I just don't get it...

Last weekend down in Gatlinburg, I finally got around to watching The 40 Year Old Virgin, and I'm going to have to just say that I don't get it.

For a year I've heard everybody rave about the movie. It's been lauded alternately as hilarious and sweet/touching. So when some of the folks in the chalet were going to drop the movie in and sit down, I hopped upstairs (missing out on running yet another poor schmuck from the pool table). Two hours later, I was sort of shaking my head and wondering what I'd just seen. It's not hilarious. It's kinda sweet, sure, but there are a lot of kinda sweet movies that people don't think are deserving of a nod for best picture or best actor. I'm thinking this whole 40 Year Old Virgin thing was just a little over-blown.

Sure, it's cute. Sure, it's moderately funny, but getting a five out of ten in two different categories doesn't make it an overall ten.

A week later, I gave Upside of Anger a second view. First time was this past spring in Dallas, second time was in the comfort of the basement.

The movie still holds up really well. It's not a straight-forward story - there's a bit too meandering a tone for that - and the main characters aren't perfect folks. It's a story of a woman whose husband has left her and their four daughters. Joan Allen - in an excellent performance - is the mother whose relationships with her daughters are strained at best. Kevin Costner is also excellent at Denny Davies, former World Series hero and neighborhood drunk who takes a shine to the abandoned family. The writer and director, Mike Binder also makes a quality appearance as Denny's radio producer who crosses into the family for a short time as well.

The movie allows us glimpses into the family's coping and missteps with each other as they struggle with each other as much as with the departure of the patter familias. We don't stay too long in every instance, often drifting out for a seasonal fade away as time passes without us watching the family the entire time. We visit but don't always stay long enough to see every issue resolved. A few months later, we're back, and the family has moved along a bit, whatever issue we'd just seen has been patched over as best they can manage, and life has gone on.

It's not a perfect film, to be sure, as the narration steals some of the momentum at times and is too heavy-handed in the end, and the film's ending leaves much to be desired, but it's a good film. One that allows us to journey with the characters and to hope for and with them.

Jagged Little Pill Acoustic by Alanis Morissette is crap. Simply crap marketed to people who remember their rebelious, angry days fondly. The AllMusic.com review nails it.

They're due tomorrow...

Let's open today's musical reviews with...Asleep at the Wheel the eponymous major-label debut by the biggest Texas swing band of the past couple of decades. I'd always heard great things about them, but apparently it turns out that I don't really enjoy Texas swing all that much, at least not this album of it.

I don't think it's a bad album, just not one that I enjoyed - too sharp, too twangy - sort of the same complaints that I have with the purest of Bluegrass music.

Rock N Roll by Ryan Adams isn't the greatest album that Adams has put out, but it's another example of Adam's having diarrhea of the pen and record producer. I gave this one a try when it first came out - a couple of years ago - and was very disappointed. Adams is the alt-country idtio savant, able to toss of spectacular hooks and songs with just a casual brush of his pen, but he's the same guy who tosses off pieces of crap even more easily and doesn't seem to notice the difference. He's as derivative as can be one moment and as brilliant as anybody the next. It's really frustrating.

With my diminished expectations, I found this album to be better than I'd remembered. It's far from a great album, but there are a few hooks here and there that just stick with me for hours and days. Catchy stuff, good stuff - surrounded by crap here and there, sure, but catchy stuff if you give the album a chance. It is surely harsher than most of Adams's work, but it's pretty much the same work with the acoustic guitars swapped out for electric ones. Seriously, catchy stuff, but don't get the hopes up too much. I'd drop the whole thing onto iTunes and delete the chaf. There's a wheaty bit or two there.

Not enough people know about Paul Kelly. He's an Australian guitarist and songwriter who is one of the best writers of tunes around. Quality guitar licks, rich imagry, and a wonderful sense of life is all that Kelly has. It's not much, but it's what he's got to offer on Ways and Means, a double disc that lets Kelly explore all sorts of love. He drops the joy of finally being able to be with someone after hiding feeling for so long, he goes with the pain of unreqited love, and he relishes in the pure carnality of physical love, and never does he put out a sappy note. It's all simple and straight forward with great music underneath - and in one case, a modern classic of surf instrumentals. There's that surf, blues, the jangle of Byrds-era pop, slide guitar, and drips of other styles that Kelly puts together into a sound that works seemlessly even though it's full of disparate notes. Give Paul Kelly a try if you haven't before.

Ah, instrumental jazz with a pretty guitar lead. Bill Frisell has made a career out of doing nice instrumental interpretations of songs that you know. On his newest double disc - East/West - Frisell captures a couple of nights of live club performances. He takes some nice meanders through "Heard it Through the Grapevine", "Hard Rain", "Masters of War", "Shenandoah" and a bunch of other tunes that I don't know nearly as well (his website suggest that they're originals of his. There aren't a lot of tracks here, but that's because Frisell's style is often to take soem pretty long journeys through the tunes, letting the pacing build slowly as phrases flit in and out of the music at first, hinting at the song that is to follow and letting those notes become slowly more numerous until the song has come together almost without the listener noticing. The music never wanders from the core of the tune, however, but there are moments when the focus slips just a bit before coming straight back. It's jazz, good jazz - nothing too out there, just pleasant jazzy tunes. It's not going to set the world on fire, but it's pretty music. Not that I'm going to buy it, but I'm willing to drag a few of the songs onto the iTunes.

I don't remember Nickel Creek being quite as dark as they are on Why Should the Fire Die?, but that doesn't diminish the musical quality of the disc. It's not happy stuff as it sounds like the boys in the band has been through some rough times romantically, especially on the first few songs. The couple of instrumentals tear through the talent, and the stuff underneath the dour lyrics. It's a heck of a lot more fun to listen to This Side, but this disc shows that this isn't a band afraid to push the boundries. There are more drums and electric guitar here than there've been on their previous releases, but this trio isn't afraid to drop the traditional for what they want to play.

More from the 'bary and the 'bary

Nightwing: Year One is a good retelling of Dick Grayson's transition from Boy Wonder in the pixie boots to independent Nightwing. Along the way, Grayson visits with Batgirl, Superman, Deadman, even the new Robin. It's an excellent tale of a man moving on from his childhood role to that of an adult, and it's a nice retelling of the birth of one of the best new hero creation from DC in the past couple of decades. The artwork is very cartoonish, but it's okay because the tone here isn't exactly dark and brooding - something that Dick's character has always been written to avoid as a reaction to the darkness of Batman. Now, if Batman could just get another Robin to stick around...

Spider-Man: The Last Stand is pretty redundant crap if you ask me. It turns out that the Black Cat has a thing for Peter. Oh, shock! And one of the villians knows who Spider-Man really is. Ah, the suspense! And that villian has endangered one of Petey's family members to get back at him. No way!?! And all the rogues work together to (not quite) defeat Spider-Man for good. Seriously?!? Yeah, I think I've read this about a hundred times before. Sure, the artwork by the Dodsons is pretty good (except where you can't quite tell if it's Aunt May or Felicia Hardy in the hospital bed), but overall, this is the same Spider-Man story that's been told a hundred times before.

Ex Machina: Tag was next on the docket (everything from here out came from a visit to Borders this weekend - I love using them as a library.) This second volume of the excellent Ex Machina series reveals a little more about the background of Mitchell Hundred, first super-powered mayor in the US - and of NYC, no less. He's a politcal independent - decried as bleeding-heart liberal by one side and as neo-con by the other. Here we see him consider school vouchers and officiate at a two-man wedding. No issue is beneath him or too hot for him to handle - except for his history. That he avoids like the plague. The pacing's excellent in this series, and the characters fascinating. The artwork throws me here and there with odd looks on the characters, but it's ane excellent series, and this volume (while not quite the quality of the first) is a great pick up of the story.

Batman: Hush Returns makes me start to wonder what's up with Hush. We saw in the first volume of tales with him that he was Dr. Tommy Elliot, childhood friend of Bruce Wayne, privy to the dual-identity secret now, hopeful killer of Batman. But he died at the end of Hush. Apparently, though, he's not dead. He's pissed, determined, and smart, but he's clearly not dead.

I don't really understand, and I'm curious to see how the non-death is explained as well as any possible superpowers that Hush has, because he's way too fast, strong, and brilliant to not be some sort of mutant/metahuman/whatever.

Decent enough story - kind of engrossing - and the artwork's not bad, but it's not a must-read for any real comic geek.

Flash: Rogue War leaves me kind of curious. On one hand, there's the interesting relationship that the various rogues in Flash's gallery have with each other - some gone good, some plotting together, some being a quality chaotic evil character and killing almost at whim. They're some of the few villians who've gotten enough of a chance to get character development. In this volume, we get character studies of a half dozen of the rogues, getting their background and motivation before the story really starts rolling around.

On the other hand, the fact that the Rogues have been flip-flopped from bad to good to bad to good by The Government, the Top, the Flash, Zatana, Zoloft, Percoset, and a hair dryer so often is a little odd. Does kind of make sense that if a lot of them think somebody's been messing with their brains, they'd be a little peeved.

Good artwork. Good plotline with the return of a few character's we'd been missing. Nice bastagely work by Captain Cold who continues to move further and further from the inkling of decency we saw in Catwoman just a while back. He's really, truly, definitely evil. Simple as that, and I look forward to the eventual showdown between him and Flash. What else could things be point toward other than a really crappy upcoming year for Wally?

Superman: In the Name of Gog is visually sloppy and rife with time travel foulups. I don't see how the various Gogs of the future (one for every minute of his life) have been attacking Superman to wear him down without causing a problem in the future. And how would they have unlimited time to spend back here? What happens to them if they die? So many problems...

And the artwork isn't much better. We do get Gog bringing back all of Superman's foes - sort of a "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" feel to it...to tucker our Supes and ready him for Gog, but in the end, we get a bunch of papges of buildup and like a page of resolution. Good luck with picking up the continuity after that crap, folks. Luckily, by the end, effectively nothing has happened. Oh, and Doomsday saves Superman because he's become intelligent and respects Supes. Yeah, that's all cool and sutff...

Ultimate Galactus: Secret continues the tale of the Ultimate universe's coming of a being referred to as Gal Ack Tus (or something like that - hell, it's Galactus coming...big problem for all of Earth). This isn't really the tale, though, of Galactus. It's the tale of Captain Marvel coming to Earth and flipping sides from the Kree (who are here to watch Earth die at the hands of Galactu) and helping our heroes toast the Kree.

I've said it before, I'm digging the whole of the Ultimate universe. I love the reworking of the Marvel history with the various shifts and changes throughout. I like the visual design of Captain Marvel. I like the characters of Iron Man and the rest of the Ultimates (their version of the Avengers). It's a blast to follow things along, and it works well for me because I know enough to get a lot of the references, but I'm not left out of the loop because I've not been reading the whole of the Marvel Universe for the last like forty years. It's good stuff...you really can't go wrong with any of the Ultimate line.

Tomorrow...music...I've been listening to a bunch of stuff this week - big trip to the family for shared birthdays...four hours in a car...

I dunno...

Went out Friday night with the wife to see The Squid and the Whale after a fine dinner provided by the PHS Key Club (picking up a tradition that'd been lost for a while).

I don't know exactly how I feel about the film. It'd finely acted by all involved. Jeff Daniels has been receiving a ton of critical praise for his performance, and it's deserved, as is Laura Linney. The two children in the film also do a great job, but I'm not so sure about the story and any meaning I'm supposed to get from the film.

The film is about the divorce of two New York City writers and what it does to their two sons. It's not meant to be a complete picture of the divorce and its effects, particularly as the entire movie focuses on probably a two- or three-week time period (which fits its 23-day shoot), and the thing that left me coldest at the end was the lack of resolution in the film. The good guys don't win, the bad guys don't win, the parents don't get back together, and the kids don't come to any real understanding or coping with the situation. In that, it's much more like what a real divorce situation would be like, I guess, but that doesn't mean it's something I'd like to watch.

The movie is funny in parts - hilariously so - and tough and a fair bit akward to watch at times, as well, particularly as the younger son goes through some serious acts of misbehavior in response to his parents' separation. For me, the best part of the film was the thorough (re)creation of a mid-80's NYC liberal family complete with time-appropriate clothing, tennis references (a personal fave of mine were the descriptions of the various pro players by Daniels's character), and amazingly permissive parenting attitudes.

I don't know that I'd recommend this film even though I will say that it's very well made, and the majority of reviews say that it's a fine film.

And if anybody has any thoughts about the title and its possibly allegorical ties to the parents in the film, I'm open to suggestion, because it's got me stumped.

Ah, fond rememberances...

I remember the titular, eponymous Blues Traveler disc pretty fondly. I was first introduced to Traveler by my cousin Aaron and then from Tom Boofter - both friends that I've sadly lost touch with - and maybe it's because of this that I have such fond memories of this disc, because on further review, it's got a few high points ("But Anyway" and "Crystal Flame" most high), but it's not a spectacular album. It's certainly not bad, and if it were a gift or something, I'd probably keep it around, but I'll not be rushing out to buy a copy. In the process of hunting stuff down, I also checked out Four by the Travelers, and my feeling is that they were a greatest hits band...great highlights but not full albums...

What the **** is this? A vicar's tea party?

Outstanding...tight...great acting...great storyline (a bit confusing, so follow along)...all together phenomenal...Layer Cake is excellent.

I checked it out from the library last week and got around to seeing it this weekend. It's still as excellent as the first time I saw it (in the theater a year or so ago). Based on the acting and the whip-crack quick writing, this moves easily into my top five organized crime movies. It's not The Godfather, but it's a hell of a lot more fun.

'Cause they had to go back to the 'bary...

JLA: The Obsidian Age: book two isn't too bad. On this, my second read through, I found the storyline a lot more enjoyable than I had during my first read through a year or two ago. This volume continues the storyline that sees the big team heading into the past to save Aquaman and THE WORLD! At the end of the previous volume, we saw a dead Superman discovered in the present. Here, we open with Supes and the rest of the crew in the past up against a team that does kick their backsides, kills 'em even. The other reviewer (see above link) mentions that some of the tension is lost because we know that the JLA isn't going to die, and I agree, but what shines in this volume is the teamwork shown by the group, including the sacrifice that they have to make to save the future, not knowing (in the story, anyway) whether they would survive to see that future. It's the teamwork and relationships that hold this volume together even though they (mostly) take place during a rather long battle. The volume ends with a few of the JLAers going their own ways to figure things out, but enough of the team stays together to make Rules of Engagement - which I picked up from PLCH today - interesting at first glance.

The Secret of Barry Allen sees the newest Flash trying to come to terms with the actions of the JLA in mindwiping villians and even trying to turn some of them into good guys with the use of Zatana's magic. I'll give DC credit for the idea, at least, because if heroes existed and truly had the power of near-gods, then some of them at some point would have to think that they could solve a lot of the world's problems through magic or surgery or threats or whatever. But I'll also admit that the moral quandry and the rejiggering of DC history has gotten to be a little tiresome.

I do like the Flash's history (the former Flashes watching out for the current one, the family that forms around the mythos) as well as the ties that bind his massive and varied Rogues Gallery together - we see some really interesting interactions among the gallery in this volume - and that's the saving grace here. The artwork is good, the story is interesting, and if it weren't such a muck of mental corrections and moral problems, I'd probably've enjoyed it a whole lot better.

Daredevil: Redemption - let's see...the artwork's poor, the story's two-dimensional movie of the week fare, and it's full of inbred Southern culture stereotypes...I'm gonna say that it's pretty simply crap. And as much as I'm not a religious type, the religion bashing that goes on here is just way too heavy-handed even for my tastes. Steer clear of this pile of dookie...

Continuing their release of the newest Superman title, DC gives us Return to Krypton. It's a pretty typical throwback story in which a modern comic writer tries to recreate a story of his/her childhood using the modern character. As such, it works decently well, with Lois and the Big Blue Boyscout heading back to a hoax Krypton (not that they really know it) that's somehow trapped in the Phantom Zone.

The general storyline isn't too bad, but the modern technique of trying to explain everything gets in the way of the story. Instead of it just being a dopey lark, the writers try to make everything into something that's just a shade away from possible (in comic logic and science, anyway). If they hadn't tried that, if they'd instead just treated it a little more as a revisiting-the-childhood-tales tale, then I think it'd've worked way better.

But that's life...and it's my TPB reviews for now...more later when I go through the couple that I picked up today from the spectacular PLCH...

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