Just say meh...

This CD has a wonderful lineup - with Beck leading things off, the Roots, Aimmee Mann, Sonic Youth, XTC, and a half dozen others filling the CD. The only problem with this compilation CD is that only one of the songs actually sounds even remotely like a Christmas song.

The rest sound like decent enough alternative songs, but putting them all together, slapping some Christmas titles on them, and calling them a Christmas CD doesn't automatically work.

And I know, I've done my fair share of listening to Christmas music for a while now - finished up the Christmas CDs (the dozen of them) over the summer. The cds are broken down by genre of music, but this CD doesn't do much other than get one or two mildly interesting songs. There is a nice take on "Amazing Grace", but that's not really screaming Christmas to me, either...

It's much less than some other good Christmas music compilations that I can highly recommend

• Best Christmas Album in the World Ever - its name, not an endorsement
• Christmas Remixed
• Ultra Lounge: Christmas Cocktails and its followup
• Very Special Christmas
• The Edge of Christmas
• Maybe This Christmas
• Wonderland: Cool December

...and a couple that I haven't heard but that look decently promising...

• A Santa Cause
• Phil Spector's Chistmas Album

Vegas, baby, Vegas!

I don't gamble much. The odds are stacked so strongly against me in nearly every game out there - from the lottery to poker, slots to tear-offs - but it's clear that not everybody looks at the long odds and turns away.

This is a History Channel ninety-minute documentary (with historically accurate recreations, woo hoo!> that tells the tale of a group of MIT students who have taken the Vegas (and Atlantic City, Monacco, Paris, etc) casinos for millions of dollars.

It isn't a how-to menual of how you might head to Vegas and rob the place blind, but it does do a nie job explaining the strategies that the college students used - card counting, team play, and hi-lo betting. The show is pretty well done - though it does suffer from some made-for-television quirks (recap of the premise every 30 minutes, bad acting in some parts, not quite movie quality film). The tale begins in 1992 when the team was first being formed and ends in late 1993 when the team that is the focus of the documentary (though other teams were built from the ashes of the main team. At one point, the team was up $888K and was being comped left and right at the casinos because they were providing so much money to the casinos.

The main stories are "why this team worked for a year and a half" and "what went wrong in the team dynamic that eventually killed the success?". We get interviews with the real team members and bunches of recreations with slightly more attractive people (a source of comedy to me). Through the intercutting of the two, the story is quite well told, and the destruction is well told.

I'd initially grabbed this from PLCH because a friend of mine was at MIT at this time and knew a number of people who had been a part of the MIT blackjack club. Interesting to me...might be to you as well, even without the personal connection.

Gangsters with a heart...

Donnie Brasco has one impressive cast - Pacino, Depp, Anne Heche, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, Tim Blake Nelson, Paul Giamatti. It's also got great source material - real-life story of an FBI agent who went undercover for six years with a NYC mob crew.

The movie deserves its place among the best mob movies made, but it's about a lot more than the mob. It's much more a story of a man torn between his life and his work, work that is changing him and devouring him, making him into the person he pretends to be. It's also a story of an older man - frustrated with his place as the fading gun on the mob - taking a young man under his wing, bringing him into the family and showing him how to not become the older man, stuck and frustrated in his current position.

Outstanding film...highly recommended...not quite on par with The Godfather or Goodfellas, but it's in the next echelon of mob films.

Started the film last night, finished it up today after tennis this morning.

Scoreless

It's not a good film. There are, in fact, few redeeming qualities to this one. The storyline is bland (half dozen kids try to steal the answers to the SAT). The actors don't have much to do of any interest. The discussion is cliched. The whole plot works because the daughter of ETS's president happens to go to school with the rest of the characters. The grouping is perfectly multiracial (two white boys, two white girl - clearly meant to be romantically linked to the boys, a black guy, and an asian guy).

Luckily, it was free, and I did stuff on the computer while it was playing.

General synopsis is - avoid it.

No absolution...

