. as i know loads of talented people who tend to like/make all sorts of types of films i feel that securing entries should not be a problem. as you can tell by this site's constanat championing of works like bacon and johnson county fair, we will pretty much look at anything in our lifelong quest to come to a clear definition of what cinema is.(which at this point seems like everything) i want voices as diverse as zach proctor and joe wisner and shane white and myself and mike scott and anybody else who thinks that they have something that they would like to share in less than 30 minutes to make something and submit it to the fest.( a john peddie ode to his son?, mike maier finally getting motorcycles right on film?) whatever the fuck ever. readers of this blog who know similarly talented people(they are everywhere) that show an interest in artistic expression of this ilk are encouraged to tell their friends so their friends can submit.

my dream is to have a party where these films will be seen and voted on, both by the audience and by a jury of film illuminatti who have shown little interest in making films yet still have strong voices and infinite credibility in the bc universe (ryan micheel, jury foreman?) and two awards will be handed out as such. but who cares about awards as much as the forum for having new, interesting, off the beaten path work seen by an audience of discerning indianapolis viewers.

i want my reader's help! submit ideas in the comment section.
i want films of all sorts. experimental docs about crack head trannies to abstract color splotches. it all has its place in the beer cannes film festival. just be original and make it yours. own it.

because here at beer cannes, we are all about the cinema and the amazing things that it can do. we are all about expanding the ideas of what it is. and most importantly we are all about lending a voice to works that need to be seen from this incredibly talented city of ours. beer cannes is the property of its contributor's various messages...i am merely the vessel by way of which these messages travel. we are hollywood for those that don't have the industry connections to do that sort of thing. we are a friend to all you badass indy artists and filmmakers, and we want to show you some love.

pablo picasso never got called an asshole...

2008-07-14T08:40:00.008-04:00

so my bro joe wisner(bacon) was over yesterday and we began talking about various artistic projects that we would like to undertake. along the way, the subject came up of joe's recent trip to an east side artists auction of their wares and how that made him feel about the overall status of art, and more in particular, the art of painting. somewhere during all this, with a cheeky bend in our smiles, we got onto the subject of what truly defines art to us especially in the form of paint to canvas and much to my suprise we both had some very "outside the gallery" thinking on the subject.

now, anybody that knows me knows my feelings on how antiquated of an artform i think that most of them have become in the wake of the moving image as video effects can now bring expressionism, impressionism and abstract expressionism into the way of moving that these artists could only have dreamed of when trying to capture that movement on the ststic canvas. if you doubt that ask me to view one of my many video projects...please.

but this entry is not about that exactly. because as antiquated as painting may be, i still enjoy looking at it and am occasionally moved into liking it. oddly enough though, as joe and i discovered, films tend to show me what i want from paintings more often than galleries do. and by this i don't mean bullshit like painter's painting(a doc about the abstract expressionists) or the lame as all hell pollock(starring the vile and revolting ed harris). and it has nothing to do with the moving image giving life as in the above paragraph. no, i find that my favorite paintings actually tend to be part of the greater set designs in films.

my favorite painting of all time was done by an annonymous artist, not some famous one like picasso. it sits above the desk of jimmy stewart(american hero/treasure) in his home office in the film harvey. yaeh my favorite painting ever is a rockwellian portrait of a nine foot rabbit with his arm around the shoulder of jimmy stewart. and anyone who knows me knows i am not afraid to admit it. i'm not afraid because that painting is perfect.

and then joe brought up something that i had forgotten about, the paintings in the royal tenenbaums. these, by artist miguel calderon, also exemplify the "harvey" school of painting as they are painted by someone with actual painting talent, the type of people who mastered fruitbowls, flowers and the human form before moving on. and unlike alot of talented artists they didn't move into the realm of just splashing colors on canvas(mark rothko et al.) no they managed to use their sizable talent and mix in a little oddball humor and come up with amazing works.

the sad part of all this is that i live in a world where i have to go to the movies to see badass, original work like this, while the numerous galleries and museums around here show off either the newest in knockoffs of older modes of painting or some talentless hacks splashes of color that don't mean anything. occasionally i get lucky and robert meko unveils a new piece, but that is like once a year. no the sad part is, even with the strides already made, this city still has a long way to go before i can have a firsthand look upon the works of a genius like arturo herrera .

oh well, at least i still have the cinema to show me the best of what the painting world has to offer.

what you should be looking forward to...

