This last weekend one of my high school friends was back home in the state for a couple of weeks on leave from serving in Afghanistan. While he was home a group consisting of me, him, and six other guys from high school got together and went camping at the Old Barn in Lanesboro. Traditionally this group of guys, minus me, go there every year. This last weekend was only the second time I’ve ever made it and they’d been going every year since we graduated high school. I would have liked to have gone all of the other times, but usually whoever decided to put it together each year would only tell me about it a couple of days before it happened and I would usually already have plans.
But this year I made it! We were able to schedule it better since there was only a two week window that Adam, my friend serving in Afghanistan, would be home. I got there Friday night about an hour after they said they’d be there, but there was no one at our campsite. I drove around then entire campground wondering if they’d somehow given me the wrong campsite number, but I didn’t see them anywhere. Turns out that the guy driving didn’t leave until after an hour past his scheduled departure time since he had to mow some of the lawn so his wife didn’t have so much to do on her own.
…Wow, that last sentence kind of scares me for two reasons. First, he’s letting lame-ass yard work get in the way of coming out camping with the guys and second, he’s letting his wife regulate his life, even if it is somewhat indirectly.
Anyhow, once everyone got there we started up a fire and cooked ourselves some supper before spending the entire evening just sitting around, burning logs, talking, reacquainting each other with what’s been happening in our varied lives, and trying to light our farts on fire. It was an all guys camping trip after all…
The next morning we all groggily woke up after the sun started baking us in our tents. Camping companies should seriously look into making tents that don’t turn into pressure cookers at the first sign of sunlight. We all grabbed some food in Lanesboro and then headed out kayaking on Root River for about four and a half hours.
Root River is an interesting “river” for kayaking, mostly for the fact that in many places there are lots of very shallow passes where your kayak can get hung up. I’m pretty sure each of us ended up having to maneuver ourselves off of a bed of rocks at least once or twice. What was really fun, though, was watching a couple of the guys totally dump their kayaks when they came to a couple of spots where the river narrowed and pretended that it had rapids.
Besides watching the guys dump their kayaks, we were also treated to some choice heckling from a few old guys that were just hanging out on the banks of the river. For the most part you couldn’t decipher what they were saying, but I did catch one phrase and it had me in stitches for a few minutes. He was yelling at us about some rock in the middle of the river which he said, “Would leave us deader than corned beef if we hit it.” That’s right folks, deader than corned beef.
After our kayaking adventures we spent the rest of the night grocery shopping, burning things, cooking, and trying to light more farts on fire. In between those events we did manage to get some volleyball and pool time in, which was nice, but since we’d all seen plenty of sun out on the river it was nice to sit in the shade by our campsite.
In the morning we all went our separate ways with a few more memories lodged in our brains, a few more things to talk about and reminisce over in a couple of years when we all get together again. I miss those guys and wish that we all weren’t so far apart. At least we have these annual trips, right?
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Fear My Thoughts - Hell Sweet Hell CD Review
Before I even get into the actual review I would just like to take this moment to make a public service announcement to the entire metal and metalcore scene:
We don’t need any more stupid ass, completely pointless, time wasting intros at the beginning of your albums. Sure, you think you’re “setting the tone” or “building up to the first song” or something along those lines but, in fact, all you manage to do is annoy listeners and make them immediately hit the next button every time they turn on your cd. So kill those intros. Thank you.
After you wade through the 56 second intro of random ambient noise and muted whispers, Fear My Thoughts jump right into “Windows for the Dead”, the opening track for their Lifeforce debut, Hell Sweet Hell. It was a quality choice to put as the opening track since it showcases everything that Fear My Thoughts will be doing throughout the rest of the album, mainly pounding out heavily European influenced, double bass pounding, melodic metal.
Throughout the course of the album, Fear My Thoughts vary their musical attack between a balanced combination of the aforementioned styles, strong Euro-metal tracks, straight ahead metal songs, and crunchy metalcore. They’re easily at their best when combining all of these aspects into one song, but when they focus primarily on only one of their varied influences, things start to break down.
The weakest songs are those that heavily embody their Euro-metal side, simply because they don’t know how to vary that type of approach from song to song. Each strong Euro-metal passage feels extremely similar to every other one on the album, much like many of the moments where an attempt is made at traditional metal guitar licking—-there just isn’t enough variation.
