stay away from tideland, the latest film from terry gilliam.
dammit terry, you directed 12 monkeys and the fear and loathing adaptation. you directed baron munchasen. you make visually stunning, strange, stubbornly independent movies. i am supposed to like tideland.
i had read that this movie was controversial and that critics seemed to either love it or hate it. every time the controversial nature of the film was referenced somewhere, it came with mention of the drug use in the movie: the main character is a young girl who helps her father with the administration of his heroin dose. the shooting-up isn't really that big a component of the film, but from what i had read, you would surmise that this was the controversial bit of tideland. no problem, right?
a terry gilliam film shrouded in controversy, by its sheer weirdness and by drug-use scenes. sounds right up my alley, yes?
dammit terry. im supposed to like tideland.
i love confounding, weird-ass movies, the type where you need to watch it several times to really pick up on whats going on. i love 'eternal sunshine of the spotless mind', 'donnie darko', 'waking life', that type of thing. these movies have taught me patience, and eventually each one rewarded that patience.
tideland starts out with some trademark sprawling-visual gilliam fare. soon though, we are in isolation with our main character, and the story just stalls.
my girlfriend and i made maybe 4 different attempts to watch the rest of the movie. god it is boring. i tried to be patient, and find something in the movie to latch onto, to keep my interest peaked. i came up empty.
the last time porsche and i tried to get through the film, we got pretty close by my reckoning. i was committed, very committed, to finish this damn thing. i felt like maybe the last 5 minutes or whatever would *PLEASE DEAR GOD* tie the wretched thing together.
so we're in this movie watching a little girl hang out with a lobotomized hill-person, playing make believe about submarines and sharks while they stumble around the desert. the hill person's hill-person mother has mummified the main character's father, and they are all kind of a make-shift family at this point. i feel like ive taken a lot of psychic lumps from mr gilliam to stay with the movie up to this point.
then the hill-person and the little girl start making out. then she basically asks him to show her his penis.
then tideland comes out of my dvd player and back to the rental store.
dammit terry, i am supposed to like this movie.
Monday
check out #2
check out John Porcellino's King-Cat comics. John has published his own digest-size mini-comic for a long long time, 'king cat comics and stories', and sells it through his website and elsewhere. the books exude cool with their simple-yet-quality linework. john has actually published a reprint book of the best material from these minis, a book i will be looking for in the future.
Friday
check out #1
check out this awesome collection of correspondence. dan stafford wrote to several alt-comics greats, interview style, and they actually responded!
then a legitimate comics-blogger posted the link on his (much, much better than mine) blog. then i stole said link.
tom spurgeon, beelzebub has a devil put aside for me because i leech my content off of you. your blog is amazing. i am a scheister.
then a legitimate comics-blogger posted the link on his (much, much better than mine) blog. then i stole said link.
tom spurgeon, beelzebub has a devil put aside for me because i leech my content off of you. your blog is amazing. i am a scheister.
stay away #1.
stay away from the music of deana martin.
who??
deana martin.
you know dean martin, right? the italian drunk from the rat pack. that's harsh though; i really actually like dean's singing. i understand why people have a healthy respect for dean-o, and i don't begrudge the guy his spot in the history of popular music. hell, im a drunk most of the time too.
well when dean had a daughter, someone decided it'd be just fuckin cute to name her deana. like dean with an a. its not like i was around at the time, so there may be an elaborate story or underlying reason. but i can almost garantee that it was more like 'aw hell that'd be fuckin cute'.
then, later on, deana got the great idea that she'd follow in her father's footsteps and be a singer. which would have been great for everyone, except that shes a HORRIBLE singer. HORRIBLE.
deana martin songs are instantly recognizable as horrible covers of rat pack classics. it sounds like my mom singing 'amore'. which isn't a knock at my mom's singing ability, its just that mom knows, and i know, that SHES NOT A SINGER. but deana doesn't know this.
deana doesn't understand that the songs she is covering are special, and that good performances of them hinge on something special in the singers voice. dean and frank and sammy all had interesting, unique voices. they had peculiarities in their delivery. they brought a lot of feeling into these songs-thats why they became classics. the rat pack did not get their fame from doing 'by the numbers' performances.
when deana does 'memories are made of this' or 'sway me more', there's nothing special there. she's basically on-key, she hits all the notes. nothing less, NOTHING MORE. its by the numbers.
how could you not realize that a 'competent' delivery of a classic awesome song will sound like shit? it sounds like shit deana, because we know how good it can be. we know what your dad brought to a song, or what sammy davis jr or frank sinatra brought to a song. they made it shine. a competent performance will not do.
maybe if deana was doing a new song, then i wouldn't notice so much. she unfailingly chooses covers of the rat pack songs, that have already been IMMORTALIZED by stunning performances, by people she can't hope to out-do. its a losing race.