2008-07-10T23:12:00.003-04:00

unfortunately for me, i was responsible for one time in my life and made a plan, took some time off work, and saw the new hou when it played at the indianapolis international film festival. unfortunate in that, this has left me without something to look forward to this week.

fortunately for you, i didn't see many of you in the audience. so you do.

so this week, instead of telling you what i am hyped about seeing(which by the way is nothing in particular)i get to put the early stamp on this particular piece of grade aaa taiwanese(by way of paris)beef. this selection is coming with the beer cannes approved insignia on the shrink wrap. i(landmark) present for your pleasure:

the flight of the red balloon-hou hsiao hsien

if you have the desire to be wrapped up in a foreign atmosphere where everything is new, and fresh, and alive in a way that makes one gaze upon it with a childlike wonder then watch this film. it's beauty, as if seeing the world through the eyes of a child, allows any petty tensions to fade upon the instant immerssion into the new fantastic that is a fresh way of seeing the mundane world. no experience shall be taken for granted in hou hsiao hsien's paris as the lens swirls and dips and slides to take in every molecule of air that the cityscape has to offer. this film allows one to discover things anew and discover them in a different way. it is gorgeous and the work of a true poet, writing a sonnet to a life that is loved for its living.

other than that, i might watch when did you last see your father, as i kinda liked the look of shopgirl and i like colin firth, or perhaps roman de gare even though i often refer to director claude lelouch as claude ledouche because his previous work seems so mediocre at best. but then again, i may just go see the hou again as i know it will be infinitely better than the above two pretenders. or perhaps standard operating procedure(thanks heather!!) has scarred me to the point that i am fearful of the recorded image. or then again maybe not.

so go hop to it and go see the flight of the red balloon... sit up real close to the screen and tell them beer cannes sent you.

my other car is a mercedes

2008-07-10T06:47:00.003-04:00

how come every time i see that bumper sticker that reads, "if you're not the lead dog, the view never changes," it's on the back of like an 87 ford fiesta that looks as if the view for the driver rarely changes.

just once, i would love to see the "my other car is a mercedes" blast pasted on the back of a ferrari or a porsche.

oh well. my blog is smarter than your honor student.

i don't think i fit into this indy world (guided by voices, velocity girls): my opus.

2008-07-08T21:35:00.006-04:00

often working for twelve straight in the heat and oppressive humidity will get one into a state in which they have no choice but to feel a little out of sorts, like one just doesn't fit. i was tired and quickly entering into that state when i kind of got this compulsion to just come home and spit some bile, i mean, some furious hate onto this here page. and then something odd happened...something almost surreal.

as i was driving home i was listening to fast talk or whatever cheesy title this cool nascar show on am radio has when out of nowhere i was caught in this strange occurrence which i will try to relate like this. anyone who reads this blog knows that i have a hate hard on for carl edwards. i expel perhaps too much energy in my hatred of him and the cheating 99 team. and after the day i had, i was ready to burst my hatred bubble to the sounds of carl edwards via telephone on this show. but an odd thing happened in the midst of the latest cheating scandal(irony), he held up his end of the interview like a freaking champ. he is actually kind of a cool dude. he even appeared on an episode of 24 as the head of homeland security(typical cheater). and then, horrifically, i find myself actually kind of starting to like the guy.

i hate when, after i shoot my trap off in a hateful fashion, that i end up kind of kicking myself in the ass when the object of my hate transforms into this kind of interesting, tangible existence too me. in other words, i hate that i can't hate carl edwards with the passion with which i used to hate him. i kick into neanderthal mode at that point and want to direct my vitriolic rage in another direction. however, it also, frankly, sort of confuses me and and i dreamily begin to wonder about some of my other judgements of dislike. i wonder if they too are somewhat invalid. sometimes i hate the fact that i hate. but for now i am going to focus on that hate and find somewhere to direct it, and if you give me a little time i will work to both prove this hate correct and find my way back toward the glowing positivity for which the beer cannes name is known.

as i begin my journey of obese gulps of haterade, i am thinking now of hipsters and emo kids as i believe it is good to start an essay in hate by directing it at those that most of the population also do indeed hate. it will get people on my side early and i think that is important. to clarify a point now, i don't really hate the emo kids(they are too busy hating themselves) i just kind of worked them in so that i can tell this rad joke a little later. but i do hate the hell out of some hipster mother fuckers. these bastards that roll out of their house looking like fucking nikki sixx of motley crue and wearing skin tight black jeans with black socks on a hundred degree day and acting like they are too cool to ever be bothered with the heat. fuck you. fuck your shitty obscure garage band. and fuck aqua net...or whatever kind of mousse you (over)use in your hair. you aren't a fucking rock star bon jovi, you just sell their records.

q. how many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
a. some obscure number that you have never heard of.

