The Truth Is Out There...In Your Mom's Vagina

12.19.12
4:46 pm
 
A few days ago, I watched the last Fincher film I’ll watch for a while (unless I remember to watch the one about Buttons and Brad Pitt), Zodiac.
Below are my smattering of notes…
 
It’s shot beautifully, as all his stuff. Every scene is massively detailed.
If awards were given for how good a film looks, hen clap for this one, but, after a serial killer movie like Se7en, is there really any point to keep making them?
 
Mark Ruffalo is excellent, loved every minute of him (but I still don’t love him for Bruce Banner).
His back and forth with Anthony Edwards (NNNNNEEEERRRRRDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!) is great and as natural as Fincher could have dreamed.
 
Chloë Sevigny looks (relatively) normal for once…but she’s still kind of a bitch.
 
And Charles Fleischer is astounding. I’d never want to be in a basement (even such a well-lit and set-dressed basement as this one) with him.
He’s terrifying.
But I’d still rather hang out with this creepy Charlie Fleischer than the one from his weird ass talk show.
Hyperactive little spaz.
 
You can feel the passage of time like a mofo in this movie.
From 1968 to 1991, you feel it.
Crazy…
 
In the end though, true stories that have no real ending aren’t my favorites.
Even with Donovan on the soundtrack.
 
I’ve also been rewatching X-Files and some diamonds have revealed themselves…either because of their awesomeness or their outright oddness.
 
First off, there was an episode in the second season called “3”, which is kind of like a Brett Easton Ellis homage.
It features Mulder having sex with some kind of vampire chick for no real reason while fires rage in the hills of Los Angels.
Scully gets abducted for six measly months and Mulder gets all existential and nilistic…
Very odd episode…
 
Then there is the classic, “Irresistable”, which introduced Donnie Pfaster, the “escalating fetishist” who starts off cutting the hair of a dead teenage girl, then digging up graves and taking hair, fingernails and occasionally a finger and then picking up prostitutes in order to kill them simply to obtain their hair and nails. This actor, Nick Chinlund, is PERFECT for the role and reminds me a bit of Crispin (Hellion) Glover, but less theatrically creepy and more death-sex-fetishist-next-door creepy.
You know.
Scully is so vulnerable in this…it’s heartbreaking to see her so scared.
 
Then there’s the episode I watched just today.
It’s called “Humbug” and it’s Chris Carter’s love letter to sideshows, starring Jim Rose, The Enigma, the midget from Twin Peaks and a whle bunch of other awesome actors.
The whole thing is tongue in cheek and funny as hell.
And there is some sort of aborted looking monkey monster.
Which is good.
 
And, finally, I returned to Bang studios downtown this morning for my second Speakaboos recording in as many weeks.
I was another slew of characters; a fox (a Paul Lind fox which is like a regular fox but more sassy), three different pigs, a newt, another monkey, two different narrators, Old MacDonald, the Speakaboos dragon and…more.
As for before, it was exhausting and the most fun I’ve had in a booth in a while AND I’m coming back in January!
WOO!!!
SPEAKABOOS!!!!
And, you know what’s supergreat about this?
Speakaboos is about teaching kids to read, so, in the end, I’m helping kids be less stupid.
And that is all I’ve ever wanted to do, make people a little less stupid.
Merry Christmas, future.
You’re welcome.

