Top Movie of 2010?

I'm going to make a bold useless prediction right now. The Yiddish Policemen's Union is going to be the best movie of 2010.

Fresh off watching the awesome No Country For Old Men, I was reading up on the Coen Brother's next film: Burn After Reading (trailer below - looks promising) when I found out that a couple of projects down the line, the Coen Brothers intend to adapt Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union which I'm in the middle of reading. I must say, that this is a match made in heaven - I was thinking as I was reading how perfect it will be if the Coen Brothers made a movie from it - it's scheduled to be released in 2010 but knowing reality will probably be delayed - especially as two of their movies will be released before we get to see this. This is one project I'm excited about.

Cake & Lentil Loaf

It was my turn to cook last night... I managed the cheapest night of the year so far. Spending a mere 59c on new ingredients and using stuff we already had like brown lentils (about $1 worth), carrot (30c?), 1 egg (30c maybe?) and a couple of other ingredients such as herbs to make lentil loaf. Throw in some rice and mixed veges and you got one of the cheapest student meals out there.

Also made a chocolate cake on my flatmate's orders. She bought all the ingredients, I supplied the labour. Turned out alright.

Talking about cake... because I haven't posted a video in a while. Here's the music video for Crowded House's Chocolate Cake song (from their Woodface album)

Album of the Moment

The album: Hello Young Lovers by The Sparks. Released in 2006. This album is so weird in its theatrics that its impossible to become fully engrossed in their spinning web of irony. Or if, you're not into that - you'll probably find the whole thing rather stupid.

I've got two youtube videos here. One is a music video for one of the singles of the album (Dick Around - this is a shortened version of the song)

And their guest appearance on the Gilmore Girls.

One Man Band

Pixar short film from 2005. I love these guys.

Best President Ever

OK, so Josiah Bartlet was fictional. But he was an economist, a fairly left wing economist at that - which makes him pretty rare but not unknown.

He wrote a book called Theory and Practice of Macroeconomics in Developing Countries and that is just cool.

It'll be nice if we had an American presidential candidate who didn't sign up to bad economic policies. Such as McCain and Clinton's support for the Gas Tax holiday. Obama has nothing to do with it but he seems like a lightweight.

Oh well. I liked this video from The Colbert Report. And this from the Dilbert Blog.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Seven

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville
Day Five: The Player
Day Six: Gosford Park

Robert Altman died about six months after A Prairie Home Companion was released so it proved to be his last and with its permutations on death turned out to be a rather foreshadowing film. It received lackluster reviews but I highly enjoyed it, this film was my introduction to Altman when I watched it at the end of last year. I picked it up at the video store with the firm intention to finally watch one of his movies. (It would later turn out that I would have to study him the next year - stuff like that always amuses me)

The video is of one of the songs amongst the many I could have chosen.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Six

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville
Day Five: The Player

Ah, the penultimate day and today's featured movie is Gosford Park. This won the oscar for best original screenplay. Beating some of my favourite films like Memento, Amelie and The Royal Tenenbaums. It beat Monster's Ball as well - but I haven't seen that.

The video today is one of the songs sung, which has been a bit of theme for the videos I've posted from Youtube. Mainly because they're about all that can be found. Altman has an interesting relationship with music. Something that totally needs to be explored... just not now.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Five

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville

So we go from 1975 to 1992. After making what many consider to be his masterpiece he slips a little and he makes films like Popeye. Finally, he makes his "comeback" with The Player. Though, it's not really a comeback, he never really went anywhere. People were still giving him money to sit behind a camera.

The clip below is the seven and half minute opening sequence of the movie. I can't actually watch it at the moment because my internet has seemed to have grinded to a halt. According to the comments there is some kind of error with the clip and there looks like there is a cut. But there really isn't.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Four

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye

Well, we're now onto the last film of the 70's that I've seen of Altman's. Tomorrow will be quite a leap in time after this. Many consider Nashville to be Altman's magnus opus - this three hour epic film of five days in Nashville. 24 main characters all just living. It's truly an amazing film, one of the few films that feel organic when you watch it. It truly feels like a living breathing thing. The video is one of the songs - I'm Easy by Keith Carradine, though I would have really liked to have used the 200 years song from the very beginning.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Three

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller

Altman's 1973 adaptation The Long Goodbye, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler bombed at the box office. Initially marketed as a straight-up film noir. Elliott Gould as Marlowe didn't convince anyone. With time, it's been more accepted as what it was: a satire. The video below is the opening of the film - it shows many of Altman's characteristic techniques - a warning though - it's ten minutes long.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Two

In 1971, a year after MASH, Robert Altman released McCabe & Mrs Miller. His take on the Western. Youtube wasn't very giving with videos. All of them featured Leonard Cohen singing (as he provides the soundtrack) so I decided to give you the trailer.

