"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" v. "A Study in Scarlet"

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" v. "A Study in Scarlet"

After reading the first Sherlock Holmes adventure, "A Study in Scarlet," I decided to go back and reread "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Edgar Allen Poe wrote "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) forty-six years before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Sherlock Holmes novel (1887). I wanted to know the difference between a detective story that took place during the first half of the 19th century compared to a detective story that took place at the end of the 19th century, I wanted to know if Doyle was able to perfect the genre Poe had created, and I wanted to know if Sherlock Holmes could kick C. Auguste Dupin's ass. If this were the one-hundred years war and the two met on a battlefield would the tall and lanky Holmes decapitate Dupin's Frenchified noggin, or would Dupin deduce his sword all the way into Holmes's gut? Right here and right now I'm going settle the centuries of war between the English and the French based on two short stories: one written by a Brit and the other by an American. Well, maybe not quite, but I am going to determine which story is better based on five categories: each author's biographical low point, the writing style, the sidekick, the greatest moment of deduction, and, finally, the detective itself.

Author Low Points

Not much is known about Edgar Allen Poe's life, and much of the myth is actually a series of lies told by his former publisher. Perhaps the low point of poor Poe's life are the circumstances surrounding his death. After having several drinks at a friend's birthday party he disappeared for three days and later winds up dead in a gutter. Probably not the most noble death but it does combine his preternaturally strong love of alcohol and gutters.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a standup British gentleman who famously defended Great Britain's involvement in both the South African War and World War I (talk about having your head up the Queen's arse in order to get knighted). Unfortunately, Doyle did not share Holmes's deductive skills. Doyle was later duped into believing the stories of the famed Cottingley Fairies thanks to some photographic trickery. The culprits of this hoax: two sisters, one aged ten and the other sixteen. D'oh! Doyle even claimed that Houdini was magical even though the escape artist himself claimed otherwise.

Author with the lowest low: Sir Author Conan Doyle (which makes him the loser in this category). A ten-year old and a sixteen-year old! Moriarty could have figured this mystery out. Check out the pictures and see what you think: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm. Pretty crafty for a couple of girls who would soon be taught to "lay still and think of England," don't you think? Besides, Poe's death is almost cool. It's kind of John Bonham before John Bonham.

The Writing

Edgar Allen Poe's prose is masterful as always. It has this wonderfully archaic quality to it that can never be reclaimed. Absolutely gorgeous. It is interesting to note that a good deal of the story is in the form of Dupin discussing his deduction of the crime. This theme of a story within a story appears several other times within Poe's work. You can also find it in "The Oval Portrait."

Doyle isn't quite as masterful with words as Poe, and perhaps this is why he isn't the canonical God that Poe has become. In fact, Doyle drops a couple of real clunkers when he writes. At one point he describes a group of Mormons as traversing "every impediment which Nature could place in the way, with Anglo-Saxon tenacity." Wow, that's bad writing. Maybe it sounded good before WWII, but it's the kind of line that ages worst than Ed Wood's special effects. Nowadays Doyle's sentiments strike the tone of being more than a little racist and awkward.

Best overall writing: no contest, Poe wins. Doyle can write an entertaining yarn, and knows how to create suspense, but his prose is nowhere near the level as Poe's.

The Sidekick

In both works the sidekick is the narrator of the story, and while we are given a sizable introduction to Moriarty, the unnamed sidekick in "Murders in the Rue Morgue" is not given a name. Poe does not tell us much about the sidekick except what is important for the story. He seems to possess some wealth, is staying in Paris for enough time to gain residence there, and encountered Dupin while looking for the exact same book at a library. The two talk about their situation and decide to rent out a place together, and, in typical Poe, they get a mansion that's rumored to be haunted.

Moriarty, on the other hand, is a physician who is returning from the Afghanistan war after sustaining some wounds. He calls himself a lazy man and decides to seek out a roommate after he realizes that he's been living beyond his means. Moriarty is a great means of introducing us Sherlock Holmes and his deductive techniques.

Best sidekick: Moriarty wins. We really don't get to know Poe's sidekick all that well, and Moriarty just works as a better foil to Sherlock Holmes. I have to look up to anyone who describes himself as lazy. It is odd, however, that both sidekicks decide to be roommates with the famed detectives (as we speak several Brokeback Baker St. and Murders at the Brokeback Morgue parodies have suddenly been posted online).

Greatest Moment of Deduction

Both of the most impressive moments of deduction occur as we're first introduced to the respective detectives. The moment Moriarty and Holmes meet the detective comments that Moriarty must have recently come from Afghanistan. A chapter later, he explains how he came to this conclusion: "The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.'" Impressive, impressive.

As the narrator and Dupin stroll down a Paris street without talking for fifteen minutes Dupin responds to the narrator's thoughts, "He is a very little fellow,varieties true, and would do better for the Theatre des Varietes." After the narrator unwittingly responds he does a double take (well, it doesn't say he does a double take, but he must have done a double take, and a spit take too) and inquires how Dupin knew what he was thinking about. The narrator was in fact thinking about a wannabe actor by the name of Chantilly who was attempting to play the role of Xerxes. Dupin reveals that he noticed a fruiterer bump into the narrator causing him to trip on some lose stones, and in turn forced him to examine the causeway more carefully. Soon the two of them came upon a road paved in a manner called "stereotomy" which the narrator noticeably muttered. Dupin deduced from stereotomy that the narrator would have to think of the Greek theory of atomies which lead to Epicurus. When the narrator looked towards the Orion constellation Dupin was certain he was on the right track. Knowing that there was a reference to Orion in a review of Chantilly's latest performance Dupin surmised that the narrator's thoughts must have finally fallen on this final topic, and responded to his thoughts. Once again, this is rather impressive.

The winner of the greatest moment of deduction: Dupin. Sure, Holmes is smart, but Dupin deduced someone's very own thoughts. That's pretty fucking cool. What's interesting about Poe's idea of deduction is that even though he attempts to give us a definition of the deductive faculties, it ends up seeming more like a supernatural power. The deductions that Dupin can make are often impossible. Holmes, on the other hand, was a character created in the thick of the industrial revolution when science was leaping forward, and therefore all of his deductions are merely improbable. Poe has the luxury of outpacing science while Doyle is shackled to reason. Holmes calls Dupin's act of deduction jealous and superficial,'" but we all know that he's really just jelouse.

The Detective

There are a couple of surprises in store for anyone who has never actually read a Sherlock Holmes story. One of the most surprising things about Sherlock Holmes is how prissy he is. When Moriarty gives Holmes a compliment, he describes Holmes as responding with some sort of giddy pride. Who would have guessed that an Englishman could be more feminine than a Frenchman? Another surprising characteristic is that outside of knowledge needed for deduction Holmes is a complete dunce. He had absolutely no idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He explains to Moriarty that if he were to fill his head with too much that essential knowledge might fall out.

Much like his sidekick, we don't learn much about Dupin. The narrator tells us that he comes from aristocratic roots, but that his family wealth has been all but squandered. That's about it. Unlike Holmes, Dupin knows just about everything and possesses an almost supernatural intellect. However, he does lack any giddy pride.

The winner of the greatest detective: Holmes. Sure, he can be really annoying sometimes, but someone who has fatal flaws is far more interesting than someone who is flawless. I can't speak about Dupin's further adventures (perhaps he becomes more interesting as Poe refines his character), but as far as the first adventure goes Holmes is the more fully fleshed out and interesting character.

However, this only gives "A Study in Scarlet" two points and "Murders in the Rue Morgue" three. Poe seems to have bested Doyle in this round, but just like the adversaries in their stories, I feel they will return to face each other once again.

"A Study in Scarlet": 2 "Murders in the Rue Morgue": 3.

Why Pitchforkmedia is bad writing.

Have you ever noticed that Pitchforkmedia.com is filled with worthless adverbs and adjectives? I have, and must admit that it gets on my nerves. Or, should I say that I begrudgingly admit it gets on my shattered nerves. Even when I agree with Pitchforkmedia's reviews, their poor writing really bothers me. Don't they realize that adverbs, more often than not, weaken the verb itself? The same is true of the adjective. Anything they write falls into limp academia cliche of throwing words from the thesaurus at the reader. Take a few examples from their recent review of DFA's release: "decadent anthems," "corporeal latticework," "personable charisma," and "lavishly unveiled." This is only in the first paragraph. Do these writers live in a world where the literary restraint of the Modernists doesn't exist? Why Pitchfork writers are so stylisticly awful I can't explain; however, I can emplore them to take a goddamn writing class.

