CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

ARCHIVES!
POLARITY 281

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

this entry brought to you by bat for lashes, "what's a girl to do"


THE GOOD

Cinderella Man I went into Cinderella Man not expecting much. It was yet another inspiring story about the underdog raising up against all odds to become the champ. It was another teaming of Ron Howard and Russel Crowe, and while I loved their last movie together, A Beautiful Mind, that movie was three quarters brilliance, one quarter total hero worshiping wank fest (IE, the entire last 20 minutes). I was worried that Cinderella Man would turn into that, especially since the story being told is a boxing movie-- exactly how many boxing stories are there out there where the underdog comes up against all odds? Well, it turns out there's at least one more-- Cinderella Man succeeds, and what's more, Howard avoids the sentimentality that bogged down A Beautiful Mind once it had reached its exhilarating climax. What partially makes the story succeed well is its setting-- New York, right smack in the middle of the Great Depression. Really, Cinderella Man isn't so much about one man, Jimmy Braddock, overcoming all odds-- it's got a lot of that in it, but it feels more like an examination of what it was like being in the Great Depression, and Jimmy Braddock's rise from has-been to champ can be seen as a metaphor of America's pulling itself up from the gutter and shaking itself off, and again raising to superpower. The fight scenes don't have as much impact as, say, Raging Bull, but by the climactic battle with Max Baer, who has previously killed a man in the ring, the tension has been racketed enough that you feel every hit and duck with every swing, even if it feels a bit more Hollywood than the best of the bunch. The real secret weapon here, though, is Paul Giamatti. Russel Crowe is of course incredible, effortlessly a sympathetic everyman, with large, caring eyes, but rough around the edges-- a real man's man. But Giamatti, like essentially everything he's in, is the ultimate supporting actor. He's Braddock's manager, Joe Gould, and he's putting absolutely everything on the line for him-- really, if Braddock fails in the last fight, he only goes back to a nobody living in the slums. However, his manager will have lost everything, and the strength and support Giamatti conveys is palpable, even though in terms of the story, he's just the manager character that every boxing movie has.

Dale Earnhardt Jr's Big Mo' It's a candy bar, one has caramel, one has peanut butter. I picked it up thinking, wow, chocolate candy for red necks. How amusing. Let's see how the other side eats. Unfortunately, it's by R.M. Palmer, which isn't exactly the highest quality chocolate, but it's not the lowest either, and the candy bar tastes pretty damned good, with milky chocolate that melts in your mouth. I used the word "unfortunately" because I was expecting it to be an atrocity. Instead it was just a regular chocolate bar with caramel or peanut butter in the middle, and was yummy.

Klaus Pierre, French-German Actor, Next Action Movie Superstar I like to watch Boing Boing TV, and there was an episode about a live version of Point Break. Some performers decided to do it live, ala Rocky Horror Picture Show fanatics, only every week the lead roll is picked randomly out of the audience. And on that particular night, a handsome French dude named Klaus Pierre was in the audience, and he was utterly obsessed with Keanu, and wanted very much to be up on that stage. Initially I thought he was just a comedian being funny, but when he gets rejected, he takes it... rather seriously, and I thought, Oh shit-- I think this guy's being serious. Then they did a follow-up, with Klaus Pierre learning to swordfight, because, you know, that's what action movie stars do. And another follow-up with Klaus Pierre musing about love in front of a coffee shop. The thing is, Klaus Pierre is actually a really good looking guy. If only he weren't so fucking crazy. You absolutely have got to see this guy. He's fantastic.

Modest Mouse's "Fly Trapped in a Jar" video I don't know who The Saline Project is, but they made an animated video for "Fly Trapped in a Jar". It's not very complex. It's a computer generated nightmare version of the band performing, except dipped in cotton candy and Skittles. Meanwhile, Cotton Candy Demon Isaac Brock bounces around merrily as if a stick puppet. Awesome.


THE BAD

Paramore I don't know if you knew this, but if you're a white female singer born after the year 1985, you sound like Avril Lavigne when you sing. I'm not sure if it's something in the water, or if it's a natural evolution for white people, but chicks that are under the age of 23 sound like they're Avril Lavigne when they sing. Paramore doubles the annoyance factor with being a band that is obnoxiously punk. Yes, the singer is really fucking cute. But that just makes her band seem even more like a manufactured thing specifically to get teenagers to buy their albums. Their single is about as unoffensive and poppy as it possibly can be and still have guitars, kind of like something that would be played on Radio Disney, if they had a Radio Disney 13, the PG-13 rated version of Radio Disney, and the boys in the band are perfectly coiffed and pierced for the girls, and the lead singer is hot for both the boys and the girls. It's kind of disgusting.

The term "cougar" ...Speaking of disgusting. I don't know if you've ever heard this term, but a "cougar" is a middle-aged woman who goes looking for boys much younger than her in order to fuck them. Get it? They're hunting. So they're cougars. This isn't as disgusting as "MILF", but it's pretty fucking obnoxious, mostly because there are baby tees that say things like "MY MOM IS A COUGAR". Listen, can't women be sexually liberated without embracing these terms coined by fratboys?

Not having a next-gen system yet You know what's frustrating? All my coworkers have X-Box 360s, and one of them has a PS3. They all go on Xbox Live and play together. And they come back the next day and talk about it, then they talk about other games. But I get left out of the conversation, as if I'm not a gamer. And it's like, dude, I know way more about video games than all of you. I'm way more into video games than all of you. While I sold the majority of them a few years ago, during the PS1-N64-Dreamcast era, I have over 160 games. I read several magazines on video games, visit one website daily and another frequently, I listen to podcasts, watch webshows-- I am a video gamer. I even have a video game T-shirt! Yet people have stopped coming up to me and asking me about games. Because I haven't bought any in like a year! Gosh blast it! I need a video game system right now!

Missing Portishead's new album on day one I'd been planning, since the date was announced, oh, last month or so, to be there on day one and buy their new album. I haven't anticipated an album this much since... honestly, this is more anticipated than pretty much everything since 2005's With Teeth. It's out Tuesday the 14th... IE, today. And as it turns out, I can't buy it. Not enough money. It's not that big a deal, I have all their albums, and I don't think I bought any of them on day one-- unlike with, say, Nine Inch Nails, where I've bought their last three albums on day one. But still! Portishead! They haven't released an album in a decade! I might not get a chance to buy anything of theirs the day its released ever!

Gatorade Tiger I'm sure Tiger got paid a hojillion dollars for the honor of putting his name on the bottle of Gatorade-- he gets his own line of flavors! The problem is the flavors suck balls. It just tastes like normal Gatorade, but watered down. Which is what G2 tastes like, except G2 at least has half the calories of a normal bottle. Gatorade Tiger has no excuse for tasting this mediocre.
------

with love from CRS @ 10:05 AM 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment