The Dailies 2/25/09: Motopsycho Edition!

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another edition of The Dailies. Today, we look at one of the most highly regarded films of all time, and a little known reality show from across the pond.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Director: Milos Forman
Principle Actors: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Will Sampson, Sydney Lassick

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie about what happens when positive change and energy is brought into an oppressively rigid social structure. Usually the consequences are great for the person who introduces this change, and often times they are physically removed or murdered. But their voices continue to ring in the heads of those who heard them. Their transformative effect is unstoppable and incalculable. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a mirror of the world at large in this regard; like many great men and women who spoke out against oppression and bigotry and who were summarily silenced, the hero of this film makes the same sacrifices in order to better the lives of those around him.

That hero I speak of is Randal “R.P.” McMurphy, a petty criminal who is transferred to a mental institution from a work farm where he was serving a sentence for statutory rape. McMurphy is immediately happy-go-lucky about being in the institution, perhaps presuming that his stay in the mental institute will be a walk in the park compared to a prison term. McMurphy has a friendly back-and-forth with the head doctor, and then meets his fellow “inmates”, who are involved in a roundtable discussion about one of their wives that seems to continue in perpetuity.

The other inmates of the asylum are all fantastic characters. Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif) is a young kid with a perennial stutter and a troublesome history with his mother and with other women. Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) is a neurotic who constantly looks simultaneously befuddled and frightened. Dale Harding (William Redfield) is a pseudo-intellectual who acts as if he’s smarter and more sophisticated than the others, even though he’s probably the most helpless of them all. And then there’s the Chief (Will Sampson), who is a giant Native American mute.

The characters have their own traits that Nicholson is able to play off of. They may not be very realistic (I’d imagine that the inmates at a real-life rubber room insane asylum wouldn’t be quite so lucid), but the movie wouldn’t work without them. Though they’re a little too “pleasantly insane” for reality, but they’re all off-kilter enough to be believable at the same time.

The real joy of this film, and I imagine the reason why it’s remembered so fondly by so many, are the interactions between McMurphy and the other committed men. He brings a peaceful but manic energy into the asylum, and it transfixes and consumes the others. They’ve simply never seen a man like this before. He operates above the institution, like it doesn’t bother him at all. Sometimes, it even looks like he’s happy to be there! His riotous energy causes the others to question their situations. Why are we in here? Why can’t we make our own rules? Where are my cigarettes?

Of course, there’s a reason why they’ve been kept under control for so long (in addition to their admitted own instabilities). The ward is overlooked by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, who rules their universes in an eerily calm yet domineering manner. The nurse controls everything about their lives, and though she says it’s for their own good, we get the sense that there are more sinister reasons at play. Nurse Ratched likes the power of pulling their puppet strings.

There’s a scene where McMurphy tries to get the others to vote with him to change their nightly routine so they can watch the World Series on TV. The others, battered into cowardice by Ratched, do not raise their hands to vote with “Mac” at first, despite desperately looking like they want to. As Mac looks on in disbelief, Ratched unfurls an evil smile; with it, she’s telling him there’s no hope left, at least not in her ward.

It wouldn’t be much of a movie if McMurphy took that advice, and he continues to bring long lost feelings of excitement and happiness into the others’ lives while simultaneously thumbing his nose at Ratched’s rules and regulations. At first, McMurphy wants to have some fun with his situation, and messes with Ratched as a ways to fool around, but it becomes more than that. He wants to show the others there’s life beyond the padded walls and the electroshock therapy. There’s booze, women, baseball, fishing; everything a guy could want! And Nurse Ratched has no right to get in the way of that. The rest of the film, up until the final climactic scene, depicts a struggle between McMurphy and Ratched for the souls of the other inmates. As Mac gives them more and more tastes of life, the inmates rediscover themselves, realize the injustices placed on them, and most importantly, become able to live freely, even within the confines of the institution.

The performances in the film are absolutely terrific. Nicholson is a tour de force; his energy is infectious as he bounces from one inmate to another in exactly the tone his role requires. His scenes with the Chief are touching and powerful, but also humorous; early in the film, he teaches a seemingly clueless Chief how to play basketball, and then involves him in a game against the institution orderlies.

The inmates are tremendous as well, with several notables making their first film appearances (Dourif, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito). And Louis Fletcher won an Oscar for her portrayal of the reprehensible Nurse Ratched.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of those films I see far too infrequently, where I know I’ve just watched something special as soon as the credits start rolling. It’s a blissful perfect storm of a brilliant story and brilliant acting, and well worth its fantastic reputation.

A

Won: Actor (Nicholson), Actress (Fletcher), Director, Picture, Writing-Adapted Screenplay
Nominated: Supporting Actor (Dourif), Cinematography, Film Editing, Music-Original Score

Long Way Down (2007)
Directors: David Alexanian and Russ Malkin
Featuring: Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman

I’ve long had a fascination with out of the way places. There’s something about the ends of the earth and the tops and bottoms of the world that speak to me. I don’t know if it’s their inaccessibility, their obscurity, or their loneliness. But there’s something attractive to me about the last places on this planet that we still don’t know much about. And though I hope I’m wrong about this, what makes them more attractive is that I’ll probably never see them. When am I going to go on a Kenyan safari or ride through the wilds of far Eastern Russia?

It’s these feelings that eventually brought me to Long Way Round (2004), a travel series that originally aired on Sky One in the United Kingdom. The premise of the show revolved around Ewan McGregor (of the new Star Wars pictures, Moulin Rouge, Big Fish, etc.) and his longtime friend and fellow actor Charley Boorman riding around the world on their motorcycles, starting in London and ending in New York City. McGregor and Boorman were assisted by support crews consisting of the directors of the series, cameramen, and medical staff. The whole experience was filmed and broken into several hour long episodes, as well as a book.

I thoroughly enjoyed Long Way Round because it took me to those places that I’ve never seen before and know nothing about, but I expected that. What I was surprised by was the likeability of McGregor and Boorman, the expertly filmed and edited episodes, and the way I felt when I was watching it. Long Way Round acted as an invitation to accompany McGregor and Boorman, not simply watch them race around on motorcycles. It became one of the most pleasant film surprises I’ve ever experienced, and when I heard they had filmed another series, I rushed it to the top of my Netflix queue.

Long Way Down sees the crew go from John O’ Groats in Scotland down to Cape Town in South Africa. It’s broken into eight hour long episodes (originally airing on BBC Two in the UK), and in each McGregor and Boorman ride through various locales, take in the local culture, camp either with local tribes or on the side of the road, and simply mosey along until they reach Cape Town. They do make visits to landmarks like the Roman Coliseum, various ruins in Tunisia and Libya, and go on safari in Namibia. These stops provide a nice change of pace from their constant riding; for the first half of the trip, they’re constantly on deadline to finish a certain number of miles each day so they don’t miss a ferry in Sudan that runs once a week.

I believe an inherent part of any successful travelogue is the camaraderie between the participants. McGregor and Boorman are true pals. They get along well and genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s company. Their friendship is infectious, and they become your compatriots and your guides in this great journey. Long Way Down is intimately filmed; the two riders keep video diaries of their experiences and footage from their crash helmets is also spliced in to each episode. The end result is that you don’t just feel like you wish you were there, but that at points you feel like you actually are.

The scenery is usually thoroughly breathtaking. Africa has abundant natural beauty, and there are no four lane highways for the pair to ride on. The roads are often made of sand and rocks, and there’s simply nothing to distract us from the fantastic landscape of the continent. Long Way Down, much like Long Way Round, makes you realize how beautiful the world is and how much there is to it. It’s a credit to the series that it legitimately makes you jealous of the crew for being able to see all of these great things and have all of these great experiences.

The real brilliant thing about Long Way Down is that it’s all couched in an adventure travel show format. It’s not simply showing these different places, but showing them in the context of the journey at large, and also showing the difficulties the pair endure in order to get to them. The two have endless crashes, nearly run out of gas, face river crossings and man-made dangers; it’s an incredibly hard undertaking. This is a travelogue of the highest order.

I hope someday I’ll be able to have an experience like the trip depicted on Long Way Down. Until then, watching this series is honestly the next best thing.

A

John Lacey

Forgotten Records #2: Morbid Angel - Gateways To Annihilation

Morbid Angel
Gateways to Annihilation (2000)
Earache

Preceded by: Formulas Fatal to the Flesh (1997). Succeeded by: Heretic (2003).

It's difficult to say that something from the metal underground is "forgotten," because, let's face it, most of the all-time classic metal albums, barring any Metallica, Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, AC/DC, etc. aren't even remembered by most mainstream music outlets in the first place. I can't think of too many mainstream music fans who own a copy of At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul; however, that album is almost universally praised among metal fans who know anything about the genres. In this sense, it was difficult to come up with something that's a "Forgotten Record" from the metal underground, but I think I found a good example.

Morbid Angel have released their share of albums that are considered death metal classics, specifically their first 3 releases, Altars of Madness, Blessed Are the Sick, and Covenant (and yes, they have continued the alphabetical trend of naming their albums ever since, leading up to 2003's Heretic, their last release). These albums are some of the most influential in the entire death metal canon, as they combined the speed and intensity of Slayer with the evil, creepy harmonies of Mercyful Fate/King Diamond, and their lyrics were mostly about Satan and evil spells, at first. Once 1995's Domination was released, the band took on a bit of a more streamlined, basic approach, which took some fans by surprise. They returned to the intense speed and brutality of earlier works with 1997's Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, their first album with vocalist/bassist Steve Tucker. This album is considered a bit of a classic among die-hard Morbid Angel fans, so this is hard to consider a forgotten record. Its follow-up, Gateways to Annihilation, however, is rarely mentioned as one of Morbid Angel's greatest albums, something I take issue with.

Why was it forgotten?

Maybe it's because of the slowed-down tempos, or the clean-to-the-point-of-sounding-electronic drum tones, or because of the length of the songs, but I've never understood why any Morbid Angel (or death metal fans, in general) wouldn't like Gateways to Annihilation. Opening with the all-too-standard-in-metal ambient track, "Kawazu," Gateways is the first Morbid Angel album that doesn't open with crazy guitar riffing right off the bat. Normally I hate any sort of ambient or intro track, but on this album, its ominous tone really helps set the mood for what's to come. As soon as the first proper track, "Summoning Redemption" starts, it jumps right out of the speakers and assaults the listener unexpectedly. This song is a mid-paced, groovy death metal track, with insanely precise tremolo picking by guitarists Erik Rutan and Trey Azagthoth. I can't express how much I love the opening riffs in this song before the vocals kick in. They are melodic, atmospheric, yet crushing all at once, mainly due to Pete Sandoval's always-impressive drumming.

When Steve Tucker screams "I stand before you!", it's frightening how clear, audible, yet intense his vocals are. His work on this album is completely underrated, in my opinion, as he manages to get across the power that great death metal vocalists need, and also the clarity to understand what he's saying on every track. I haven't even gotten to the solos in this song, probably the most melodic solo laid down by Erik Rutan, followed by the typically crazy, Eddie Van Halen-on crack Azagthoth guitar work. The song is a bit long, at 7:16, but its constant twists and turns are rewarding, and yet it has a very simple, memorable song structure, with lots of repeating riffs and refrains. This is probably my second favorite Morbid Angel song, second only to "Rapture" from Covenant.

There really isn't a bad song on this album, but my favorites have to be "Summoning Redemption," "Ageless, Still I Am," and "Secured Limitations," which is a vocal duet between Tucker and Azagthoth, both delivering absolutely sick, clear vocals that go well with the song's stop-start groove. One thing I love about this album is that it maintains a consistent vibe and groove throughout. Some might find it repetitive, but I find the mid-paced numbers really give the riffs and vocals a lot of room to breathe, as well as create a lot of atmosphere that you didn't always find throughout a Morbid Angel album. There are still some signature speedy Sandoval blast-beat parts, but far less than any other Morbid Angel album.

Should it be forgotten?

Definitely not. However, having listened to this album all the way through for the purpose of writing this piece, I do now understand more why a lot of Morbid Angel fans don't appreciate it. For one thing, it doesn't sound like a typical MA release, but it does definitely sound like Morbid Angel. Trey Azagthoth's guitar work is instantly recognizable, no matter how fast or long the songs may be. I think this album is the heaviest album in the Morbid Angel catalogue, next to Covenant, and it's definitely worth re-investigating if you're a fan of Morbid Angel, or truly heavy metal in general.

I'm sure the fact that this was only the second Morbid Angel album I owned (Domination was the first) made me able to appreciate this album in its own right, and not within the context of their classic sound and catalogue. I thought that maybe I'd now dislike this album, having delved deep into their back catalogue, but I still think it's one of their best releases. I understand why it was disregarded by the MA fan base at the time, and now that original vocalist/bassist David Vincent is back in the band, I can’t see MA playing any of these songs live anymore, and that’s a shame. This album will continue to get lost in the shuffle, but it definitely should not.

A-

Matt Steele

Forgotten Records #1: Beck - The Information

Welcome to my new feature, “The Forgotten Records”. In this column, we take a look at different albums by established musicians and bands that either didn’t sell as well as their other albums or are often overlooked when discussing that artist’s catalogue. I’m limiting the discussion to established and well-known groups here. Though it may be a crime that few have heard of Guided By Voices’ Under the Bushes Under the Stars, that’s largely due to the group’s relative obscurity and not because that particular album is overlooked. I’ll leave those discussions to Brendan Leonard and his “Hidden Classics” column.

As a for instance, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen each have a ton of albums, right? But have you ever listened to (or even heard of) Young’s Hawks and Doves, Dylan’s Shot of Love or Springsteen’s Devils and Dust? Why not? That’s what we aim to find out. So without further adieu, Forgotten Records #1.

Beck
The Information (2006)
Interscope

Preceded by: Guero (2005). Succeeded by: Modern Guilt (2008).

Why was it forgotten?

In 2005, Beck released Guero, arguably his biggest record since 1996’s Odelay. Though his 2002 record Sea Change was a critic’s darling and is probably more highly regarded than Guero, the latter record had a number of hits over the spring and summer of 2005 and received substantial radio play. Songs like “E-Pro” and “Girl” were alternative rock radio staples in 2005 and were heard on radio and television long after the record was released. The album’s success played a big role in bringing Beck back to national prominence after lurking in the shadows for a few years (admittedly, all the while releasing strong efforts).

