Heir-brained Lebron

So you really are the next Jordan.

Recently Cleveland Cavalier Ira Newble drafted an open letter chastising China for its complicity in the current Darfur genocide. He also urged fellow professional hoopsters to show solidarity on the issue. Newble was able to get everybody on the team to sign the letter…except The Chosen One and Damon Jones. James’ response as to why he didn’t sign?

``It was basically not having enough information,'' LeBron said in an interview before Game 4 of his team's playoff game against the Nets in New Jersey three days ago. ``Any decision I make I have to have extensive knowledge.''

Oh that’s right, I guess even with a few hundred thousand dead, millions displaced, a growing international outcry and oh yeah, rampant gang-rape, you still have to hear both sides of the story. I guess I'll also reserve judgment until I hear the Barbara Walter’s Special where she sits down to a heartfelt interview with members of the Janjaweed.

Are you kidding me? Is James so beholden to Nike that he won’t even sign a letter condemning genocide? Wow. James has made no secret of his desire to be the world’s richest athlete. I don’t think he’ll eclipse Tiger due to the nature of their respective sports, but it’ll be close. Should he remain healthy, he will undoubtedly eclipse Jordan’s career earnings both in salary and endorsements. While James has yet to match Jordan’s on-court accomplishments, he has already shown he will equal Jordan’s calculated disengagement from any public political forum. (If you recall during the 1990 North Carolina Senate race, upon being asked if he would openly support an opponent of Republican incumbent Jesse Helms, North Carolina’s favorite son infamously stated “Republicans buy shoes too.”) Here you have one of the most visible humans on the planet unwilling to speak up for what amounts to a moral no-brainer. In an ideal world, James would have taken this issue along with the clout a $90MM contract confers directly to Nike CEO Phil Knight and said, “Hey, we can like do something about this.”

What’s sad is that I kind of dig Lebron. Despite his constant courting of comparisons between himself and MJ and his questionable business decisions, I find he carries himself very well. (If I had $100MM at the age of 18, I’d probably walk around wearing a platinum and diamond encrusted bank statement hanging from my neck along with some flip-flops, that’s it.) He seems to have a real personality (at least in his commercials) and it is a likeable one. Given the unimaginable amount of hype, constant fan and media interest, endless scrutiny and dissection of Lebron as a player and celebrity, I believe he’s done an admirable job of staying sane. I don’t believe the human ego is built to sustain that kind of pressure. I’m more surprised when a prominent celebrity turns out to be more like Will Smith than Eddie Murphy.

Maybe after he’s accumulated a few more dump trucks full of lucre, won a few titles and gotten more fan adulation only to watch it fade, he’ll understand. He’ll understand why a figure like Muhammad Ali will be a far more important figure in the history books than his current idol MJ. He’ll understand that becoming a “global icon” means more than just being the poster boy for an army of corporations. He’ll understand that eventually when the camera is on him and the microphone is in his face, people will want to hear something other than, “Obey your thirst.”

Movie Picks of the Week

Hot Fuzz – Danny Butterman: "Ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, 'Aaaaaaah?' "
So goes the line that sets up one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in years. Hot Fuzz comes from the guys who did Shaun of the Dead (a movie I only saw parts of, but heard good things about).

These are guys who I would love to sit down to dinner with and just talk about movies because clearly their minds are as gunked-up with celluloid as mine. This movie reminded me a lot of Talladega Nights in the way it manages to almost lovingly skewer its target, in this case the buddy-cop genre which gave us classics like Beverly Hills Cop and regurgitated tripe like Rush Hour (or “-2”, or “-3”).

They respect the genre which is what allows them to mock it so effectively. You’ve got everything ranging from a very well telegraphed Point Break reference that had me in tears to toss away references of movies like Chinatown. Clever chaps. British humor doesn’t seem to translate too well in the States which is a shame because I feel as if you’ve not completely experienced comedy if you’ve never watched one Monty Python film or at least seen an episode of Mr. Bean. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have impeccable comedic timing and play off each other exceptionally well. I look forward to whatever they have next on tap.


