The Cabin in The Woods

Went and saw this movie yesterday with my buddy Dan. It was a real riot. College students travel to a remote cabin in one of the most hackneyed set ups ever. The kids in the movie are the brainy chick, the slutty chick, the jock/horn dog type, the intellectual type and of course, the stoner/nerd. Everybody is good looking.
Some dudes in lab coats run the show from some underground bunker. Lots of blood is spilled. These guys are numbed out by their government robot jobs. They see a bigger picture they must adhere to while inflicting unending pain on their hapless subjects. It had a little bit of an Evil Dead vibe at first, but that gets out of the way pretty quick. There is some great dark humor and quite a bit of gore. Mermen are pretty fucking hideous.
A fun horror flick. I recommend. At least one hick has horrible skin. I suggest an oatmeal facial scrub.
Also contains a nice young lady making out with a mounted wolf's head as well as a pretty funny motorcycle stunt. A sexual encounter takes place in a rather moldy, mossy environment that could only result in chiggers.
Dust your nuggets people. It's summer.

Let Me Tell You About Shearwater

I picked up the new Shearwater album "Animal Joy" and damn if it isn't great, beautiful music.
It's downright fruity in the best way possible. To me this music is about dirt and nature. I have no other way
to describe it. First some background...
I got into these guys a little late around the time of their "Golden Archipelago" record and on first listen it failed to impress. I had read a lot of great reviews for their albums "Palo Santo" and "Rook" which I admittedly have still not heard. At the time I had purchased "Golden Archipelago" it was a little too complicated and refined for my moods, but then something strange and terrible happened. My dad became terminally ill and started going down hill very fast. I had my iPod on shuffle one day while trying to find a parking spot at the hospital and the first song "Meridian" came on and I just sat there for a while and really listened to it for the first time. I was kind of blown away by it. It took on a dramatic, soothing and cathartic vibe and I was moved.
The music of this band is a bit more refined than what i am normally into. I generally like raw, emotional records, but these guys give you that in a majestic way. I kind of got a Van Der Graaf Generator vibe from it.
It was theatrical and conceptual and little bit melodramatic. 
What happened not too long after the consummation of my love for this group was pretty bizarre. At my wife's behest, she suggested I go out one night to blow off some steam. As it happened, Shearwater was actually playing a gig in Tallahassee that night. So I went out to see them and Damien Jurado and proceeded to get supremely fucked up. I was due the next morning to visit an oncologist with my father and family to receive what we all feared would be his death sentence. In this heightened emotional state, I took it all in. I got to meet Thor Harris, Shearwater/Swans drummer who turned out to be a swell guy. Steve Dollar was kind enough to introduce me to him. I watched the whole show and also talked for a short bit with Jonathan Meiburg, the leader of the band and its lead vocalist. He has the kind of dramatic vocal style that generally goes missing in a lot of so called indie circles. He has a technically rich and powerful voice.
People don't generally sing in that kind of serious style anymore. It was refreshing. Anyway, he was nice enough to listen to what were probably incoherent meanderings. That band cleansed my soul and gave me a terrifying night. I pretty much had a monumental breakdown later on that night...my God.
"Animal Joy" is their new album and is a little more straightforward and dare I say "rocking" in parts. I quite like it. I recommend it. Great songs and musicality. Proggy even. So you know I'm down! I'm a sensitive man.

I Went and Saw "The Descendants"

Beautifully filmed in Hawaii with Beau Bridges looking like a charred husk.

George Clooney takes whiteness in this movie to a new level. Matthew Lillard's gums win best supporting actor nomination from me. Judy Greer is cute as always. It's hard to develop empathy for these characters. I guess no matter how rich and affluent you are, your heart is always going to get screwed at some point. The kid actors are pretty good in this film and Robert Forster punches one of them in the face. Deservedly so. It's hard to have resolution when the source of all your love and agony is in a coma. People are money grubbing snakes that will fuck around on you with Matthew Lillard. Proceed through life with caution. Bonus points to Rob Huebel (Children's Hospital) for placing his nuts in a jar next to the bed.

Blu-Ray review: Grand Prix

One of the greatest car racing films ever made stars James Garner. He's a real douche bag in this movie and treats everyone like shit. Even in the bonus features he's threatening to throw people/extras blocking the shot into a canal! What an animal. The Rockford Files was great. Jessica Walter (Arrested Development/Archer) is astonishingly beautiful in this movie although she's kind of a treacherous. She bones James Garner's character while her husband is healing up from a horrible crash injury. The racing scenes are amazing as are the location shots and it brings us back to an amazing time in auto racing history before it was destroyed by rednecks.

