A Million Ways to Die in the West

You would think that we would eventually learn our lesson as a society when it comes to Westerns and Comedies. Back to the Future Part 3 laid the foundation; and Cowboys and Aliens as well as The Lone Ranger were the brick and mortar so to speak, of the outhouse that has become this genre. I knew from the preview that this would be a terrible movie but I also thought the same thing about to incredibly funny Ted. So I decided to give MacFarlane the benefit of the doubt, thinking that they just couldn't show the really funny stuff in the trailer because it was too raunchy.

The Family Guy creator relies heavily on these over the top crass jokes and random pop culture references for his comedy. The only thing is, in the past they worked because it was delivered via a CGI teddy bear and a few odd looking cartoon characters. When it's done with real life human beings however, it just comes off as a bunch of 13 year old boys cracking jokes on one another because they are too scared to admit that they like girls.

So this takes me to A Million Ways, where you are introduced to Albert (MacFarlane). a cowardly sheep farmer in the west whose girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) has just recently broken up with him because she feels as though she needs a real man who can offer her more. Albert takes the breakup pretty hard and begins to realize that living in the final frontier isn't all that it's cracked up to be because there a ton of ways you can die in the west; and to him life out there is pointless with out his girlfriend. That is until he meets the mysterious and beautiful Anna (Charlize Theron), who while waiting for her horrible gun slinging husband to return from his conquest, has befriended and fallen for Albert. As he is showing her the town, he runs into Louise and her douchey new beau (Neil Patrick Harris) at the deadly county fair; and it is here that he has had enough and decides to challenge Harris to a gun fight. The problem is, he's never really fired a gun before and now must rely on Anna to train him before he is killed in said fight. The rest you can figure out for yourself as its really not that deep of a story.

Within the first 15 minutes of the movie, you immediately realize that you have just wasted $11. I have never heard an entire theater be so quiet during a comedy; every joke absolutely bombed. And it never turned into one of those situations where its so bad that it becomes funny. After the first 15 minutes it does get a bit better and there are some jokes that are quite funny but you have to sit through some pretty brutal scenes to get there. And again, the problem is that you have real live humans delivering this sophomoric humor; so it comes off as just that, juvenile. Also, in reality this seemed like a good idea for a 30 minute Family Guy episode that was somehow stretched into a 2 hour long feature film. MacFarlane has this incredibly long rant about how terrible life is in 1882, which would have been funny if he could have done his trademark flashback scenes like he does in his cartoon. But since this isn't a cartoon, you just had to sit there and watch him scream for about 10 minutes (no joke) like he was the dumber cousin of Dennis Miller.

Also it doesn't help that MacFarlane isn't the best looking man in the world. He has these small beady eyes that are both alarming and distracting, so much so that in the scenes where you are supposed to feel sorry for him because he's the lovable protagonist, you instead just feel sorry for him because he looks like a special needs kid. That may be the worst thing I've ever written but it's true!

Theron and Seyfried are easy on the eyes; and Neeson is his usual solid self. And the one scene where MacFarlane is hallucinating with the Indians is clearly the highlight of the film because this is where he sneaks in all of his pop culture references. The sad thing is, his scene with Christopher Lloyd would have been the best surprise of them all had they not ruined that for you in the previews. Oh well, it was still good to hear him yell "Great Scott" one more time.

This movie is a complete waste of time and I suggest that you avoid it at all costs! I rate it as unbelievably WEAK!

X-Men :Days of Future Past

For a second, I want you to think about just how much damage Brett Ratner did to the X-Men franchise. He almost single handedly destroyed it forever; so much so that it took them two Wolverine movies and now two X-Men reboots to overcome his hack job! It only took Batman one attempt to overcome Joel Schumaker's mess of a movie in Batman and Robin; and the same goes for the Spiderman franchise, although they look like they are headed back down the wrong path again themselves. My buddy and I came to the conclusion that the studio didn't really know which direction to go in with the X-Men movies after the second one, so they purposely brought in Ratner to destroy it; this way they would have an excuse to reboot it. This is similar to what Heath Ledger did when he wasn't getting the roles that he wanted. Much to their chagrin, he more than exceeded their expectations!

X-Men: First Class set the stage by taking us all the way back to the beginning of  Professor X and Magneto's friendship which eventually turned sour and this second installment continues the effort to erase any memory of Ratner's Last Stand. We start off in the future with a scene that is a straight rip from the opening of The Terminator. You see a dark and war torn land that has been destroyed by blood thirsty Sentinels, whose sole purpose is to not only hunt down and destroy mutants but also any humans that may carry the mutant gene to pass down to future generations. The Sentinels break into the hiding place of the few remaining mutants which include Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), and it is here that you see their ability to adapt to the mutants' powers and to use them against them. But thankfully Kitty has the ability to take them back in time to a few minutes before they actually arrive so that they can leave the area and avoid any confrontation. Professor X and Magneto get the idea to use this power to send Wolverine back to the past so that he can try and stop the development of the Sentinels in the first place, in hopes to avoid a war altogether.

In order for him to do so, he must find both Charles and Erik and convince them to work together again so they can find Raven/Mystique and stop her from assassinating Dr. Bolivar Trask. This is important because the assassination acted as the catalyst for the Sentinel program once they were able to capture Mystique for her crime. This gave them access to her DNA which was the key to what made them so deadly!

What I liked so much about First Class was the raw emotion that both Fassbender and McAvoy brought to the story. Both are unbelievably talented actors and the intensity that Fassbender brought to Erik's character instantly made you get on board with whatever his cause was; which made Raven leaving Charles for him so believable. Well his intensity and determination were on full display again here as you can see his passion and love for his fellow mutants boiling over to the point that he would destroy anyone or anything that got in his way. There is an unforgettable scene where he destroys RFK Stadium to help him in his effort. It is unlike anything I can remember seeing in a film before and seeing as how I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan I loved it when that awful stadium was left in ruins!