The Information just sort of appeared towards the end of 2006, largely out of nowhere. Guero was still on the minds of Beck fans and songs from that album had remained in circulation for so long that it still felt like Guero had just come out. The Information was released to little fanfare and mixed reviews from the musical press, and after a few minor radio hits, the album sort of faded away into obscurity. Despite one of the most innovative covers in recent memory (the cover is a blank sheet, and the album contains “colorforms” that can be stuck to the album cover in various ways, allowing you to design your own cover), the album failed to find an audience outside of Beck loyalists. So how’d that happen?

Should it be forgotten?

Short answer: no. The Information isn’t the most accessible album, even by Beck’s standards, but it is often brilliant and almost always catchy and memorable. The Information may find Beck at his most cerebral; like a lot of his efforts, there’s a sonic surrealism at play here. Sounds bombard the listener from every direction, whether they are great beats, cell phone rings, and random electronic noises. As always, Beck’s signature spoken-word pseudo-rapping ties everything together nicely. It’s a credit to Beck that he is consistently able to mix different styles and different sounds together and create coherent songs and albums.

A lot of The Information is just plain cool. It starts off with a bang, with “Elevator Music”, “Think I’m In Love” (one of the few singles from the album), and “Cellphone’s Dead” setting the foreboding but hopeful mood for the rest of the record. There’s something pleasantly dark about these songs; they’re not happy and they have an ambient quality about them, and yet they often feature bright choruses. Whenever the record feels like it’s going too far down a dark alley, it’s rescued by a timely sunny hook or chorus. Beck never lets The Information go too far in one direction or another.

The album continues with “Dark Star” and “We Dance Alone”, two of the best songs here, which are both straightforward and uncompromising. The beats on The Information are incredibly strong, and I would have been content to listen to these songs without any vocals at all. The beats and the atmosphere they create are that powerful.

I should make sure to say that The Information is a pop record. It’s just a little out there. It’s a party record in a nontraditional sense. If it’s on in the background, you nod your head and tap your feet, but if you listen closely, it makes you think. There’s a lot going on here. The Information is very atmospheric, and even for someone as notably eclectic as Beck is, that can be a turn off for a lot of people. I can see why this didn’t fly off the shelves.

The album isn’t all beats and electronica. Some of it (including the songs “Strange Apparition”, “Nausea” and “No Complaints”) harkens back to the early honky-tonk carefree Beck records, and this dichotomy of sounds is very well done. It never sounds forced or unnatural.

Unfortunately, the album does lose a little steam towards its conclusion. Its bottom third is largely a washout. “1000 BPM”, “Motorcade” and “The Information” all struck me as meandering filler and failed to make an impression. The last track, a suite called “The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton”, despite going off the deep end in terms of ambient minimalism, worked well and was a fitting conclusion to this odd and often beautiful album.

The Information is a thinking person’s record, and a hell of an experience. Unfortunately, that rarely equals sales and notoriety these days. If you like Beck at all, or if you’d like to take a strange aural journey that includes some head-nodding and foot-tapping, check this out.

B+

John Lacey

Musings: 2/14/09

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Hopefully you and your significant other are out on the town today, frolicking and having a good time, looking lustfully into each other’s eyes as you eat lunch at a ritzy city café. In fact, if you’re reading this on Saturday, February 14, you have no soul and will probably be consigned to hell for not having anyone to share this day with.

Kidding! Who am I to talk; I’m writing the fucking thing! Anyway, I have some opinions I wanted to get off my chest and I took in a documentary in the wee hours of last night that I didn’t necessarily want to write a full review on, so I decided to mash them together in the seldom seen “Musings” column.

Item #1: Steroids in baseball (and, more specifically, in A-Rod’s ass)

Like most people who follow baseball, I was a little disheartened by last week’s reports that Alex Rodriguez, the purple-lipped and mocha-faced Yankee, used steroids during his time as a Texas Ranger between 2001 and 2003. I wasn’t surprised at all, and I wasn’t shocked, and I guess I wasn’t even saddened. This is the way baseball has become, and no name that comes out from here on would surprise me one bit, even if one of my vaunted Boston Red Sox was to be outed.

I have much more of a problem with the sports media for losing their collective minds about the entire affair. Columnists from all over the country are already lobbying for A-Rod’s numbers to be stricken from the record book. One moron in New York City even advocated for the Yankees to eat the remainder of A-Rod’s 10 yr/$977 billion contract out of principle. Have these people lost their fucking minds?

I don’t remember when it became cool to act morally offended about everything, especially in something as trivial and, realistically, stupid, as professional sports. Every day there’s a new fiasco, and the “steroids in baseball” saga has created more furrowed brows and heart palpitations among reporters and uninformed fans alike than anything else that has happened in sports for the last few decades. It reminds me of something Jim Norton said on Opie and Anthony a few years ago. Reading a New York newspaper headline that equated a Yankee loss with war and murder, he succinctly pointed out the ridiculousness of it all: “One group of millionaires with sticks hit more balls over the big blue fence than another group of millionaires with sticks”. I love sports, and I especially love baseball, but will people chill out already?

I know, I know. It’s “America’s pastime”. It sends a bad message to the youth of America, those high school kids looking for that extra 50 pounds of muscle to put them over the top. I’ve heard all the arguments. And I can see where some of this is coming from. I certainly don’t think taking steroids is the right thing to do, and it does create an unfair advantage, no question.

But it seems like everyone was doing them! When you look at the Mitchell Report, and Nook Logan appears on the list (a utility-bozo extraordinaire whose best season was hitting .258 with one home run and 17 RBI’s for the 2005 Tigers), it makes you think, who wasn’t taking these things? And like the great questions of the Universe, the answer of course, is “we’ll never know”. We really will never know the extent of steroids in baseball and all of the players that used them. We just won’t. That, of course, won’t stop Johnny Newspaperseed and the ill-informed populace from nailing certain players to the wall just because they hit a lot of home runs during that time period and looked muscular. Hear that, Frank Thomas and David Ortiz? Even though we have no reason to think you’ve done anything wrong, you’re cheaters because you’re both big and hit home runs! Isn’t that just as unfair as cheating in the first place?

This argument has been made as well, but it’s a fair one. Baseball turned a blind eye to players like Mark McGwire, Ken Caminiti, Sammy Sosa and others becoming the size of rhinoceroses and shattering records. It was all fun and games then. Come to the ballpark and see this freakishly large cartoon character hit a ball 700 feet! Where was the testing then? Who was asking the questions? The baseball brass couldn’t have been that naïve. Baseball made their bed, and now they have to lie in it. They dropped the ball, and allowed all of this to happen. It’s not fair to go back now and drag certain players through the mud to show that they're “doing something about it”.

I think everyone that has the numbers should get into the hall of fame, no exceptions. If they feel the need to include a caveat that the time period was rife with steroid use, that’s fine. For certain players that tested positive, go ahead and put an asterisk on their plaques. But Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens (as much as I hate him), Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and now Alex Rodriguez all belong in Cooperstown. They dominated an era in which steroids were the norm. Since we have no way of proving which pitchers were on steroids and which pitchers weren’t, and since popular opinion is telling us that all home run hitting mashers from that era were on steroids, it’s only fair to assume all pitchers were on steroids, too. You can’t have it both ways.