"well then wes, why do you listen to her?"
i am forced to listen to deana through the magic of a syndicated radio station known as 'the music of your life'. this is what we listen to at work, and usually its good, because they DO also run the actual classic rat pack stuff, as well as all kinds of other interesting old songs. its like nostalgia radio--they even have little bumpers with an announcer saying 'remember those great old songs you used to hear on the radio? theyre all here on the music of your life'. thats kind of the station's pitch.
again let me say, they actually do some pretty good programming. there's a lot of variety--i must have heard a billion versions of 'fly me to the moon' by now, including an instrumental samba version, and thats damn nifty.
but they do me wrong- wrong, wrong wrong- by letting deana be a deejay, and by putting her songs in the rotation.
so if you have a choice, if you can manage it, if you aren't yet scarred by the mediocre singing of deana martin, i have this advice for you:
STAY AWAY.
who??
deana martin.
you know dean martin, right? the italian drunk from the rat pack. that's harsh though; i really actually like dean's singing. i understand why people have a healthy respect for dean-o, and i don't begrudge the guy his spot in the history of popular music. hell, im a drunk most of the time too.
well when dean had a daughter, someone decided it'd be just fuckin cute to name her deana. like dean with an a. its not like i was around at the time, so there may be an elaborate story or underlying reason. but i can almost garantee that it was more like 'aw hell that'd be fuckin cute'.
then, later on, deana got the great idea that she'd follow in her father's footsteps and be a singer. which would have been great for everyone, except that shes a HORRIBLE singer. HORRIBLE.
deana martin songs are instantly recognizable as horrible covers of rat pack classics. it sounds like my mom singing 'amore'. which isn't a knock at my mom's singing ability, its just that mom knows, and i know, that SHES NOT A SINGER. but deana doesn't know this.
deana doesn't understand that the songs she is covering are special, and that good performances of them hinge on something special in the singers voice. dean and frank and sammy all had interesting, unique voices. they had peculiarities in their delivery. they brought a lot of feeling into these songs-thats why they became classics. the rat pack did not get their fame from doing 'by the numbers' performances.
when deana does 'memories are made of this' or 'sway me more', there's nothing special there. she's basically on-key, she hits all the notes. nothing less, NOTHING MORE. its by the numbers.
how could you not realize that a 'competent' delivery of a classic awesome song will sound like shit? it sounds like shit deana, because we know how good it can be. we know what your dad brought to a song, or what sammy davis jr or frank sinatra brought to a song. they made it shine. a competent performance will not do.
maybe if deana was doing a new song, then i wouldn't notice so much. she unfailingly chooses covers of the rat pack songs, that have already been IMMORTALIZED by stunning performances, by people she can't hope to out-do. its a losing race.
"well then wes, why do you listen to her?"
i am forced to listen to deana through the magic of a syndicated radio station known as 'the music of your life'. this is what we listen to at work, and usually its good, because they DO also run the actual classic rat pack stuff, as well as all kinds of other interesting old songs. its like nostalgia radio--they even have little bumpers with an announcer saying 'remember those great old songs you used to hear on the radio? theyre all here on the music of your life'. thats kind of the station's pitch.
again let me say, they actually do some pretty good programming. there's a lot of variety--i must have heard a billion versions of 'fly me to the moon' by now, including an instrumental samba version, and thats damn nifty.
but they do me wrong- wrong, wrong wrong- by letting deana be a deejay, and by putting her songs in the rotation.
so if you have a choice, if you can manage it, if you aren't yet scarred by the mediocre singing of deana martin, i have this advice for you:
STAY AWAY.
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