* Magic Mikeis coming from you. Watch out for his wand! Steven Soderbergh's latest is ridiculous fun.
I never did figure out what Channing Tatum was supposed to be wearing in that scene the photo is from. I think he was a shirtless SWAT team member.
UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...
* In Which We Serve, the first collaboration between David Lean and Noël Coward is a war movie and also wartime propaganda.
* Vanya on 42nd Street, Louis Malle's cinematic tribute to the live theatrical experience.
My friend and collaborator Megan Levens drew this picture of Joan from Mad Men for me for my recent birthday. Please visit Megan's website and look at more of her work. Maybe commission her for a piece of your own. Also, be sure to wish her a happy birthday tomorrow, June 19.
NEW TO THEATRES...
* Chronicle, a "found footage" superhero movie that could have just as easily stayed lost.
* A Separation, Asghar Farhadi's remarkable Iranian family drama.
* The Woman in Black, Daniel Radcliffe's turn as the victim of an old-fashioned ghost story in this Hammer horror production. UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...
One more from by Luis Bunuel...
* Viridiana, starring Silvia Pinal as a soon-to-be nun who discovers the real world is not as chaste or predictable as expected
THIS WEEK IN DVD/BD REVIEWS...
* A Beautiful Life, Andrew Lau's melodramatic romance picture starring Shu Qi as a woman learning to love.
A little late putting the list together this week. Like so many others, I did some traveling over the holiday and didn't have the computer access to really put this together. Visiting family is always time for me to see bad movies, too, so I sat through one pretty decent one (The Next Three Days--slow start, excellent final act, kind of lame final scenes), a mediocre one (Karate Kid; Jaden Smith is the most phony actor, I don't get it), and one truly awful, awful piece of crap (Grown-Ups; an ironic title since the humor was aimed at dimwitted toddlers). I washed it all away with the original True Grit when I got home. I am so ready for the Coens now.
NEW IN THEATRES...
* Burlesque. I still love you Christina, but why did you make me sit through this? Cher is going to be great in the Ben Stiller threquel Night at the Wax Museum.
* Outside the Law, a familiar but overall solid story of three brothers in the fight for Algerian independence.
UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...
My last three Criterion reviews have a running theme: socially conscious comedies from the past that are still relevant today.
* Modern Times, the classic Charlie Chaplin comedy manages to remain timely and hilarious. [Also at DVDTalk.]
* My Man Godfrey, with William Powell as the butler who is more than he seems.
* Sulivan's Travels, a profound comedy about the power of laughter and the human spirit from Preston Sturges.
THIS WEEK IN DVD/BD REVIEWS...
* Metalocalypse: Season Three: Somehow the cartoon series manages to overcome its thin premise (chronicling the over-the-top situational adventures of the biggest black metal band in the world) and continue to crank out the comedy. Best season yet.
* The Venture Bros.: Season 4, Vol. 1, one of the best cartoons on TV has a bit of a lacklustre cycle, but still worth it for when the jokes hit their mark.
Tonight I am attending a party for the season finale of Mad Men, and I was tasked with making a music mix to keep the shindig hoppin'.
I took a two-part approach, as we'll be listening to music before and after the show. The beginning of the mix is made up of songs we heard on the series this season, and the second half is a selection of hits from 1965, the year of season 4. Many were picked for their lyrical relevance to the story, some just because they were cool. I was struck by how many old-style crooners and the like were still landing on the charts back then. We tend to think of the '60s as being all about the classic rock, but forget that not everyone was on board. With bands like the Animals, Zombies, and Kinks, however, we can start to see the shift toward harder-edged music coming.
Most of these songs are available for download from Amazon or iTunes.