All baseball can do is realize their mistakes and clean the game up moving forward, which is seems they’re doing. Don’t keep people out of the hall of fame, don’t reverse or take away any records, and don’t do anything stupid. They had their chance to nip the steroid problem in the bud and opted not to. That’s the way it goes.

Item #2: Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005). Directed by Sam Dunn and Scott McFadyen

I was up until the wee hours last night, unable to sleep, and flipping through the channels. There were the usual infomercials, crappy movies, and sports highlights on, and I wasn’t in the mood for any of those things. I continued flipping and found this documentary, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, on one of the VH1 channels and I decided to take it in.

I had heard a lot about this documentary from fellow writer Matt Steele, who is an encyclopedia on all things metal. I had some interest of my own, as well. I used to listen to metal quite a bit in middle school and the beginning of high school. For whatever reason, I slowly found myself being less and less interested in the musical genre, and looking to other places for music that really spoke to me (much to Matt’s dismay). I’ve always been fascinated with metal music, however, and even though I don’t listen to it anymore, I still have an interest in it. I ask Matt about what my old favorite metal bands are currently up to and I constantly browse Wikipedia for information on some of the more ridiculous and brutal Scandinavian bands. Since this documentary promised to cover pretty much all things metal, I was hyped up for it.

Dunn, the director, interviewer, and focal point of the film, is an affable guy and a true metalhead. His goal for the film, stated at the beginning and repeatedly all the way through, is to find out why people like metal music and to look at the heavy metal culture. You see, Dunn was an anthropologist in college, and he’s also a lifelong metal fan, so put the two together and voila! You have this documentary.

As a snapshot of metal music at large or as a primer on the history of metal for someone just getting into it, this film is a godsend. It at least glosses over every genre and subgenre of metal and talks with the major players in each one. The film also looks at various metal traits and characteristics; the clothing, the sexuality of the music, etc. Dunn is entertaining enough and the bands and musicians he talks to are often colorful and insightful as well.

The film misses the mark on a few things. I don’t believe Dunn achieves his goal of finding out what draws people to metal. He simply looks at different aspects of heavy metal fans and heavy metal music, but he doesn’t really tie them all together. We get clips of metal dignitaries talking about how after a tough day, the music was always there for them, man, to which I say, “Wilco’s always there for me, too. What’s so unique about that?”

Of course, we need to talk to Dee Snider as well, and about the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center), which sought to put heavy metal on trial. First, the PMRC is a complete joke that knew nothing about music, and I think that’s well understood by anyone with any familiarity to the proceedings. Any committee that wants to discuss KISS and Twisted Sister songs is probably a waste of money. They’re fucking hair bands, for God’s sake! Does anyone really take them seriously?

Secondly, Dee Snider might be the biggest blowhard on the face of the earth. I don’t exactly seek his interviews out, and yet I’ve probably heard him talk about his hearing with the PMRC in ten different interviews. We get it, Dee. You came to a stuffy board meeting with teased up hair and skin tight jeans on, and to their surprise, you were coherent and articulate! Thank you for saving metal.

Discussions of the PMRC lead to a look at various suicides and violence that look place and the attempt to pin those actions on heavy metal music. Of course, this line of thinking is complete horseshit, and if you’re killing yourself because Ozzy Osbourne told you to, maybe the problem isn’t with Ozzy. But I think the film misses an opportunity here to discuss something interesting. Though anyone who commits suicide or violence against someone else has serious issues, regardless of what music they listen to, why is it that a lot of these victims listened to metal? What about it speaks to disaffected youths? Is it because it’s loud, or do they actually like the music?

And finally, we get a segment about women in metal. We hear about how metal has been a boy’s club since its inception (true), and then we go into discussions about all-female metal bands like Girlschool, Vixen and Lita Ford. Of course, the film talks about these bands and what they did for women’s rights as if they’re all modern day Rosa Parks. No one was oppressing women in metal; there just weren’t any female bands for a while. And then the bands that came along really sucked. So who gives a fuck?!?

Dunn does a good job going over the history of heavy metal music and hitting the main talking points, but he does fall into the aforementioned traps that almost every metal doc falls into. It would have worked a lot better and would have been a lot more interesting if he succeeded in really showing us the metal culture and why people are drawn to it.

To reiterate, no one cares about Dee Snider and no one cares about Lita Ford.

C+

John Lacey

Hidden Classics #1 - Guided By Voices

Guided By Voices

Under the Bushes Under the Stars (1996)

Matador

Hello friends! My associate/enemy John “Jackie” Lacey has asked me repeatedly to take part in his blog. Finally, I acquiesced. So here is the first entry for my column which will be called “Hidden Classics.”


I’ve had the benefit of growing up with older siblings whom are much cooler than I, and throughout the years they’ve passed down some really great music, saving me from “discovering” bands such as Nickelback. One of the bands that my siblings caused me to become smitten with are the indie stalwarts Guided By Voices, led by former 4th grade teacher Robert Pollard.


GBV is hardly hidden; they’re considered along with Pavement, Sebadoh, and Dinosaur Jr. as one of the key independent bands of the 1990s. Toiling in the obscurity of Dayton, Ohio for the late 80s as well as the early 90s, Guided By Voices finally caught national buzz after the 1994 release of the indie classic Bee Thousand, their 7th full length. I love that album, adore it even, though it can be hard for many to tolerate given its Lo-Fi aesthetic and its somewhat fanciful lyrical content (i.e. “Robot Boys,” “Demons,” “Nondairy creamers explicitly laid out like a fruitcake,” etc).


This brings me to my first Hidden Classic, Under The Bushes Under The Stars. By the time it was released in 1996, GBV their trademark Lo-Fi sound had been anointed indie darlings by everyone from the New York Times to MTV’s Kurt Loder. There were heightened expectations for them to deliver Bee Thousand Part III (part II being their excellent Lo-Fi follow-up Alien Lanes). What they instead delivered was a powerful, clean sounding record, chalk full of infectious hooks and radio friendly singles. There’s hardly anything Lo-Fi about Under The Bushes..., and that apparently turned some people off. Not me, however. Granted I first heard it about 3 years after its release, but I fell in love with the record after the first spin.


With rock powerhouses Kim Deal and Steve Albini producing various tracks, Under The Bushes... is by far the poppiest record in the GBV pantheon. How songs like “The Official Ironmen Rally Song,” “Under Water Explosions,” “Drag Days,” and “It’s Like Soul Man” didn’t get significant radio play is beyond me. Pollard has an incredible pop sensibility; the dude can write a hook, but he can also be very poignant. Take for example the heart wrenching acoustic number, “Bright Paper Werewolves,” a song literally about scratch ticket junkies in Dayton, and from my experience living in Pawtucket, Rhode Island for a year, I can identify.


They want to get out of here
but they can’t find the exists
They cling to the cinema
and they can’t find security
then they finally got recognized
so they left in obscurity and misery


Pollard’s songwriting partner in crime (at this point) is fellow Daytonian, Tobin Sprout, and he too brings some of his best material to this record. “Atom Eyes” and the Albini produced “It’s Like Soul Man” are pop gems that sound like lost R.E.M. classics. While Pollard’s material dominates most of the record, Toby’s songs offer pleasing jangley excursions that still manage to fit the mood perfectly.