28 Weeks Later

28 Days Later was an imaginative take on the zombie-genre where instead of the living dead, we were given people infected with “rage.” (You know what just occurred to me though? The whole “rage”-virus was stolen from the Transformers cartoon. Specifically this episode. Man I’ve seen too much crap. What have I done with my life?) Anyway, it was the first time (as far as I know) that you had “zombies” running like track stars trying to take down anything in sight.

It was truly intense, especially the early scenes where we have the protagonist Cillian Murphy wondering around a seemingly abandoned London. The tension is ratcheted up to the point of being unbearable. I loved every minute. I’ve watched Boyle’s films since Shallow Grave which introduced me to Ewan McGregor who would go on to make Trainspotting with Boyle a couple of years later.

After a tidy return at the box office and decent DVD sales, four years later we have the sequel which returns none of the original cast and Boyle overseeing only as executive producer. The movie starts off well enough with a man making an obvious, but tough choice (c’mon does she really leave him a choice?). But instead of really exploring the consequences of his decision, we get your standard “let’s do everything that doesn’t make sense to progress the plot.” Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many an entertaining film has come from watching people make god-awful decisions (Friday the 13th series, Aliens, Poltergeist—should have just left the little girl in the TV—as Eddie Murphy said, she was only five and they couldn’t have been that attached to her). In this case, I just got a bit frustrated as to how stupid everybody was being. Also, it felt too much like a retread of the previous film which was a bit lame since they had such great ideas to start this one off.

On the bright side, the film does have a decent amount of scares in it and although I’d seen it all before, it was done competently (except for the awful ‘chaos-cam’ whenever up-close ‘rage’-attacks happened). I can’t really recommend this one as a $10 expenditure, but if it’s on cable I wouldn’t make you change the channel. Until that happens, go rent 28 Days Later!

What the Shell You Lookin' At?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) – “It won the Oscar” “Really, for what?” “Best movie ever.” – Talladega Nights. I haven’t seen this movie in nearly fifteen years, but in my mind it's one of the top ten comic book movies ever made. (See right down there at #9!!!). Here's why: They made this movie without CGI and it didn't look crappy. The turtle costumes were created and animated by the legendary Jim Henson Muppet Company. That in itself is reason enough to at least respect this movie. Nobody wouldn’t even try to make this movie today as a live action work. Also this movie had the voice talents of Corey Feldman, one of the finest thespians of the go-go 80s. He strung together a hit streak of films only Tom Cruise, Will Smith and Tom Hanks would go on to rival.

Beginning in 1984 with his appearance in Friday the 13th IV, he went on to make some of the greatest films in the history of motion pictures, nay, in the history of human achievement. I submit the following body of work or oeuvre if you will (always use the fancier word when you want to emphasis how important $#!t is): Gremlins (1984), Friday the 13th V (1985), The Goonies (1985), Stand by Me (1986), The Lost Boys (1987), License to Drive (1988). Four of those movies went on to win Nobel Prizes and one developed a vaccine for cancer I believe. What did they all have in common? The Feldman. Ipso facto (Latin is keen!), TMNT is at least a very good movie.

Now I don't remember the details of the film, but I do recall Raphael being a brooding bad-@$$, Michaelangelo making a lot of pizza jokes and a lot of ninjas getting beat down. That sounds to me like the recipe for a classic film.

1. Batman Begins
2. X-Men 2
3. Spider-man 2
4. Batman
5. Superman II
6. Superman
7. Blade
8. X-Men
9. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
10. Sin City

Overheard In Brooklyn...

“You know Hillary’s gonna win the election? You know that right? It was a prediction by Nostradamus. You know that right?”

-Some guy walking down my block in Crown Heights, dead-@$$ serious.