q. how many emo kids does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
a. who gives a shit, let them cry in the dark.

and speaking of a cry in the dark, mine is about to burst through aldous huxley's proverbial doors of perception when i spit in the direction of jim morrison and the vile, putrid, asscrackesque doors. the doors kind of suck. they don't write catchy songs in the least, which is sin number one in my book. but that isn't even the important thing with them, as i can always forgive them of their sin by not listening. no the thing that bothers me about the doors is their percieved perception as being some deeper than thou poetic artists. i mean c'mon this morrison fucker was nothing but a drug addled cliche slinger. "love her madly as she's walking out the door","try to set the night on... fire." he needed to set his fucking notebook on fire because i guarantee you that was some trite ass trash. and then this dude has the nerve to spit out a book of poetry. who is this guy...jewell? i mean seriously, if jewell had died after her first album and subsequent book, would she be looked on as this joanie mitchell-esque, whimsichal, poet genius instead of the washed up, snaggletoothed, failed techno come lately country singer she has become? because her and old jimbo were slinging from the same pile of stereotypical shit in my opinion. would kurt loder have the same balls to call out jimmy as he did jewell? or would he suck at the teat of fame instead of cutting it off as he should?

and speaking of cutting it off, since cutting it off is already "on the table"(metaphorically) can i stop seeing it projected on the big screen(literally) this solid fuck you is directed at sociopathic frat fucker eli roth. stop cutting dicks. i'm sick of the splatter porn as i sit in aghast amazement, not at what i see on screen which is trite showmanship at best, but in the fact that people are watching this craving the newest, most exotic display of mutilation that the mind could offer. in a recent cinemascope, errol morris commented how this mode of recent cinema is a product of the war angainst islam as being one that the americans fight with a method of sexual humiliation and domination. a war of who's cock is larger. while i agree with his assessment of the war, i completely disagree with the idea that this is the intent of mr. roth and his ilk. personally, i don't think they are smart enough to contemplate this metaphor until someone more intelligent, like mr. morris, points it out. i honestly think that they are just sensationalist assholes who always feel the need to "up the ante" in some way. either that or they are just perverts that like the look and sound of penis being sliced off.

and speaking of the sound of cut dicks, john fogarty sounds as if his penis has been sliced off hostel style. i mean really...fuck creedence clearwater revival. their songs might be catchy if they didn't have that fucking guy that sounds perpetually constipated gurgling on the tracks. could anybody else in the band sing? because honestly, they picked the only freaking guy on the planet that could make geddy lee's voice sound as clear as whitney houston's by comparisson. but i suppose it wasn't entirely their fault. after all the shit voiced singer trend had already been established by the wheezing, nasal, allergic to tonal quality musings of the jim morrison-esque "poet" bob dylan.

and speaking of bob dylan, i'm not really gonna spit on bob dylan's songs. he has some good ones, he has some that are vile. no, i'm not gonna do that as frankly, i am wholly indifferent to his music outside of making fun of it by singing along as poorly as possible. no today's hatered directed toward bobby boy is for fucking up an otherwise fine piece of work. i'm not there would have been a great, damn-near perfect film if it wasn't for that fucking chucklefuck bob dylan and his obscenely vacuous persona. the pacing was incredible, the dynamics of the narrative arrangement were flawless(much like this essay), and the visuals were todd haynes' normal slice of perfection. but at the center of it all was an ego of pretention that couldn't even seem to fit within the same frame asthe film itself. it's as if todd haynes found the only subject ever that would make david bowie, sorry maxwell demon, look both deeper than surface level and humble in contrast.

and speaking of humility, i am going to serve a dose to simon and garfunkel, whose entity i don't exactly hate except when taken in conjunction with the idea that after these two split they went on to become better expressed, much more interesting artists. paul simon wrote my favorites of his repetoire, me and julio, codachrome, call me al...are all mega fucking hits in my mind. and art garfunkel started blowing up as a really skilled and intuitive actor in some big timers like mike nichol's film carnal knowledge and nicholas roeg's disturbingly great movie bad timing. when i think of their post band careers, i can't help but wonder how good the sound of silence would have sounded without garfunkel pussing it up and how many well drawn ineffectual pussy characters could have come to the screen had these two not been dragging each other down. and that thought kind of makes me hate the duo that is simon and garfunkel.