While there are 24 songs on this album, it moves incredibly fast (just over 54 minutes). Each track sustains the forward momentum, and when the album finishes with the gloriously bizarre “Take To The Sky,” you’ll be tempted to start the record over. The album’s first and last songs have similar (if not the same) chord progression and act as perfect bookends to a magnificent album. While Under The Bushes... might not be my personal favorite GBV album, I think it’s an album anyone who loves Who’s Next inspired Pop music should give a listen to. Maybe afterwards you’ll understand why when GBV broke up in 2004, my fellow diehards and I begged, “Don’t Stop Now.”

- Brendan Leonard

The Dailies 2/8/09: Wrestling with Cowboys Edition!

As promised, I am back with two more movie reviews, the Oscar-nominated The Wrestler and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the 1969 Western that popularized “Raindrops are Falling on My Head” (the less said about that, the better). Let’s get going!

The Wrestler (2008)
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Principle Actors: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

The Wrestler is a film about pathetic people. Its protagonist, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, is a washed up professional wrestler who once wrestled in front of packed houses at Madison Square Garden. Now he’s sleeping in his beat-up van because he’s been locked out of his trailer for being behind on his rent. Local stripper “Cassidy” (Marisa Tomei) is too old for her profession and endures the pawing and catcalls of local bozos to provide for her young son. Randy’s daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), is an emotionally unstable twenty-something who has become a lesbian due in large part to Randy’s shaky and often absent fathering, giving her an extremely negative view of man and manhood. Many of the other wrestlers are decrepit shadows who struggle to walk and sign autographs from wheelchairs. The characters in this film are not happy ones.

I was very excited to see The Wrestler. I have always held an affinity for professional wrestling, and followed it closely from my days as a young boy until, gulp, 2007. In the summer of 2007, one of my favorite wrestlers, Chris Benoit, murdered his wife and son and then hung himself with an exercise machine wire. I realized then the world of professional wrestling is not a glamorous one. Wrestlers are chewed up and spit out, and very few are able to get away from it without severe physical or mental damage.

The Wrestler hits on this subject constantly. Mickey Rourke is truly fantastic and worthy of the accolades being hurled in his direction. He perfectly embodies the broken down Randy Robinson. He looks like he’s been through hell, and he probably has.

Unfortunately, The Wrestler closely mirrors what real life is like for a lot of the top stars of the 80s and 90s who now find themselves wrestling in bingo halls in front of 30 people because they don’t know how to do anything else. Randy never enjoys himself in this film; he’s never happy. He’s constantly looking for something: his youth, a return to the high life, his lost fame. In his heart, he knows those things are never coming back, but he presses on, because even the possibility that he’ll get another big break is a hell of a lot more enticing than spending the rest of his days as a nobody working at the local supermarket.

Randy’s entire life is one degradation after another. I imagine that once you’ve sold out Madison Square Garden and have truly been a star, it must be tough to scoop chicken salad at a deli counter for impatient geriatrics. Even when Randy is in the ring, where he thinks he’s “at home” and with “his family”, he’s playing to miniscule houses in front of bloodthirsty adolescents. Are these really the types of people you want to call your family?

Aronofsky makes great use of music in the film. The soundtrack is largely filled with hair bands from the 80s (Quiet Riot, RATT, etc.) Not only do these songs intrinsically recall the 80s, but a lot of those bands mirror Randy’s quest. We see bands like Poison and RATT reforming to play in front of 80 people at American Legion halls. We see their members go on reality TV and make complete asses of themselves. They’ve been to the top, and now that their time has passed, they’re willing to do anything to get back there, no matter how self-degrading and ugly.

The wrestling scenes are very well-done and very realistic. Randy wrestles a “hardcore” match with Necro Butcher, actually a real life wrestler. In hardcore matches, anything goes. You can hit the other guy with a pane of glass, barbed wire, thumbtacks, staples, you name it. We grimace each time Randy gets the staple gun treatment, because it looks so real (and very well might be).

The film is greatly buoyed by Rourke and Tomei’s performances. We’ve discussed Randy, and Tomei plays a stripper that eventually falls for him, after much cajoling. When Randy begins to put the pieces back together with his daughter and goes on a date with Tomei, we’re happy for him. When he finds even a modicum of enjoyment out of working at the supermarket deli, we’re ecstatic. But when he decides to take on a final match with his 80s nemesis, the Ayatollah, we’re devastated, because we know what it means for him long before the ending. It’s a credit to a great storyline and great performances.

There are some plot holes in The Wrestler, and some leaps of faith. The subplot with his daughter has great potential, but ultimately feels a little shoehorned. She hates him when he first arrives at her house and tries to reconcile with her, then he buys her a present and takes her out (and apologizes profusely for the wrongs he’s done), and she’s back on board. Then, he forgets about a dinner arrangement they’ve made and goes to her house in the middle of the night to apologize for that, and she never wants to see him again. I know she’s emotionally fragile, but even the fact that he went to her house at all to make amends should show that he has changed, or is at least making strong strides towards changing.

It’s also a credit to the film that we care so deeply about Randy, and it would have been nice to have an ending to the movie that was affirming for the audience and not just the character.

B+

Oscar nominations:

Won: TBA
Nominated: Actor (Rourke), Supporting Actress (Tomei)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Director: George Roy Hill
Principle Actors: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross

I was very sad to learn of Paul Newman’s death last year, because he was one of the only actors that could excite you just by seeing his face appear on the screen. Newman has an unmistakable film presence, more powerful than Eastwood’s and perhaps rivaled only by McQueen’s (though Newman has been in better films). When Newman shows up with that never-ending twinkle in his eye and smirk on his face, you’re in for some fun.

Luckily for us, that’s the mood he sustains through the whole of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He’s accompanied by Robert Redford, at this time a relative unknown who would go on to be one of the biggest movie stars of the 1970s. They play, well, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a pair of smooth talking, quick shooting outlaws who rob banks and trains and prefer to use words to wriggle out of situations rather than bullets.

Butch and Sundance have robbed one train too many of Mr. E.H. Harriman, president of the Union Pacific railroad. Harriman, who is never seen on screen, hires a posse of the best lawmen and trackers in the nation to hunt down Butch and Sundance and not stop until they’ve been killed. After a few close calls and narrow escapes, Butch convinces Sundance and Sundance’s lover (Katharine Ross) to head down to Bolivia, where the banks are free for the robbing and there are no pesky lawmen to give them any trouble.

Truth be told, this film would be pretty mediocre if anyone else had been cast in these roles. The storyline is a little hollow, plot points often take a long time to develop, and at times, I thought, “This whole movie is just watching Butch and Sundance make quips and rob banks”. The only reason this boring formula works is because of how colorful Butch and Sundance are. They make the whole ordeal worthwhile.

Newman and Redford are constantly in charge in Butch and Sundance, both as actors and characters in the film. When they wink and smile and smooth talk another character, they’re doing the same to us. They’re easy to get behind and easy to root for. They’re unfazed by danger and always believe that there’s a way out of whatever predicament they’re in (and there usually is, until the very end).

This is a Western, but it’s a different kind of Western, and that’s perfectly OK. This isn’t a Clint Eastwood Western, set in a dirty, sweaty and grimy desert. This isn’t like Django, a violently over-the-top spaghetti Western. This Western has color. It’s filled with trees, streams and bushes. Even when the heroes enter areas that fit Western stereotypes, they seem to rise above their surroundings. They have a clean sheen around them, like they have a forcefield protecting them from the dirtiness and desolation around them. The Man with No Name revels in the dust and dirt; he becomes the desert. Newman and Redford merely operate in it. It’s a different take, and a refreshing one.

Newman and Redford are a lot of fun together. The Sting, which was another collaboration between the two that followed this one, is one of my favorite movies. Butch and Sundance isn’t as solid as that film is, but any chance you get to see Newman and Redford together you have to take.

B+

Oscar nominations:

Won: Cinematography, Music-Original Score, Music-Original Song, Writing-Original Screenplay
Nominated: Director, Picture, Sound

John Lacey

Steele's Lost Report: The Little Prince 2/7/09

"The Little Prince"

Season 5, Episode 4

I was going to start recapping this season of Lost from the get-go, but I waited too long and now I don't really feel like reviewing 3 episodes all at once. If you watch the show, you know how draining it can be just to sit through multiple episodes, especially with all that's gone on this season, so I wasn't about to torture myself by having to write about them, as well. Hence, we start with episode 4, "The Little Prince."

Last week's episode, "Jughead," ended with the cliffhanger of Charlotte's nose profusely bleeding before she collapsed to the ground. We also saw how Desmond and Penny were about to get involved in the off-island drama set in 2007. What we didn't see, however, were the actions of any of the Oceanic 6 (and Ben and Ben's off-island Others). "The Little Prince" gives us a good dose of off-island material; unfortunately, most of it is centered around Kate. Now, I don't dislike Kate as a character, necessarily, I just find a lot of her storylines incredibly boring. This one, fortunately, is probably the most captivating storyline she's had since Season 1, but it was basically a convoluted way of showing us that, Hey, Ben is a manipulator.

As I predicted, the man behind the Agostini & Norton law firm coming to get blood samples from Kate to determine her relationship to her "son" Aaron was Ben Linus. Although they gave me a hell of a fake-out this week. Jack demands to see Kate, but won't exactly tell her why. Kate leaves Aaron with the visiting Sun, while she goes to meet with Dan Norton, the aforementioned lawyer. Sun, in the meantime, has a package delivered to her filled with surveillance documents and photographs of Ben and Jack (loading Locke's body into the van!), and a nice box of chocolates... oh, and underneath those chocolates is a bad-ass gun. Sun really means business, it seems, although I'm still not quite sure why she holds Ben (and Kate?) responsible for Jin's death.

Kate gets nothing out of her meeting with Norton, so she thinks following him to his meet with his client will yield more results. Jack goes along with Kate for the ride, and we see Norton meeting with CLAIRE'S MOTHER. Which, actually, wasn't that surprising, because the "Previously on Lost" montage had the clip of Jack meeting Claire's mom at Christian's funeral, but I digress. What WAS surprising, however, was what happened when Jack had a conversation with Mrs. Littleton (his stepmother, of sorts). He was on the defensive from the get-go, and started talking about how everything they were doing was to protect Aaron. "Who's Aaron?" Mrs. Littleton replied, and oh shit, we realize she is not the client after all. At that point, it became obvious to me that Ben was behind this, and it became obvious to Kate as soon as she saw Ben and Sayid get out of the van when meeting with her and Jack at the rendezvous point. Jack, feeling that Ben is on his side and would never hide something like that from him, is surprised when Ben simply put, "It was me, Jack." That about ends the off-island shenanigans, except for Sun, with a sleeping Aaron in the backseat, menacingly looking on from afar, with aforementioned pistol in tow. Shit's about to go down... next week, unfortunately.

Back to the on-island goodness in the year... actually, we don't even know what year they left off in last week's episode. The bomb wasn't there any more, but it could have been way before 1954, or way after it was buried. All we know is that Charlotte is still passed-the-F-out, and Daniel's shirt seems to have absorbed all of her nose blood. Sawyer starts immediately harassing Faraday about what is happening to her, but Juliette calls him off. She then politely asks Daniel if he knows what is happening, and he expresses that he thought it might. She does eventually come to, and doesn't know where she is or who Daniel is. Once he says his name, however, she smiles and instantly knows what is happening, leading me to believe that Daniel is her "constant."

Locke starts to think that going back to the Orchid station is the only way to try and stop what's happening to Charlotte (and Miles, although he keeps that from everyone but Faraday. Faraday then tells him it might be because of the amount of time he and Charlotte have spent on the island. This confuses Miles, who has only been on the island for two weeks, yet the time they spent focusing on Dr. Chang's baby in the season opener leads me to believe that Miles was born on the island.) Before they can even get anywhere, they're met with another flash, this one leading them to November 1st, 2004, (thank you, Lostpedia!) the night Boone died and the hatch lit up.

Anyone who recalls the episode where Boone met his demise also realizes that Claire gave birth to Aaron at the same time. Well, we don't get a flashback of that event, necessarily, but we get Sawyer literally seeing Kate assist Claire in giving birth to Aaron, just feet in front of him. Sawyer does not intervene, however, because “What's done is done.” Locke inspired that outlook in Sawyer, after telling him how he had banged on the hatch door out of frustration when he was unable to save Boone, looking for some sort of purpose. “I needed that pain, because I wouldn't be where I am today without it.” The islanders head back to the beach following another flash as Sawyer looks on at Kate, and then nothing. When asked by Juliette what he saw, he replies that it doesn't matter, because it's gone. I gotta be honest. I never liked the Kate/Sawyer love story, and felt really pissed at her when she banged him in one of the Others' cages. After the way Josh Holloway played the heartbroken one last night, I almost want him, not Jack, to end up with Kate. Upon arriving at the beach, they come across their camp, somewhat in tact, but ransacked of supplies. The zodiac raft that they planned to take to the other side of the island is also gone. In its place is a large canoe, with a mysterious bottle of water from an Indian airline inside of it. My guess? The Oceanic 6 flew on said airline and crashed into the island.

This theory is further enhanced by the islanders being shot at by dark figures in the distance, also in a large canoe. I'm thinking it was either the future versions of themselves, or Jack and his buddies doing the shooting. Sawyer shouts “Thank you, God!” as another flash approaches, saving them from danger, until they reappear in the middle of a vicious ocean storm. “I take that back!” = funniest line of the night. The islanders get to land, where Sawyer and Juliette have a nice, quiet moment. That is, until Juliette gets a nosebleed. LOST!

And how could I forget maybe the jaw-droppingest moment of the night? Caught in the same storm as our islanders is a life raft full of French speaking people. They approach a body floating on a piece of lumber and drag him onto their raft. When they turn him over, we recognize him instantly, and it's Hurley!? WTF?

WRONG. It's Jin! Jin lives! Jin lives!

The next morning, Jin wakes on the beach, again not understanding anything anyone's saying. He realizes one of the young women speaks English, and he does “a little.” He tells her his name is Jin, and she introduces herself as a very young, very pregnant Danielle Rousseau. Wow, wow, wow.

The preview for next week's episode had Ben telling Sun he could prove that Jin was still alive, along with Locke being lowered by rope down into what I assume is the remains of the Orchid station. I cannot wait.

A-

Matt Steele

The Dailies 2/5/09: Chock Full O' Aliens Edition!