Spidey 3 -- Uh, It's Not Superman III?

I like Sam Raimi. I really do. A Simple Plan? Minor classic of the genre. Evil Dead Trilogy? Still watch at least one of those movies every year. But this third installment of Spider-man? What the hell? How can such a competent director make such bad decisions? Has the stench of the Batman sequels dissipated so much that we have forgotten their lessons of exactly what not to do in a comic book movie?

Rule no. 1: K.I.S.S. – Keep it simple stupid! You’ve got way too many subplots swirling around in this thing – Sandman and his sick daughter, Peter and MJ’s relationship troubles, the Brock rivalry, the son of Green Goblin rivalry…argh, my head hurts. And so you set all this stuff up and manage to wrap it all up, but then everything gets short shrift. I am displeased.

I got the sense that he had this unwieldy script and tried to do the best he could. But Sam, you’ve got the best performing comic franchise ever! Stretch it out! You have material for two movies here.

You’ve got the symbiote-suit, so run with it. You didn’t need to use Venom in this movie. You could have shown Brock getting hooked up w/ the suit at the end, but we didn’t need to see an entire Venom arc especially handled so poorly (and BTW Topher Grace makes a great Brock, but he’s given so little to work with).

So that’s strike one with that and then we get Saccharine-man AKA Sandman robbing banks to save Tiny Tim. WTF? Why can’t a villain just be bad? Strike two!!

Then you’ve got dark/emo-Petey which I actually liked, but again it falls to the wayside too quickly. You had something there; why not run with it? Ball one.

Also, how much did this franchise gross worldwide? Why aren’t you hiring WETA to do the SFX? These graphics are utter shite. Spidey looks fake; Venom looks fake; Sandman looks sporadically fake…everything looks like a rubber action figure. That’s three.

So other than that, it’s great!

Bjork gave me an Ear-rection

Four years ago on Coney Island I had one of my all-time favorite concert going experiences. It left me exhilarated and completely exhausted. For two hours me and a couple of thousand people danced and sang along with Bjork Guðmundsdóttir and we all left feeling like the world ain't too bad a place.

Such is the power of the Icelandic nymph.

Bjork is the most important musical artist of the late twentieth century. There is no single artist or group that can match the fierce intelligence of her songwriting combined with the alien beauty of her voice. The soundscapes she chooses to inhabit are equally complex and peculiar. Compositions tend to be amalgamations of electronica, R&B and pop that make her at once indefinable and accessible. I suppose she’d be defined as pop, but when her work is taken as a whole, it seems to transcend the genre (and really all genres).

I find most modern songs about romance to be mawkish and simple-minded. Singers coo “ooh baby” a hundred times and furiously emote about how horny somebody makes them or how they were hurt when such-and-such was seen at the movies with so-and-so. This problem extends beyond the teeny-bopper pop tarts from whom this type of pabulum is expected. There is a dearth of popular artists making really intelligent music (I hear the Arcade Fire’s not too shabby, but they’re “NYC/L.A.-popular” which is a different kind of popularity).

Bjork manages to make love songs that are deeply personal yet devoid of sentimentality. And she is a woman very in touch with her own sexuality. Her songs make voyeurs out of her listeners. Excerpt from “Cocoon” off Vespertine: “He slides inside/half-awake, half-asleep/we faint back into sleephood/when I wake up the second time/in his arms gorgeousness/he’s still inside me.” She aspirates half of the lyrics increasing the sensuousness almost to the point of discomfort for the listener (the song still makes me blush after countless listenings). Or take these lyrics from Possibly Maybe: “Mon petite vulcan/Your eruptions and disasters/I keep calm/Admiring your lava/I keep calm”
and “Since we broke-up/I’m using lipstick again/I suck my tongue/In remembrance of you.” Wow.