A painted tale about Batman seeking vengance for a bombing at Wayne Enterprises ten years ago. Beautiful paints - creating a very moody look for Batman and for India, where the story spends much of its time.

There's something here that just seems a little less than revolutionary - Batman obsessing about a crime and possibly figuring out that the obsession might not be the most healthy choice.

Looks like I didn't do a great job in choosing TPBs this week.

Family lost...and reunited...

No online reviews that I could find...so it's just me to link to...

I like what the newest version of the Teen Titans is doing with things. They're bringing many of the characters back in here and there as mentors to the new crew of youths - Superboy, Kid Flash, Robin, Wonder Girl - who have been through enough of their own adventures to not be total neophytes.

In this volume, Raven makes her reappearance into the title, again being used by a recurring villian - Brother Blood - in a new incarnation. Raven finds herself being used to bring about the end of the universe. It's the kind of thing that the Titans have seen a half dozen times before - sick little family that they are, but it works here.

Broken story...

The review I've linked to pretty much says it all: "After trudging through all 144 pages, I was left with the impression that this story would have been better suited without the Batman mythos."

It's not a bad tale. It's well drawn and well told, but it isn't anything special at all. The storytellers just didn't seem suited to tell a Batman tale. They try to include a half dozen Batman villians who just don't seem to have any place here while also trying to introduce a new pair of villians to the cannon.

Nothing worth tracking down here...

Stylish movie hits us over the head...

I kind of like Jude Law. Good actor, stylish guy, hilarious when he hosted SNL a while back - did a great impression of Tony Blair. And he's good in this. Does a good job balancing the suave exterior and tortured interior that the titular character demands, and his monologues to the camera are very well done - much less stiffly than in the original film.

The female characters all do a very good job as well - Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Jane Krakowski, Nia Long, and Sienna Miller - in each playing a different part of the world that Jude Law needs to show the growth - or total lack of growth - that he shows in the film.

The movie is gorgeous, doing a great job recreating New York in the English set. Great cinematography, great lighting - little heavy-handed in the blue wash about two-thirds of the way through the movie. The costumes are outstanding.

And the movie stinks. We meet the main character as he begins to look inward an evaluate his life and where he's headed, but he sets that aside and continues bouncing woman to woman as he has been. And by the end of the movie, Alfie tells us - in a long, unneeded, over-written monologue - that he's looking for meaning in his life and wondering whether his life hasn't been wasted.

I remember reading somewhere that voice over is the fallback of a weak director, that a good writer does say "Jimmy is sad" but rather lets Jimmy act sad and allows us to get that through his actions and dialogue. Here, the voice over is a crutch that just isn't needed. It's neat, and it's well done, but it's too much.

And the movie didn't go anywhere. The character seems to be the same at the beginning and at the end, just with a better understanding of the kind of guy he is.

I haven't seen the original, so I can't compare, but the new Alfie isn't much to worry about going out to see...

A quick shout out for Omar Epps who makes something impressive out of an absolutely tiny role...

I keep trying...

What are there now, like fifteen different X-Men monthly titles? Every time I consider picking up an X-title, I feel like my mom did when I was younger and she would buy a candy bar. She knew there was one that she liked, but picked one of the myriad wrong ones more often than the right one because she just couldn't remember which it was.

So, was it X-Men or Uncanny or New or Astonishing? Some of them I absolutely can't stand, but there's one I like - well, two, if you count Ultimate, but I'm clear on which series that one is.

I'm thinking it's not X-Men itself, as this story was okay but far from fantastic. The premise and set-up were pretty good, with the team taking on a giant, semi-sentient creature with psychic powers that simply stirred up violence in the world around it and then fed off of the anger and chaos.

And then the heroes went into space and started just blasting at things. In the climactic battle, little was shown of what was going on, and we were instead treated to the heroes talking to each other while we almost caught glimpses of the fighting that was going on around them.

Maybe it's Uncanny...anybody else remember?

But un-seriously, folks...

Pastic Man has made a bit of a resurgance in the past few years, moving from early comic relief to someone that authors went so far as to have Batman say was "the most powerful member of the Justice League" when faced with having to defeat the Martian Manhunter gone crazy. This past year, DC put Plas into his own strip with a solid return to the humor that had begun to be forgotten in his past.

In this collection of that mini-series, we see Plas as scripted by Kyle Baker. Plas - formerly Eel O'Brien, petty criminal and zoot-suit wearer - helps solve a crime and finds that he has been framed for the murder involved. He pledges to find the killer - who the FBI thinks is Eel O'Brien, long thought dead, but instead Plas's identity is instead revealed to the FBI whose newest agent, Plas's cartoonishly pneumatic partner who turns out to have a secret that is revealed by the end of the book.

The humor is very well-written and refreshing with all of the gloom-and-doom of modern superhero books (the Justice League lobotomizing criminals, Blue Beetle dead, Genosha wiped from the world, Batman psychologically wounded, Nightwing turning himself in for a murder he didn't commit), and Baker does a great job of telling an entertaining and well-crafted story while revealing Plas's origin to those who are new to the hero. And the twist at the end is well done, if a little cornball in the happy ending.

This is a TPB that kids and adult will likely both enjoy, and it's a good lark.

PS. The Plas series also won a couple of Eisner awards for humor writing and series for a younger audience.

Dated but not out of date...

Another from the Sharonville branch...The Candidate starring Robert Redford...

Politcal satire in which an honest man isn't quite corrupted by the system...Peter Boyle does a great job as the ad-man who runs Redford's campaign, never quite pushing Redford but never quite letting him refuse to be lead either...loved seeing Boyle in the full beard - very different from other parts he's been of late...

All in all, not a bad film, but the feeling of revelation that might have taken hold in 1972 seeing that a candidate's campaign could be a savvy media manipulation doesn't pack quite the same punch in ye modern times. Wag the Dog updated the ideas pretty well, and even The Distinguished Genltemen has mined this teritory in a modern way. The film did stay amazingly close to the personality of Redford's Bill McKay who never quite broke but certainly bent in the winds.

Not a bad pick-up...

Rich and tasty...with nary a hint of cheese...

Neil Gaiman first popped into my brain when I hunted my way through the outstanding, revolutionary Sandman series from DC. After reading the eleven volumes (plus a couple more from Death and the rest of the Endless), I set the man aside knowing that someday I'd probably get around to Coraline but not knowing of much else by Gaiman.

I was frustrated, then, when I picked up American Gods on cassette from the West Chester library a while back, got engrossed in the first tape but had to return the book when the second tape was thoroughly unlistenable. Waiting a while for others to return the copy for PLCH, I finally got around to going all the way through the book, and I couldn't have been more pleased.

The basic storyline is of Shadow, a pretty good guy who got caught in a bad deal gone wrong, just getting out of jail with the feeling that a storm was brewing in the air. Things get bad, turn strange, and get worse for Shadow, and he meets some fascinating characters - Mr. Wednesday, a leprechaun, and gods from every imaginable pantheon from Egypt to Eastern Europe, Native American to South American, Australian to prehistoric. There is trouble afoot as the newer gods - Media, Internet, Spook Show - are threatening to wage war against the old gods for primacy in the American belief system, and Shadow finds himself in the middle of the coming battle, not knwoing his exact place in the deal but knowing that more and more are coming to him wanting to have his help or his head.

Throughout the book, Gaiman reveals things at a wonderful pace, allowing us to guess the secrets of the characters just before or just as he reveals them. He crafts a truly sympathetic but far from helpless figure in Shadow and allows us to invest in him emotionally as we see him trying to do the right thing but being thwarted and mystefied at nearly every turn.

By the end of the tale, Shadow has found himself to be a bit player and the axel around which the entire story turns, both at the same time. He turns out to be nothing but a red herring while being the absolute hero of the tale, and it turns out that Gaiman has been dropping us hints all along.

Gaiman is a master at his trade and is one of the finer authors working today.

I'm looking forward to Mirrormask - also from Gaiman - this fall...

Still rolling along marvelously...

"I was dead. I came back to life."

For a superhero, DC or Marvel, death is far from a permenant condition. It is simply another thing to be overcome in the long challenge to save the world or the universe or the hometown.

When Green Arrow died a few years ago, I don't think anybody rellay expected his death to be permenant, and a few years later when Kevin Smith penned Oliver Queen's return to life, I started grabbing the trade paperbacks and following the journey. I've been amazingly impressed with the artwork and the writing that has become a trademark of the newest incarnation of the series, and this volume might be the finest one yet.

In this volume, Green Arrow journeys around the country - and to the watchtower on the moon - to collect some of his momentos that he left behind when he did die. Turns out that he'd entrusted this collection to a friend/foe who didn't quite do a full enough job of things, so Queen finds himself in a wistful, reflective collecting mode. It's one of the more emotional, mature comic books that I've seen DC put out in a long while. Right in the middle of a typically action-packed run of stories, Brad Metzler pulls out a marvelous tale of a hero coming to grips with his mortality, knowing that he did die and that he likely will die again, and that he probably won't be coming back a second time. Metzler has GA look at what is important to him and making sure that his relationships with those people aren't lost to him.

If you're a fan of superhero comics, this is a series that you should be following regularly.

Some redemption...

In the review that I've linked the title to, the reviewer states that "I don’t like Superman. In the course of this job, I’ve read hundreds of Superman stories, and you’d be surprised how, to my eyes, they almost all read as tedious mish-mashes of each other, going nowhere with little of any interest beyond one super-powered being beating up on another super-powered being. Bor-ing."

And I'd have to agree. Superman is unbeatable. He's stronger than just about anybody in the DCU. He can cheat death. He is the greatest hero our world has ever known, and any bad guy who is able to really threaten Superman seems just to be contrived as being "the strongest foe Superman has ever faced" which is just what we read about the previous guy.

All that being said, the storyline with Ruin is actually starting to intrigue me. The previous TPB to collect this storyline - Unconventional Warfare - left me flat and thinking that there just wasn't any hope for an ending in sight for this storyline, but in this collection, the tale tightens a bit and suggests that we just might get a decent dust up coming. I will say, however, that the storyline (bad guy learns who Superman is, threatens/kills friends of Superman) seems to have been done before and before (Parasite, Conduit, Manchester Black, now Ruin).

Also of interest here is the relationship between Clark and Lois as they begin to look into the possibilities of having a child, something that Clark seems very reluctant toward but that Lois - in light of her recent shooting and near death - seems much more positive toward. And Mr. Mxyzlplytx (sp????) makes a couple of interesting appearances realted to this. The recent presentation of the fifth-dimensional imp (yeah, spelling that is way easier) have been taking a more friendly turn of late, moving him from a semi-evil, mischevious imp to a reverential character who shows up to nudge Superman in certain directions. I like the turn, and I really, really like the various art styles interspersed through the two issues with the imp. Great work in blending the reality artwork of the rest with the especially cartoonish art of Mxy's ideas and fantasies.

All the being said, I'm conflicted about this TPB. The artwork throughout the main storyline is horrible. So many sketch lines throughout the every drawing that the thing looks like a bottle of ink was simply spilled. Freakish, jagged people who - if they're not in the foreground - lose their mouths or eyes or whatever features aren't really needed.

Interesting storyline that I do want to see through to the conclusion.

But dangit, DC keeps not making it easy to follow Superman through the TPBs. For JLA, the TPB's are numbered so it's easy to tell where the storyline goes next. Here, DC collects the issues into TPBs without numbering, with unconnected titles, and with no clue whatsoever as to which TPB came before or will come next.

Anybody know of a chronology to the Superman TPBs? I'm really curious to see which came when and where in the line.

PS - if anybody wants to learn about Superman and all the styorlines he's been a part of, check this website out.

Art for kids...

Took the little Heckman girl to see March of the Penguins Friday night. Good friends and cheap babysitters, what can I say?