Part I
1. RJD2 - "A Beautiful Mine (Theme Music from 'Mad Men')" 2. Nashville Teens - "Tobacco Road" 3. Jan & Dean - "Sidewalk Surfin'" 4. Patti Page - "Old Cape Cod" 5. "Theme from the Man from U.N.C.L.E." 6. Peggy Lee - "I Enjoy Being a Girl"* 7. Skeeter Davis - "Ladder of Success" 8. Simon & Garfunkel - "Bleecker Street" 9. Otis Redding - "Satisfaction"** 10. Petula Clark - "I Know a Place"*** 11. The Beatles - "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"**** 12. Jim Reeves - "Welcome to My World" 13. Etta James - "Trust in Me"
Part II
14. Jack Jones - "The Race Is On" 15. Ramsey Lewis Trio - "The In Crowd" 16. The Byrds - "Mr. Tambourine Man" 17. The Diamonds - "Silhouettes"***** 18. Herman's Hermits - "(What A) Wonderful World" 19. The Searchers - "Love Potion No. 9" 20. Peter & Gordon - "I Go to Pieces" 21. The Yardbirds - "For Your Love" 22. The Kinks - "Tired of Waiting for You" 23. The Zombies - "Tell Her No" 24. Jackie Deshannon - "Love Will Find a Way" 25. Marvin Gaye - "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" 26. The Supremes - "Back in My Arms Again" 27. The Chiffons - "Nobody Knows What's Goin' On" 28. The Beatles - "Eight Days a Week" 29. The Animals - "We Gotta Get Out of this Place [single version]" 30. Gerry & the Pacemakers - "Ferry Cross the Mersey" 31. Tom Jones - "It's Not Unusual" 32. Freddie & the Dreamers - "I'm Telling You Now" 33. Dickey Lee - "Laurie (Strange Things Happen)" 34. Sam Cooke - "Shake" 35. The Toys - "Attack" 36. Unit 4 Plus 2 - "Concrete & Clay" 37. Lesley Gore - "Look of Love" 38. Bobby Vinton - "Mr. Lonely" 39. The Righteous Brothers - "Ebb Tide" 40. Simon & Garfunkel - "The Sound of Silence" 41. The Beach Boys - "Help Me, Rhonda" 42. Len Barry - "One Two Three" 43. Gary Lewis & the Playboys - "Everybody Loves a Clown" 44. The Vogues - "You're the One" 45. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass - "A Taste of Honey" 46. Brenda Lee - "Too Many Rivers" 47. Roy Orbison - "Claudette" 48. Sounds Orchestral = "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" 49. The Crickets - "Now Hear This" 50. The Ivy League - "Tossing and Turning" 51. The Lettermen - "Sincerely" 52. The Ronettes - "He Did It" 53. The Ventures - "Diamond Head" 54. Frank Sinatra - "It Was a Very Good Year"
* The show actually used Doris Day, I believe, but I could not find her version on MP3. Lee's is more jazzy, anyway. ** I substituted Otis for the Rolling Stones because my hostess doesn't care for the Stones. Their original version of this song was one of the top 3 hits of 1965. *** I am missing a song here. In the same bar where Petula Clark plays, some kind of surf rock tune follows, but I could not identify it or find any place telling me what it was. **** I could not find an instrumental version to match the one on the credits (there were plenty, none were right), so I went with the vocal version. ***** "Silhouettes" was a charter for Herman's Hermits in 1965, but rather than use two Hermits numbers, I went with an older doo-wop version of the same song.
Current Soundtrack: Bruno Mars, Doo-Wops & Hooligans
Thursday, February 11, 2010
WHEN WE WERE WOLVES
NEW IN THEATRES...
* The Wolfman, needs to disappear gently into that dark night. What a tragic bore! It should have been called Emo Wolf (like Teen Wolf, but emo). Look at Emily Blunt up there and just try to forget...
And does anyone know what is up with steampunk cosplayers showing up to the screening of this? There were multiple middle-aged fetishists at the movie. One of the women was cackling like a banshee during the more violent scenes. I'm a little scared of what her fanfic would be like. Almost on par with the bloodthirsty cheering at Edge of Darkness a couple of weeks ago.
I also find it weird that I've seen a couple of reviews where people wonder how Benicio Del Toro could be Anthony Hopkins's son. It's fairly obvious in the movie that his mother is Spanish. The actress playing her is Cristina Contes, and her character is named Solana. The math isn't that hard.
UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...
* Fists in the Pocket, the twisted debut of director Marco Bellocchio. (Watch for my review of his new movie, Vincere, next week...)
* Paris, Texas, another emotional masterpiece from Win Wenders, written by Sam Shepard.
THIS WEEK IN DVD REVIEWS...
* A Man Called Adam, the 1966 jazz movie starring Sammy Davis Jr. as a troubled trumpet player. Features performances from Louis Armstrong and Mel Torme.
It's been a while since I posted mail here, but this post from the DVD Talk forum cracked my shit up:
"I read Jamie S. Rich's DVD review of Across the Hall and...
I think Jamie's review is ridiculous. He's clearly jaded and bitter - probably a want-to-be filmmaker that never was. I almost skipped this movie, but just watched it and it was much stronger than he made it sound to be. Beautifully shot, well acted...felt very classic. There were some truly beautiful moments in it. I was shocked to find it was made in ONLY 17 DAYS!! Pretty remarkable in that regard. Jamie's review sounds more like he's letting out the anger of his failed career than giving a very good film a competent criticism. WAY too angry. Not so surprising that I've never heard of HIS work..."
The best part is the guy was so mad, he registerd on the site specifically to write this. No one has come to his defense yet. Do you want to?
The mail's not all bad these days. In reference to the Wild Oranges review, one reader writes:
"It was a genuine pleasure to read your review...It was better than articulate, it was witty, eloquent, and (I suspect) accurately evocative of the film. Thanks!"
"[Your review] is SO GOOD. Thank you. I appreciate fine writing and analysis, and look forward to the Blu-ray video for my collection. I've always felt that Nick Hornby, rather than 'preaching,' leads one to a point where some new perspective is gained - you said as much in your review, so your credibility is established with me. After all, don't we all seek approval and agreement? ;-)
I know that you got paid for writing this review, but it seems to be honest work by a capable craftsman. Again, thanks."
Actually, the movie is the payment. I don't receive any other coin for my work.
Finally, RodSerling.com is going to be spotlighting my review of the Studio One Dramas staring some time this weekend, which I am super psyched about!
Current Soundtrack: Spoon, Transference
Sunday, December 20, 2009
I'LL HAVE A GREEN CHRISTMAS
Check this out. My friend Terry Blas gave me this killer drawing of Charlie Day in his Greenman persona from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia." Merry Christmas to me, indeed!
Check out more of the drawings Terry's been doing for gifts at his blog.
Current Soundtrack: Spandau Ballet, True
Sunday, July 19, 2009
HEY, YOU! DON'T WATCH THAT! WATCH THIS
This show, called "The Clown," scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. I saw it by happenstance, I think my mother suggest I watch it during an afternoon home because she thought One Step Beyond was a bit like The Twilight Zone, which I watched incessantly. My guess is this series was an attempt to bank off the success of Rod Serling's program; just look at that host stalking through the performance. It started in 1959, a year after television viewers first entered the dimension of the mind.
This episode single-handedly made me hate clowns, and I never watched One Step Beyond again, frightened of what else I might see. I had to be only eight or nine at the time. It was only a couple of years ago that I finally found out what it was I had seen. Despite telling people about this show several times over the years, no one had any inkling of what I was talking about. I was starting to think I had imagined it. Finally, I managed to ask on the right message board a couple of years back, and seeing that the first season of One Step Beyond was being released on DVD soon, I decided to see if "The Clown" was available online.
It's still pretty creepy.
I'm actually kind of surprised by the story now, and how rotten and abusive the husband was. It also makes me think of Paul Pope's Escapo.
Friday, December 26, 2008
IRATION, JUBILATION
The day after Christmas, the snow is still here, but things look to be returning to normal.
I got two marvelous gifts from my friends Terry and Joëlle, who are basically my Portland family. Rather than spending money, we had a rule of only giving gifts we made this year,. As a non-artist, I feel horribly inadequate about my efforts in comparison to what I got, especially with Terry. A mix CD and a poem I wrote to commemorate the year (and go along with the Pushing Daisies drawing Joëlle did for him) doesn't seem like enough next to this gorgeous watercolor:
Joëlle inked this with a brush (I believe), with the logo cut out of zipatone patterns. This is actually a photo of it taken through a glass frame, no flash. It's too large for my scanner, I need to take it and have a photocopy made and shrunk down at some point to do a proper scan. The biggest problem with this photo is the image fades to the right. Strangely, the photos I took of it out of the frame had way more problems.
Of course, see more of Joëlle Jones' art through this link.
In this theme, Mike Allred did a drawing for Joëlle to give to her husband, illustrating one of his favorite movies, The Big Lebowski.