When Fear My Thoughts start to let their sound expand to encompass small additions to their core sound, such as the electronics on “Ghosts of Time” and “Dying Eyes”, the groove-oriented approach on “The Fighting”, or the brooding, slow-paced structure of “Trying to Feel” the band comes off highly listenable. Each of these songs highlights some of the band’s finer moments on Hell Sweet Hell. The unfortunate part about this is that it makes the other songs on the disc feel subpar, or pedestrian, in comparison. Regardless, this is still a fine European influenced metal release that will delight many fans of the genre.
Rosco Coltrane is a Dirty Old Man
Now you can see why he's a collector's item!
[Edit: The image won't hotlink so click here to see what I'm talking about.]
[Edit: The image won't hotlink so click here to see what I'm talking about.]
What Would We Do Without Google?
Is it just me or is almost every new and wonderful innovation found on the internet being done by Google (or being bought out by Google)? First their search algorithms are some of the best out there. Gmail is one of the best webmail services. Google Maps are head and shoulders above Mapquest or Yahoo Maps (both of which I will never use again as each has given me bogus directions at least once). Google Earth has the potential to be an amazing tool for exploring the world from your desktop. Google's Desktop search is freakishly good. I can't really think of a project that they've undertaken that hasn't been cool.
Now with the opening of some of their API's, the ability for people to make custom tools using Google's robust projects has been blown wide open and I've recently stumbled upon one such tool that I think is pretty neat--Google Maps Transparencies. What this site does is takes Google's road maps and superimposes them on top of the satellite image of the area. This way you can see the lay of the land as well as the roads that run through the area. It might not be any more useful than straight up Google Maps, but it sure is neat. I look forward to seeing what other tools people can come up with.
Now with the opening of some of their API's, the ability for people to make custom tools using Google's robust projects has been blown wide open and I've recently stumbled upon one such tool that I think is pretty neat--Google Maps Transparencies. What this site does is takes Google's road maps and superimposes them on top of the satellite image of the area. This way you can see the lay of the land as well as the roads that run through the area. It might not be any more useful than straight up Google Maps, but it sure is neat. I look forward to seeing what other tools people can come up with.
Monday, July 11, 2005
About Freakin' Time
As you may have noticed over the past couple of weeks the formatting of my site has been... less than desirable. There would often be spaces between posts and the comments link or other big spaces in posts for no reason. Well, actually there was a reason, but it wasn't my fault. It was our wonderful friend, Blogger's, problem.
Because of some changes that Blogger made to how posts are published, all of my posts were being wrapped in div clear:both tags. What this did is clear all of my floating formatting, which is how I define a lot of the layout on my site. There was no way to keep blogger from adding those tags to each post so I just had to live with the formatting issues and continually complain to Blogger.
Thankfully this affected enough blogs that they finally released a fix for it. So, barring any other screwups from our friends at Blogger my site should be back to looking normal, at least when it comes to formatting.
Because of some changes that Blogger made to how posts are published, all of my posts were being wrapped in div clear:both tags. What this did is clear all of my floating formatting, which is how I define a lot of the layout on my site. There was no way to keep blogger from adding those tags to each post so I just had to live with the formatting issues and continually complain to Blogger.
Thankfully this affected enough blogs that they finally released a fix for it. So, barring any other screwups from our friends at Blogger my site should be back to looking normal, at least when it comes to formatting.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Thinking About the Future
Last weekend, along with watching lots of movies and hanging out with Kristin, I also managed to travel up to Virginia, MN to see one of my friends get married. It was only the fourth wedding I’d been to in my life and one of the other three was for one of Kristin’s friends while another was when I was about 12 or so.
I suppose now that I’m at the age of 24, I’m entering into that age range where all of my friends will probably start tying the knot. It’s already weird having two of my friends married and another getting married this fall. It’s also a little disconcerting to see so many people in my age range married or engaged since I’m at neither of those stages in my life. It’s almost like there’s some sort of indirect pressure on me to move on to that stage of my life as well just because everyone else has or is in the process.