Seeing a dejected and vulnerable Charles was cool too because all we've ever known of Professor X is the always calm and level headed Patrick Stewart. For the first time ever, I almost put X on the same level of coolness as Magneto. Almost. I can also watch Jennifer Lawrence in a painted body suit all day long; its almost as if she was born to play this role.

Bryan Singer does an excellent job of balancing both the complexity of the story and the CGI heavy action scenes. Sometimes movies can get too bogged down in trying to explain the science behind time travel and it simply leaves you bored and confused by all of the plot holes that appear as a result of it. Instead he gives you a quick 5 minute breakdown of it and spends the rest of the time showcasing the powers of the X-Men. In fact, one of the movie's highlights is definitely when he slows down the action and lets you see what life is like for the young Peter/Quicksilver as he takes out a room full of soldiers in the Pentagon.

I don't want to ramble too long about the awesomeness of this movie but just know that the action scenes are top notch, the dialogue and the story are actually pretty decent, and the acting for the most part is stellar. I rate this movie as TIGHT and suggest you pop in before Singer and the rest of Hollywood is in jail due to the underage boys controversy; leaving Ratner and McG to rule Hollywood forever!

*note* the only reason why McG wasn't involved is because he's too scared to fly to Hawaii

Locke

Me " I will take one for Lockey or Low Key please." Exasperated Ticket Agent/Movie Nerd " *sigh* I believe it's pronounced Lock" Whatever fat boy! Just give me my damn ticket to this pretentious modern day version of a One Man Hamlet! At least that's what all of the lame previews made it appear to be. "Tom Hardy is a Tour de Force!" "It will change the way you view cinema!" Really? A man sitting in a car and talking to a speaker for 90 minutes? And what in the world does Tour de Force mean? Is that a reference to that stupid bike race in France?

The only reason I saw this movie was because Tom Hardy was in it. Well, that and the fact that the guy who wrote the brutally depressing Eastern Promises also wrote and directed this movie. I can only hope that Hardy doesn't resort to only making big budget nonsense just so that he can try and break through in America. Sure he was Bane in the forgettable third installment of Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy but really anyone could have had a giant mask covering their face, making it impossible to understand a word of what they were saying. It could have honestly been Charles Barkley as Bane and no one would have been the wiser; just make him wear long sleeves the entire time. The point is, you need to see the movie Bronson to get a true feel for this man's talents. You may see his unit one too many times for your liking but you also see the true range he has as an actor. My fear is that he will become the next Sam Worthington, who if it weren't for the 30 Avatar sequels that are coming out, would be auditioning to be the 5th member of Vince's posse in Entourage the movie.

In Locke, you are taken through Ivan Locke's (Hardy) 90 minute drive from wherever his home is to the city of London on the eve of the biggest day of his professional career. But he gets a distressing call from someone that will change his life forever. As the story unfolds you learn that he had a one night stand less than a year ago and as a result of it the woman is pregnant and about to give birth. The woman, whose name is Bethan, has no family or true friends that can be there for the birth, so he decides to do what he considers the right thing and that is to drive down to be with her for the birth of their child, even though he barely knows her. There are also some additional experiences from his past that are haunting him and this certainly plays a role in his curious decision. On the way to her he has to balance keeping Bethan, who is obviously a head case, calm while also breaking the news of what is happening to his wife and kids. Oh and there's still the matter of trying to set up and prepare everything for the largest cement pour in his company's history; for which he's in charge of overseeing. The thing is, its next to impossible to do this over the phone, so his company is freaking out.

Steven Knight (writer/director) does an excellent job of keeping your attention by basically making Locke's cellphone the co-star. Every time a name pops up on the phone, you immediately expect the worst as more and more challenges spring up. I'm also not sure how much creative control he gave his director of photography but visually there are some scenes that are quite stunning. No there aren't any action scenes but the lenses they use to show the environment around him and the role it plays in his struggle to not only balance the stress he's experiencing but also his health and fatigue, add yet another dimension to the story.

And this movie doesn't work if it doesn't have someone that can command the screen like Hardy can. The calm and confidence he shows throughout the film makes you believe that everything will work out in spite of all of the evidence that points to the contrary. Also Ruth Wilson, who plays the role of his wife, makes your heart break every time she talks to Locke after finding out the horrible news. I can't really describe the emotions I was feeling after I left the theater but the mere fact that I felt anything was a plus in my mind. I have paid money to see movies with a 300 million dollar budget before and left the theater only thinking about what tacos I was about to eat.

I rate this movie as FRESH and I suggest that you at least pop in on Netflix.

A Week in the Life of the World's Greatest City

I know that most of the people who live in New York, San Francisco, L.A. or maybe even Rome would not agree with my assessment that Austin is in fact the world's greatest city; but the simple fact remains that it is! I won't even get into the weeks where we have South By Southwest, Austin City Limits, or even Fun Fun Fun Fest; just to name a few. I will just focus on this past week's events which included The Moontower Comedy Festival and every other show that you could possibly want to attend in this hipster haven of a town.

Speaking of hipsters, I know that they are all sighing in disgust over this piece mainly because it will encourage even more people to move down here, and it will also draw even more attention to the aforementioned festivals. They love to complain about these by the way; completely forgetting the fact that these festivals are what drew them to move to this city in the first place. But it is what it is, Austin seemingly has a festival every two weeks. So if you show me a person who is bored in this town, then I will show you a terrible person.