Current Soundtrack: Antony & the Johnsons, "One Dove;" One Dove, Morning Dove White & "Why Don't You Take Me" singles & B-sides
Saturday, October 18, 2008
HOSPITAL PEOPLE
The effects of the writer's strike in Hollywood this past year is still being felt in our television sets. As the 2007-2008 seasons of our favorite shows come to DVD, for instance, regular collectors of TV on DVD are realizing that these new collections are much shorter than usual. This was a result of the months where work was halted and Hollwyood's slavish adherence to a school-year schedule. Even with this pause, the season had to end on time, even if contracts and commitments were for a certain number of episodes.
I think that latter cause is coming to bear on ER, the long-running medical drama that I have been a fan of since almost the beginning. I signed on as a regular viewer somewhere in the first or second season, thirteen years ago, 1995. That's quite a stretch, and up until two years ago, one that was usually rewarded. Somewhere in unlucky season 13, the series hit a lurch that it never found its way out of. Like that old car that takes longer to warm up in the mornings and starts to rattle and make noise like it's going to fall apart when you accelerate over a certain speed, ER wasn't performing the way it once was.
I use the car metaphor because speed is a big factor in why ER was beginning to suck. The pacing of the show had always matched the hyperdrive of the environment. Too many patients, not enough hours in the day, and precious few moments to get it right and save lives meant that the drama was always pushing forward, rushing to cram in as many plot points and character moments as possible before the clock ticked over into the next timeslot. As season 14 began in the autumn of 2007, ER's team had downshifted out of their usual frantic pace and now were taking their time, as if there weren't enough patients or even the will to work, let's all just kill time until our shift is over.
Surprisingly, the signal point for this doom was when Stanley Tucci joined the cast as the new chief in the emergency room. Say what you want about Tucci, but the actor, who has played everything from Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream to gangster Frank Nitti in Road to Perdition and even the Tim Gunn-esque art director in The Devil Wears Prada, has never had a problem injecting life into a flagging production. He's like the caffeinated coffee you secretly sneak into the decaf pot when your unsuspecting coworkers require a little pep. Apparently, there was a double switch, like a spy comedy where we lose sight of which glass has the poison, and the whole crew was getting decaf. Gone was the adrenaline-fueled show style and the sense of urgency; here to stay was an increasingly lackadaisical sense of malaise.
Which is a tad off topic, going the long way around to say I had grown tired of ER, with its increasingly ridiculous big-event finales and the soap opera Achilles heel where many shows go on so long they have no more options for romantic couplings as everyone has slept with everyone else at one time or another. Had not rumors begun circulating at the outset of season 14 that it would be the show's last, I'd have jumped ship. After so long, though, it seemed silly to not see it through.
Then the writer's strike happened and those rumors dried up for a while, only to re-emerge to stay this season: #15, 2008-2009, would be the last one at long last, full of cameos and returning characters and farewells.
Only, three episodes into the new season, and it seems pretty clear to me that this year is going to be largely an add-on, an unplanned epilogue to the previously expected ending. Season 14 was nineteen episodes, four short of the usual twenty-three, so leftover four scripts waiting to be produced, perhaps? How else do we explain the killing of the Mekhi Phifer character in the season premiere and the departure of Maura Tierney in the third installment, which aired this past Thursday? Why would you dispense with the two actors with the most seniority in the cast so early on, unless maybe their contracts only covered a certain number of episodes, and that number logically would have fit with the full order of the previous season? Given the constantly renewable plot structure of the series--a teaching hospital such as Country General has a revolving door where staff comes and goes quite regularly--it makes a certain amount of sense that Phifer and Tierney might have left a few episodes before the end of the series, giving us a finale that showed an all-new staff completely unrecognizable to the team of doctors we met back in 1994--but a whole season's worth of John Stamos and Scott Grimes? Really?
This past week's farewell to Tierney's Abby Lockhart character was about as uninspired as they come. The basic idea was that Abby had not told anyone she was moving to Boston, and she shows up to her last day without any fanfare. Bookended by voiceover where the character waxes philosophical (was she reading from the Bible?) and featuring story lines that revolved around Abby saying good-bye to friends and passing an endless series of torches to those she was leaving behind featured echoes of many similar farewell episodes, but it felt far more forced this time around, largely due to the poor treatment of the character in the previous season.
