July 31, 2001
Yikes! When did Peter and Stephanie Buck begin to look exactly like each other?
Peter Buck started his air rage trial today, denying the charges. All that aside, the similar looking couples thing creeps me out. I wonder what their children look like? Zoe and Zelda are twins too. Creeeeeepy.
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July 31, 2001
One of my favorite movies of last year was Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love.” The soundtrack came with these photos, with lines on the back. They’re gorgeous shots, and I couldn’t bear to write on the back of them.
I had a friend scan them in for me and dumped it together in a gallery for everyone to take a look at. I just love the oversaturated colors. Clicking on any of the photos will shoot you into the standard gallery.
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July 30, 2001I finally watched Planet of the Apes yesterday. Despite low expectations, I still found it massively disappointing. Much like Jurassic Park, it’s a basically a high budget b-movie. In that sense it’s still a bit of fun, especially much of the Ape action. On the other hand, you still have to sit through some tiresome dialogue and plot. If anything, I almost wish it were more over the top than it was. That and maybe some more wild monkey sex.
I don’t have a lot of input other than what’s already been said by everyone. I will mention that Mark Wahlberg’s big motivational speech to the humans was probably the worst I’ve ever heard. He probably couldn’t get me to go to the supermarket, much less to war against supersimian ape warriors. The speech went along the lines of “C’mon guys! We can do it. Let’s go.” Imagine that in a flat, whiny delivery and you get something less inspirational than the average Little League speech.
If you really, really must go see Apes (and it is a good big screen movie), try and go see it at the Mann Village in Westwood. Those guys leaned on the volume button wrong or something, because the volume was turned up way beyond the THX spec of 85db. The THX trailer in particular was bone-rattling, moving enough air with the subwoofers to make my the legs of my pants sway. Freaky cool.
Like most movies I find mediocre, Planet of the Apes made an assload of money this weekend. $69 million dollars.
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July 27, 2001
Today’s musical purchase is “Comfort Eagle,” the new album from Cake. I’ve always liked Cake but I’ve found them to be very inconsistent songwriters. “Prolonging The Magic” consisted of some really, really great songs surrounded by unlistenable crap. “Comfort Eagle” is more in the middle, in that sense. There hasn’t been anything nearly as good as “Never There” or “The Distance,” but I was able to listen to the entire album through in one pass without feeling the need to skip anything. That’s generally the first, most important test. They did name one song called “Arco Arena,” showing off their Sac-Town roots.
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This entry goes out to James Lucas Jones, Oni Press editor. He admitted to me that he read my website once and now wants to write a blog too. This brings the number of people who have read this page up to about seven (Linus, Jo, Nisha, Adam, Charlie, Ade and James). If I’ve left you off this list, please e-mail me.
While we now all anxiously await JLJ’s “The Erotic Adventures of an Indie Comic Editor,” shoot over to Oni Press and buy some of his company’s comics.
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July 25, 2001
Westside Angst
by that dog.
I’m a sucker for stuff that mentions Los Angeles area codes. Strangely, I can’t remember when there was a Ship’s in Westwood.
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July 23, 2001
It’s OK Mr. Cusack, I had pretty much the same look on my face while watching America’s Sweethearts too.
While there are a ton of great actors and some really funny bits, the movie never really gels into anything worth watching. Cusack’s my favorite actor and he shines in his role. Stanley Tucci, Seth Green, Hank Azaria and Christopher Walken are all hilarious, but have tiny, tiny roles. I never really thought I’d say this, but I think this movie needed more Julia Roberts in it.
Weird.
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July 19, 2001
Jurassic Park III didn’t suck nearly as bad as I thought it was going to.
I caught it on opening night and I was fairly amused throughout its brisk 90 minute running time. As far as “Part III” movies go, it’s pretty decent. Certainly better than Scream 3 or Rambo 3. Not close to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, though.
Even though it’s still basically a dinosaurs kill people movie, it’s quite a bit different from the two Spielberg efforts. Joe Johnstone strips the movie down to a B-Movie thriller, adds quite a bit more humor and cuts down on a lot of the plot and exposition of the first two. That said, his knack for action isn’t nearly as developed as Spielberg’s. While the first two movies generally had these long extended action sequences that built and built to nerve wracking climaxes, JP3 goes more for quick horror movie jumps and scares.
The dinos look better than ever, although when I saw the Spinosaurus for the first time, my first thought was “OK, c’mon. They clearly made that guy up.” I’m almost positive some paleontologist somewhere is mismatching giant bones and creating fictitious monsters just so they can get in the Jurassic Park movies. Strangely, in Jurassic Park III, it appears that the dinosaurs now know sophisticated martial arts techniques, as I caught two dinos snapping people’s necks Navy SEAL style. Very, very odd. I think by the fourth installment, you’ll see them doing full-on wire-fu.
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July 18, 2001Blogger finally announced the winners of the blog template design contest.
Some of the winning designs are quite spectacular for being simple, basic templates. I know my site doesn’t look nearly as good as say… Stone Angels does. Of course, something like Stone Angels is going to look a bit silly once 8000 blogs are running it, but that’s neither here nor there.
Maybe it’s time for a redesign.
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July 15, 2001This weekend’s entertainment event was a John Williams concert at the Hollywood Bowl.
The concert featured pieces from Hook, Fiddler on the Roof, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, AI, Superman, AI, ET, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, among others.
A fine way to spend a beautiful Southern California evening.
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July 13, 2001More info on All Tomorrow’s Parties finally surfaces.
It’s $100 for a weekend pass for all three days, which doesn’t sound too bad. Individual day tickets are also available.
At this point I’m worried about whether or not I can even get tickets, because I can sense the anticipation building for the event already. Even if I do get tickets, the setup of the show sounds a bit odd. If handled incorrectly, I could end up waiting in line for most of the night, trying to get into the more hotly anticipated acts while missing out on the smaller ones. Hopefully it won’t be too problematic.
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