First Movie Review: No More Heroes... I mean, Wanted

Movie: Wanted
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann, Konstantin Khabensky and Angelina Jolie.
Genre: Action/Shooter/Comic Book Adaptation
Year: 2008

WARNING: Spoilers Ahead

I’ve seen a few movies at the theater recently, something I don’t do very often, and I’ve been enjoying myself, in some cases despite myself. Seeing this, I thought I’d give a movie review a shot. Wanted is an action movie based on a comic book by Mark Millar and JG Jones. The original comic was about a man who gets drafted into a super villain secret society who basically rules the world because they wiped out all the heroes in 1986. It’s incredibly over the top and features things like a super villain made of shit (named Shithead no less.) The film adaptation retains a number of elements from the comic (Mayhem, the main character’s name) but drops some of the less desirable aspects like rape, hate crimes and super powers. The movie stars James McAvoy as Wesley Gibson, a gutless office drone who suffers from panic attacks and is walked all over by just about everyone he knows, from his anorexic bitch boss to his fuckbender of a best friend who just happens to be screwing Wesley’s girlfriend. All of this changes when Wesley is drafted into the fraternity, an organization of assassins who can slow down their perception of time, bend bullets and select their targets based on the loom of fate (as in A Loom.) What follows is a dark, twisted version of a coming of age story that culminates in McAvoy killing absolutely every other character in the movie. The plot is superior to the comic as it makes the characters in the fraternity a bit more likeable in comparison to their comic book counterparts, but really, the plot of this movie can go fuck itself. I did not go to this movie for the plot, I went to see dozens of people get slaughtered by each other and that’s exactly what I got.

The argument against Wanted is that it rips off The Matrix (Bullet Time, impossible leaps), but it also rips off Fight Club (office drone becomes something more than human.) And I really don’t care. For one, EVERYTHING rips off The Matrix these days, because Bullet Time is so popular. It’s how this movie rips it off that’s fun. Yes, bending the arc of bullets is completely impossible, but really the idea is so ridiculous, what more could you want. More? OK. Angelina Jolie is also in this movie and for what ever reason, she’s very convincing as a super hot assassin. Shocking. Moving on. The movie has many other entertaining things like exploding rats, exploding heads and Morgan Freeman. Not to mention my favorite scene where Wesley smacks his best friend in the face with a keyboard and the letters fly by in slow motion reading “Fuck You” with the “U” at the end of “You” being the guys tooth. This movie doesn’t have a point other then mindless gun slinging violence and it does that extremely well. Mark Millar’s comics aren’t known for their dialogue scenes, they are known for their fight scenes. This movie communicates that perfectly. And it’s kind of fun to watch this nameless burke become a super cool assassin. Perhaps the problem with this movie is it asks you to suspend too much disbelief as all the plot twists are over the top. But I think people are too cynical these days, so shelve your fucking ego and go see this movie you cubical drone. It May not be The Dark Knight, but it’s entertaining as fuck.

Andwoo’s Predictably Gushing Yet Awesome Review Of: In The Aero Plane Over The Sea

Album: In The Aero Plane Over The Sea
Artist: Neutral Milk Hotel
Genre: Indie Rock/Folk
Year: 1998
Label: Merge

Where Has Jeff Mangum Gone? No one really knows, do they? For those of you who don’t already know, Jeff Mangum is the driving creative force behind Neutral Milk Hotel, as the band’s primary composer, lyricist, guitarist and vocalist. And he is a genius. It is that simple. His work, the little of it that there is, is essential to the Indie Rock world in the same way that fingers are essential to playing a guitar. It is for this reason that In The Aero Plane Over The Sea is an essential record. It starts out simple, just Mangum and his guitar, and then the rest of the band comes in. Fuzzy Bass, Musical Saws and a piece of awesome brass band compose some of the unusual sounds heard on this album. It is certainly unusual.

Mangum’s lyrics are clear and sung with no irony whatsoever. You can always understand every single word the man is saying and his stories are often tragic, often wonderful and always engaging. According to my friend Ani, this album is about Anne Frank. I know that “Holland, 1945” is definitely about her, but for the rest of the album, I don’t know. I’ve also heard that it’s about tragedies large and small, which would seem to be true as well. Whatever the subject matter, it’s brilliant. That’s the thing about this album, it’s incredibly over-hyped, in fact so much that the hype drove Jeff Mangum into hiding. But the hype is deserved, it is quite perfect, musically, lyrically and it maintains this quiet perfection all the way throughout the album.

I don’t know exactly where Jeff Mangum found this album inside of himself, but that place leaves me awestruck. I don’t know if I could come up with anything like this, even if I had all eternity and was omniscient. Many people want Mangum to come out of hiding. They want him to return to the world of music and wow us again and again by repeating his brilliance with more albums like Aero Plane. He doesn’t have to though; he’s already created his masterpiece. If he wants to stay hidden away from his fame, I understand perfectly. I wouldn’t want the entire Indie rock world staring at me all the time either.

-Afterthought-

I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love Bob Dylan. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It. I Love It.

You Got Your Bones To Make A Beat. You Better Make A Mighty Good Beat!

Album: Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus
Artist: Cloud Cult
Genre: Indie Rock
Year: 2005
Label: Earthology/Baria

In my explorations of the world of Music, I have a lot of stockpiled good karma and it pays off often. One of these pay offs came in the form of Cloud Cult, a band which I was introduced to by my friend Alex. Cloud Cult power is twofold; for one, all the musicians involved are talented and for another, the lyrics are great. I’m not sure how to describe lyrics, never really have been, but they at times seem whimsical at others deadly serious. Recurring themes are things like overcoming great hardships, wonder of everyday life and positive energy. That’s one of the great things about Cloud Cult to me is that they always seem to be moving in the positive direction even when the shit hits the fan.