and speaking of hate, that brings me to my final hate of this essay and oddly enough the place where it comes back to positivity as i earlier wrote that it would. right now i hate that when i made out my fourth of july pantheon of musical artists, the beer cannes rock & roll hall of fame if you will, that i forgot to include the awesome jonathan richman and the sweetly seductive mary lou lord to the list. i wish to attone for that now by extolling their oddly similar virtues. the thing that these two artists do with their songs is to capture the pure ennui(at best) and the utter dissillusionment(at worst) created by the naive hopefullness inherent in the concept of the american dream. there is a wonder to their music that amazes me as i find it strange that they can be so downbeat melancholly and so dreamily hopeful simultaneously. they are two definite, surefire additions to the pantheon.

and speaking of additions to the pantheon, there is another badass that i forgot to mention who just so happens to be the punchline to one of my favorite jokes.

q. how do you turn a duck into an r&b singer?
a. put it in the microwave until its bill withers.

lean on me.

4th of july asbury park (sandy)...another top ten-ish list.

2008-07-05T10:37:00.008-04:00

as the fireworks are hailing over little eden tonight, i find myself contemplating what exactly this experimental concept that we know as america truly means. america, in its purest sense, seems to be forever linked in my mind to the concept of freedom. and while these words are nothing more than abstracts with countless and no doubt highly subjective meanings, i feel that we can begin to distill the essence of these things if we put our minds to it...or maybe our hearts.

so it goes that as i attempt to reconcile my thoughts on freedom and this once proud experiment in democracy, i find that they are almost inexplicably linked in my warped psyche with the history of rock and roll and its subsequent offshoots brightening up the airwaves that exist between the spaces we inhabit as the physical representations of our persons. that, to me, is freedom in its purest form. and as i begin to well up from all this love of the supposed "freedom" that "america" represents, i feel it my patriotic duty to pay some sort of tribute to the awesomeness that i occasionally take for granted.

although the relevance of top ten lists has been argued on this site, yesterday i felt compelled to colate another collection of iconic symbols in my life. it's my birthday gift to america and to freedom itself. so without furter adieu, i present to you the greatest of what freedom and rock and roll and that eternal struggle has to audibly offer. these are the sounds of beer cannes. this is the top ten recording artists of all time.

hall ond oates-make me want to do the d.a.n.c.e. 1,2,3,4,5...they are the best representation of pure fun ever put out into the zeitgeist. and they can totally sing their asses off.

the guess who-drunken buffoons who weren't afraid to be drunken buffoons. poetic.

the jesus and mary chain-because "rock and roll is supposed to be dumb" right randy albright.

bruce springsteen-because every organization, even a list, needs a fucking boss. and because he has the best singing voice ever which makes everything he does seem a little more important.

america-because it's the 4th of july and because the heat was hot and because they aren't actually american.

jim croce-is cat stevens on steroids and james taylor for cool, smart, and classy people

m.i.a.- because its supposed to be about revolution, even the silent ones in your head. and as ryan said, the pineapple express trailer makes paper planes the best song in the world.

old dirty bastard-two albums, infinite insanity. pure crazy with pop hooks. a hero.

led zeppelin-because i have ears and because you can't have a list like this without them.

new order-rose from the ashes of depression like the phoenix of ecstacy.

the stone roses-the single greatest album from front to back ever made.

the eagles-have the most good songs of anyone consistently played on the radio. they are as if creedence clearwater had grace, dignity, and vocal talent.

neil diamond-because everybody i know has a different favorite song. mine used to be cracklin rosie...now its forever in blue jeans.

oasis-because i went to high school in the mid to late nineties.

and manimal-because nathan cook is the best guitarist on the planet, joe wisner, the drummer, has as much talent as anyone i've ever seen, and because i sing my ass off like my life depended on it. we form like voltron to make rock for your cock.

airwaves are the last fortress of anarchy. they are the purest form of absolute freedom left...take them over and remember that choice is the greatest gift that existence gives us, whether the choices matter or not. choose away!

glitteratti: the new media mafia in the nap.

2008-07-05T10:21:00.002-04:00

if you will be so adventurous as to actually click on the links to the left of this, you will find the best and brightest(and mike maier) this town has to offer on full display. and as happy days are here again, i am glad to report a new star in the indy blog skyline. ryan micheel, landmark luminaria, has begun posting his musings on popular culture. this is a really good thing as it is something which we here at the b.c. have been petitioning for for a while now.

so click on the link that begs the question "why are you even reading my shit..."
you might just learn something.

cheers ryan, i hope this doesn't plunge me further into irrelevancy.
and a big thanks to john peddie, one of the smartest dudes i know, for joining the cause to get ryan to do a blog. and for being a cool dude in general.

here is to saving the city...one pop culture experience at a time.

rumor has it...