In high school I always imagined myself married right after I got out of college. I would have found my special someone in my four years of school, established a strong relationship, and entered into the engagement phase of the relationship. Later, in college I imagined things a little differently, especially as I approached my senior year. I still wanted to have that strong relationship with someone established, but I didn’t want to get married right out of college, but maybe a year or two afterwards.
Now, I’m here a year and a half after graduating and not even close to being married. Does this trouble me? Honestly, a little, but it’s not something that’ll keep me up every night. I’m starting to realize more and more that things don’t always work out how you imagine them or how you plan them to happen. Life happens and when it does, even the best laid plans can and will change. That’s just the nature of the game.
So what do I now see in my future pertaining to marriage? Well, I really don’t know. I wish I knew for sure when it would happen because that would make things easy, but as it is now, I really have no idea when I’ll get married. Some days I even have a hard time seeing myself getting married at all, not because I don’t want to—far from it—but because I sometimes think that it just might never happen. Every time I imagine myself getting married, or simply engaged for that matter, it keeps getting pushed back further and further into the future that sometimes I wonder if I’ll be dead before I’m married :-) Who knows, though, maybe it's a good thing I'm not married yet because what if I suddenly realized I didn't want to be right now. I'd already be married so I'd just end up being a lot grumpier whereas now I could just put it off a little longer.
Seriously, though, if somehow things don’t work out with Kristin, I don’t know if I’d have it in me to get that emotionally invested again. I don’t think there would be any way that I’d be able to completely give myself to a relationship again. I’d always have the feeling of previous failure hanging over me, keeping me from being able to truly invest myself. I’d be too afraid of giving up even more of myself and potentially having it not work out.
Anyways, this is all pretty much just a bunch of hypothetical, aimless thinking and is a very roundabout way of segueing into telling everyone that I have some pictures up from Andy and Amanda’s wedding that I was at last weekend. Just click on the picture below to be taken to the gallery. There’s not many pictures there yet, but I should have more later.
I suppose now that I’m at the age of 24, I’m entering into that age range where all of my friends will probably start tying the knot. It’s already weird having two of my friends married and another getting married this fall. It’s also a little disconcerting to see so many people in my age range married or engaged since I’m at neither of those stages in my life. It’s almost like there’s some sort of indirect pressure on me to move on to that stage of my life as well just because everyone else has or is in the process.
In high school I always imagined myself married right after I got out of college. I would have found my special someone in my four years of school, established a strong relationship, and entered into the engagement phase of the relationship. Later, in college I imagined things a little differently, especially as I approached my senior year. I still wanted to have that strong relationship with someone established, but I didn’t want to get married right out of college, but maybe a year or two afterwards.
Now, I’m here a year and a half after graduating and not even close to being married. Does this trouble me? Honestly, a little, but it’s not something that’ll keep me up every night. I’m starting to realize more and more that things don’t always work out how you imagine them or how you plan them to happen. Life happens and when it does, even the best laid plans can and will change. That’s just the nature of the game.
So what do I now see in my future pertaining to marriage? Well, I really don’t know. I wish I knew for sure when it would happen because that would make things easy, but as it is now, I really have no idea when I’ll get married. Some days I even have a hard time seeing myself getting married at all, not because I don’t want to—far from it—but because I sometimes think that it just might never happen. Every time I imagine myself getting married, or simply engaged for that matter, it keeps getting pushed back further and further into the future that sometimes I wonder if I’ll be dead before I’m married :-) Who knows, though, maybe it's a good thing I'm not married yet because what if I suddenly realized I didn't want to be right now. I'd already be married so I'd just end up being a lot grumpier whereas now I could just put it off a little longer.
Seriously, though, if somehow things don’t work out with Kristin, I don’t know if I’d have it in me to get that emotionally invested again. I don’t think there would be any way that I’d be able to completely give myself to a relationship again. I’d always have the feeling of previous failure hanging over me, keeping me from being able to truly invest myself. I’d be too afraid of giving up even more of myself and potentially having it not work out.
Anyways, this is all pretty much just a bunch of hypothetical, aimless thinking and is a very roundabout way of segueing into telling everyone that I have some pictures up from Andy and Amanda’s wedding that I was at last weekend. Just click on the picture below to be taken to the gallery. There’s not many pictures there yet, but I should have more later.