On to the last city!

After months of playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas I've finally made it to the last city (of three - this one is based on Las Vegas). Normally, I wouldn't bother posting this but with a bunch of controversy over the latest GTA I couldn't resist. My normal game experience normally ends in frustration as I fail to use my rocket launcher to shoot down a helicopter and end up blowing myself up because I can't aim the frigging thing.

Frustrated, I then go out and run over a bunch of children or force some prostitutes to eat some defecation. (OK, you can't do either thing in the game)

There is a comment on David Farrar's blog that's interesting. It's from a "Fletch" who quotes an interview with a former army guy about using first person shooters as part of training for army, police, etc... Well GTA isn't actually a first person shooter (bar a couple of occasions when you have to go into that mode) - you don't actually have to aim your gun - press a button and it'll happen automatically. Press circle and bullets come out and your target dies. The subject matter in the game is no worse than what you'll find in movies. I think the idea of the "immersion" effect of games is no different to the effect found in movies when you watch them in the right conditions (lights out, no distractions). So why should you attack video games when they are so much more artificial?

Anyway, I actually wanted to take a look at Family First, the organisation that's driving the controversy. Unfortunately they're another one of those organisations that seem to consider family values and christian belief one and the same. I hate these guys, I think if they ever want to be taken more seriously they need to actually divorce themselves from their christian side and distance themselves from the religious right.You do not have to be a Christian family to be a loving family that promotes good values.

These are the people that tried to have Californication banned (they were unsuccessful, though they did manage to get a large number of advertisers to withdraw). I took a glance through their recent news to take a look.

This article talks about a study that showed children watching MTV or BET (does BET even screen in New Zealand??) are exposed to something bad once every 38 seconds. Family First add their position at the bottom.

This material can be viewed free-to-air in NZ on C4 , and also on Sky TV e.g. Juice TV etc. Broadcasting standards in NZ are failing our children.

You can't directly compare C4 with the American MTV! C4 complies their programming from a wide variety of sources. They actually play music videos which MTV hardly does. MTV rather shows "a variety of pop culture, youth culture, and reality television shows aimed at adolescents and young adults" (wikipedia) which includes a lot of shit - shows like A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila that has 32 male and females vying for the love of a bisexual woman (this is actually screened in NZ on Sky on their MTV channel which may hit that mark mentioned before - that channel should be banned not because it's immoral but of the awful progamming). C4 and Juice TV would be nowhere near the "once every 38 seconds" mark that Family First is implying.

OK, I've completely gone off topic. I hate Family First, we get it. Watch this Daily Show segment on Gran Theft Auto IV.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day One

I'm about to write an essay about the late film director Robert Altman - so you should expect lots of writing about Altman on this blog. I find him to be completely fascinating as a director and he's currently my latest favourite director - so far this year I've seen six of his films. With the one I watched at the end of last year that's a total of seven - so I've decided to dedicate this week to Altman and will post a new youtube video every day of an Altman movie.

I start off with M*A*S*H which was the film that broke him into the mainstream way back in 1970. This video has the song that will later become the theme song for the television series... with the lyrics removed of course...

Dexter

I watched new TV show Dexter last night after a fairly boring episode (apart from a few scenes) of Desperate Housewives. I remain conflicted about it.

After being a huge fan of Six Feet Under (own all five seasons on DVD), I just can't get the "David" character out of my head.

To me, Michael C. Hall who plays Dexter, is that uptight gay man who runs a funeral home in LA. Not this unfeeling blood splatter analyst from Miami who dabbles in killing serial killers. It's a serious hurdle I'm going to need to get over before I can become a fan of this show. And I'll like to, I did enjoy it - at least I think I did - I'll need to watch some more to make sure. This makes Monday night the only night of television for me. There's nothing else that I'm totally enjoying at the moment.

That's probably a good thing. I so need to do more work.

Oh well, I posted a quick 29 second youtube video below of David from Six Feet Under in a moment from the first episode.

Bill Hicks on JFK

Had a dream last night where Danny DeVito was by grandfather and Jennifer Aniston my grandmother. There was also an election that never ended and I played a huge game of chess that stretched out over a 15 acre field with my 12 year old sister.



Following up on my review of the film JFK... This is Bill Hicks talking about the man and his assassination... not the film.