WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 08/10/04

I found Feedback a new album from Rush which I hadn’t known about. In celebration of their 30 years together (wow, that’s staying power!) they revisited some songs they covered when they were first starting out in the bands they had in their teen years.

The songs are a little rough. They don’t have quite their usual level of synergy and it isn’t exactly their sound, but it’s very fresh and definitely sincere covers. There’s some good classic rock on there and a couple of the songs. “Heart Full of Soul” and “Crossroads” really rock.

After suffering some disappointment from their previous couple of albums, it’s nice to see the boys coming back and doing something fun and with some energy. It also reminds me of the Ramone’s Acid Eaters, which were great covers of 60s songs, but a little more for novelty value. Still a very worthwhile album though.

Originally Written 07/08/2004

M. Night Shyamalan needs to be slapped.

I saw the The Village tonight. To say I hated it is too strong, but I was seriously dissapointed by the film, and I went into it without much expectations. Though I was hoping for more werewolves. This is it, M. Night needs to stop relying on the crutch of trick endings and big surprises. I’ve been growing tired of them, but this one really annoyed me. It was just so trite and mundane.

I didn’t read any big reviews before seeing the film, not wanting to be affected by them, but I did catch one tiny capsule of a review today while looking up the showtimes. The reviewer for Variety I think it was pointed out that his films have made people approach them like their a secret to be cracked, and that changes how you watch them and look at the story. As I said to Paul, you don’t really watch his films, you more observe them, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. That takes out some of the fun of the movie for me, you can’t just be an observer, you have to be a detective.

It’s also sad and annoying that he could write better movies if he didn’t always seem like a one-trick-pony. While some of the dialog in this film was a bit wooden and heavy, that may have been deliberate. I will say he always does a great job with setting, mood and cinemaphotography. So it’s sad when the movie doesn’t live up to its promises or what it could have been.

About twenty minutes into the film I got an idea of how it might end. Then again later on I had the same thought, but hoped it wouldn’t be true. When it was revealed to be what I’d suspected I didn’t even have some dull surprise. I was annoyed to have seen it coming, especially since it was such a trite and silly idea. What’s more, he played his hand too quickly. The ace was shown with about twenty minutes left, which made things kind of anticlimactic. There was another face card which didn’t do much for me and then a joker at the end, but I’d called that too. I leaned over to Paul and suggested it about 5-10 minutes before it was shown. Bleah.

What’s more, not only was the ending so predictably obvious, I found it kind of insulting. I’m tired of how M. Night has to make a big show of how clever and insightful he is. He came off as particularly smug in this one, not just from his forced cameo in this film (I felt his others worked, this one didn’t), but he also looked like he was preaching from an ivory tower. It was so damn heavy-handed and smacked of moral superiority.

What’s more the morality tale was pretty hard to swallow. The film did kind of work as a fable, but even then the metaphors were way to obvious. Again, I can’t say I hated the film, I did like parts of it, and some of the ideas were interesting. I still felt let down and insulted though. I’m also torn on whether or not to recommend this to anyone. I tend to be a movie snob, so other people might really like it and feel I’m too hard on it. I still think it could’ve been a lot better. Still, it’s worth checking out, if not as a rental than as a matinee. As Paul said, the immersion of the darkened theater works much better for the suspense. Though I didn’t think the suspense always worked her. Signs did that much better.

Originally Written 02/11/04

Devil’s Playground is a really interesting documentary about a custom of the Amish. The Amish don’t believe in baptizing infants and think that only an adult can make an informed decision on whether to join the church and follow god. When kids turn 16, they’re released into the outside or “English” world and can basically run free, doing just about anything. Then after a couple of years, they’re expected to come back and get baptized into the church and live in the community and follow the religion for the rest of their lives.

Man, adolescence is hard enough, I couldn’t imagine going through what those kids go through and having to make such a huge decision at that age. Like the preacher’s kid who runs wild when they have a bit of freedom, these kids pretty much went crazy. There’s tons of parties, alcohol, drugs, cable TV and video games. Some kids even moved out of the house to enjoy the freedom.

The documentary was quite well made. It followed a few different kids and showed how things went over the many months. Some of them went back to the church, a couple couldn’t return to that world, and one was still in limbo as he was trying to figure things out. It was a really poignant and somber film. It also gave an interesting look into Amish society and their beliefs, which you normally wouldn’t be able to get.

Originally Written 02/04/04

Hee hee, my mind was wandering and I chanced to think of one of Tom Leher’s old songs. I love his sarcastic wit and socially-conscious humor. He has a good way of making fun of just about everything too. He ribs on both sides of the argument a little here, plus I agree with him that dirty books are fun.

Tom Leher – “Smut”

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Originally Written 02/02/04

Saw a late-night (11PM) showing of Bubba Ho-tep at an independant theater tonight. The first thing I noticed when we got there was the crowd. It was the usual collection of freaks and geeks, lost of college kids and goth girls in black makeup and fishnet stockings. The theater was kind of crowded, but it was kind of fun having a art-house college film experience. It’s been a few years since I’d gone to one of those. The crowd was fun to watch the film with too. People were laughing, but nobody was being too loud or obnoxious.

The movie was a little disappointing. We were all kind of expecting a typical Bruce Campbell movie, but this was no Evil Dead or Army of Darkness. That wasn’t too surprising since it was a different director. There was one or two fun Sam Rami inspired moments though, like when Elvis is fighting a giant scarab. They did the standard camera tricks that Rami would do, and that was fun to watch. The scarab was also super-fake looking, which added to the amusement. And Jen was all sad when the beetle got squished. “Awww, he was cute” she whined, which got more laughs from us.

It did kind of drag in places, but I kind of liked it. It wasn’t great, but it had its moments, it was clever and I liked the characters. Bruce Campbell was great as an aging Elvis in a rest home. The story of him having switched places with an impersonator to get away from it all, then not being able switch back because his double died, was intriguing. It was kind of neat to see Bruce Campbell place such a restrained and understated role, and Elvis was a nice tragic figure.

Ossie Davis was great as a black guy who thought he was President Kennedy (“No offense Jack, but Kennedy was a white man.” “They died me this color so they could hide me!”). They played him as a nut, but there was just a little bit of uncertainty which let you believe his story was true if you wanted to. Either way the two of them were a fun team and their histories, real or imagined, added to the story. I also liked how it was all about the personal redemption of Elvis as a character getting his life back.

The setting of the rest home was very well done. The set designs just showed how the place was slowly crumbling apart and you got a real sense of decay to it. I liked how the old people stuck there were not just used for cheap laughs, but were handled with some care and the mood was sad and regretful.

The mummy didn’t actually play much into the film, which was a disappointment. It was funny how when he did show up he acted pretty much like a redneck. They found some egyptian graffiti he’d scrawled on a wall in one of the bathroom stalls, which roughly translated into something about Cleopatra’s sex life. Also, the couple of times the mummy spoke, they showed subtitles with both silly fake-glyph pictograms and also the english translation. One of the insults the mummy yells at Elvis was the line of the film: “Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass-wipe!” Very lowbrow, but too funny. One friend said that one of the pictograms for that was of a guy whipping his butt. I wish I’d caught that.

So it wasn’t a very good film, but it had its moments and had enough to entertain me. I did still like the main characters.