I will start things off with the Moontower kickoff show featuring Aziz Ansari which took place Friday night. I think everyone in the building was excited with anticipation for what was to come this week. There was a lot of energy in the air as Aziz came out wearing a suit that had to be designed by Hugh Hefner himself. His show was great as it was mainly focused on relationships and how our modern age has basically killed them; which is totally relevant in this town with its "I can replace you with someone else tonight" mentality. But seriously, with the suit he was wearing, I think we were all waiting for him to pop a Viagra and invite about 20 Playboy bunnies on stage with him. I particularly felt sorry for my buddy whose ex girlfriend briefly dated Aziz. I guess he can look at it one of two ways; she thought that my friend was so inadequate that she felt a 4'2" Muppet would better serve her needs. Or he can look at it from this point of view; he was so awesome that she could only replace him with a world famous superstar comedian that hangs out with Kanye. I hope he decides to go with the latter and in the process keeps all sharp objects away from himself. Then there was Tuesday night and Hannibal Burress.

Hannibal was performing at The Paramount Theater, an old converted movie theater that allows you to drink as they show classic movies along with comedy and musical acts. Hannibal was usual self, rhyming about chicken dicks and stabbing bitches, which of course had us all rolling in the aisles while also making sure we knew where the nearest exit signs were. It's amazing that a black man can get on stage and scream about stabbing a woman and no one calls security. Look at how far we've come America? I had to pass on Kids in the Hall who were performing at the same venue because later that night my neighbor comes by with a bottle of wine and informs me that she has 7 pretty Colombian girls that will be staying with her until her wedding night that coming Saturday. I then tell her my fantasy of being a black rapper in a music video that sprays champagne on foreign women. She tells me that she can make that happen! I instantly pass out.

For most of the lame cities that are out there, this in itself would have been enough to shut down half of the downtown area but that's not the case for Live Music Capitol of the World. For decades Austin was this is name only; sure we'd have a ton of shows but they were all awful blues and folk acts. These days you'd be hard pressed to go a week without a top act performing at one of the 8 million venues we have here. Oh and not to mention the other 40 shows you have to choose from on any given night. With everyone and their brother moving down here, the quality of the local acts has gone up considerably, and you have your choice from every genre possible. During the greatest week ever I alone attended Phantogram and Cloud Nothings while missing out on Haim and Manchester Orchestra. I wasn't even close to being pretty enough to be at the Phantogram show but I can tell you that I wanted to impregnate someone on the spot when they played Fall in Love. And I probably would have impregnated a friend of mine after the Cloud Nothings show if Easter wasn't the next morning! The point is, the music is so good here that it actually makes men want to have children!

Also, when I woke up Saturday morning I had forgotten that this weekend was Reggae Fest. It's an awesome food drive where the cost of admission is simply bringing a few canned food items; and this grants you access to great local Reggae music, beer, and the other items you naturally associate with Reggae and dreadlocks.

If that's not enough, there's the fact that our winter only lasts for about 2 months, so this leaves plenty of time to hang out at the Barton Springs pool which is fed from our underground springs. You are sure to see naked hippies smoking herbal refreshment, banging on bongos, and dancing off beat. And if that doesn't turn you on, then you can also go down to our eclectic SOCO district which is full of oddball shops, restaurants, and hipsters. Afterwards you could see a movie while having dinner and a beer at the Austin staple The Alamo Drafthouse on Terror Tuesday or picnic on Mt Bonnell which overlooks our beautiful city. I had to cut about 20,000 words from this piece so it wouldn't run too long but you get the point. Why would you  pay 8 million dollars a month to live in a cardboard box in Manhattan when you could live in the greatest city in the world where Colombian women are dropped off on your doorstep?

Protomartyr, Broken Twin, and The Outfit

In my quest to always check out the latest bands that are popping up in the music scene, I frequently experience some of the strangest shows or parties that are to see out there to see. Saturday I stumbled upon a Cassette Revival Party; this uber hipster event allowed you to trade cassettes, walkmen, boom boxes, and whatever other accessories your dad had hidden away in his storage closet. This was part of a movement to inspire artists to go back to recording analog versus that of digital, and apparently this nonsense is picking up some steam. I saw all of these hipster kids walking around with these cassette tapes that they will never be able listen to. Who has a cassette deck anymore??? People don't even take those to Goodwill because no one wants them! I remember cassettes; they were cool because you could make your girlfriend a mix tape of cheesy love songs whenever she got mad at you; and whenever they needed re spooling it kind of made you feel like a handyman. But there is a reason why we have moved on from that "technology" and that's because the sound quality sucked!

Bear with me for a moment, I will get to the new acts in a second but I cant talk about this party and not mention all of the freaks that I saw out that night. First of all, there were these girls who were dancing to the sounds of a dj who happened to be bobbing his head off beat to his own music; one was dressed like Tina Turner from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and the other looked like Vanity from Action Jackson with this gold triangle chain around her neck. They were kind of cute and reminded me of the weirdo 80's but once the cougar hipster at the party started giving me the eye, I figured it was time for me to leave for another show. And the second I walked in I see this kid rocking beginner dreads with white tips that made him look like the lead singer/rapper of that awful group Kottonmouth Kings! I wont ask you if you remember them because no one does; I barely found a reference to them using a Google search! And right behind this clown was a hipster wearing a bucket hat; I guess he felt inspired to become the white Schoolboy Q of the south. I was secretly hoping that the giant black guy that was wearing a tank top and looked like the lead singer of TV on the Radio would punch him on general principle, but sadly this didn't happen. Oh well, I should've sneaked into the private party that had Corey Feldman drunk on stage and singing Guns n Roses covers off key. But on to the bands...