One of my favorite songs, “Moving to Canada,” is about the end of the world (sort of) but still seems more positive than the majority of music out there today. It’s nice to find something that isn’t wallowing in the doom and gloom of the world and tries to acknowledge some of the good. Another example is Transistor Radio. In the song, Craig Minowa (Cloud Cult’s leader) tells a tale of hearing his dead grandfather’s voice in his radio, his grandfather then leads him on a journey where he encounters wondrous but ordinary things, and even after his grandfathers voice leaves him he continues the journey. It’s a really beautiful story and it makes you want to believe in impossible things like that. Minowa’s songs are sung with an intense kind of earnestness. It’s honesty like that that also furthers the music’s wonderful feel.

The music is fantastic. Lots of it is guitar, bass and drum based, which is totally conventional, but thrown into the mix are a violin and what I believe is an electric cello. Proving that even convention can be made good with these days, Cloud Cult’s guitar rock is the perfect blend of arty and accessible. I know that usually I favor things with all the accessibility of a forty foot roof, but this is a rare situation where the “pop” aspect of this music doesn’t serve to discredit it but rather speaks to the artists skill in creating a sound that is both unique to them but still manages to be pleasing to many ears. This is Indie Rock, not polished pop crap so don’t be scared away from getting this album because I said the word “pop” and didn’t chuck biscuits. There is always more to say, but for now I think I’ll leave it at that. This is a fantastic album and you should pick it up now, because the world could use more positive energy. Ignore your inner pessimist and get this album.

Show Review: Visualize Industrial Collapse!

Main Act: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Opening Acts: Mute Socialite, Jason Webley
Venue: Neumos

Jason Webley has, in my experience, never failed to deliver the goods. Each album, while not all masterpieces, is excellent and interesting. He has a unique voice in folk music, somewhere between a seafaring pirate and roaming vagabond. How he got paired with the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum was a question that inspired much speculation and honestly had an answer which was ultimately less spectacular then I thought it would be. But how this show came to be isn’t as important as the show itself. I like Neumos, it’s a good venue. Good size, shape and atmosphere. I got to the show when doors opened an hour before the show actually started. Fortunately, I didn’t go alone and had people to talk to through the monotonous pre-show music. The first act of the evening was Mute Socialite, an instrumental metal ensemble that had two drummers, one of whom was Moe! Staiano, a former member of Sleepytime. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of dual drummers and I like a nice powerful drum sound, stereo drums all the better. With that Mute Socialite had one thing going for it and little else. Fortunately they didn’t play long and weren’t uninteresting, actually, they were fairly entertaining, even at one moment covering a section of Sleepytime's “Sleep is Wrong”.

After Mute Socialite hustled off stage, Webley was on. The first time I saw Webley he had a full band, tonight it was just him, an accordion, guitar and jug of coins. Any skepticism I had at the idea of his solo show was crushed utterly by the sheer entertainment of his performance. Obviously, this is how he began I thought, playing solo shows with sparse resources. It was a very raw performance, with Webley playing “The Last Song”, “Dance While the Sky Crashes Down” and “Icarus” among others. One of the coolest things was watching him provide his own percussion by stamping his feet. The accordion is a hefty instrument and anyone who can play it and stamp out their own percussion deserves your respect. Like the first time I saw him, he was funny and charismatic and an overall nice guy. Other similarities were the performance of “There’s Not A Step We Can Take That Does Not Bring Us Closer” which involved the crowd becoming an orchestra of violins and trombones. Once again I was a trombone, and my vocal chords are still paying for it. This turned out to be the 10th year anniversary of Webley’s career and in honor of that he preformed “Music that Tears Itself Apart” and subsequently convinced the entire room to start tickling each other. The man puts on good shows.

After Webley left the stage, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum began to set up. This in itself was something to behold. The Museum has a lot of homemade instruments, which have names like “The Sledgehammer Dulcimer”, “Piano Log” and “The Vatican”. Many of these are percussion/string combination devices which produce familiar yet alien sounds. These instruments were, I believe, assembled by their Bass player Dan Rathburn. But no matter who built the instruments, one cannot help but recognize the band genius. Dressed in quasi-tribal outfits and makeup, the band creates a cacophonous sound that could very well be the disorganized collapse of society as we know it. Tagging a genre could be difficult but ultimately I decided on “Avant-Progressive/Chamber Metal”. Inventive percussion, invented instruments and philosophically apocalyptic lyrics made for an excellent combination. I only took my eyes off the band to grin manically at my comrades. Seriously, this shit rules and it was something of an anomaly that I was able to see it. If not for Jason Webley this probably would have been a 21+ show and it was unless you got you tickets in advance like I did. Because of that I was able to witness the brilliance of songs like “Helpless Corpses Enactment” and “The Angel of Repose”. Carla Kihlstedt, Dan Rathburn, Nils Frykdahl, Matthias Bossi and Michael Mellender create something brilliant and terrifying every time they step on stage. The show was loud, chaotic and powerful. And yet, completely contained as it was clear that the band had these death-prog anthems down to a science. Maybe it was a science. Each member of the band except Frykdahl played at least three instrument, homemade and otherwise. And they were all fantastic players at them too. What made this show one the best I’ve been to in a while was that I was right in front and had an unobstructed view of everything. During one song, Rathburn was playing a trombone right in my face and I had to lean back in order to avoid being hit in the eye. They played for a long time, ending with a fifteen minute prog-jam starting from the base of “Sleep Is Wrong”. I left completely exhausted and thoroughly pleased with myself for having gone.


See also: My reviews for The Cost of Living by Jason Webley & "In Glories Times" by The Sleepytime Gorilla Museum