Friday, July 08, 2005
I Need Cartoon Network
At the house I live in here in Rochester, we don't get cable. Well, that's not completely true... we get the most basic of the basic cable which means we get the local channels, some news channels, some foreign language channels, a couple of shopping channels, and MTV2. It's more channels than what I used to get living in the country, but I'm starting to want to have more channels at my fingertips, especially after watching this click of Voltron getting served from an episode of Robot Chicken (which is on Cartoon Network).
Cartoon Network's Adult Swim consistently puts out shows that I really, really enjoy which is something that network tv rarely does. I think it's something about how completely off the wall most of the comedy is. Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021, Space Ghost, and now Robot Chicken are all money shows. Combine that with the shows they picked up from other networks, such as Family Guy and Futurama, and you have a killer lineup.
The other channel I really miss is Comedy Central, mainly just for the Daily Show with John Stewart. I picked up the Daily Show Indecision 2004 box set that just came out to tide me over until I pony up some money to actually order cable. In the summer right now it's not all that bad since I have the nice weather to enjoy, but once winter rolls around I think cable is going to have to be a must.
Cartoon Network's Adult Swim consistently puts out shows that I really, really enjoy which is something that network tv rarely does. I think it's something about how completely off the wall most of the comedy is. Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021, Space Ghost, and now Robot Chicken are all money shows. Combine that with the shows they picked up from other networks, such as Family Guy and Futurama, and you have a killer lineup.
The other channel I really miss is Comedy Central, mainly just for the Daily Show with John Stewart. I picked up the Daily Show Indecision 2004 box set that just came out to tide me over until I pony up some money to actually order cable. In the summer right now it's not all that bad since I have the nice weather to enjoy, but once winter rolls around I think cable is going to have to be a must.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Haste the Day - When Everything Falls CD Review
Does every moderately successful metalcore band have to water down their “breakout” albums in order to appeal more to the Hot Topic, teenie-bopper crowd? Atreyu did it with The Curse. Norma Jean did it with O God, the Aftermath. Every Time I Die sounds like they’re going to do it with Gutter Phenomenon. Really it should be no surprise that Haste the Day would follow the trend and mellow out on When Everything Falls.
Sure, Haste the Day still sound like Zao, Atreyu, The Agony Scene, and Evergreen Terrace in a blender on liquefy, but instead of that being a good thing, as it has in the past, it doesn’t come out quite as well this time, probably because of the lack of Zao and The Agony Scene influence and a lot more Atreyu copycatting. There are moments on this cd when you can almost swear that you are listening to something from Atreyu’s current musical output or that you are hearing a bizarre version of Underoath that uses death metal growls in place of screams. Listen to “If I Could See” or “Fallen” and try to tell me that you can’t hear the influences.
Even with the newfound focus on melody and trendy, over-produced guitar licks, these guys can still rip shit up with the best of them. Listening to the pummeling breakdown choruses on “Walls & Fear” or the bridge on “This Time It’s Real” will reassure longtime fans that the old Haste the Day that was more concerned with brutality and making your ears bleed is still there, just in a new glossy form.
Now getting back on track about why this album isn’t as good as it could be… there is definitely a lack of quality guitar solo riffs like those found on Burning Bridges. Along with that, another thing that has been missing, since even before then, is the intricate song structures that were a staple on their debut EP, That They May Know You, which was easily their best work with everything since having been on a downhill progression and coming off as too streamlined.
Interestingly enough, one thing that will probably get Haste the Day a lot of attention is the inclusion of a cover of the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Long Way Down”. When I saw it in the tracklisting, I couldn’t wait to see how they would turn a mediocre pop-rock song into a metalcore anthem. Well, I’m still waiting. They hardly give the song a makeover other than by adding a few background screams which, by the way, are mixed in so low they’re almost inaudible. Other than those few screams, it’s a pretty basic cover of the song, which is just unacceptable.
Yet once again, a metalcore band has found themselves polishing up their sound, mellowing out, and leaving behind their strengths in order to try to make a splash into the mainstream of the genre. That doesn’t necessarily make this a bad cd, but in comparison to Haste the Day’s previous output, this disc definitely falls short.