The World Of Froud

12.2.11
7:46 pm

Last night, thanks to my lovely taking an amazing puppet/creature crafting class with Wendy and Brian Froud (check out her Facebook for picture of the thing she made, it's astounding), her and I were invited to the opening of the World of Froud exhibit at the Animazing Gallery downtown.
Some highlights included seeing several of Brian's original character sketches from Labyrinth as well as a slew of goblin and faerie paintings and sculptures by Wendy, Brian and Toby (who played Toby AKA the Babe with the Power in Labyrinth and has since become an INCREDIBLE sculptor), participating in an auction run by Lolly Lardpop for a one-of-a-kind Brian Froud painting (Chris and I capped our bidding at $3500 and missed out by $250...we're still kind of fifty/fifty about not getting it...), and then, because of our high bidding, spending the rest of the evening as VIPs of sorts, getting to hang out and talk with Heather Henson (Jim Henson's daughter who sounds a hell of a lot like Sarah Vowell but without her inherent darkness), writer Ellen Kushner and the one and only Brian Froud.
I had a conversation with Brian Froud, the guy from whose imagination most of the creatures from Labyrinth sprang.
I am now cooler.
It was a wonderful, magical evening.

In far more mundane news, I have continued my Fincher Fest, watching Panic Room two nights ago and Fight Club last night.
Panic Room is much better than I remembered it being and I think I figured out why I had such a problem with it when I saw it in theaters, oh, nine years ago.
Thing is, Fight Club desensitized me.
That movie was as mind blowing as anything Chris Nolan has ever done, even more so, and the fact that the next movie after it was shot (primarily) in one room in one house with a cast of less than ten people...well, it just didn't stack up.
But, seeing it now, as an adult and more of a film person (?), I was able to get a lot more of the nuance, the back and forth between Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart (excellent casting, by the way, they look like mother and daughter), the schizophrenic hysterics of Jared Leto's Junior and the evil of Dwight Yoakam's Raoul.
Obviously, still not as great as Fight Club, but a very good, very well-made film.

Fight Club, of course, is still as excellent as always.
The perfect blend of dark humor, intense action and ridiculous visual effects.
I'm upgrading to Blu Ray as soon as I get the chance.
Also, I remember hearing this on the commentary with Fincher, Pitt and Norton when I watched it with their commentary years ago and it came back to me: despite all the madness and chaos and anarchic overtones of Fight Club, only ONE person is actually killed by violence in the entire movie.
Another person is shot, but that's all.
Compare that to your typical action hero bloodbath and complaining about Fight Club suddenly seems a bit pointless, eh, right-wing fuckos?
Do you mind if I call you fuckos?
Thanks.

Anyway, planning on taking in Se7en for the umpteenth time this weekend and maybe Get Low, which has finally made its way to my home after months of blockage due to me not watching Re-Animator and the HBO Angels In America mini-series.
Next week should herald the arrival of both Zodiac and The Something Something Something Of Benjamin Button, which I hear was also pretty awesome.

I received my script for next Friday's Speakaboos session; I shall play six characters and all of them will sound drastically different.
THIS is why I'm doing this, for projects like THIS.
Teaching kids to read and talking in funny voices.
You know, I had a good feeling when I walked out of that audition, but didn't hear anything so I just chalked it up to fools not understanding my genius (a problem I face, literally, every hour of every day...and that includes the ten or so during which I am sleeping), but then I got the booking and realized that they were all probably still unconscious from the exposure to my genius and quickly forgave them.
I am kind and ridiculously talented.
Also modest.
I am hugely modest.
And well hung.
Have I mentioned that recently?
Well, either way.
I am.
Huge.

Since about midnight last night, I have been absorbing the six track sampler released in advance of the full Dragon Tattoo score (digital release on the 9th, physical release on the 27th) and have been experiencing a sort of aural word association with some of the tracks:

Hidden In Snow - Aphex Twin's Drukqs (specifically the stuff with the hammered dulcimer)
People Lie All The Time - Saul William's Skin Of A Drum
What If We Could? - No association, just caught up in how beautiful and sad it is
Oraculum - How To Destroy Angels' The Believers
Please Take Your Hand Away - No association as this was one of the Comes Forth In The Thaw tracks
Under The Midnight Sun - Bowie's The Motel (specifically the slide guitar from the end)

At this moment, with seven of the thirty-nine* tracks revealed (the full Karen O. "Immigrant Song" cover is available for a buck on iTunes), it seems as if, while the Swarmatron was Reznor and Ross' weapon of choice on The Social Network score, the hammered dulcimer is the selection for TGWTDT.
Quite frankly, I'm going to need some psychotically explosive guitar like that in the more exciting bits of the 8-minute trailer you can find streaming out there now.
Then we'll talk...
 