I'm cautiously excited about Protomartyr from Detroit. At times they sound like Michael Cera's band in Scott Pilgrim but with a lead singer from the grunge era. And on their new record, its like they are channeling Joy Division with the drums reigning supreme on each track. Their fuzzy guitars give it a harder indie sound and the spastic nature of the music matches Joe Casey's personality, which is on full display in his voice and his lyrics. Check out Feral Cats and Ypsilanti to get an idea of their sound. I need to give their latest album a few more listens but for now they get a rating of FRESH!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SSeouZtUBI

Next up is Broken Twin, a singer songwriter from Denmark. I am not a huge fan of singer songwriters and it's next to impossible to get me to go to one of their shows, but something draws me to these depressing lyrics that are sung over a dark and brooding piano. "I find it hard to simply live, I don't know how to be young, tell me now whose side you're on, we fall in love with anyone" - Sun Has Gone. She digs so deep emotionally on each track that you cant help but find a connection; at some point in your life you have shared these thoughts. I would also suggest checking out Out of Air, just stay away from wine and gun powder when you do. I rate her as FRESH!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kvN3aPbpq4

The last group to check out today is The Outfit from Dallas. They are a hip hop trio from the south that sounds like early Future. The Outfit consists of MC Mel and Jayhawk as the southern fried rappers and Dorian, who is the producer that brings a trippy and spaced out feel to their music which helps them stand out from the rest of the pack. I 'm not quite feeling it yet but I'm also extra critical when it comes to hip hop, so check them out for yourself. Props to them for representing Whataburger in their videos though. As of now they get a rating of kind of WEAK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxRA2Q02Wlg

Godzilla

You know that girl or that guy you used to hookup with that you thought was really fun and had great sex with? But for some reason it's been a really long time since you've talked to or seen them so you think it's a great idea to reach out to them because you're going through a bit of a drought? And right before you are about to see them, you start getting really excited and you build them up to be bigger than they ever actually were? And it's only mid sex that you start to remember that this person was really just someone that made you laugh every now and then but in reality was kind of wack and that's the reason why you lost contact with them? Sorry for super long question but that's the perfect description of Godzilla!

Everyone remembers the old school Godzilla movies, they were both cheesy and badass at the same time but in the end they were just movies about a giant beast tearing shit up. But for some reason I forgot that and got really excited for the reboot thinking that it was going to be this mind melting event that would change my viewpoint on what movies should be like; similar to what The Matrix did. It wasn't until mid movie that I realized that I didn't need this big scientific breakdown behind it, I just really wanted to see Godzilla tear shit up! Sadly there just wasn't enough of that in it, but just like sex with the old flame, you have to finish it!

Going into it I was really excited over the fact that they got Gareth Edwards to direct this latest chapter of the giant lizard. If you had seen he previous movie Monsters, then you'd know that he was able to do some pretty amazing stuff with giant creatures on a low budget by simply using shadows and suspense to scare you senseless. So I figured that he would use the same strategy here and not risk the possibility of having the creatures look lame by solely relying on CGI. But for the most part he didn't; you actually see Godzilla and the MUTA's (or MOTA I cant remember) that he's fighting. And that was my issue, if you actually have decent CGI, then use it and have them tear things up on a giant scale like the Emmerich brothers do in every one of their terrible movies!

Instead we get an hour of Walter White aka Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) shouting about conspiracy theories and his son Kick-Ass (Taylor-Johnson) trying to forget his mother's death; which happened in an accident at the plant where a MUTA originally attacked. Keep in mind that once the film is over, you realize that neither character was really relevant to the story and we could've been just fine without ever meeting them, but I guess they have to sell this to US audiences somehow. I will say that the one part of the science that was cool was the fact that the MUTAs, who feed on radiation, had the ability to emit EMP's, shutting everything down in its wake. And it was also cool that these MUTAs were basically prey for Godzilla. And that's basically the story, Godzilla chasing down prey while humans chase them around.

Once Edwards finally said screw it and let them fight, that's when I woke up and started to enjoy the movie. I don't feel good about giving it this rating but I did enjoy the movie, so it gets a rating of barely FRESH! Enjoy and stay away from that wack ex, you've been warned.

My friend will go Bethzilla on me, if I don't mention her nickname in this review. And I have to admit that this dumb nickname did make me chuckle once or twice in the movie. 

Your Friend, Kaytranada, and Issue

I found myself stuck in my apartment for most of the weekend due to a bike accident I had on a Friday morning. I'm telling you this because when you live downtown in a city that has literally 40 shows a night on any given day of the week and you can't go see any of them because you look and feel like the Elephant Man, it's like sleeping next to a naked Mila Kunis that won't let you touch her; it's pure torture! The one time I did sneak out was to support my friend who was playing a show at Stubb's. He was opening for Fire in the Sky and some other terrible band that had three former frat boys playing awful country rock as they wore these short sleeve polo shirts that were unbuttoned to their navels. It felt like I was watching three Patrick Batemans walk on stage right after they had just banged two hookers and flexed their muscles in the mirror mid act. By the way, I recently watched this movie with some people and pretty much every guy in the room admitted to doing this very act at least once. What?!?!? These people actually exist??? Anyway, the point is, even if I did have to suffer through these scrubs, I more often than not stumble upon some pretty good shows. And I live in too great of a city with awesome music options to go this long without previewing some new artists for you. So here you go.

First up is Your Friend from Kansas. Your Friend is the project of Taryn Blake, a girl who looks like someone who would play bike polo on the weekends, not someone who would sit in their dorm room making great mind altering music. I'm always skeptical of the one man band because it generally consists of one scrubby dude with an over elaborate drum kit and a MacBook, and they typically just sit there and play the same rhythm and beat on a loop for about 12 minutes. But with Blake, her music consists of guitars, drums, keys, and her magical voice. She reminds me of Jim Jarmusch's wet dream of being a vampire whose too reclusive to leave their apartment, so all they do is stay in and make this amazing music for centuries (Only Lovers Left Alive). Along that same line, her songs actually feel like an independent film; one that takes its time in telling you the story but once it gets going it completely sucks you in. And that's the perfect description of Tame One; I had almost written it off until all of the instruments kicked in and once that happened I was completely mesmerized by what I was hearing. Give her EP Jeckyll/Hyde a listen as I give her a rating of FRESH.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zad8wq4afr8