Death Metal is so Funny
First, I'd just like to let everyone know that the newly recoded, reworked, and resexified version of Decoy Music has just launched this last weekend so please check it out. Hopefully you'll come back often for your fix of new music, news, cd reviews, and more. If not, I'll hunt you down and kill you.
Anyways, as I was posting some news articles to the site the other day, I noticed that Relapse Records was having a gigantic catalog clearing sale. I decided to look to see what there was. Who knows, maybe I'd find some cds I missed when they first came out. What I forgot is that Relapse is predominantly a death metal record label and I don't really dig all that much in that genre, however, I am glad that I checked out the sale for one reason--the band names. Death metal bands have the funniest names ever and what's even funnier is that most of the time they actually take themselves seriously when their name is obviously downright comical. How many people are going to take bands with names like Hammerfall or Longsword or Nightwish seriously? I sure can't. Here are some of my favorites that I stumbled upon along with what I initially thought when I read their name:
Abortion (so they're liberal?)
Agony Conscience (It hurts to think?)
Angel Crew (Gabriel and his posse of rap stars!)
Black League (It's like the Ivy League... except for demons)
Blood Vomit (Is there really any other way to puke?)
Bloody Gore (As opposed to happy, clean, fun gore)
Cryptic Carnage (You never know how bad they're really going to be)
Falling Over Drunk (At least they're honest)
Disgorged Foetus (Ummm... wow)
Eat My Fuk (They ate a few too many paint chips as kids)
Exploding Zombies (My favorite so far)
Extreme Noise Terror (Ok, now you're just throwing words together)
Forced to Decay (Because, well, it won't happen on its own)
Gutrix (What a name)
Hellacopters (The devil's air brigade)
Jesuslaceration (Yes, that is one word, and yes, it is a stupid name)
Mushroom's Patience (Didn't know they were that patient)
Ok, I've only made it through to the end of the M's, but I seriously can't go any further without feeling bad for most of the bands. Death metal bands need to stop taking themselves so seriously, or if they are going to be serious they need to be more intelligent about it.
Anyways, as I was posting some news articles to the site the other day, I noticed that Relapse Records was having a gigantic catalog clearing sale. I decided to look to see what there was. Who knows, maybe I'd find some cds I missed when they first came out. What I forgot is that Relapse is predominantly a death metal record label and I don't really dig all that much in that genre, however, I am glad that I checked out the sale for one reason--the band names. Death metal bands have the funniest names ever and what's even funnier is that most of the time they actually take themselves seriously when their name is obviously downright comical. How many people are going to take bands with names like Hammerfall or Longsword or Nightwish seriously? I sure can't. Here are some of my favorites that I stumbled upon along with what I initially thought when I read their name:
Abortion (so they're liberal?)
Agony Conscience (It hurts to think?)
Angel Crew (Gabriel and his posse of rap stars!)
Black League (It's like the Ivy League... except for demons)
Blood Vomit (Is there really any other way to puke?)
Bloody Gore (As opposed to happy, clean, fun gore)
Cryptic Carnage (You never know how bad they're really going to be)
Falling Over Drunk (At least they're honest)
Disgorged Foetus (Ummm... wow)
Eat My Fuk (They ate a few too many paint chips as kids)
Exploding Zombies (My favorite so far)
Extreme Noise Terror (Ok, now you're just throwing words together)
Forced to Decay (Because, well, it won't happen on its own)
Gutrix (What a name)
Hellacopters (The devil's air brigade)
Jesuslaceration (Yes, that is one word, and yes, it is a stupid name)
Mushroom's Patience (Didn't know they were that patient)
Ok, I've only made it through to the end of the M's, but I seriously can't go any further without feeling bad for most of the bands. Death metal bands need to stop taking themselves so seriously, or if they are going to be serious they need to be more intelligent about it.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Recent Movies
Over the last week and a half or two I've actually managed to watch a bunch of movies. I go in spurts where I will watch a ton of movies and then I'll go for a while without watching any. I'm very spurty like that when it comes to entertainment in general. Some weeks I'll spend just watching tv shows, others I'll focus only on reading, others it's movies, and yet others video games. These last couple weeks have been a combination of tv show watching and movies. Happily, most of the movies I watched were pretty good.
On a suggestion from a friend/co-worker I watched both I Heart Huckabees and What the Bleep Do We Know a little while back. Both were good and very philosophically oriented, which is always a surefire way to get me to like a movie. Huckabees story of rival existential detectives trying to help three men find the meaning of life is, well, something I definitely didn't expect. The previews made it seem like it was a somewhat semi-intelligent comedy that would rely mostly on off-the-wall situations and odd transitions. Thank God it was so much more.
At its most basic, Huckabees basically pits the nihilistic existential outlook against the interconnected, Spinozistic metaphysical model. A lot of the comedic moments arise from the complete disconnect between the two philosophies. Mark Wahlberg plays the perfect aspiring intellectual that feels like he has a grip on reality's underpinnings, yet is completely clueless. Jason Schwarzman's confused, edgy character is a hoot. I would imagine that anyone not philosophically educated or inclined would relate most with his character as I'm sure many of the topics covered wouldn't exactly resonate too well with the majority of everyday moviegoers.
Jude Law's portrayal of the empty, corporate stereotype who defines his meaning in the world by his successes, yet wonders if there really is more out there, is easy to sympathize. So many of the people I know fall into this category of being. They define themselves by what they've managed to do in their lives so far and by what they have. Consumerism at its finest.
Anyone who has any philosophical inclinations, or is even moderately intelligent should go out and pick up I Heart Huckabees at your next convenience and give it a screening. It's a movie that is rarer and rarer in today's movie industy, an industry obsessed with explosions, comic book adaptations, fart humor, and sappy romantic comedies.
What the Bleep Do We Know is a combination of a documentary, a new age recruitment video, and a narrative story of self exploration. It's another intelligent movie, but at times it gets bogged down in its new age existential ramblings. Often these ramblings aren't explained very well and come across as ideas that are just being thrown out there for random consideration instead of actual deep debate. There are some very interesting bits that deal with quantum physics, which I found educational, and some interesting bits that discuss God and the big picture which are thought provoking, but other parts of the movie, such as the overarching thread of creator/observer philosophy in the latter half of the film left a lot of open holes that could have used some more time to be explained.
Over the weekend I finally took in the extended version of Return of the King with Kristin. We'd both been waiting to watch it and finally found a solid 4+ hours to dedicate to it. I have definitely enjoyed the extended versions much more than theatrical releases. Some of the scenes that were added to RotK I felt really should have been in the original movie, but considering how long it already was something had to get cut. If you ask me, they should have cut down the ending a little, or lost a couple of them. Anyhow, the scene where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli hijack the pirate ships with the ghost army was a great addition.
Another scene that I couldn't believe they left out of the original version was the resolution of the Saruman plotline. Watching RotK in the theaters by the time the battle of Minas Tirith started I was wondering, "What the hell happened to Saruman? Is he going to somehow come help the orc forces? Does he play a role here soon? Are we to assume he's dead?" I just didn't know what happened to him.
The last additional scene that I thought was needed was Sam and Frodo donning orc armor and travelling with the pack. In the original version of the film it seemed like they just magically teleported across a vast expanse of land, but this scene helps to show why they're so tired at the end and how they crossed the sprawling expanse of orc land on their way to the mountain.
Now, like any good comic book fan and like any Batman fanatic, I went to see Batman Begins last week. It is easily the best Batman film, which is not necessarily an easy thing to become considering how good I thought the first two were (and in case you don't know, I thought the first two were freakin' sweet). I'll also go out on a limb and say that this is probably the best superhero film outside of X2. If you haven't seen it yet, you really should check it out.
Lastly, I also caught Land of the Dead in the theater with my family. Odd family movie, I know, but there wasn't much else playing that we all hadn't seen. As I somewhat expected I was the only one of our family to enjoy it. I'm a sucker for zombie movies and as long as they're done decent, I'll enjoy them. When they're done crappily, I'll hate them (I'm looking at you Resident Evil movies). I guess the best way to classify this movie for casual zombie moviegoers would be to say it's a nice combination of the horror/gore of the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead and some of the more morbid comedic moments of Sean of the Dead. If you don't mind seeing blood & guts up on the movie screen, like a little political commentary with your horror, and dig zombies go see it.