2008-07-04T07:37:00.003-04:00

...that rob reiner is a fat fucking sexist slob. has there ever been a female screen character more pathetic than the one jennifer aniston plays in this film? aside from the complete inability to make even the simplest decisionwithout patriarchal input, the thing that i find most horrific is the fact that she constantly needs some sort of reassurance, either from her fiancee or her dad or some other male, just to feel like she is not pathetic. and that in turn makes her pretty damned pathetic. seriously, jen's charachter from the good girl(a feminist masterpiece, no doubt) called and even she thinks this way of behaving is bordering on ultimate loserdom. jeanne diellman just wants that bitch to make a decision on her own even if she prostitutes herself and caps a mutherfucker.

but she can't. as reiner beats it into our heads that she absolutely neeeds the men in her life for her to have any sembelance of inner peace.

and speaking of the men in her life, do you know how hard it is to completely waste a talent the size of mark ruffalo's? a much better film would have been him and richard jenkins sitting in an empty room watching fucking paint dry. it, at least, wouldn't have made me want to puke.

seriously meathead...why don't next time you just save us the lame graduate subplot and just make a movie about a helpless woman who needs to suck a dick every fifteen minutes like some sort of iv fluid or she will die. at least i will know coming in that it's sexist as opposed to you doing something even more insulting and hiding these antiquated attitudes in a picture aimed at women.

that...and mix in a salad you bloated piece of shit.

fireworks is what i'm looking forward to

2008-07-03T20:05:00.010-04:00

just remember when you're being inundated with all this fourth of july brew-ha-ha what you're really celebrating: the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white guys didn't want to pay their taxes. attack the gas station...

so it seems as if landmark is trying to go all boss hog on us and get the new errol morris game. but i have to admit, their behavior lately has made me cynical. i wonder this...if i go see standard operating procedure on the fourth of july, is this goning to leave me subject to some sort of patriot act illegal search of my persons? cause if so, that shit isn't even mine...i let a friend borrow these jeans and he must have left that stuff there.

but seriously...you might as well watch it because i guarantee(without having seen it) that it is a better made film than hardcock or indiana jones and the moron palace. i mean for real...errol morris once got a dude off of death row with one of his films(how many times has old satan spielberg done that?)

in all seriousness though, i don't usually like documentaries or films about wartime activities. but some of them you just ought to see. and standard operating procedure is the one. it is probably(an assumption made without the aid of an actual movie schedule) the showcase of the greatest filmmaking talent available in this city right now. for real...read the interview in the last cinemascope and i guarantee you will have your mind blown in a joe wisner film type of fashion at least once during the interview.

just go see it...if only to express the small inner anti-american sentiment all americans secretly keep in their hearts. see it just to prove me wrong on this point:

in the sixties the counterculture used to stage sit-ins as a form of protest...i would be delighted if our generation could merely sit still for any significant duration. given, counterculture probably doesn't even exist any more in the youtube-iverse we live in. but still i can hope.

prove me wrong...please

the wisdom of crowds

2008-06-30T23:01:00.005-04:00

honestly, i expected the beer cannes audience to rise above the obvious, populace pleasing sounds of the joker and take the money and run. and i certainly did not expect the complete seduction of abracadabra and jungle love.

i mean have you ever heard one of these nights or the best of my love. not to mention already gone and take it easy. seriously guys, i gave you a slam dunk on the innaugural poll question and you did me wrong.

the steve miller band beat the eagles by a 2 to 1 margin and that is bullshit. you are probably the same people who tell me that james taylor is better than jim croce or that billy joel is better than elton john. they aren't. and the steve miller band, as awesome as they are, sure as shit aren't better than the eagles. i mean seriously the fucking eagles. they might be the best band ever...if it wasn't for hall and oates.

the sad part of all this misinformed hullaballoo is as wrong as you are, you are all the audience i have so i am gonna trust you with another question. this one however is one that i do not know the answer to just yet.

as you have noticed, over our first month of existence we here at beer cannes have touted the promising work of up-and-coming (probably on your face) talent joe wisner.thus far he has submitted two works of utmost importance to the current cinematic landscape of our city and now i am leaving it up to you to decide which is better.

so what's it gonna be?

the manimal video for the hit song like your mother or...
bacon

please view both of these and vote over on your left. those of you who previously voted for the steve miller band...please find some way to attone for the sin of incorrectness, i trust being a supporter of beer cannes that you will.

a quick hell yeah for george hill

2008-06-27T10:00:00.005-04:00

the only thing that salvaged that shithole of a draft for me last night was the san antonio spurs ambitious 26th selection with which they took broad ripple rocket and iupui jaguar george hill.