Is my writing any better? Well, as you can tell I don't edit anything I write. Hell, about one person a month actually reads my site, so I don't really have a reason to, but when you have thousands visiting a day, you would think that you would try and put up something decent.

Ahh, Pitchfork. Some critics write reviews that are works of art themselves. Indeed, they write companions to art that makes the reader delve deeper into the author's idea. In the hands of a great critic art gains dimensions not yet fathomed by the reader. Pitchforkmedia is capable of just such criticism, but too often they substitute an attempt at style for any true substance. When they're good they're very, very good, but when they're bad they're awful.

I can't be too hard on Pitchfork because despite their failures they're informative and fun. Their biggest falure is that they come accross as critics and not fans, but when you're covering five albums a day that's excusable. If they happen to run accross my article then I hope they take the criticism to heart, but also remember that I've just had eight beers tonight. Take that for what it's worth.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl (5/5)

“It’s time for a howdown ma’! Invite the cousins over and put the new ‘Black Rebel’ in dat ‘dem der new fangled disc playin’ merchine. Heeeeeehaw!”

No, no, no! Despite what everyone’s claiming, B.R.M.C. have not gone country—they’ve gone retro!

I’ve always wondered why a band who took their cue from the 80’s rock group The Jesus and Mary Chain would name the band after Marlon Brando’s gang in the 1953 film The Wild One. I don’t recommend judging a book by its cover but judging by B.R.M.C.’s name I would have expected something along the lines of The Raveonettes. If they’re going to name their group after a fictitious gang I would suggest The Lords of Hell (on a side note, you have to give props to a family film that keeps the line, “Don’t fuck with the Lords of Hell). On B.R.M.C.’s latest they take their sound back to the roots of rock and up the folk and country influences, but at its heart it sounds like 1950’s rock ‘n roll—well, with 50 years of musical evolution having more than a little influence.

B.R.M.C. came out of the gates with a ridiculous amount of hype (it was probably New Music Express). They were just asking for a smack down. When their solid debut album came out plenty of critics dismissed them as Jesus and Mary Chain rip-offs (fair enough) and then declared B.R.M.C. were juvenile delinquents who would amount to nothing (a little harsh I thought). When B.R.M.C.’s follow up, Take Them On, On Your Own, was a little sophomore slumpish you could hear bones splintering around the world as critics collectively broke their arms while patting themselves on the back. Things only got worse when B.R.M.C. were dropped from their label. To top it all off an ex-girlfriend stole their dog and showed up at a show only to make out with every guy there.

Down but not out, the B.R.M.C. have return with a triumphant left hook. Howl isn’t a return to form, it’s a complete reinvention. The Jesus and Mary Chain posturing is downplayed while folk, country, and gospel are embraced. The sounds conjure up the dustbowl west complete with lone churches set against a flat landscape. It’s hard to tell whether the incantations of religion are sincere or merely dressing for the new sound, but in the end I don’t think it matters much. Even if the album is style over substance, they have enough style so that it doesn’t matter. For a band to do a complete overhaul like this is impressive to say the least. I hope the attention Howl is getting will force those critics who dismissed B.R.M.C. to take another look.

I read that the title of the album, Howl, is a reference to the Allen Ginsburg poem of the same name. I don’t really see much of a connection. “Howl” the poem is loaded with urban imagery that Ginsburg seems so intent on railing against. At one point he intones “Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets,” likening the urban landscape to the Old Testament idol the unfaithful worshiped. Despite Ginsburg’s distaste for concrete surroundings, his poem has its feet firmly planted in a city if only to condemn it. Ginsburg’s “Howl” strikes me as a Jeremiad pointing to a new way of life in an increasingly conservative America. B.R.M.C. are much closer to On the Road, the novel that follows Kerouac’s persona as he crisscrosses the country as if he was running from his Bible-black Catholic roots. It has the same grand sense of movement and a tortured sense of religion that would ultimately consume Kerouac just like his alcoholism.

My three favorite tracks: “Howl,” “Ain’t No Easy Way,” and “Sympathetic Noose.” Despite the organ, the title track sounds as if it has one foot dipped in B.M.R.C.’s last two albums (come to think of it, “Salvation” could probably have gone on this album with no problems). “Ain’t No Easy Way”—the obvious single—is a taunt song that ruminates on how it’s much easier to fall into love than to completely escape it. “Sympathetic Noose” makes great use of studio trickery. The song starts with the strumming of a raw sounding acoustic guitar only to have it backed by a percussion section that can only be produced by modern day electronics. It’s a great dichotomy, and in my opinion the best moment on the CD.

The B.M.R.C. have tossed off their leather jackets, gave their old label the finger, and completely revamped their sound. After listening to this album you might be asking yourself, “What are they rebelling against?” B.R.M.C. would pointedly shoot back, “Whaddya got?”

The Clash - Super Black Market Clash

The Clash - Super Black Market Clash (4/5)

My three favorite bands/artists are The Clash, David Bowie, and Nirvana (sometimes in that order). Several months ago I realized I had been buying a string of albums by new bands--many of them debut albums. (Well, I had been buying whatever CDs my meager school loans could afford me whenever I decided I didn't really need to eat dinner for the next two nights). This struck me as odd because I remember back in middle school and high school I would choose two or three bands and quickly consume their discography. I began to notice huge gaps in my CD collection. The Clash were one of my favorite bands, but I only owned four of their CDs. It was time to starve for a couple more days.

For weeks I could feel "the shakes" coming on. You know, the rumbling that moves from your extremities until it infiltrated your whole body. I half expected dead babies to start falling from the ceiling a la Trainspotting. So I gave in and bought a few CDs, and made certain I start filling in the gaps in my Clash collection.

I love the feeling I get when I'm peeling the plastic from the jewel case. It's like a miniature Christmas, but better because you don't have to return everything. I proceed to unhook the jewel case cover so I can remove the annoying sticker at the top (if there's already a plastic cover why do we need the goddamn sticker). I don't believe in God, so this is really the only ritual I take part in. My girlfriend even accuses me of being obsessive about my CDs whenever I count them (she doesn't know me like they do anyways).

Enough about my idiosyncrasies, lets talk about the music. Super Black Market Clash is exactly what a B-sides album should be: a handful of gems ("1977," "Groovy Times," "Pressure Drop"), some experimentation ("Justice Tonight/Kick it Over," "Radio Clash"), but is ultimately uneven. I have been put on the record as saying that a B-sides album isn't worth anything if it isn't uneven (well, on the record because I just wrote it now). If the band doesn't have some failures then they're really not trying, are they? They're just spending time lounging in the safe zone. There's nothing terribly wrong with the safe zone, it's nice, I'd visit, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there. The two biggest critical darlings had some massive failures. Radiohead's first album was absolutely grating (and not in an avante garde sort of way) and in my personal opinion the Beatles were mediocre until Help!. That being said, some of the songs off the second half of the album fall a bit flat. Even so, they're all interesting to listen to and don't permanently scar the album.

Super Black Market Clash is just the fix for those of you who have already bought the first three CDs (which I recommend doing immediately if you haven't already). Perhaps I have been avoiding finalizing my Clash collection because I just don't want to get to the point where I buy the final CD. Until several years ago I always had the ability to look forward to Joe Strummer releasing an album now and then, but once he passed away the prospect of reaching the end of The Clash's extended discography became very real. If there was an artist who was able to truly represent the world I live in it was Joe Strummer. His music always presented the world with a hard edged realism, and yet managed to be filled with hope. It was like sifting through the dregs of a garbage bin to find a Picasso. Who's going to be the soundtrack to the world once I do buy that final CD? I guess I'm just marching to the inevitable.

Chungking Express

Chungking Express (4.5/5)

Chungking Express is cut into two distinct but tangentially related stories. The first involves a police officer recovering from a breakup with his long term girlfriend May. He is so obsessive that every day he buys a can of pineapple juice with an expiration date of May 1st (also his birthday). Eventually his paths cross with a cocaine smuggler who has been double crossed. The two make an unlikely pair, but the film is smart enough not to play up the theme of lovers (well, more like a lonely pair who happen to occupy similar space) from the opposite sides of the fence.

The second story involves another police officer and a local restaurant worker. This is where things get good. The second police officer has also recently broken up with his stewardess girlfriend (stolen from him by the police officer from the first story). The stewardess leaves a Dear John letter and the keys to the officer’s apartment at the restaurant so he can pick it up. What follows is an energetic, funny, and ultimately emotional love story.