The showing we saw - 6:45 on Friday night - was filled with families with fairly young children. Only one couple - of the roughly ten groups - was childless, and I'm guessing that they came because of the arthouse advertising for this film. It's kind of interesting to me that this nature film - a National Geographic production - is being marketed both as a children's film and an artsy nature film. And, surprisingly, it does a really nice job of straddling that divide.

The film chronicles the journey by Emperor penguins each year across seventy miles of ice to breed in the area of Antarctica where they were born. The fathers then stay with the eggs while the mothers journey back to feed, then the parents switch places, back and forth for nearly a year. Along the way we see entertaining stumbles and waddles from the rarely graceful penguins, but these light-hearted moments are more relief than major tone, as much of the story is the numerous opportunities for things to go wrong - an egg dropped, cracked, and frozen in seconds; a forgotten penguin not finishing the journey; a snow storm blowing babies from fathers; an albatross snacking.

The tone of the movie overall is more somber, speaking of the determination of the penguins who spend so much of their time and energy protecting the eggs and chicks that ensure the species's survival. We see death on screen - eggs, chicks, adults - and the death os not candy-coated. Nor, however, is it presented in gruesome fashion. The seven-year-old with us had no problems dealing with the passage of even the cutest of baby chicks because she saw the it wasn't - her words - violent, cruel death but just death from nature.

As an educational tool, the film is wonderful. Our screening was complete with a semi-constant low murmur of children asking questions of their adults and the adults answering in hushed tones. No one seemed to mind as everyone in the theater was being as polite as they could be while still letting the kids learn about life.

As an entertainment film, the pacing is well-done, and the production values are amazing. The scenery is stunning, and the close-ups of the penguins are incredible.

My only issue with the film was with the humanizing of the penguins - lines talking about the penguins kissing and falling in love - were clearly aimed at a younger, probably less-scientific audience than the one I find myself a part of.

This isn't a science film for adults. It's a nature film for adults and their children. It has a story (even crediting a screenplay writer in the front credits) and tells that story quite well.

Some kind of documentary...

Borrowed Some Kind of Monster from a student this week and sat down on Wednesday to enjoy it while Karlen was out running some errands.

Admittedly, the pacing was a little slow, but the movie was covering a two-year period in the lives of Metallica - the entire recording period of their newest cd: St. Anger - a rather eventful two-year period for the band. In this time, their lead singer, James Hetfield, went through a year of rehab for alcoholism, time when he barely saw his band mates and certainly wasn't recording anything. They hired a new bassist and dealt with some of the issues that had caused their previous bassist to leave the band. The band took a try at recording promos for a radio conglomerate - my guess being ClearChannel. And they paid a psychologist $40,000 a month to be at their beck and call, meeting with the full band at least once a week throughout the entire process.

The last part of this was by far the most interesting to me. In today's society, we think of affluent, yuppies (a term that begins to feel very dated to me as I approach the age of no longer looking down on yuppies but rather being closer to middle age and trying to avoid the stereotypes that come with that) as being in therapy, but the biggest hard metal band on the planet as instead shagging groupies and drinking themselves into a stupor before and during a concert. Metallica don't fit the stereotype. Lars collects multi-million-dollar works of art - seen here in an auction as he rids himself of a large collection - and the band feels that they need to work through some issues if theyh are to continue to record together, so they see a shrink.

It's really interesting to see the guys of Metallica discuss jealousies and emotions that they've kept bottled up from each other for years, slights and feelings that have eventually lead to festering wounds. In the end the band leaves themselves open and naked to their fans and to anyone who watches Monster. It's an imperfect look (too slow, as I mentioned) at an imperfect band doing everything they can to be a band, a whole, a group of friends making music - friends who occasionally need to remind themselves and each other of why they are together...because they are a hell of a band making some impressive music...

Admittedly, though, I greatly preferred their earlier stuff - Metallica and And Justice for All - to their newer, St. Anger.

More stuff to see...

Looking forward to seeing Where the Truth Lies and The Ice Harvest. Just caught the trailers online this morning...