Next up is Kaytranada, a DJ out of Montreal that makes funky hip hop music with a touch of house mixed in. I know what you're thinking, something comes out of Montreal besides strippers??? Yes, apparently that city does have more to offer than women of the night and awful French Canadians! Plus I don't think strippers ever actually leave the city. Anyway, this is the kind of music you'd expect to hear in a lounge that has mixologists; but it's cool enough that you'd ride to it on your way to the club. I would check out Disclosure, At All, or just his entire mix tape Instrumental Hip Hop is Dead as it definitely gets the party going once the base drops. I rate this guy as FRESH!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rppKW9eIvE

The last artist for the day is the son of hip hop legend E-40, Issue. My buddy tried to tell me that he was wack but I just didn't want to believe it. Now I will say this, he does make some dope beats but  I should have known something was wrong when he was compared to Lil B. I figured no one could ever be that wack again but boy was I wrong; this is the second coming of dude! All he raps about is making and drinking tea! What's up with rappers and this latest obsession over rhyming about food? Wonton Soup??? When he rhymes he sounds like the dumber and lazier version of Ma$e. Remember him? I think he is wack but because of who his father is I will give him a rating of only WEAK. If you want to check him out, listen to Ten Monks and Let Me Do My Thing. I mean, if a song like Gas Pedal can be a hit, I guess anything can be these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr9aL0Dsaak

Neighbors

I was walking out of a church meeting the other day and I saw this well dressed hipster pacing around in our parking lot looking stressed out. I go to a predominantly black church, so when I see a nicely dressed white guy looking nervous I automatically assume that he's there to hand out a summons or he's handing out free yogurt samples. Black people don't like yogurt. He told me he was stressed because he didn't think we'd have our cars out of the way in time for his trucks to arrive and that they were filming an independent comedy on our property that night. I told him that all he had to do was let me know and that I'd have us out of his way in no time; that basically telling me basically made it a wrap. I also explained that saying something was a wrap was just a phrase black people used to use when something was a done deal. I wasn't trying to relate to him simply because he was in the movie industry; similar to when white guys say to me "what's up bro" or "how's it hanging brother?" And I took the fact that he laughed just a bit too hard at my lame joke as an indicator to where Hollywood is in regards to what's considered funny.

This is why I don't go see many big budget comedies anymore; they've basically all become glorified fart or erection jokes. And yes there is one fart joke and three erection jokes within the first 30 minutes of Neighbors.

Neighbors is about a young married couple who have just recently had a baby and moved into a quiet residential neighborhood. They are struggling with adjusting to their new life as a part of them still wants to hang out with their friends and party like they use to but the new baby (who they love btw) keeps them from doing so. So when they see that a fraternity is moving in next door to them, they are naturally concerned with the fact that they will be up all night throwing loud parties. The frat was just kicked off of campus for this very reason and they don't want to upset their new neighbors, so they make a pact with them that if they are ever too loud, just call them and let them know.

Well wouldn't you know it, one night the frat throws a party so loud that Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are left with no other option but to call the cops on them. Once the cops arrive, the head of the fraternity Zac Effron feels like their bond has been broken and this leads to an all out prank battle between the two houses.

I have a friend from New Zealand and for some reason he thinks he's funny. It doesn't matter if no one laughs at his jokes, he just keeps throwing them at you until one hits. And that's what this movie felt like; they threw about 2000 jokes at you and only about 20% of them hit. The ones that do hit are really funny but man you have to suffer through some pretty long bits at times. There's the what seemed like a 20 minute discussion between Rogen and Bryne on how they were going to tell their neighbors to keep it down but remain cool while doing so. This of course means we had to listen to Rogen ramble for about 15 minutes while not being funny. Then there was the scene where they each had their own terrible impressions of celebrities which sounded nothing like them. I'd like to think this was on purpose but that'd be giving them too much credit.  Also I'm not sure when it became ok for white guys to openly use the N word as a joke. It's like that time a few years when it was socially acceptable to make fun of the way Japanese people talk; that was never cool to me.

I don't mean to complain too much; like I said I did laugh out loud a few times. And they did show random boobs as well, one of which included an unbelievably gross milking scene. I know what you're about to ask and the answer is yes, I still would've hit it afterwards.

In the end this was just one big joke that was stretched out a little too long. Some of the cameos worked, mainly Rafi's from The League but overall I have to rate this movie as WEAK. I'd check it out if I was bored and had nothing else to do.

The Retrieval

I know that I am about to state the obvious here but I really do love movies; so much so that it negatively affects my social life. I'm not simply talking about the fact that it takes me away from doing other things that involve actual human interaction, I'm focused more on the fact that after seeing 3 straight depressing movies in a row while also watching The Wire, I'm about ready to play real life Frogger in the middle of the I-35 highway! So what do I do to deal with it? Naturally I go see a movie about the Civil War that involves black people getting punked.

In the latest story about our country's darkest time, we are introduced to a young boy named Will and his uncle Marcus. They have effectively become freed slaves since the day their plantation and its owner were overtaken by the Northern troops. Will's parents are gone so he is being raised and taken care of by his 'survive by any means necessary' uncle. So in order to survive they work with bounty hunters to track down runaway slaves and wanted men for money. Their leader is a white man named Burrell; he isn't necessarily an outright evil man but he will take out anyone or anything that will get in the way of him collecting his bounty money. One day he sends Will and Marcus on a mission to track down this dangerous and mysterious man named Nate. The reasons for the retrieval of this man are murky at best but the reward is a rather hefty one and Burrell considers this such a priority that he threatens to hunt down and kill both Will and Marcus if they don't return with Nate in tow.

So they use the excuse of Nate's brother's failing health to lure him back with them. He reluctantly agrees and the rest of the movie focuses on their journey back to Nate's original home where the bounty hunters await. Along the way we learn more and more about this mysterious man as well as the imperfect relationship that exists between Will and Marcus.