Beautifully photographed. The transfer is super clear and the colors really pop. Once again everybody has severe nicotine addictions and drink alcohol constantly. The 60's!!!

There is an amazing crash scene where a dummy flies into a tree. A lot of the racing scenes are incredibly realistic as they used real drivers and the actors themselves did a lot of their own driving. They say Garner could have actually gone on to competition he got so good. What a man!
The only film that competes with this is "Le Mans" which is also incredible, but a little more atmospheric. I heard McQueen was originally involved in this movie, but dropped out due to lack of creative control.
Both movies are worth watching.

While Stricken I Watched THE GUNS OF NAVARONE on Blu-Ray

Is there any movie in which Gregory Peck doesn't look like a smug prick in it?

I must apologize, I have been deathly ill for a week. This film was on price cut at the local Satanic Big Box

store so I picked it up. I needed something to feverishly go in and out of consciousness to. I barely made it out of there without passing out in the aisles. As of this moment of posting I am sweating and watching this hilarious classic. My favorite part so far is when they describe these guns of Navarone and in the background the huge fake canons fire. Peck looks like he's had a cigarette surgically attached to his lip. There's a guy that looks like Fred Grandy (Gopher ala Love Boat). Everything is "bloody" this and "bloody" that when any Englishmen are on the screen. This film is my second or third "impossible, suicidal" mission movie I've watched in the last month. Not sure what that's about.

This blu-ray print is beautiful and it is so lovely to see real landscape shots instead of CGI.

Whoahh, Anthony Quinn  keeps slapping a Ringo Starr/Freddie Mercury impersonator. Highly recommended. 

I remember watching this on late night cable tv a few years ago and thinking "those guys are having a real hard time getting to those cannons. This is taking forever."

Also, don't ever eat these. These are horrible. Flavorless mush.

Blu-Ray review: Days of Heaven

An incredible film from the late 70's by Terrence Malick with music from Ennio Morricone.

I'm not usually into tragic love stories, but this Criterion Collection issue of Malick's film from 1978 really moved me. Richard Gere stars as a murderous steel worker in the early 1900's. He confidently sends his boss to a dirt nap(although it was an accident) and escapes with his girlfriend to Texas where they take up working for a farmer. Apparently, the foreman thinks they suck and immediately becomes suspicious of them. Sam Shepherd stars as the good looking farm owner with the crooked teeth. He lives in the "obviously rich" house.

He falls in love with Gere's girlfriend. Gere and his girl are travelling under the guise that they're brother and sister. This enables Gere to cook up a scam when he realizes the farmer has some horrendous disease. The farmer is seduced by Gere's "sister" and they get married. See where this is going? Anyway, a whole bunch of horrible shit happens after that. On a bright note: No gerbils were harmed during filming.

The cinematography in this movie is amazing with lots of wide angled landscapes that are really beautiful. The movie has a sort of dream like quality that I enjoy. Dialogue is often minimal and a good portion of the film is narrated by a young girl. Life sure was hard back then, you betcha.

I haven't seen much of Malick's work. I did see the "Thin Red Line" about 10 years ago and really liked it. I did not make the connection until I read the bio in the booklet that came with the dvd. When I think about that movie now I see a lot of the same stylistic qualities at hand.

I watched "Blow Out" on Blu-Ray

I am big fan of "Blow Out" although I'm not a huge DePalma fan. How about "Snake Eyes"? John Travolta is great as a movie sound dude with a shotgun microphone that likes to record owls. Some of the camera work is amazing in that they used split screen techniques to keep the subject in the background in focus with subjects in the foreground. Nancy Allen is kind of terrible in her dipshit character's role, but I think that was the point.her character is both exploiter and the exploited. The film within a film stuff at the beginning that kind of takes the piss out of 'Friday the 13th/Halloween' teen sex horror films is pretty funny. John Lithgow appears as a total psycho. The type of role he reprises so brilliantly almost 30 years later on "Dexter". He really is a creep in this. Dennis Franz cannot possibly own a t-shirt that isn't stained.
The music score in this film is kind of insane. It careens from huge orchestral dramatic flourishes to low grade early 80's synth cheese with a LOT of sexy saxophone.
It is essentially a sound recordist industrial film, political murder mystery and slasher movie rolled into one.
The ending is both depressing, ridiculous and fantastic. I found a lot of the sound recording stuff fascinating. Travolta chain smokes in a fucking hospital for crying out loud. Almost none of the sound editing techniques or smoking scenes are relevant today. DePalma was brilliant in evoking the kind of weird, grainy film shots in the political assassination scene that reminds me of the Kennedy films by Zapruder.
The Criterion film transfer to Blu-Ray is amazing. I love seeing all of these older films with a lot of detail revealed, especially location shots.