Oh, and, finally, you might have noticed that this is going up between the hours of 3pm and 11pm, my standard working hours...well, that's because we just got us a motherloving computer with the motherloving internet here at the Hospital.**
But, there are quite a few administrative restrictions...chiefly enforced by Barracuda.
Anyone know a way to get past it?
I'm quickly becoming a detractor of said program and, as a result, the fish which shares its name.
Will, could you drop Mr. Doom a line and help a brother out?
If you do, you won't just be helping me, you'll be helping yourself find out more about Shock G.
That's a promise.

All right.
Weekend time.

*Read as "thirty-holy-fucking-shit-nine"

**And don't worry, I'm utterly disintegrating the cookies/cache file/temporary internet files and everything else that could expose my three dozen searches for variations on the "clowns fucking dolphins" motif...hey, a new computer demands a new desktop background, right?

BEACH GAME!!!!

11.30.11
3:22 pm
 
Recently, I watched Danny Boyle's "The Beach".
It should have been titled "Someone Took A Shit On The Beach".
Because watching it was the equivalent of stepping in a pile of sand-covered feces on a beach...for two hours.
Danny Boyle earned a hell of a lot of cred with "Trainspotting" and lost it all on this bag of balls.
From the random character choices made by characters you didn't care about to all the pointless yelling and then the fact that the idea of paradise is a bunch of smelly hippies with an unlimited supply of weed.
Yes.
Paradise is a commune, folks.
Run by Tilda Swinton, perhaps the strangest-looking woman in Hollywood...although she was great in "Constantine".
And, at the end of the movie, all the poor, life-is-too-hard-man-so-just-roll-up-a-joint-and-let-the-sun-GOOOOOOO-BAYBEEEE!!!! stoners have to leave their sticky, green Shangri La and return to the real world.
Total bummer, dude.
I'm sure once they reconnect with their respective dealers though, that life will be a little easier.
And thank goodness for that.
I'm willing to wave away this fart of a movie simply because everything else this guy has done has been great and everybody gets one.
"The Beach" is Danny Boyle's one.
Let's move on...
 
In anticipation of Fincher's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" remake, I've been reading up on him.
Did you know the first thing he directed was a music video for Rick fucking Springfield?
It's for a song called "Bop Til You Drop" and could not have less to do with Rick Springfield or bopping.
It (sort of) still holds up and was probably one of the weirder things on MTV at that time.
Or certainly one of the most ambitious.
After a handful of interviews, I realized two things: that he's kind of a megalomaniacal, control-freak dick (which makes for a great director) and that I need to watch more of his stuff.
I had totally forgotten that he directed "The Game" back in 1997, a movie which involves Michael Douglas in an "ARG" when an "ARG" was merely something the Hulk exclaimed in comics.
If you haven't seen "The Game", see it.
It's a brilliantly made mindfuck of a movie.
Michael Douglas is great as is Sean Penn.
Granted, it's one of those "The Usual Suspects" type revelation movies, but, also like "Usual Suspects", it's fun the whole way through.
And it still holds up.
I plan to rewatch both "Panic Room" and "Zodiac", though I remember not loving either of them.
Then, once I've gotten through them, I'm going to do "Fight Club" and "Se7en", two of my favorite movies.
Between those two and "12 Monkeys", I learned to love Brad Pitt for more than his DSLs and myriad abs.
 
So yes, in short, avoid "The Beach" like a dirty hypo lying on a beach and embrace "The Game" as the kick ass future glimpse it was/is.
 
Also, next Friday, I am going to be recording a bunch of characters for an upcoming Speakaboos project.
Google Speakaboos, think of me and then laugh and laugh.