This movie is a character study, mainly focusing on Will and his internal conflict of what kind of man he wants to become. From the opening scene where you see him using his age and his look of innocence to gain the trust of people just so he can use that to his advantage to bring in runaway slaves, you see is reluctance and instant regret. But all he knows is what his uncle is teaching him, so he naturally believes that this is the only way to survive. And things only get more complicated once he meets Nate and they encounter the challenges you would normally expect to see in the middle of a Civil War.

This movie is gut wrenching at times as you keep wanting Will to separate from his uncle and do the right thing, but that's his only remaining family in a world where all he knows is death and destruction. I loved this movie because it actually gives you a side of the war that hasn't been beaten to death over the years and you honestly have no idea how it's going to end until the film's final shot.

There is one funny thing of note and that's the fact that Will's uncle Marcus looks just like Chappelle in his Behind the Scenes of Roots sketch. They could've thrown me a bone and played some Rick James during the final credits, but I guess that's reason number 450 of why I am not allowed to make movies.

I rate this movie as FRESH but I suggest that you see it when you're in a really good mood.

Palo Alto - Book

So dig it … James Franco is a writer among other things. Now I’d always heard about James “Dean” Franco being a bit of a jack of all trades, but after the serious waste of time that was Ethan Hawk’s attempts at writing I sort of gave up on the idea of celebrity literature. I only started paying attention to Franco as an artist after he did the movie “Howl” about the poem of the same name by Allen Ginsberg. In my opinion that film was excellent because of how raw and honest it was as well as the fact that it brought to the forefront perhaps my favorite American poem in a fresh new way via new media. But also I appreciate Franco’s sense of rebellion and transcendence in the form of his social media selfie empire, his shit paintings for painting’s sake, and his self-deprecating sense of humor. He basically trolls the whole world. After all he played Ginsberg with such openness that it almost hard to watch some of the scenes in the film. I’m with you in Rockland! Check that one out if you haven’t.

It wasn’t until he caught shit for hitting on that 17 year old girl however that I took notice of Palo Alto as it was suggested that the whole thing had been a stunt to promote the upcoming (and how timely for this blog) movie version of Palo Alto being released May 9^th. As Franco never acknowledged either way if this had only been a media stunt, my curiosity overcame me so I picked it up and gave it a read.

The film version happens to be directed and co-written by Gia Coppola and should be an interesting jaunt … Franco incidentally will play a minor character – the teacher (Mr. B) who preys on a young high school girl so the dots seemingly connect. Anyway all speculation aside, this novel really got me. I read it (a short 200 pages or so) in two days and damn near couldn’t put it down.

It focuses on a series of loosely connected vignettes told from the perspectives of young men and women in high school in Palo Alto who seem to be exceedingly narcissistic and troublingly violent sexually and otherwise. What really struck me though was the style. It’s not preachy at all. Every character is justified in a strange empty adolescent way. Franco spent a good deal of time at Brooklyn College taking creative writing courses and working with some of the best mentors in the world. It was during this time that the vast amount of what would become Palo Alto was penned.
 
What’s interesting is that in the afterword Franco mentions that the driving force of his narrative happened to be the fact that the classes would read what they were working on to each other and it gave him a particular focus as the subject matter was both personal and explicit. He used his own loose memories of his childhood, as well as the memories of anonymous high school students (requested for his thesis) for source material.

As a child of the 80’s I could appreciate the references strewn throughout. Shit like Ninja Turtles, and Zelda Ocarina of time brought back flashes of my own memories growing up in America. The feel or style of the narrative hits you like some kind Bret Easton Ellis novel; something akin to Less than Zero or Rules of Engagement. There is a nihilistic tendency in all of the characters as if the outrageous acts they do regularly are downplayed as if they happen all the time. The best part is there’s nothing over

the top in the sense that a little pot smoking here or there, or the occasional peach schnapps or gangbang are about as bad as it gets. In other words the real bad stuff is only hinted at or implicit in the descriptions. What’s left unsaid is perhaps the most troubling of all and yet it’s transcendent. It pushes you to refrain from passing judgment. Each vignette relies on a tiny arc that drops you suddenly without much of a resolution. This gives tremendous emotional impact and a sense of nostalgia for those times when even the slightest occurrence could mean extremes of excitement or abject valleys of suicidal depression. Moreover, he deals with issues of race, self-identity, gun violence, misogyny, and drug abuse with equal whimsy.

As I was reading and remembering high school, I’d have strange recollections. Not so much things that occurred but the emotional backdrops of these occurrences.  In other words in my memories, who I was and what I dreamed of were so amplified by hormones, and fear, and lust that every moment seemed to be immortalized for no other reason than it was happening to me. This is the very magic of

Palo Alto. The solipsism of adolescence is a funny thing because it’s capable of such poetic beauty and yet there is this dark side that makes possible egregious acts of ignorant violence (emotionally and physically) that quite often go unanswered or simply rendered irrelevant as you move into adulthood.

One particular moment that really made me love the book happened when a young man was caught drunk driving after a hit and run and made to do community service. He was sent to work in children’s library and being the perfect shit that he was, he ended up wasting his time rereading all the childhood books that his mother had read to him instead of working. There are some great moments where Franco describes books like The Hungry Caterpillar or the Rainbow Goblins, books that I myself have read with my mother, in terms of extreme and hateful adolescent ignorance. For instance the Goblins were clearly gay because they sucked off the rainbow “nothing gayer than that shit” or the fact that when they were betrayed by the flowers and swallowed up by the strange color juices you found out they didn’t wear underwear “because you could see the blue goblin’s butt as he was dying.” Of course

such things are offensive to say but even when dealing with issues of race there is a sensitivity to it that even goes beyond the nihilism in a way that points to some kind of strange salvation for all the characters involved.

An example of this is that after this kid gets booted from the library for drawing dicks and vaginas on all the characters in the children’s books, he is reassigned to an old folks home where he meets an old woman whom he decides to draw “shitty portraits” of because he’s so bored. Incidentally he learns to draw the spirit underneath all the “wrinkles upon wrinkles” and finds that even the most depressing living people, seemingly devoid of a soul, might still have one hiding out underneath the “old dead decaying eyes.”

What’s even more intriguing is how Franco manages to write women. There are a handful of characters that are slutty and/or “mature for their age” that the boys discuss as you can imagine they would, but the moments where these women have internal dialogues are some of the most moving in the book.
They are written as real and valuable and lucid almost more so than the one-dimensional caricatures of the boys. Some of the passages are haunting enough for me to have felt like I was reading my own wife’s or sister’s story as fucked up as that sounds.

All in all I’d almost reluctantly and surprisingly give this one an ULTRA-TIGHT and would encourage anyone who wants a quick read to pick it up. I’m definitely going to read his other work and most likely anything he ever puts out. This one made me James Franco fan. He’s a writer’s writer and in my opinion a damn good one. Hell, it made me want to write and to write truthfully. Usually I don’t bother watching movies about books I’ve read but I’ll check this one out … the Coppolas tend to not let me down and I’ll say without restraint that James Franco might just be a fucking genius. Yeah I said it.

Matt Cowart

 
 

The Amazing Spiderman 2

For some reason I keep getting fooled by the Spiderman franchise. I always get lured in by the fact that Spidey seems fun, colorful, and flexible; similar to the women I like! But just like with those women, the longer you hang around and are exposed to what's really going, you realize that it's just a boring shallow mess that somehow gets $10-$20 out of you every time you hang out. I should've known something was up when right before the movie starts, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone come on the screen begging you to turn in your ticket to the box office for a free digital download of the movie you're about to see. That's like a girl giving it up in the middle of the first date, they seemed just a bit too eager to lock things down. "Yo girl, can I finish my burger first???"

The first time they rolled out a Spiderman trilogy it started out ok but by the time we reached the third one we were stuck with a stoned James Franco, an annoying Topher Grace, and cheesy dance numbers with lip syncing. Thankfully Hollywood realized how awful things had become and decided to reboot the franchise with new actors and a new feel. The first Amazing Spiderman was entertaining enough but it looks like we are headed down the path of destruction again with this second installment.

This movie starts off at Peter and Gwen's graduation ceremony, of which Peter is late to because he is tracking down these random bad guys who are trying to steal Plutonium (I believe). I mention this because its one of only three action scenes in this entire two hour movie. Once Spidey saves the day and arrives just in time to receive his diploma, he starts to feel guilty that he is still with Gwen. Digital Dennis Leary keeps popping up in his head, as does the promise he made to him to stay away from his daughter so she's not hurt by his being the webbed hero. So instead of providing us with more awesome action scenes, we get 90 minutes of Meet Joe Black. Should we be together or shouldn't we? On top of that Peter has to deal with the fact that his best friend from childhood has inherited a deadly disease from his father and he is hell bent on getting Spiderman's blood because he is certain that it will save his life. Oh and he is still dealing with his parents deserting him as well as a new enemy in the form of a former nobody geek in Max (Jamie Foxx).

That's a lot to deal with in a two hour period and the writers don't do us any favors by glossing over any of these story lines. They deal with the Gwen situation in the cheesiest way possible by throwing on what sounds like a U2 C side while they are at a carnival and giving each other the lamest compliments ever. Also for some reason when Max is attacked by these evil eels and turns into Electro, he has his own theme music that sounds like a scrubbier version of My Chemical Romance screaming "I hate Spiderman, you lied to me Spiderman". Which under normal circumstances would be ok if he was flying around or something while they played it, but they play it during the middle of a dialogue between him and Spidey and its just very distracting. If they were going to give him theme music, they could've at least been clever and used a play on words. I mean its Jamie Foxx, just have him rap License to Eel or something. Yes, yes I know that was awful but I laughed for like 30 minutes at that joke last night, so I had to print it.

And then they had the ultimate joke at their disposal and never used it. Peter's best friend Harry Osborn has a secretary who is white and they named her Felicia for some reason! So naturally I'm expecting the "bye Felicia" joke to pop up at any time! No! Noooo! All we got was a "Thanks for your help Felicia". What????? Awful!

It's not that the acting was bad or anything; everyone did a fairly decent job in it. And the three action scenes they did have were pretty damn cool. It's just that a superhero movie should have more than three freaking action scenes; especially when you have villains as cool as Electro and the Green Goblin. The rest of the time you are bored to the brink of death!

I rate this movie as really WEAK and suggest that you avoid it. Have a lovely evening Felicia!

Tristessa - Book

Everyone who’s ever been to high school in America knows about Jack Kerouac and the beats. It’s likely that you’ve even read On The Road or at least might have stumbled upon the ultra-wack film adaptation featuring vampire goddess Bella as a two-dimensional bit character with one facial expression (playing against type - just kidding). If you are not an avid reader then you also likely never moved beyond the cliffs notes of old Jack’s most well-known novel. Ask anyone who didn’t drop out of college as an English major and tragically you’ll find that at best Jack finds himself hardly remembered or at least mired in the all too familiar Penguin Classics territory of American literature – a moot point – easily forgotten – old news. What most people don’t know is that Jack is the original punk rock masochist, dying the flames of his own high minded zeal and love of truth. Countless indie bands have referenced his work – even more mainstream acts like Smashing Pumpkins.