Howdy, everyone, and welcome back to The Dailies, where I take a look at two movies I’ve recently viewed. Enough talk, let’s do this thang!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Principle Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, Francois Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr

It’s pretty well-established what you’re going to get when you watch a Steven Spielberg picture. You’re going to get a well-made, intriguing enough film often featuring dazzling special effects and even more dazzling characters. The film may not have the most tightly knit story or realistic plotline, but we’re willing to forgive these lapses because, “Holy shit! Indiana Jones just decapitated that Nazi with an airplane propeller!”

Close Encounters of the Third Kind has perhaps a better storyline than any of Spielberg’s other 70s and 80s blockbusters. Electric utility lineman Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) is driving around at night in the middle of nowhere in Indiana trying to find his way to an electric power plant that has been thrown off-kilter (by recent UFO activity). While hopelessly lost and surveying a map, an alien craft hovers over Dreyfuss’ truck, shining a bright beam on him and causing the truck to shut off and various papers and unfastened materials to fly around. Dreyfuss is darkly sunburned, but his mind is also burned with the indelible image of the alien spaceship.

Dreyfuss’ obsession with the spacecraft and his adventures in trying to figure out where it came from and how he can see it again provide the best moments of the film. In one scene, he and the others who witnessed the craft attend a government press conference. Their attempts at gathering more information about the aliens are thwarted by one of their own, a country bumpkin who makes a variety of insane assertions. In perhaps the movie’s most famous scene, Dreyfuss creates a sculpture of a mountain with his mashed potatoes at the dinner table, and then sobs when he sees his family looking at him in horror. There are many well done scenes like this one.

Dreyfuss is quirky enough in the role, but the success of the Spielberg formula has always depended on characters. Indiana Jones. Crazy sea captain Robert Shaw and local police chief Roy Scheider in Jaws. E.T., for Christ’s sake! Dreyfuss doesn’t provide that iconic connection of character to film that these aforementioned films create. He does his job admirably, but he’s not larger than life. And in Spielberg’s films, the bigger and brighter the special effects, the bigger the character needed to be able to make us care about them. Without that piece of the puzzle, the film rings a little hollow.

Those special effects are breathtaking, to be sure. In their time, I imagine they were state of the art, and they still looked very good on the Blu-Ray transfer I watched. The special effects in Spielberg’s pictures from the 70s and 80s have a nostalgic feel to them. They’re a little dated looking, but they’re timeless nonetheless, and still very effective. The climactic scene of the film, featuring the alien mothership performing a “duet” with the humans (of that famous five note sequence) is as great a scene as any I’ve seen recently.

A lingering question had me a little unnerved after I watched this. Dreyfuss willfully abandons his family to pursue his dream of boarding the alien ship, and we get nary a mention of this during the climactic scenes (Dreyfuss drives his wife and kids away with his constant craziness, and they’re never heard from again). We know Dreyfuss is obsessed with the aliens, but this obsession is never quite fleshed out enough for us to believe that he has lost all feeling for his family. It was a little odd that it wasn’t addressed.

B

Oscar nominations:

Won – Cinematography & Sound Effects
Nominated – Supporting Actress (Dillon), Art Direction-Set Decoration, Director, Effects-Visual Effects, Film Editing, Music-Original Score, Sound

Alien (1979)
Director: Ridley Scott
Principle Actors: Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt

Alien is a movie that really knows how to scare the crap out of you. It isn’t horribly gory, and it lacks the staples of modern horror flicks. You’re not going to see scantily clad C-cup teens being hacked to pieces by machete wielding maniacs. Alien is too smart for that. It scares us not by throwing everything in our face, but by keeping us waiting.

Ridley Scott really knows how to direct a suspenseful film. Every aspect of Alien is designed to provide a surreal spookiness. The ship, the Nostromo, is dimly lit, with often the only illumination being provided by the control panels and their futuristic buttons and switches. Tensions between crew members are almost constantly uneasy, and grow worse as the alien begins killing them one by one. Even the title of the film, Alien, gives you cause to wonder; what is the alien? Where is it? We can’t follow the camera round a corner or go into a dark room without grimacing at the thought of the alien leaping from the shadows.

Scott throws us a bone, however, and a couple of scenes pay off the tense waiting in a big way. Both scenes entertain and scare us at the expense of poor John Hurt. In the first, the crew has landed on a nearby “planetoid” to investigate a strange signal the ship’s computers have picked up. In their exploration, they encounter an abandoned spaceship. Hurt’s character ventures into the bowels of the spaceship, where he discovers a vast expanse of round, “leathery” objects that he assumes to be eggs. Peering into one of these eggs turns out to be a big mistake when a life-form hurls itself out of its shell and into Hurt’s face.

In the second scene, the most famous scene in the film, the alien has removed itself from Hurt’s face after a few days. Hurt tries to recover by eating with the crew, but suddenly goes into violent convulsions. His chest explodes, blood splatters on the crew, and a baby alien tears itself out of his stomach and speeds away. Despite the countless amounts of parodies of this scene (from Spaceballs to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me), it’s still incredibly potent and frightening.

In his Great Movie review of Alien, Roger Ebert makes a great point. I’m paraphrasing here, but he writes that part of what makes the alien so frightening and what makes the movie work so well is because we never know what it really is. At first, the alien has tentacles and is rather small and affixed to Hurt’s face. Later, we see the baby alien, a tiny monster with gnashing sharp teeth. In each scene where we encounter the alien, it looks different; it has developed. That makes the alien an even greater villain (for both the crew in the film and for us, the audience), and gives us another wrinkle to watch for.

Alien has its drawbacks, unfortunately. Some of the characters are pretty one-dimensional, including the character Lambert (played by Veronica Cartwright). Lambert constantly whimpers and cries, which wouldn’t be as big an annoyance if she wasn’t one of the last people remaining at the end of the film. Another, more infuriating problem, was the insistence of the characters to constantly put themselves in compromising situations. Crew captain Dallas (Skerritt) enters the air ducts in an incredibly stupid attempt to flush the alien out. Other crew members blindly enter rooms with no cover or protection and don’t shoot the alien when they have a chance to. At one point, I was yelling at the TV out of frustration for Parker (played by Yaphet Kotto) to shoot the alien. I don’t know whether this is a sign of a truly engrossing movie or a few truly poor scenes.

Those qualms aside, Alien is a top-notch horror film. It gives you something you don’t see much nowadays; a genuinely scary film competently directed and expertly acted.

B

Oscar nominations:

Won: Best Effects-Visual Effects
Nominated: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration


This will be followed shortly by another entry featuring The Wrestler and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

John Lacey

The Random Ten #5

Testament - "Henchmen Ride" - The Formation of Damnation (Nuclear Blast, 2008)

From their latest opus, 2008's The Formation of Damnation, this is Testament doing what Testament does best: melodic, anthemic, riff-y thrash metal. The Gathering, their last album (from 1999!) was arguably my favorite metal album of the 1990s, and I thought there would be no way of topping it. For that reason, I wasn't too interested in The Formation of Damnation. I saw Testament live this past summer with Judas Priest and Heaven & Hell (Black Sabbath fronted by Ronnie James Dio), and they played 2 songs from Formation, and they fit right in with the rest of their 80s thrash classics they put on display that night. I decided to give the album a shot, and I'm very glad I did. "Henchmen Ride" isn't the best song on the album (that would be the title track or "More Than Meets the Eye") but it's a solid thrash metal anthem with great riffs and a great guitar solo by returned axe-god Alex Skolnick.