Much of the success goes to Faye Wong, who admires the police officer from afar (and eventually from not so afar). She’s charismatic and an absolute joy to watch on screen. In fact she has enough energy to match Wong Kar-Wai's frantic camerawork. The role could have easily been annoying or downright creepy. She’s downright charming. I should probably continue with the review lest my fawning will be seen as annoying and creepy.

I enjoyed the second story so much that I almost wish the entire film was devoted to it (although a majority of the movie is). Wong Kar-Wai seems to be playing with the theme of urban isolation. The contradictory feeling of seclusion when you’re surrounded by throngs of people. Yet somehow, despite the competing cultures and fast-paced non-interaction, there is a thin thread connecting you to everyone around you.

I don’t really know what Chungking Express is about, but I do know that it’s fun. It’s easily the best romance I’ve seen in a very long time. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an American romance that was any good (do they make American romance films anymore, or are they all comedies with romantic endings tacked on?). This is the kind of movie you feel elated when it’s over—the kind of movie you watch movies for.

Bubble

Bubble (4/5)

One of the first shots in Bubble shows gravestones huddled around two American flags. The death of the American dream would be all but played out in art, if it wasn’t so damn relevant all the time.

Bubble begins with Martha and Kyle who work at a doll factory in a Southern Ohio town. Kyle lives with his mom and works two jobs to get by. Martha goes home to her bed ridden father she refuses to put into a nursing home. When a new factory worker, Rose, is hired a love triangle forms between the three. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Martha has romantic feelings for Kyle, but she does become jealous when her only friend starts taking smoke breaks with someone else. The monotony of the small town is broken up—ever so slightly—by the murder of one of the factory workers.

Bubble has gotten more press for its release strategy than for the film itself. It is being released in theatres and DVD simultaneously. I have been on record as saying that I oppose this business model because it will hurt the theatre owners and continue the growing trend of people avoiding the movie theatres altogether. Although, I did see this on DVD because no one wanted to see this movie with me. Fine, I’m a hypocrite, so sue me (I’m in law school so I feel perfectly safe saying you can sue me, because I’m reasonably certain hypocrisy is not remedied by law).

What is more interesting than the business model is the experimental nature of the film. The director, Stephen Soderbergh, uses all digital film, actually shot the film in Ohio, and uses non-actors. The result is largely successful. And it's got a sweet trailer (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454792/trailers).

Each character seems numb. They blindly go through their daily routine unaware that anything exists outside of their job and the small circle of people they know. Kyle and Rose are probably in their mid-twenties—about the time when the feedom of teenage years quickly gives way to an ever decreasing number of options. Martha is at least forty, and has long given up thinking about life outside of the town. When Rose says that she wants to get away, Martha asks why with a puzzled look on her face.

The characters in Bubble show almost no emotion, even when the murder occurs. They’re completely numb. A part of that numbness transfers to the viewer, and it does become a little difficult to care about what happens to them. Maybe that’s the point of the film, but it also subdues some of the emotional resonance.

I went to college in a city in Southern Ohio so this film had a little more impact on me. It was odd living on a campus where the springtime landscapers made certain every flower and blade was just right, while the city around us looked like it was crumbling. There’s a lot of Ohio that feels as if all the brick and mortar has been torn down leaving only a steel skeleton. In Springfield, Ohio, where I lived, certain areas of the city had rows of large mansions that were either vacant or carved into separate apartments by a landlord. You could tell that the whole city collapsed when the factory jobs were shut down and eventually sent over seas.

Because it was filmed in Ohio Bubble does a great job of showing the flat landscape littered with barely running factories or barely standing houses. It’s a film that’s actually concerned with places that aren’t on one of the coasts. While I have no evidence to back this up, perhaps one of the reasons Hollywood is taking a hit is because people finally want to see themselves or people they know up on the screen. The average person gets enough fiction from the daily news, and the public wants to see something real from today’s artists. This doesn’t always mean a documentary (although documentaries and non-fiction literature are immensely popular these days), but it does mean that books, movies, and television will have to start viewing the world through the eyes of the average American.

Addendum to Sliver: The Best of the Box

Addendum to Sliver: The Best of the Box

The other day I was listening to Nirvana's Best of the Box, but became so frustrated with it that I had to come up with my own list. Take a look if you're interested:

1. Spank Thru (1985 Fecal Matter demo)
2. Token Eastern Song (demo)
3. Ain't it a Shame (demo)
4. Blandest (demo)
5. Clean Up Before She Comes (solo acoustic)
6. Heartbreaker (live)
7. Mrs. Buttersworth (rehearsal recording)
8. White Lace and Strange (radio performance)
9. Floyd the Barber (live)
10. Even in His Youth (demo)
11. Polly (demo)
12. Opinion (solo acoustic)
13. Oh the Guilt (B-side)
14. Lithium (solo acoustic)
15. Verse Chorus Verse (outtake)
16. Curmudgeon (B-side)
17. Here She Comes Now (demo)
18. Sliver (solo acoustic)
19. Old Age (outtake)
20. I Hate Myself and I Want to Die (B-side)
21. Marigold (B-side)
22. Sappy (B-side)
23. You Know You're Right (solo acoustic)
24. Do Re Mi (solo acoustic)
25. All Apologies (solo acoustic)

It took me a while to come up with a way to make each side of Nirvana sound cohesive, but I eventually decided to organize the list by the eras represented by the box set. The first eleven songs are from the Bleach era. The next eight come from the Nevermind era. The final six come from the In Utero era. I think it gives it the feel of a documentary on CD. You really get to hear the gradual progression of the band, and maybe see where they were going. Enjoy.

Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead (3.5/5)

Horror movies almost always make money. It's an easy formula: create a monster, cast attractive people, and then have the monster kill them. All you really have to do is make people jump once or twice and your job's finished. It's also why most horror films are terrible. Land of the Dead, while not perfect, manages to be a unique horror film, because it believes horror movies can do something other than make people jump in their seat, although it does that too.

Land of the Dead is the fourth film in George A. Romero's Dead series. While the previous films involved the eventual decline of civilization, this film revolves around the last remnants of humanity trying to create a new civilization. The only problem is that the new civilization looks a lot like the old. In fact, it looks a lot like ours. Land of the Dead is a straight ahead allegory. It's not quite a mirror image of today's political climate, but it's awfully close. This is both a strength and weakness of Land of the Dead.

The plot revolves around a group of raiders who make a living going into the outlining suburbs and ransacking them for supplies. After a night of raiding, Cholo (John Leguizamo) decides that it's his last. He wants to buy his way into Fiddler's Green, a high rise building where all of the affluent live surrounded by the poor throngs, like Cholo, who work for them. When the owner of Fiddler's Green, Kaufman (Dennis Hoffman), makes it clear isn'tt Cholo isn't the kind of person who can live at Fiddler's Green (as Kaufman will say later on, a "spick bastard"), Cholo steals Kaufman's specialized armor vehicle Dead Reckoning. Cholo threatens to fire off Dead Reckoning's missiles at Fiddler's Green if he isn't paid five-million by midnight. Riley, one of Cholo's fellow raiders, is enlisted by Kaufman to find Cholo and stop him before the midnight deadline.

Oh, and there's a side plot about the zombies (often called stenchers) starting to gain the ability to think.

The analogy is there for anyone looking. Cholo starkly states that he's performing "jihad," and when he hears the demands Kaufman says he doesn't "negotiate with terrorists." Romero is examining how marginalizing certain groups causes dissatisfaction and anger to boil over into violence. There are many examples of this around the world, and one of the most recent were the riots in France. While Romero never asks us to like Cholo, he does expect us to understand why he's doing what he's doing.

I enjoy it when escapist fair tackles more serious subject matter. While they can never truly probe the problems as deeply as a more dramatic piece, the effect of recontextualizing real world problems in a fantasy setting can help us see things in a new light. It may never give us answers, but may help us tackle a problem from the flank rather than head on. There's a certain amount of catharcis in seeing such serious issues cut to their essence and treated as escapism. Such a blatantly political theme in a horror movie is brave to say the least.

The problem with the film is also its strength. At times the allegory becomes stretched. A ready example is when Riley chooses not to fire on a band of zombies because they're just trying to "find their way." I know the zombies are there to symbolize the marginalized people outside of our boarders, but c'mon, they're fucking zombies! Hell, they were just eating people! Maybe Romero feels that his message is too urgent not to shove it in our face, and while I can understand this proposition I feel it hurts his art. Romero was able to insert his political message into Dawn of the Dead in a less labored manner.