How hard was Jack Kerouac? He died of internal bleeding at the age of 47 due to advanced cirrhosis of the liver coupled with injuries sustained in a bar fight the night before. Now don’t get me wrong … drinking as much as he did meant that Jack penned some stuff that was pretty much shit. In fact it can be safely assumed that anything he ever wrote down was influenced heavily by post-war Bennies and shit-tons of cheap wine and whiskey. To get a sense of just how fucked up this guy was most of the time watch his live (at the time) TV interview with William Buckley Jr on YouTube a few short years before his death. For Christ’s sake his last words were “I’m bleeding.”

Despite his numerable intolerable literary moments however I have always had a soft spot for anything beat and as such have read even the notebooks of bad poetry and stupid doodles. I blame my dad who slipped a copy of Naked Lunch (by beat grandfather William S. Burroughs) into my trunk one summer before I left for camp. That was an interesting summer. My point is that I have attempted to save you from the obnoxious and call out one small work that I think you’ll appreciate. It’s called Tristessa and its 97 pages of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read.

This is the book for bad hangover Sundays. You know the kind of morning where you can literally feel the lack of dopamine and you can’t seem to right yourself. The Sunday morning coming down from whatever the hell it was that you took the night before. You start to daydream about evil shit that might happen to you and you probably deserve it. You sincerely consider running out in front of a car or at least having a scotch for breakfast. This is the time to read Tristessa – out loud – all alone – as if you’re reciting it for God himself. It’s the penultimate in transcendent freshness. It hurts so good.

This short work is the story of a Mexico City whore who’s original name in real life was Esperanza Villanueva and who befriended Jack when he traveled there on multiple occasions. She is heavily addicted to morphine and lives in a shanty town that defies description. Jack named her Tristessa in the novel because in those days libel was taken seriously by publication houses. The title is apt however as it’s Spanish /Portuguese for “sadness.” Basically the story is loosely framed around real events but completely told from the first person perspective of Jack Duluoz (Kerouac) who comes to Mexico City to connect with an old friend and ends up falling in love with Tristessa. This is no ordinary love however. Jack is on a Buddhist kick – which means that he’s sworn off lust for lust’s sake. His entire ordeal is centered upon his raging alcohol fueled adoration of the strangely beatific Tristessa as he watches with cool headed hipster vision the entire cosmos manifest itself in her death march.

As you can imagine, a heavily morphine addicted whore in Mexico City is at death’s door and this inescapable reality become the most noble crutch for the deeply medicated Jack. He sees God in Tristessa, in her chickens scampering across the floor, in the dove that’s made its home in her rafters, in the sickly old face of the old woman who shares her shots.

As the novel progresses you notice that his achingly lustful longing to show her his love is thwarted by his inability to speak her language, not just Spanish but the language of a junky. His entire monstrous struggle is simply his, never shared, and only hinted at by his erratic and sad behavior. There is no hope for Jack and there is no hope for Tristessa. In this he finds that where there is no hope, all hope manifests itself perfectly.

So pour that scotch, put on some jazz, draw the blinds and cuddle up to Tristessa when you feel truly hopeless – you might find God in the endless poetic ramblings of a lovelorn legend long dead without any answers or any comfort. If you never read anything else by Kerouac, get this one in. I’d give it a TIGHT.

“You know the futility of love and you shrug – you shrug away the warm kiss” - Tristessa

Matt Cowart

 

 

 

 

Blue Ruin

I will never forget the first time I cried in the theater; it was when a local gang retaliated in response to Ice Cube pulling out a gun on them in Boyz in the Hood. When I saw them shoot down poor Ricky in the alley, I just lost it! It was so pathetic that even my female cousin looked at me in disgust as it was happening. But whatever, I wasn't the only one crying, quite a few people felt this connection to Ricky!  I grew up nowhere near the hood but just like Ricky I was trying to escape the awful environment I grew up in; which was the horrible country town of Victoria, TX. There may not have been black dudes who had Jeri curls and drank St Ides but there were plenty of hicks who all owned rifles and listened to David Allen Coe. So when he went down, I felt my dreams going down with him as well. "Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what's going on in the hood!" That's right Ice Cube, and apparently they don't care about what's going on in the woods either.

Jeremy Saulnier in Blue Ruin takes you to a world where people dispense their own form of justice on one another. And just like in Boyz in the Hood, there seems to be no end to the retaliation that occurs as a result of it. When you first meet Dwight, you see this loner who lives out of his car, eats out of garbage bins, and showers in the homes of people on vacation. It isn't until one morning when he receives an important message from a cop that he decides to clean himself up and go on what is apparently his life's mission. The man that was accused of murdering his parents is about to be released from prison and Dwight immediately returns home to kill him. Once he does, it sets in motion a series of events where Dwight is left no other option but to defend his family and take on the entire family of the man he just murdered.

What I like about this film is how real life revenge is portrayed in it. Dwight's parents were taken away from him at a young age for apparently no reason and the murderer is being released early due to a plea agreement. Now I am not saying that we would all go after our parents' murderers nor am I saying that we should; but if we did, we would be just as bad at it as Dwight is. He is so inept at what he is doing that it's painful to watch at times but you can tell that he will avenge his parent's death no matter what the likely outcome of it is. He hasn't gone away to study jiu-jitsu with random monks in Brazil and returned as this badass. He simply went away to deal with the pain and this is the result of his time of reflection.

You feel the fear he has over his sister and her kids potentially being harmed as a result of his actions, the built up anger he has in his heart, as well as his inability to identify with a world that's full of people who haven't had their lives turned upside down in the manner that he and his family have. But also when you get to the third act of the movie and it slows down a bit, you learn more about Dwight and you begin to identify with him in a different way.

At first I didn't quite know how I felt about this film when I left the theater. I thought it was entertaining but it felt more like a cry for gun control. "This is what happens when you give a bunch of hicks easy access to guns" And while it still sort of has that feel to it, this movie has settled well with me mainly because of its realism and the range of emotions it forces you to feel. I rate this movie as FRESH mainly due to the fact that they were able to find a bar that still sells Red Dawg beer! I haven't had that since I was in grade school!