On a suggestion from a friend/co-worker I watched both I Heart Huckabees and What the Bleep Do We Know a little while back. Both were good and very philosophically oriented, which is always a surefire way to get me to like a movie. Huckabees story of rival existential detectives trying to help three men find the meaning of life is, well, something I definitely didn't expect. The previews made it seem like it was a somewhat semi-intelligent comedy that would rely mostly on off-the-wall situations and odd transitions. Thank God it was so much more.
At its most basic, Huckabees basically pits the nihilistic existential outlook against the interconnected, Spinozistic metaphysical model. A lot of the comedic moments arise from the complete disconnect between the two philosophies. Mark Wahlberg plays the perfect aspiring intellectual that feels like he has a grip on reality's underpinnings, yet is completely clueless. Jason Schwarzman's confused, edgy character is a hoot. I would imagine that anyone not philosophically educated or inclined would relate most with his character as I'm sure many of the topics covered wouldn't exactly resonate too well with the majority of everyday moviegoers.
Jude Law's portrayal of the empty, corporate stereotype who defines his meaning in the world by his successes, yet wonders if there really is more out there, is easy to sympathize. So many of the people I know fall into this category of being. They define themselves by what they've managed to do in their lives so far and by what they have. Consumerism at its finest.
Anyone who has any philosophical inclinations, or is even moderately intelligent should go out and pick up I Heart Huckabees at your next convenience and give it a screening. It's a movie that is rarer and rarer in today's movie industy, an industry obsessed with explosions, comic book adaptations, fart humor, and sappy romantic comedies.
What the Bleep Do We Know is a combination of a documentary, a new age recruitment video, and a narrative story of self exploration. It's another intelligent movie, but at times it gets bogged down in its new age existential ramblings. Often these ramblings aren't explained very well and come across as ideas that are just being thrown out there for random consideration instead of actual deep debate. There are some very interesting bits that deal with quantum physics, which I found educational, and some interesting bits that discuss God and the big picture which are thought provoking, but other parts of the movie, such as the overarching thread of creator/observer philosophy in the latter half of the film left a lot of open holes that could have used some more time to be explained.
Over the weekend I finally took in the extended version of Return of the King with Kristin. We'd both been waiting to watch it and finally found a solid 4+ hours to dedicate to it. I have definitely enjoyed the extended versions much more than theatrical releases. Some of the scenes that were added to RotK I felt really should have been in the original movie, but considering how long it already was something had to get cut. If you ask me, they should have cut down the ending a little, or lost a couple of them. Anyhow, the scene where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli hijack the pirate ships with the ghost army was a great addition.
Another scene that I couldn't believe they left out of the original version was the resolution of the Saruman plotline. Watching RotK in the theaters by the time the battle of Minas Tirith started I was wondering, "What the hell happened to Saruman? Is he going to somehow come help the orc forces? Does he play a role here soon? Are we to assume he's dead?" I just didn't know what happened to him.
The last additional scene that I thought was needed was Sam and Frodo donning orc armor and travelling with the pack. In the original version of the film it seemed like they just magically teleported across a vast expanse of land, but this scene helps to show why they're so tired at the end and how they crossed the sprawling expanse of orc land on their way to the mountain.
Now, like any good comic book fan and like any Batman fanatic, I went to see Batman Begins last week. It is easily the best Batman film, which is not necessarily an easy thing to become considering how good I thought the first two were (and in case you don't know, I thought the first two were freakin' sweet). I'll also go out on a limb and say that this is probably the best superhero film outside of X2. If you haven't seen it yet, you really should check it out.
Lastly, I also caught Land of the Dead in the theater with my family. Odd family movie, I know, but there wasn't much else playing that we all hadn't seen. As I somewhat expected I was the only one of our family to enjoy it. I'm a sucker for zombie movies and as long as they're done decent, I'll enjoy them. When they're done crappily, I'll hate them (I'm looking at you Resident Evil movies). I guess the best way to classify this movie for casual zombie moviegoers would be to say it's a nice combination of the horror/gore of the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead and some of the more morbid comedic moments of Sean of the Dead. If you don't mind seeing blood & guts up on the movie screen, like a little political commentary with your horror, and dig zombies go see it.
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