Tierney joined the cast in 1999, and in the near decade that followed, her character has gone trough a lot, including wrestling with alcoholism and a history of mental illness in her family, various failed relationships, and a career path that took her from being a nurse to becoming a doctor. The apex of this character arc was her marriage to Luka Kovac (Goran Visnjic), presumably finding the stability she had always been searching for. Instead of making Abby the show's new uber-doctor (and its first woman in that role, really), however, the writers decided to spend another season kicking her around: she falls off the wagon, has an affair, and loses her confidence and very nearly her job. For the years we spent rooting for Abby to get ahead, this was a sad payoff. Even Tierney publicly expressed a desire to see her character killed rather than merely waving good-bye, saying it was the only thing they had not yet subjected Abby to. Extreme though it may be, it makes more sense than spending her last hour of television finally letting the character be everything you have spent the last year telling us she could not be.
And so, what does that leave us with? 19 episodes full of character we care little for? How long before more of them have contracts that run out? What will it matter if Noah Wyle or Anthony Edwards return to reprise their roles as doctors from the original staff if there is no one left at the hospital that actually worked with them? In strolls Dr. Carter, to a refrain of, "And you are...?"
As of right now, I'm strongly considering making this past week's episode my own personal finale. As the last character I have any investment in departs, so too shall I. Loyalty is a two-way street, and if the producers of ER have so little interest in rewarding mine, then why do they continue to deserve it? This is supposed to be entertainment, a part of the old "Must-See TV" line-up. Now tuning in every week is just a chore.
Current Soundtrack: Kaiser Chiefs, Off With Their Heads; the Rolling Stones, "Hitch-Hike;" The Futureheads, "The Futureheads;" the Last Shadow Puppets live on WXNP; Sugababes, Catfights and Spotlights
If you aren't watching the fourth season of HBO's police drama The Wire, what the hell is wrong with you? Get your "On Demand" fired up and snag this season's first half and get caught up before it's all over.
I had the opportunity to see the last five episodes of the season over the weekend, and the finale left me in absolute awe. I was already a huge fan of the first three seasons, but the more the show progresses, the more impressed I become. The Wire is easily the most complex show on television. Characters rise and fall, moving in and out of the story, but always with purpose. Each season, the creators spend the first half setting up all of their various players and laying out their plot threads, and then around episode eight or nine, they lift the magic veil and suddenly all the disparate elements move together. You never get the sense they don’t know what they are doing at any given moment, and when you look back at all that has preceded it, you realize that they've had it planned from the beginning. Each series essentially focuses on one case, and there is no greater evidence of the show's vision than the way season two bridges one and three, the way the characters that were important to the investigation of one ride through the background of two to reemerge in three. For those of you who are complaining that the people behind Lost don't appear to have any clue where their own show is going, hop over to my island and see what is really possible.
The close-out of season four has a lot of surprises. Characters that you thought would go one way don't, and certain positions change up. The fate of a couple of the players really broke my heart. I really want season five to get started just for the hope that we'll hear they are okay. The end of the episode is one of those long montages that veers through the various members of the cast (keep in mind, you have the police, the criminals, and the government, and all the places they splinter and merge) to give a quick denouement and assessment of where these everyone is at. It's cut to Paul Weller's cover of "I Walk On Gilded Splinters," an excellent choice to illustrate the posturing and tenuous illusions of life in "the game." It's a perfect exit, and I'm ready for the next entrance.
Current Soundtrack: De La Soul, The Impossible Mission: TV Series Pt. 1
Author of prose novels and comic books like Cut My Hair, It Girl & the Atomics, You Have Killed Me, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. Jamie's most recent novel is the serialized book Bobby Pins and Mary Janes, and his most recent graphic novels are the sci-fi romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Madame Frankenstein with Megan Levens; and the weird crime comic Archer Coe & the Thousand Natural Shocks with Dan Christensen.
, but emo). Look at Emily Blunt up there and just try to forget...
.
drawing 
.
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to gangster Frank Nitti in 
, has never had a problem injecting life into a flagging production. He's like the caffeinated coffee you secretly sneak into the decaf pot when your unsuspecting coworkers require a little pep. Apparently, there was a double switch, like a spy comedy where we lose sight of which glass has the poison, and the whole crew was getting decaf. Gone was the adrenaline-fueled show style and the sense of urgency; here to stay was an increasingly lackadaisical sense of malaise.
; the Rolling Stones, "Hitch-Hike;" The Futureheads, "The Futureheads;" the Last Shadow Puppets live on WXNP; Sugababes, Catfights and Spotlights 