congrats to george hill on your dream coming true. you are a newly minted millionaire with a three year guaranteed contract and i'm sure you won't disappoint cause you got game.

iupui has a baller in the show...this is fucking unbelievable and should be celebrated as not only awesome for mr. hill but as a testament to what coach ron hunter is doing with his "ips all star team" at iupui. ron takes a shot on local talent that the big ten schools have been overlooking for years. and now he's got one of them in the nba. keep doing your thing coach and i for one will always support.

good for ips
good for iupui, go jags!
cheers to ron hunter
and cheers to george hill...go get em baller!

this is a great thing for indianapolis

awesome...i have something to look forward to and something not exactly new to be afraid of... (new pacers=more gunshots)

2008-06-26T23:32:00.008-04:00

it's thursday which means what? oh yeah...it's the freakin' weeken' ima 'bout to have me some fun. first, i wanna give a big ups to landmark and their booker(no i didn't write the letter) for getting something that i actually want to see, which is a film that actually made some festival rounds and made it into the pages of film comment(as opposed to us weekly.) this week landmark keystone "arts" presents:

reprise-joachim trier

i am gonna see this film and i urge you too as well. either that or mongol because right now i feel it is of utmost importance to fans of the cinema in this town to support as much as possible because i would hate for landmark to "suffer the same fate as our beloved castleton arts"

after all, even landmark's half-assed offerings of an olive branch to those with style and class is better than nothing.

and speaking of nothing...i must ask, what is your favorite kind of car?
because right now, mine is a firebird...which is exactly what the pacers should do.

fuck you larry bird! under your direction the pacers have become nothing. i mean really, how many wing players do you need. it's as if the only thing you could do to make me think that jarred bayless was a great pick is to immediately trade him for brandon rush and jarrett jack, both of whom happen to play the same position as our two best players and the guys you are supposedly trying to build around in dunleavy and granger. nice going asshole, why dont you sign jamaal tinsley to a nice long term extension and call it a day. how else can you fuck this team.

so in closing...fuck larry bird, fuck the pacers and go see reprise...if only so we can get some more adventurous fare around here.

a brutal slice of life

2008-06-22T16:52:00.004-04:00

every so often a talent will emerge whose take is so fresh that it will go on to render everything that came before it obsolete. think lubitsch, think kazan, think godard, think spielberg, think tarantino.

joe wisner is not that guy. no he is the other kind of guy. the type whose shit is just so revolutionary, so ahead of the curve that those lacking foresight are prone to dismiss it in its own time. taking a realist aesthetic and molding it to his own whims, wisner has created a realm of infinite houseparties and morning breakfasts after where the act of seeing things as they are lends itself to much larger ponderings of the greater meanings of existence.

after dropping the ultra hot, beer cannes favorite video for the band manimal that can be seen to the left. joe wisner has recently unveiled his second opus bacon.

bacon is a six minute think piece about the eternal struggles to rise beyond ones station as a fatty, fleshy slab frying in an uncaring god's earthly grease fire. it reminds us of the celestial pokes and prods and twists and turns of the great unknown's forever shifting tynes. one starts off so young and meaty and ends up a smaller, burnt, almost unrecognizable version of one's former self. this metaphor of the grand parade that is life takes hold of the viewer and ensnares its audience in a cycle that leads from utter despair on the state of the human condition to an almost insatiable appetite for life if only to momentarily delay the crispiness that lies ahead. a perfect meditation on the process of aging, bacon is among the finest short films i have ever seen.

grade a beef! beer cannes approved!

is there anything to prompt "what i'm looking forward to?"

2008-06-19T19:29:00.005-04:00

in a short answer...no.

it is a sad comment on the state of things when, in doing my research, i no longer need to look at the mainstream theatre's webpages to find out what new hollywood films will be bestowed upon the screens of our fair city. i find lately that all i need to do is take a gander at landmark theatres site for the keystone "art" cinema and magically the newest hollywood release would be displayed for me there. this week its get smart(which in fairness i will probably see...at the drive-in)

so what's the deal. the amc's of the world get all the sequels and landmark gets all the old tv shows. (gus van sant's "cheers"...how you like dem apples...thats all im saying.) speaking of gus van sant...i think that might have been the last "post" film upon which landmark's indy incarnation could hang its "art" hat.

and that was before i started this blog, therefore it didn't actually "happen."

so its off to tibbs drive in...the greatest place for movie loving friends of beer cannes in the city.

c'mon landmark...get me the duchess of langlais...get me alexandra...
step your game up.

just freaking watch it

2008-06-17T23:55:00.003-04:00

seriously, i very rarely post to this site whilst drunk...but fuck it. i was just watching the first fifteen minutes of george washington by david gordon green and i just wanted to say that you need to watch it. it is poetic. it is gorgeous, and it is real and that makes it freaking beautiful as it unwraps itself in front of you and swallows you whole. i love it and you will too.

seriously, if you are going to go see pineapple express, which i plan to do, you owe it to yourself to at least see george washington and all the real girls before you do. its the best time you will spend in front of a television this year...guaran fucking teed.

aaron katz

2008-06-16T20:43:00.001-04:00

as my theory holds that words are woefully inadequate quantifiers of the breadth of human emotions, the films of aaron katz, and more specifically the feelings they create, can not be done justice by mere vocabulary exercises. so i will let one of the characters from dance party usa speak on its behalf. here's:

"just a little sort of synopsys...its awesome."

the kids of dance party usa inhabit a world of empty yet still spinning amusement park rides. they long for the one moment when one is stuck at the top of the ferris wheel with the one they adore even if they are so drawn into search mode that they can't fully appreciate these moments until afterward when they can relay them in a way as to make them some sort of souvenir of the glorious moment now passed. in this land of emptiness, where moments pass by in a hazy, drug and alcohol induced stupor, the greatest hope these kids have is for a snapshot, or a photograph of a memory to prove that something, anything actually happened. they take large parties and section themselves off into smaller, more intimate parties, the type where moments are shared.(see quiet city...please) and then, as if nothing ever happened, these moments are gone and these kids are left all alone, spooning condiments into their mouths while neglecting the hamburger that is on their plate.

but who cares, as long as the music is good. and it is...really good.

really big things

2008-06-16T12:35:00.003-04:00

i saw kung fu panda yesterday on the imax screen. turns out there is a slight charge for the awesomeness(and the attractiveness.) but much like divorce(and energy drinks), it is expensive because it is worth it. the largeness of it genuinely made me feel like a child and the movie, which is visually lush and kinda gorgeous, rocked as well. a great time was had by all.

what i'm looking forward to

2008-06-12T22:28:00.002-04:00

nothing...at least not this weekend. fuck the hulk and fuck m. night; i can be bored sitting around my house. this should lead to the publication of a previously promised diatribe about film distribution, but it isn't going to...at least not tonight. im a little too sad that i missed cj7 last week because of the sheer inconvenience of scheduling. at least i still have the oppurtunity to see kung fu panda, even though honestly i want something more substantial. i want the new guy maddin. i want the new dardennes. i want...something...that isnt indiana hulk and the happening of doom. what is nicole holofcener doing? atom egoyan where are you? i deserve better than this. and when i dont get it my mind turns to wanting to think about things that aren't really as interesting as the cinema. like...

reggie bush is the new boz.
is it possible to be a flop and resurrect a franchise simultaneously?

give me better movies.

pacman jones and student loans: just bein' rebellion at the script club.

2008-06-11T10:50:00.007-04:00

recently on the jim rome radio program, there has played a soundbyte of much maligned cowboy cornerback adam "pacman" jones in which he is being interviewed about his penchant for trouble and more specifically his prediliction towards places in which young ladies remove clothing. pacman's answer horrified me as it the incident seems a microcosm for a much larger problem facing this country. his answer goes a little like this.

"it aint no sin to go to the script club...(not a typo)
"i'm just bein' rebellion"

now, i'm not trying to make any moral judgements about pacman. after all, he is correct about the fact that it is not a sin, or at least against the law, to go to the script club. i have been there many times myself. unfortunately, my version of the "script" club involves screenplays for films that play in my head. and that's a little bit different than the man implicated in a shooting incident at a...say it with me now pac...s-t-r-i-p club. yes, children it seems as if pacman is once again involved in a shooting. this time however, the only thing he was trying to murder was the english language.

or maybe im just bein rebellion. no...im starting a rebellion by being rebellious. see the difference pacman? but again, this is not the real problem. after all, the first time i heard it i laughed the same way i did the first time i heard dolphins linebacker channing crowder ask if "they speak english over there in england" after claiming that he couldn't find it on a map. hell yeah, i laughed, right before it started to make me angry.

see the sad fact is these fucking guys went to college, or at least housed themselves on or near college campuses for a few years. the worst part is that they did it for free while most of my friends and aquaintences actually graduated owing sums of money the size of small mortgages. it apparently does not matter to the granters of free education that these dudes' iq are about as low as their 40 yard dash times. it apparently doesn't matter that these guys clearly did not take advantage of the academic oppurtunities and rewards granted them free of charge because of their football prowess.