Another note about her lyrics: they don’t rhyme. That might not seem like a huge deal, but I think it is. It forces the listener to really engage with the song, because you can’t anticipate what is going to be said next. This makes multiple listenings far more rewarding than the average pop song (at least to me).

As for the concert:

The concert was the equivalent of being invited into a painter’s studio. Half the songs she performed were from the upcoming album, Volta. Some worked, some really worked and others didn’t connect with me. Yet, the experience was never less than fascinating. She opened with her new single Earth Invaders, a hyperkinetic sugar rush of a song. The accompanying horn/vocal section (all female; each played a horn and sang) was (we were told at the end of the set) a group from Iceland.

There was clarity in her voice, still as powerful as ever. It filled Radio City Music Hall and at times sent shivers to my spine. (She always elicits laughs from the audience when she utters her mouse-like “thank you” after completing each song.) When she let loose with songs like “Pluto”, the place just erupted (during songs like that and “Army of Me”, I really wished the concert was outdoors or in a place like the Roseland so you could feel the entire audience reacting to the music).

Bjork brought out a few guests to help her perform the new material. Most were musicians playing an instrument specific to the given song. One was a fellow vocalist who I believe was named Anthony. Anthony and Bjork performed a very awkward duet. I’ll reserve judgment for the song until I hear it on the album, but the performance left a little to be desired. I forgave the song for not working, because it was so amusing to watch Bjork interact with another vocalist. It was like watching two kids at a high-school talent show. For most of the song they were trying to coordinate their dance movements which consisted of both swaying back and forth as if about to slamdance with each other (in fact the swaying got so pitched that Anthony started jumping up and down like some kind of over-excited Labrador; weirdest shite I’ve ever seen).

There was a generous helping of songs from all her albums save Selma Songs. The stage was full of equipment and attention-grabbing devices (lasers, projection screens, flags…), but it never took away from her presence. My eyes stayed fixed on her most of the time, intrigued by her complete submersion into the songs.

The only gamble that didn’t pay off for me was the performance of certain songs from Medulla, the album composed with mostly human vocals. A song like “Where Is The Line” needs that ethereal vocal arrangement to be effective. Conventional instruments substituted in for all the creative vocal pyrotechnics did not do the song justice.

The set was short and sweet. She finished in roughly 1 hr and 20mins including encore. The crowd would have loved to stick around for another hour easily. I can’t really compare this concert to the other one I saw four years ago. I enjoyed the Coney Island concert, because it was a completely visceral experience. This concert I enjoyed in a different capacity. It gave a glimpse into how the mind of one of my favorite artists works.

Required Bjork listening:
Venus as a Boy – Debut
Human Behavior - Debut
It’s Oh So Quiet – Post
Army of Me – Post
Possibly Maybe – Post
Joga – Homogenic
Unravel – Homogenic
Bachelorette – Homogenic
Pagan Poetry – Vespertine
Heirloom – Vespertine
Oceania – Medulla
Where is the Line - Medulla

Kneel Before Zod

After seven years of not having a television to call my own, I've jumped back into the fray. Behold the beauty of the Samsung 32" LCD Enthrall-atron 5000 and the Onkyo Cacophonator X-3.14. I also copped a nice little upscaling DVD player (not sold on Blu-Ray or HD just yet). I finished off my set-up with a nice selection of speakers and a subwoofer after doing some research on an A/V forum (Bose is apparently a very despised brand).

Initial tests indicate that this thing will rock even the most jaded eyes and ears. People complain about living in the hood, but one of the unmentioned benefits is that your neighbors are usually loud and this remains true during all hours of the day and night. Yes, when you want to just get some good sleep after coming home from a hard workday, it can be frustrating to hear somebody blaring the reggae version of "This Is Why I'm Hot" out of a system that N.O.R.E. would describe as "garbation" roughly ten times straight. However that also means you won't feel guilty for watching Casino Royale with the volume set high enough to fill an AMC stadium-seating theater at 2am on a Wednesday.