That being said, Romero does a fine job of creating a world out of a tiny budget. Seeing how much people can do with a small budget used to be one of the highlights of horror films. Would The Evil Dead be as good if you didn't know that it was filmed in a few months with virtually no budget and no experienced filmmakers? Now that horror movies are becoming less ambitious and special effects cheaper, I haven't seen a movie try and stretch a budget anymore. Romero does a fine job and adds a few details here and there that show you why he's so good in the first place. The first shot in the film is a diner sign spelling "eats." It's a clever bit of dark humor in a film about flesh-eating zombies. This may seem like an odd thing to say, but the gore is gleeful in its excess. When an army officer tries to throw a grenade, a zombie chops off his arm causing him to fall onto his own explosive and blow up. It's deliciously twisted. There are several scenes of gore that are painful to watch not because of the amoung of blood, but because they focus on things you could imagine actually hurting. You'll know them when you see them. Romero goes out of his way to show us things we've never seen in a zombie movie before.

While not on the level of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, Land of the Dead should satisfy Romero fans. It's almost enough for me to forget the awful Dawn of the Dead remake. If Romero is back in the game, then hopefully other horror movies will try and keep up.

Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (4.5/5)

Christopher Marlowe is fucking cool. What other Renaissance writer was a goddamn spy? I mean, I like Shakespeare’s plays and all, but as a person he’s boring unless he’s being played by Joseph Fiennes. I often pit two historical figures against one another in my mind, and I wonder what would happen if these two fought. I think I’ve already mentioned what would happen to Kubrick if he ever fought Kurosawa (see the Hidden Fortress review). If Shakespeare and Marlowe fought, Marlowe would bust out his super secret digital watch—that’s secretly a laser—and he’d slice Shakespeare in half. Maybe ‘Speare would have a deadly quill like the Joker had in Batman, but a deadly quill versus a laser? I think we know who would win. I know the digital watch/laser is a bit silly because they didn’t have digital watches back then, but at the very least he’d have an hourglass with a secret laser.

Reading Dr. Faustus I realize what a shame it is Marlowe died so early. Marlowe’s ability to combine drama and comedy was light years ahead of Shakespeare’s. It wasn’t until the second half of Shakespeare’s career that he started writing dark comedies, but Marlowe was interjecting his humor with a dark twist right away with plays like Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. If Marlowe hadn’t dies so early (in a fight over who was going to pay the bill no less—fucking cool!) then maybe there would have been two playwriting giants in London competing against one another. Just imagine the masterpieces that would have ensued. I bet they would have made King Lear look like A Comedy of Errors.

This is the second time I’ve read Dr. Faustus, and I had forgotten how anti-Catholic it is. The story takes place mostly in Wittenberg, Germany where Martin Luther wrote his famous 95 theses. The location already sets up the tenuous relationship between Protestants and Catholics. This relationship, obviously biased against Catholics, is further represented in the good angel and bad angel that appear to Dr. Faustus several times. The good angel repeats over and over to Dr. Faustus that he can repent at any time and come back into good graces, while the bad angel keeps on telling him it’s too late. The obvious analogy is that the good angel represents the Protestant idea of justification by faith. Not surprisingly, one of the groups of people who Marlowe is rumored to have spied on were Catholics intent on overthrowing what they saw as England’s Protestant government. Furthermore, the first thing Dr. Faustus does when he makes his famous bargain is to play a practical joke on the Pope.

Please, if you’re Catholic don’t let this turn you away from reading this beautifully written play. At times the mixture of slapstick comedy and high brow allusions are a bit uneven, but that was the nature of the beast back then. Marlowe had to play to the peasants as well as royalty.

The trick Marlowe plays on the audience is even greater than the trick played on Faustus. Marlowe actually gets us to care about Faustus by the end of the play. This is either a trick to show us how close every one of us is to making a Faustian bargain, or it’s a trick to show us how unfair these religious traditions were. After all, what did Faustus do that was so wrong? He goes into the deal with plans for making himself a despot, and ends up using all of his power to fetch grapes for debutants and summon Helen of Troy so that others may see her beauty. (Dr. Faustus has "phenominal cosmic power," and all he can manage is playing a few practical jokes and impressing people with out of season fruits.) He’s never punished for his bad acts, but rather because of who he pledged his allegiance to. Over the course of twenty-four years Faustus has actually become a somewhat better person. His greatest crimes are nothing more than playing practical jokes on peasants. He’s not perfect, but he’s also not deserving of eternal damnation.

I see Dr. Faustus as a critique of religion. Others may find that it only reinforces their beliefs, and that’s what makes the text so good. The Faustian bargain finds its way into literature time and again, but it means something different to each author; likewise, Dr. Faustus means something different to each reader.

Yojimbo

Yojimbo (4.5/5)

I have never been shy about my admiration for Akira Kurosawa. If you happened to have read my Hidden Fortress review then you probably know this...mannn (sorry, I couldn't resist a Friday reference). While watching Yojimbo I asked myself why I love Kurosawa’s films so much. I think the answer is that he’s able to be a genre filmmaker and yet his films are capable of transcending the genre into art house cinema. The cynical might quip that I’m saying this only because he’s a foreign director. I don’t think that’s the reason at all. Sure, there are films that transcend their genre in the manner that they’re the best Western, Science Fiction, Adventure film out there, but Kurosawa’s films raise the important questions that the average Hollywood drama wishes it could address. There are only a couple films outside of Kurosawa's work that I feel have done this (Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid and 2001). Kurosaw makes us think within a form that entertains as much as it probes.

Yojimbo is the darkest Kurosawa film I’ve seen yet (I must admit that this is only the fifth film of his I’ve seen). There are scenes of a dog taking away a human hand for a snack, the main character chops off a thugs arm, and towards the end of the film the main character is beaten to the point where he can barely stand up. In fact, I don’t’ think I’ve seen a more violent film made from 1961 or earlier.

Toshiro Mifune plays the main character (we’re never given his real name) who becomes the “hero” of the story despite himself. He enters a town that has been devastated by a war between two gangs and quickly decides he will set the two against each other while making a nice profit in the meantime. After a demonstration of his skills where he kills three people (“Cooper. Two coffins…No, maybe three) the hero sets up a bidding war for his services. Eventually things escalate and Mifune continues pitting the two gangs against each other until they just about destroy the town itself.

Mifune’s character is a protégé of the hard boiled anti-hero that spouts off one liners in modern movies. Compare Sin City’s “It's time to prove to your friends that you're worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying. Sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.” to “I’m not dying yet. I have to kill quite a few men first.” The movie is based off of Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, and is really a mix up of a samurai film and film noir. In turn, it was latter remade into “A Fist Full of Dollars.”

There’s less hope in this film than there is in other Kurosawa movies. Unlike the lost baby in Roshomon or the city park in Ikiru, I get the feeling that there’s no redemption for Mifune’s hero. There are several references to the gates of hell in the film, and this is perhaps the best description of where the hero resides. He’s constantly in a state of limbo where he hasn’t fallen into damnation but salvation seems like an impossibility. When the hero walks off at the end one can only assume he’s going to be wandering for the rest of his life.

Geronimo: His Own Story by Geronimo

Geronimo: His Own Story by Geronimo, Taken Down by S.M. Barret (5/5)

Geronimo: His Own Story is an endlessly fascinating autobiography that belongs in the pantheon of other great American works of autobiography and memoir. This book should take its place alonside other great works of personal non-fiction such as The Autobiography of Malcom X, A Moveable Feast, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and (arguably the best of the bunch) The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. This is a strong statement, but after reading this short autobiography it's at least an idea that should be entertained. I found things in this book that I was not expecting, and it ended up being a far more complex and intriguing portrait of Geronimo than I had previously entertained. The most fascinating side of Geronimo that comes across in these two-hundred pages is not Geronimo the warrior but Geronimo the diplomat.

S. M. Barrett’s introduction tells us that after Geronimo finished what he wanted to say he would not take questions or add anything more, but merely stated “‘Write what I have spoken.’” These are the actions of a man who has a very specific purpose he is pursuing. After reading Geronimo’s story I believe his purpose in publishing his tale was to accomplish in peace what he was unable to in was—he wanted to deliver his people back to Arizona.

Geronimo dedicates his story to Theodore Roosevelt, because, in his words, he “knows I speak the truth;…he is fair minded and will cause my people to receive justice in the future; and because he is chief of a great people.” Even before his story has started Geronimo strikes a cordial tone. Not only are Geronimo’s words flowing with accolades, but they are also giving Roosevelt something to live up to. By stating that Roosevelt is “fair minded and will cause my people to receive justice in the future” he is almost challenging Roosevelt to live up to this description.