now i dont begrudge pacman and channing their success in the nfl. i dont begrudge them the spoils that come with it. but i do begrudge the fact that these guys paid no money for the use of academic facilities of the universities of west viginia and florida respecively. especially when people i know who merely wanted to be more intelligent, well rounded, and better spoken human beings are going into debt up to their eyeballs just to take advantage of the academic institutions that pacman and crowder took for granted.

it seems to me that this is indicitive of a larger problem in the united states as we use far too many of of our not quite as abundant as we thought resources pulling up idiots to the middle (or higher) and not enough of our resources allowing the intelligent to make themselves even better. we have the talent in this country to constantly be setting the bar higher and higher in all walks of life. but unfortunately the welfare system of college scholarship awards has brought us to the point of granting education to the likes of pacman jones, channing crowder, and maurice clarett, while inflation has brought us to the point that alot of capable people are unable to self resource alot of ideas because of the financial burden that their educations became. alot of talent is being wasted and the bars seem to be being reset at a slower pace than at any time previous in human history with perhaps the possible exception of the dark ages.

and that is fucking depressing...oh well i'm gonna go to the script club.

another person boo-ing busch

2008-06-08T10:22:00.003-04:00

i figured it couldn't be that bad, after all it had a good name. i was wrong. unfortunately busch beer is nowhere near as good as kyle busch. hell it isnt even as good as kurt busch has been this season...which is pretty horrible really. no the frothy concoction from the good? people at anheiser busch is pretty fucking awful and i am convinced that they put extra sugar is that shit as i woke up with a splitting headache this morning. without any other hangover syptoms to go along with the headache, i dont believe i can take the blame for overindulging on this one.

so with that in mind i am giving busch beer a big fat BOO!!! and a little fuck you like the fans at the last few tracks when kyle busch has taken the checkered flag.

but you can only add my voice of dissent to the chorus of busch haters only insofar as the beer.

fellow nascar fans need to respect what rowdy is doing and show him some love. quit booing him because he is going faster than your guy and respect the phat run he is on. dont be a fucking redneck like the world thinks you are on this one, okay nascar fan. just because little e doesnt have the nutsack to pass somebody when it counts dont take that out on kyle busch.

i mean, shit, eventually even jeff gordon is gonna win a race this year. and in between deciding whether to call him an elf or a dwarf or a hobbit, i am gonna give him the few moments of respect that was earned by his trip to victory lane. i will even listen to what he is saying with his helium midget voice.

so in closing, dont hate kyle busch. put that hate somewhere more useful and refuse the next time someone offers you the cold beer with a similar monicker. you will be glad you did. because busch beer sucks.

a short list of people who've got me during this rainy season

2008-06-07T00:34:00.002-04:00

i will hang with anything these people do...

andrew bujalski is kind of like your life, only less interesting. which in turn makes you realize how boring your life really is, or at least how it might appear that way to an outsider. and that, in turn, makes you long for the type of lives being led by people in andrew bujalski films. it is a continuous cycle that has me wanting to rewatch mutual appreciation right now. so i can feel better and worse about my existence simultaneously. plus that dude is totally nathan cook...for real.

miranda july is the angel and devil on my shoulder. whispering in one ear that everything is beautiful while telling me that nothing from this point forward will ever be the same in the other. witness her thoughts in you and me and everyone we know on how technology pulls us away from our true longing, which is the community of others, by allowing us further into ourselves. just far enough to know we cant go back from the universe of our imagination to the uncertain world of interpersonal relations. and she just seems cool, read her blog about voting in an elementary school...it singlehandedly made me register.

clint bowyer is the greatest damn car driver that ever was and he drives the coolest looking car. carl edwards is a cheater.

if i were italian and grew up in the 60's, i would believe that ermanno olmi had the supernatural ability to peer into my mind and see through to my soul. i am connecting hardcore to the il posto mentality that if one buys a raincoat to impress a girl, the only thing one should plan on is being all wet. because the only thing a stylish raincoat does is prepare one to be rained on. and i totally dig the daydreaming at work vibe of i fidinzati because i often find myself daydreaming at work...usually of the same dancehall scenes that our protagonist fancies.

and finally, a request that will most definitely appear again on these pages. i dont know what needs to happen, whether someone needs to get off their ass, whether someone needs to come up with some money...i dont know. all i know is that i hope the stars align just right in the near future so i can quit asking this same question. whit stillman...when the heck are you gonna make another movie? its been like ten years and if i have to see one more mike white film before i see your next concoction i might have to bust a fucking cap...