hang in there...

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...

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

tis the season

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...

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

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?

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

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

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...

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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