Much of the fighting in Geronimo occurs between the Apache’s and the Mexicans. Geronimo doesn’t try and hide his feelings about the Mexicans, stating not only that he as “no love for the Mexicans,” but also that if he was younger, “and followed the warpath,” he would “lead into Old Mexico.” In fact, his battles with the Mexicans take up a slight majority of the book. He does not make any similarly broad statements when speaking about Americans. Whenever Geronimo criticizes American policy he makes certain that he focuses his criticism on the officer in charge rather than American policy as a whole. Geronimo realizes that merely lashing out at an unfair, but time honored, practice of breaking U.S. treaties would alienate his audience and hurt his cause.

The rhetorical technique Geronimo uses in telling his story is rather matter of fact. This is in stark contrast to some of the more melodramatic works that were popular around the turn of the century. Certainly this highlights a difference in two cultures, but it is also indicative of how Geronimo goes about trying to achieve his goal. Instead of histrionically telling his story he presents it in what seems to be an objective and reasonable voice. When Geronimo gave himself up to the U.S. Army one of the conditions was that his band of Apaches would be sent to Florida with the rest of their families. When the U.S. breaks this condition Geronimo flatly states that this “treatment was in direct violation of our treaty made at Skeleton Canon.” He lets the action speak for itself. If he railed against the injustice committed then he would have turned off a mostly white audience. After all, it was their government who was responsible for breaking the treaty.

I won’t make this into a thesis (although I probably could). Geronimo: His Own Story is a wonderful portrait of one of American History’s most courageous heroes. In the book I was surprised to find out just as much about Geronimo the diplomat as I did about Geronimo the warrior. I’ll end this with Geronimo’s words: “There is no climate or soil which, to my mind, is equal to that of Arizona. We could have plenty of good cultivating land, plenty of grass, plenty of timber and plenty of minerals in that land which the Almighty created for the Apaches. It is my land, my home, my fathers’ land, to which I now ask to be allowed to return. I want to spend my last days there, and be buried among those mountains. If this could be I might die in peace, feeling that my people , placed in their native homes, would increase in numbers, rather than diminish as at present, and that our name would not become extinct.”

Addendum to Addendum

First the Canadians voted in a conservative, and now the Palestinians voted in the Hamas. What the fuck! When did the whole world become a bunch of religious extremists. I call for a new age of enlightenment. Science will once again rule the day, and anyone who has religious tendencies will be marginalized or deists. How bizarre is it when the world looked more progressive three hundred years ago?

Addendum to Wolf Parade Review

I heard the Canucks just voted in a conservative Prime Minister. Take that you fuckers, we've just successfully made you our ass puppet. If the U.S. is going down in flames at least we can take you bastads with us. I don't even know if you guys have a Vice President, but now it's officially George W. Hate to break it to you guys, but your our bitch now. America's going down the toilet, but at least we're taking you with us.

Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine

Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine (3.5/5)

Death From Above 1979 play like new wave had a head on collision with metal. They're one of those bands with only two members; you know, like Local H or the White Stripes. While Local H hook their guitar up to a bass amp to put a little meat on their bones, and the White Stripes use the lack of a bass player to reinforce their retro sound, Death From Above 1979 don't really have an excuse. Maybe they just don't want to split their touring profits with a third party (my explanation for any bassless band). Their sound just isn't full enough. To be fair, they are at a deficit considering they play such danceable music, but they have left behind the instrument that could most easily serve their purpose. Without a bass player their grooves just aren't as effective.

Of course, these guys are damn good songwriters, and maybe that's why I'm being so hard on them--I think they could do better. Before I heard Death From Above 1979 I thought I was finished with any band that had even a hint of post-punk influence. I thought the market was saturated and there couldn't possibly be anything more out there. Unfortunatly for me Death From Above 1979 turned out to find a unique approach to the new wave phenomenon. They're good songwriters to be sure and have a handfull of excellent tracks on this album: "Romantic Rights," "Blood on Our Hands," and "Cold War" to name a few. All of these songs showcase the band at their most energetic, but when the songs start to slow down they really could use a bass player to accentuate their sound.

This certainly wasn't a bad CD (I gave it a positive score), but I think DFA79 is capable of more. Maybe all they need is a bass player to flesh ou their sound, or perhaps all they need are songs that more easily fit their lean sound. In either case, I'll be looking forward to what they come up with nexts.

Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary

Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary (4.5/5)

These damn Canadians have gotten uppity. Ever since the earliest signs of America's decline as the premier superpower (national debt, trade deficit, the European Union, China's rise to prominence) Canadians have seemed a bit smug. They're like the tortoise who beat the hare through slow but reliable progress. Recently there has been a slew of Canadian rockers to cross the boarder, and it's feeling like a slap in the face. I have previously suggested Americans do at least one of two things: 1) kick the Republicans out and get someone in office who know their head from their ass, or 2) show the Canadians we still have better rock music than they do. Option one seems like a long shot, but until recently I would have claimed we could lick the Canuks at option two. I mean Rush, c'mon. Is Geddy Lee a guy or a girl? It seems that the Canadians have decided to take our weakness as an opportunity to bombard our country with overly catchy indie-rock bands. I've even come across a couple friends who have become full fledge Canukaphiles (my solution: internment camps). Well, Wolf Parade won't make option two any easier.

I didn't want to like this CD. I really didn't. They're one of those bands that receives too much hype to be any good (*cough* The Strokes *cough* *cough*). However, I was returning a Christmas present and there was nothing else of interest at Best Buy. It turns out they're really good.

Wolf Parade play catchy, but slightly staggered, indie rock--complete with keyboards, tortured lyrics, and dual singers. The singers, while noticeably unique, share the common characteristic that both sound as if their lungs are too big for their esophagus. Wolf Parade are a band that aren't necessarily remarkable because of what they do, but the fact that they do it very well. They're the kind of band that makes ordinary life seem slightly epic.

The themes of night and day creep onto the album again and again, but not so much as in a dualistic way as in the passage of time. The slow release of our remaining hours, moving towards who knows what. I get the feeling that these guys make it a habit to revisit and reexamine their past. Likewise, ghosts creep into their lyrics on many occasions, and even into their song titles. It gives the feeling of looking back at what seemed like mundane life, but finding something profound (kind of like a poem by Wordsworth--except good).

My three favorite songs off the album are as follows: "Modern World," "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts," and "I'll Believe in Anything." (On a side note, doesn't "Same Ghost Every Night" sound like a Sponge song?) Once of the strengths of the album is the fact that each song takes on a unique texture all its own. You can readily tell that there's more than one principal songwriter in their group. Despite this the album maintains a strong thematic cohesiveness both sonically and lyrically.

Apologies to the Queen Mary is a devastating loss in the Canuk/Yankee indie rock war. However, it is not a loss we can't come back from, and the end of the war is still far off. All you Yankee musicians need to get off your asses and start writing some damn fine music.

Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft

Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft (4/5)

Super Furry Animals have always had a bit of a retro feel. Ever since their first release their more atmospheric songs have always recalled a bit of the 1960's or 70's. Love Kraft seems to take that retro feeling to the extreme. Perhaps it's the mere fact that this is a more laid back album than most of their previous work, but the flower power sounding title suggests that that they are in fact consciously recalling a late 60's/early 70's feel--listening to it I'm tempted to go out and buy a black light.

The relaxed pace of the album may have led to boredom with a lesser band, but Super Furry Animals are such consumate craftsman that despite the slow moving pace they layer their songs so well you're ears are constantly alert. It's one of those albums where if you put on headphones you realize they hid a fucking rainforest in there somewhere. Despite their talent as songwriters the album still lags at parts. The beginning of "Walk You Home" could easily garner the backhanded compliment that it sounds like a Bond theme song. The only song that attempts to rock out is "Lazer Beam"--it's roller derby-tastic! I do feel strongly that the album should come with the following warning: do not take mind alterning drugs while listening to "Psyclone." Seriously, though, DON'T! I can just imagine someone dropping acid while listening to the album, and then having their head cave in at song nine. I can barely handle it's excentricities while wearing headphones. You'll know what I'm talking about if you listen to it, but I don't want to describe it for fear that some of you may be on mind altering drugs at this very moment.

Perhaps the Super Furry Animals felt that in a world of religious fanatics who march others into a war against those of different beliefs (I'm talking about America, of course) they needed to make an album that tackles all these problems with some 60's optimism. "Lazer Beam" is about escaping "imperial colonial bastards" by leaving earth in a spaceship, after all. If you think about that long enough it's not too far from the kind of thinking you'd get from a hippie, but the hippie wouldn't be joking. You just have to smile at the lyrics from "The Horn": "drink, smoke, love enjoy the ride/Right or wrong/Hair down long." I guess you can't be cynical all the time, and a little dose of retro optimism is needed now and then. My three favorite songs: "Ohio Heat," "Lazer Beam," and "Frequency."

I've avoided using the rock critic phrase that most aptly fits this album, but my will power is fading. Here it goes: while it won't win them any new fans, Love Kraft will definitely satisfy the devoted. Since I'm already one of those devoted I will probably go out and grab the aforementioned black light, and see if this thing corresponds with a famous musical. Maybe Fiddler On the Roof?

The Shroud of the Thwacker by Chris Elliott

The Shroud of the Thwacker by Chris Elliott (4/5)

The Shroud of the Thwacker is the debut novel from the not-so critically acclaimed Chris Elliot...and, well, it's actually good! I'll admit that I got this book as a present, and probably wouldn't have picked it up on my own. In fact I read it half as a favor to the person who gave it to me, and half out of boredom, but I must admit that I actually enjoyed it.

This book outpaces all of Chris Elliott's other works. That's right, it's better than Cabin Boy! All right, I know what you're thinking, Cabin Boy sucked. How about this: it's better than There's Something About Mary! Not your cup of chai, then I have one more for you: The Shroud of the Thwacker is even better than Get a Life. Yes, you heard me correctly, and I know I might get tarred and feathered for this but Chris Elliott's new book eclipses that flash-in-the-pan 1990's sitcom.

Now that I have your attention I can tell you a little about the book. The set up is this: Chris Elliott (the author) is investigating the notorious Gilded Age murders of the Thwacker. We follow both Chris' investigation in the present as well as that of several "historical" characters (including a pre-presidential [and pre-Spanish American War] Teddy Roosevelt) who were hot on the trail of the infamous serial killer.

The Shroud of the Thwacker is basically a parody of Caleb Carr's Alienist novels, historical fiction, popular history, fictional history, and steals a bit of From Hell. The book is crammed from first to last page with jokes, and if one doesn't strike your fancy the next one probably will. He manages to fit wry literary allusions ("the price of oil had skyrocketed ever since the sinking of the Pequod") next to a running gag about Teddy Roosevelt's flatulence. Elliott's main purpose is to tell jokes, but at a certain points he lets a bit of social commentary slip through. He skewers historians who often wear rose colored glasses when writing about the past (one of my pet peeves) by playing up the most unpleasant aspects of late 19th century New York. Instead of the Statute of Liberty, Elliott instead claims that New York had a statute of Nathan Forrest, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan. There are also giant wooden cell phones, time traveling, Yoko Ono, and other bits of wackiness.

Of course, the plot makes absolutely no sense, but in the end it doesn't really matter (several plot holes are actually made fun of). Chris Elliott manages to write an imaginative, joke filled, crass and clever book. Hey, maybe I've been underestimating this guy. Maybe I'll go out and rent Cabin Boy again. ("Would you like to buy a monkey?") On second thought, maybe not.

Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance

Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance (5/5)

The first thing you hear on The Modern Dance is high pitched feedback approximating something like a dog whistle. Automatically you know something is afoot. This single line of feedback rides itself out for twenty seconds while a couple of notes are plucked on a guitar in the background, and then it is overtaken by some 1950's-Rock n' Roll-sock hop chords that suddenly break into a whole song. The first song off The Modern Dance is called "Non-Alignment Pact," and the first time you hear it I swear you'll feel the top layer of your brain peel away.

Okay, enough hyperbole.

Punk music is probably the most difficult thing in the world to define. If you ask anyone what it was you'll get answers across the musical spectrum. Everything from the Ramones to Brian Eno are considered punk by some people. The easy way out of this little problem to say "punk music was underground rock of the mid to late 1970's." This just begs the question, what the fuck was it that made it "punk"? Others use the good old technique of hindsight, and throw punk into one mason jar, new wave into another, and continue to amputate no-wave, avant garde, glam rock, proto-punk, etc. Despite being obnoxious it also isn't totally accurate. After all, the Talking Heads were playing CBGB right along with the Ramones, so it's not like the punk audience showed up for the Ramones' set then left to make room for the new wavers. It was all one big mixed up mess. The closest thing to an all encompassing definition of punk is "reactionary music." Not terribly eloquent.

If you ask me the closest definition of punk is the first half-minute of "Non-Alignment Pact." The first half of punk is represented in the feedback and sparse guitar notes that represent the avant garde aspect of punk: the Brian Enos, Talking Heads, Televisions, DNAs, Wires, and the like. These are the people that were interested in tearing down rock and roll structures. They wanted to see where rock music could go.

The other half of punk is represented in the classic rock 'n roll chords that carry the rest of the song. These are the bands that were sick and tired of power ballads and just wanted to bang out a taunt burst of energy in under three minutes. These are your Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Damneds, The Germs, etc. You know, the ones who have eclipsed the punk legacy. These bands were looking to rediscover rock music's primitive roots.

Of course, many of these bands have one hand in each tradition. Adam and the Ants, The Talking Heads, and Bow Wow Wow all dabbled in African beats in order to find rock music's deep primitivism. Like the second half of punk they were looking to rediscover the primitive roots of rock. However, all three bands used this tradition to forge something forward thinking and completely new. Similarly, Pablo Picasso used African art in his paintings in order to make art that was leaps and bounds ahead of his predecessors. Critics called his work "primitivism" (and not always in a nice way), but in fact it wasn't the complexity of his brush stroke that made his work great, instead it was the complexity of his imagination. Punk rockers followed a similar ideal, and prized imagination over complex solos and seeing how many tracks you can use on a single song.

If you really think about it, even the Ramones were avant garde in a way. After years of rock musicians seeing how long they can draw out a guitar solo here are a few fifties obsessed kids looking to go the complete opposite direction. They want to unearth what made rock music great in the first place, and they didn't do that by merely repackaging old sounds (plenty of musicians these days could learn from them in that regard), but rather by realizing that because the times have changed to recapture the feeling of old rock and roll they had to change the sound of old rock and roll. If that isn't forward thinking I don't know what is. While the Ramones were more primitivism and less avant garde, and someone like The Talking Heads were probably more avant garde and less primitivism, both had a similar view on music. They needed to look towards the past in order to make a successful leap towards the future. Inevitably I'm brought to the image of Janus-- a single head with two faces looking in the opposite directions at the same time.

All right, back to Pere Ubu.

Pere Ubu are a bunch of boys from my hometown of Cleveland. A lot of people would be surprised that Cleveland had a vibrant punk scene in the late seventies. In the States, Cleveland was second only to New York as being the most important city for punk's birth (not counting Detroit's proto-punk rockers, of course). Some other great punkers from Cleveland: Electric Eels, Dead Boys, and Rocket from the Tombs.

The point of my digression is that Pere Ubu is a perfect incarnation of this primitive rock and roll meets avant garde artistry. The front cover tells a lot about what's on the inside. It's a factory worker doing a pirouette in ballet shoes and with the smoke spewing factories of Cleveland serving as background. It's incredibly surreal, and it's also a perfect image to convey the high brow meets low brow attitude of Pere Ubu. The name itself is taken in part from a 19th century French play that I'm sure no more than ten people in the United States has read (I'm not one of them).

The aforementioned "Non-Alignment Pact" is the most conventional song off the album, but even when they get really far out there you can find elements that tie them down to their primitivist traditions. "Laughing," for example, starts out with what sounds like a bagpipe dying for a couple minutes, but breaks into full out rock attitude. The song is hardly conventional, but Dave Thomas, the lead singer, throw in some old rock and blues idioms with lines like, "My baby said if the Devil comes, shoot him with a gun."

"Street Waves" continues the "Non-Alignment Pact's" repackaging of old rock and roll sounds complete with a fast and tight guitar solo. This is followed by my favorite song off the album, "Chinese Radiation." Easily one of my favorite songs of all time, it sounds like Pere Ubu is taking a cue from The Who's mini-epics, but this time it's even more compact and much more fucked up. It starts out with some clean guitar playing along with Dave Thomas's vocals, then continues into the second movement where the song picks up speed accompanied by the sound of crowds cheering in the background, until it finally eases off into a refrain of the first verse but this time with a piano backing Dave Thomas instead of the guitar. Looking back at my description I realize it's completely inadequate, but once you listen to the song a few times I guarantee you'll be hooked.

More often than not the most bizarre element of Pere Ubu's songs are Dave Tomas's vocals. He sounds as if he's flexing every muscle to just to push out the lyrics (or the yelps, grunts, or whatever the hell noise he decides to make), and when he does they sound contorted and crippled.

The songs generally de-evolve as the album progresses, and the most starkly apocalyptic moments come in the six-minutes of "Sentimental Journey." Some people would be hard pressed to call this a song, just like people had a difficult time calling Naked Lunch a novel. It's really just a collage of found sounds and instruments of all sorts shrieking. Dave Thomas makes odd noises or says odd things, and if it isn't spontaneous then it's a pretty good approximation. It sounds like they broke a lot of stuff making this song. It has even less structure than stuff found on The Velvet Underground's debut. This is the most avant garde moment on the entire album.

The final song, however, reclaims the primitive side of rock. The closing number, "Humor Me," is a faux-reggae number that has Dave Thomas yelling "It's just a joke mon" in a fake patois. This is a perfect reflection of punk music's hidden fetish with native born music. Perhaps punk was so interested in ska and reggae because it had a kind of home grown legitimacy that their post-modern society had striped from then. Then again, that's an idea for another time. "Humor Me" sports one of the best solos of all time. It's not the most difficult (even compared to the others on this album), but it certainly has the most emotion. For such a strange thirty-six minute journey that single solo was exactly what was needed to release all of the pent up anxiety the album builds.

The fact that Pere Ubu isn't considered one of rock music's greats is a Milosevic sized tragedy. I don't even think they've been inducted into Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yeah, I know, they're not exactly Lovin' Spoonful as far as non-offensive radio hits, but where's the hometown love? In my opinion they are right next to The Clash as far as being the greatest punk band from the seventies. The inequity that Pere Ubu has not catapulted above The Damned, Joy Division, Buzzcocks, Patti Smith, (all great bands) and the rest of the punk pack in terms of popularity is evidence enough that God does not exist. Of course, if you listen to Pere Ubu and haven't at least questioned God's existence in an existentialist query, then you haven't listened to Pere Ubu.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (4/5)

Once you realize this movie isn't a porno, it's actually pretty damn good. Yeah, I was disappointed at first, but instead of hunting down the red light district I actually decided to stay. Hell, porn is accessible 24/7, but a movie this funny only comes around once in a while.

The plot revolves around Harry Lockhart played by Robert Downey Jr., a petty thief turned aspiring actor who soon finds himself in the midst of an old fashioned film noir plot. Val Kilmer plays Gay Perry, a private detective who is hired to show Harry the ropes for his potential new role. When someone from Harry's past shows...actually, the plot is really just a MacGuffin for the two actors to spout off clever lines at one another, and the movie itself seems keenly aware of this. In fact, Robert Downey's character narrates the film complete with fourth wall shattering comments (such as referencing the audiences in Times Square). His narration could have come off as annoying, but thanks to the strong script and funny delivery it works perfectly.

The entire film is really just an excuse for these two actors to play off of each other, and they do a fantastic job. Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. can be two of the most frustrating actors. Sometimes they can seem so self-conscious that it's painful, and other times they can turn in a role that singlehandedly makes the movie (Val Kilmer in Tombstone for example). Here they're at the top of their game. They play off of each other perfectly. For example, when Harry asks Gay Perry if he's still gay, Perry respond, "No, knee-deep in pussy. I just love the name so much I just can't get rid of it." This is the kind of sardonic, smart-ass humor you'll find in the film.

It's so difficult these days to find a good comedy that this movie felt refreshing. It feels like it has been over a decade since I've actually laughed out loud in a movie theatre. Most comedies are ruled by the Will Ferrell rule of comedy: if you yell it's automatically funnier. It's nice to know that someone out there thinks that a clever script can be funny too.

The qualities of this film don't stop at the humor. There's also some great send-up of film noir. For a noir fan like myself, this was merely icing on the cake. Not only does the film pay tribute to old fashion noir, but takes an opportunity to subvert it whenever it gets the chance. Film noir cliches are raised so they can be turned on their head.

If this movie hasn't already been driven out of the theatres because it doesn't have a bankable star, then go see this film on the big screen. It's worth seeing a comedy with actual laughs with an audience.

Blood on the Wall - Awsomer

Blood on the Wall - Awsomer (4.5/5)

Blood on the Wall is a trio that plays like The Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Minutemen, and a touch of My Bloody Valentine. Basically, they're all of your favorite alternative bands from the eighties and early nineties all mixed up into one complete, but surprisingly unique, package. Awsomer, which is their second album (get it?), tears through fourteen songs in little over a half-hour. There's not an ounce of fat on this set. It's kind of like that guy that shows up to your party with a purpose. He makes a b-line straight to the refrigerator, downs your best beer, takes a few shots, trashes some furniture, and is gone. You'll never see him again.

I'm a sucker for bands with two singers, and maybe that's why I've fallen so hard for this album. Courtney Shanks has a rhaspy voice in the vein of Kim Gordon that'll make you think of black lights and musty smelling smoke. Ben Shanks, on the other hand, has a perfect mania in his voice, and makes the songs sound as if they could disintegrate into cacophony any second. I imagine some wild eyed berserker with veins popping out of his face.

There's at least one song under a minute, and at least five others that are under two. It's enough to give you wiplash. These terse little snippets are addictive, and like your favorite crack dealer you'll be coming back again and again. I think the real secret to writing a short album is make it so addictive you can't help but listen to it twice in a row.

There are also a few "pretty" songs. "I'd Like to Take You Out Tonight" is the longest song at three minutes and thirty-seven seconds. It recalls Jesus and Mary Chain, and is a perfect little eye in the storm. The closer naturally slows things down as well, and even features a -gasp- piano.

Blood on the Wall are smart enough not to beat you until you're numb, and even some of the harder songs have a more deliberate marching tempo. My current favorite song of the album is "Mary Susan." It features a perfect sing-along chorus backed by a great turning bass line. I've already decided this will be the perfect drinking song for when I become an alcoholic.

I'd write some more, but I've already held you up too long when you should really be buying this album.

Oldboy

Oldboy (3.5/5)

Oldboy is a film of revenge, secrets, and twists that amount to a textbook perfection of modern day Greek Tragedy. I've never really liked Greek Tragedy. I've read both Antigone by Sophocles and Agamemnon by Aeschylus and I came up with the exact same feeling towards those works as I did towards this one: I just didn't care about any of the characters. I recognize that there are some wonderful things about those plays (and, plenty of wonderful things in Oldboy), but there was no point of entry for me - no character to latch onto.

As the film opens up Dae-Su has been picked up by the police in a drunken stupor. His friend bails him out, but before he is taken home to his wife and daughter Dae-Su is abducted. He spends the next fifteen years trapped in some kind of hotel room where he is fed fried dumplings through a slit in the door, and every now and then they pump sleeping gas into the room so they can cut his hair. His only connection to the world is through television. From the television he finds out that his wife has been killed and he has been framed. He begins training to take revenge and even forms a plan of escape.

Mysteriously, before he can execute his plans he is let go. Eventually he meets up with a younger female sushi chef and the two of them try and solve the riddle of his incarceration. I won't spoil the film with more detail for those who want to see it. I guarantee there's a lot more to the story.

One of the great things about reading something as old as Greek Tragedy is the window it gives you to a whole other civilization. This is the same kind of excitement one gets from watching a foreign film. I will admit that the ending of this film would never be included in an American movie, and there are some odd scenes involving sex or sexual tension that I didn't know whether to laugh or cringe. It kind of makes you wonder what the hell is going on in the mind of the average Korean male. However, there are also some great surreal moments that probably wouldn't be found in an American revenge film. They're not a major part of the movie, but for me they were the best parts. One word: ants.

I heard somewhere that the director is actually a philosophy major. You can definitely tell from the film. There are certain profundities Oldboy forced me to face. Do Koreans really not know what the Count of Monte Cristo is? Does every rich business man have a short body guard that can kick ass? When a Korea says I'll be your dog, do they really mean it literally? Why do people go to internet cafes anyways? Questions like this will challenge the audience and make them think about their own life. (And yes, "profundities" is a word).

As an audience we learn very little about Dae-Su, and personally I don't think the film itself was terribly interested. There were plot points that were contrived in order to fulfill the direction of the story, but I didn't feel like they were overly forced. The film has style to spare, and that's probably its biggest strength.

As you can tell, I had a real mixed reaction to this film. I didn't know whether to give it a 3 (bad review) or a 3.5 (good review). I opted for the latter. Even though this film wasn't my cup of chai, it wasn't worthless and I wouldn't want to prevent anyone from seeing it. If you're really into Korean cinema I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and anyone who's into Greek Tragedy, or even Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, will probably like it. For me it came down to this: if you're more interested in the philosophy than the story and characters, why the hell didn't you just write an essay?

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (4.5/5)

"All my songs are protest songs."
-Bob Dylan

"I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world."
-Bob Dylan

Throughout Martin Scorsese's two-hundred minute documentary we get to see Bob Dylan squirm under a barage of journalist questions. Several times he just asks the questions right back at them, and at one point starts snapping pictures of the photographers themselves. Dylan is portrayed as a chameleon, refusing to be a spokesman for the left or put on a pedestal by the folk movement. The closer Scorsese gets to his subject the blurrier he becomes.

The story of Dylan is framed nicely within the turbulent times his music came about. When pictures of Dylan's sleepy Midwest town is flashed across the screen it's apparent that the straight laced conformity was indicative of the nation as a whole.

No sooner are we are introduced to the restless kid who enrolled in college but never went to any classes, then we see him skirt to New York where he is rumoured to have followed in the footsteps of the old bluesmen, and sells his soul to the devil. Shortly after, his mediocre playing is transformed into a confident musician.

During the times Dylan is in New York you can almost feel the pressure that was building in America. This is also the time where he probably gained a political consciousness that he would later accept or deny depending on how he felt, or maybe on who was asking.

The majority of the concert footage contains booing and heckling from the crowd. I had always heard about the controversy concerning Dylan "plugging in," but it is something else to actually witness it.

This documentary has a long running time, but it never dragged. I was constanty intrigued, and always engaged. No Direction Home is richly layered and deals with a lot more than just Bob Dylan -- I'm sure I don't understand half of it. Scorsese show us a scene of Andy Warhol and Dylan right before he cuts to some British fans deriding the new Dylan music as "pop." As is the case with any Scorsese movie, it is about a lot more than what's up on the screen. In some way No Direction Home is about the changing art of the sixties. It was this decade that modernism really started giving way to the post-modern movement.

The relation between Dylan and his music also intrigued me. The Beats and many of these folk musicians viewed art as a truthful unveiling. Much of this film will have you wondering if Dylan's music concealed as much as it revealed. The idea of an artistic Truth is chipped away at, and instead Dylan lets little truths slip out of his art. There is an act that's going on whenever Dylan writes a song, and especially when he performs a song. At times it is almost as if he is creating a personality out of bits of images and sounds he finds in the world, and then puts them together to create something fresh.

The film manages to deal with multiple themes without losing sight of its subject. In fact, it is precisely because the film deals with so much that it didn't lose my interest despite its length. Scorsese has shown us one of America's great artist, and in the process proves that he also belongs in that category.

The Hidden Fortress

The Hidden Fortress (5/5)

Of all the directing masters Akira Kurosawa is arguably the greatest. No matter how much praise and hyperbole is shoveled onto his films they always surprise me by how good they are. Not good in a, "this was phenomenal for the 1950's," but good as in, "this is better than just about anything we're seeing today." While watching this movie I was trying to think of an American director who even comes close, but no one quite matches Kurosawa. If Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kubrick had a street fight in Heaven I gurantee you Kurosawa would kick Kubrick in the nuts and decapitate him inside of a minute.

This film is often described as the impetus for Star Wars. After seeing the prequel trilogy I half expected The Hidden Fortress to be an exact blueprint for Episode IV, but they're really not that similar. It turns out that George Lucas was talented back in the day. If you're looking for simularities you'll find them, but if Lucas himself hadn't mentioned how much this film influenced him I doubt anyone would be drawing parallels. For example, the two peasant characters, Tahei and Matakishi, are supposed to be the inpirations for R2-D2 and C-3PO, but they're not similar in the least. Tahei and Matakishi are slow, bumbling, greedy, and selfish. They're a far cry from Lucas' creations. R2-D2 is the butch in the relationship while C-3PO is his more feminine partner. (I have to give Lucas credit for having the guts to put a gay robot couple in a film way back in the 70's, and it's even more amazing because no one has had the guts to do it a second time. Perhaps one day gay robots will get the screen time they deserve.)

The story involves a princess and her general who are trapped behind enemy lines and must make it back to their own land. Of all the Kurosawa films I've seen this is the most commercial, and should satisfy fans of old action and adventure. Of particular interest is Toshiro Mifune who is a Kurosawa regular. He plays General Rokurota - an all around badass. When his party gets stopped by soldiers trying to hunt them down he quickly kills a couple of them, and then grabs a horse to go hunt down two trying to escape, all the while letting out a warrior's cry. This action sequence ends in a duel between Rokurota and an opposing general he has a competitive but friendly relationship with. The duel is one of the greatest fight scenes in cinema, and not just because of the fine choreography (although that too), but because of how interesting these two characters are. They respect each other, but if they met on a battlefield then duty would prevail.

This is much more of an action adventure film than something like Roshomon, but Kurosawa still manages to throw in a lot of themes. The princess has a slight epiphony while walking amont the peasants, and decides to save a girl before she becomes a sex slave; Tahei and Matakishi are both morally bankrupt but they still seem to serve a purpose in society; and General Rokurota and his rival both seem to say something about the merits and limits of honor. These themes are great and add some depth, but are subservient to sheer adventure of the film, which is how it should be.

The last film I saw that really understood how much fun a swashbuckling action film can be was Serenity, and before that was probably Pirates of the Carribean. Both are great films but can't quite live up to The Hidden Fortress. But if either of them want to challenge Kurosawa I'm sure he's got some fight left in him after he put Kubrick in his place.

Nirvana - Sliver: The Best of the Box

Nirvana - Sliver: The Best of the Box (3/5)

Well it's finally here, and there's not a single song on it that hasn't been released in one way or another somewhere else. Sure, there are three song versions that have never been available before, or at least to non bootleggers, but is that enough to make someone drop fifteen bucks? Here's what you hardcore fans are getting:

Come As You Are (boom box version). This is perhaps the single most unnecessary item on the entire CD. I didn't even like the boom box version of Smells Like Teen Spirit, why the hell would I want a shitty version of Come As You Are? Yes, yes, I get it, "Nirvana was once just another garage rock band just like yours." That's all fine and good, but give me songs that show why they kick the shit out of my band.

Spank Thru (1985 fecal matter demo). Cobain's stoner delivery is hilarious. Sure, it's just a novelty song compared to the other versions out on the internet, and the one on Wishkah, but it's still fun to hear an eighteen-year-old Cobain mess around. This is rumoured to be the first song Noveselic heard Cobain perform before he decided to start a band with him.

Sappy. This is the real gem on the album. This is even better than the No Alternative version. It sounds more stripped down, and the guitars have that jangly sound instead of pushing a wall of sound at the listener. I loved the original version, and even "borrowed" the No Alternative CD from a friend just because of that song (don't worry I gave it back). This version just has more atmoshperics, and you can really get into Cobain's vocals.

Every problem I have with the rest of the album I had with the box set, but this time it seems more prevalent because I already have the box set. Nirvana fans want new and hard to get songs, not different versions of old classics. We already have the classics, and do we really need two versions of Rape Me? The disc tries too hard to equally represent every Nirvana era by album. They should just fess up to the fact that the most interesting stuff comes from their Bleach days. After Bleach almost all of the great songs went onto their CDs. I won't go over what I would have put on the disc because it's not nearly as atrocious as the self titled disaster (but just in case you're interested I would have included: White Lace and Strange, Token Eastern Song, Even in His Youth, D-7, Verse Chorus Verse, and I Hate Myself and I Want to Die).

Just in case anyone's still reading after that shameless turn of events, I also have some good things to say about the album. They do manage to pick the best of the best (Ain't it a Shame, Clean Up Before She Comes, Do Re Mi, Opinion, Old Age, Floyd the Barber (live)). The alternate versions of classics are more interesting without an intimidating three hours of music to wade through. Of course, you could always solve that problem by putting these songs on a mixed tape of your own. You know, kind of like a...oh, I don't know, "best of the box." Francis Bean did a good job with the cover art. You can take this thing into the car without worrying about the CDs falling everywhere. They should probably have called it With the Lights Out: Travel Edition.

Unless you're like me (a completist sucker), then I don't know why you would buy this album. There are a few problems with the box set, and people like to knock it, but it's really a decent buy. Just go out and drop the sixty buck instead of picking up this scam.