Anthrax - "Hog Tied" - Volume 8: The Threat Is Real! (Tommy Boy, 1998)

A lot of Anthrax's John Bush-era material gets the shaft, but I don't really understand why. As I've said before, John Bush was my favorite Anthrax vocalist. Musically, they may not have been thrash metal any more once Bush joined, but they were still certainly metal, with an even stronger emphasis on vocal melodies and heavy grooves. "Hog Tied" is not a great Bush-era 'Thrax song, but it's not bad, either. I think a lot of Volume 8 was focused on gimmicky production techniques and not as much on the great riffs and songs that made Sound of White Noise and this album's follow-up We've Come For You All great. This song does feature a good guest guitar solo from the late, great Dimebag Darrell Abbot, of Pantera/Damageplan fame. Bush's vocal delivery, as always, is powerful and emotional, but I'm just not too into the riffs and music in this song.

Testament - "The Haunting" - The Legacy (Atlantic, 1987)

Well, here we go again, more Testament. This being from their classic debut, The Legacy, "The Haunting" was the type of thrash song that really set Testament apart from their peers. Musically, the opening riffs are more reminiscent of progressive metal/New Wave of British Heavy Metal stylings, not so much the straight ahead speed and chugging of a Metallica or Anthrax. Not that the song doesn't provide a lot of groovy chug at about the 2:05 mark, but right from the get go, Testament focused a lot on the groove and the power of metal, and not so much the insane speeds of Slayer and Megadeth. This song does pick up the pace during the 2nd guitar solo, but it was evident from the beginning that Testament were on the verge of greatness, something they achieved with their follow-up album, The New Order. I tend to forget how high Chuck Billy's voice used to sound on the early Testament material but his screaming and singing are absolutely sinister here.

Iron Maiden - "Killers" - Killers (Capitol, 1981)

Maybe my favorite song from the Paul Di'Anno era of Iron Maiden, the title track from their second album, Killers. Opening with a trademark galloping Steve Harris bassline, the slow buildup of the drums by Clive Burr and the guitars of Adrian Smith and Dave Murray, when the song kicks into full gear, it's impossible to not want to pound your fist in the air or bang your head. I knew people who didn't even like metal that would constantly ask me to re-play the first two Iron Maiden albums when I was in college, simply because it was hard to NOT have a good time when rocking out to the grooves they laid down on the self-titled debut and Killers. This song was raw, brash and powerful, like most of the pre-Dickinson Iron Maiden, and Clive Burr shows that he was just as good of a drummer as Nicko McBrain, although with a much more swinging, heavy-hitting style. To think that this album was recorded in 1981 and still sounds like a kick in the face nearly 30 years later is mind-boggling. Paul Di'Anno was by all accounts a punk from the streets of London, and he sounds like he would punch you right in the teeth if you messed with him or his gang, and with menacing lyrics like "You walk through the subway, his eyes burn a hole in your back," you can feel Di'Anno himself as the "killer." Great song from a great band.

Death - "Mentally Blind" - Individual Thought Patterns (Combat, 1993)

Probably Death's most prog-influenced album aside from The Sound of Perseverance, I've always found Individual Thought Patterns to be a little "too much" at times, with the exception of "Overactive Imagination," "Trapped in a Corner" and "The Philosopher." I've always had a hard time sitting through the whole album, non-stop. However, taking a song like "Mentally Blind" on its own, I can see the brilliance that Chuck Schuldiner had when it came to songwriting and guitar playing. The "marching" section of the song about 1:45 in is really captivating, and gives a raw, stripped back feeling to the song, before erupting into more progressive harmonizes guitar and fancy fretless bass work via Steve DiGiorgio. A lot of this album's problem is the lack of dynamics, something they corrected on follow-up Symbolic. Early Death didn't really need dynamics, as they were DEATH METAL, and wrote great, short songs. Once they started getting into longer tracks on Spiritual Healing (not to such a great effect) and Human (THAT'S how you mix prog and death metal), they either became overwhelming or engrossing. "Mentally Blind" isn't overwhelmingly technical or anything, but it's not really that engrossing, either. Not terrible by any means, but if you want to hear greatness from this album, check out the songs I listed above.

Iron Maiden - "Running Free" - A Real Dead One (Capitol, 1993)

Wow, iTunes is being real diverse today. I've criticized A Real Live One and A Real Dead One a lot in the past, and for good reason. They were recorded across their Fear of the Dark tours of Europe and Asia, and Bruce Dickinson was ready to jump ship at any moment during those tours, which he ended up doing following their conclusion. This performance of the classic from the band's self-titled debut sounds like a singer who wanted the crowd to do his job for him (which they pretty much do), and has a really un-inspired middle section where he tries to pump up the crowd with clapping. Having seen Maiden 4 times since they've reformed in 1999 with Dickinson back at the helm, I know when Bruce is really feeling it and when he's going through the motions, and this performance of "Running Free" is him really going through the motions. Also, Janick Gers's guitar improvising is distracting, and he has one of the worst live lead tones I've ever heard. Anyways, this performance is mediocre and on the verge of just plain "bad." If you want a good Maiden live album, get Live After Death or Rock in Rio.

Megadeth - "A Tout Le Monde" - Rude Awakening (Sanctuary, 2002)

Another live performance, this one of Megadeth's French-chorused "hit" from 1994's Youthanasia, "A Tout Le Monde." The vocals on this version are audibly re-recorded in the studio, as you can hear two Dave Mustaines singing during the verses, and it's definitely NOT just reverb. I can't say I blame him, however, as he is almost as bad a singer in the live realm as Billy Corgan. Musically, this was from their first "comeback" lineup, on The World Needs a Hero tour, which was Megadeth trying to forget they recorded an adult soft rock album named Risk in 1999. The live performance is pretty good, as Al Pitrelli does a passable attempt at Marty Friedman's melodic solo. The crowd's attempt at a singalong during the quiet chorus near the end is laughable. I mean, really, who asks an American crowd to sing in French at a metal concert? Anyways, a good performance of Megadeth's only good "ballad." I can take it or leave it.

Machine Head - "Death Church" - Burn My Eyes (Roadrunner, 1994)

Opening with a distorted sample of what sounds like some sort of religious preacher (I'm assuming, given the name of the song), "Death Church" is one of my least favorite songs off Burn My Eyes, an otherwise powerful album. The "clean" riff that opens the song just sounds kind of dumb, like a bad take on the Halloween theme song. Some of these mid-90s metal songs tried so hard to be political and anti-conformity, and had lyrics that were on the verge of laughable. We get it, televangelists are bad, greedy politicians are bad, taxes are bad. Yeah, Megadeth covered that back in 86. You're not being profound, you're being redundant. I have a love/hate relationship with Machine Head. I just saw these guys live opening for Metallica in January, and Robb Flynn is still just as much of a metal-poseur-douche as he was back in the 90s. But the guy can rip on the guitar and write great tunes when he wants to (2007's The Blackening is proof of that). Anyways, "Death Church" is not nearly as bad as anything on The Burning Red or Supercharger, it's just boring.

Damageplan - "Wake Up" - New Found Power (Elektra, 2004)

Ah, Damageplan, the band that Pantera's brothers Abbott formed in 2002 while Phil Anselmo was off doing lots of drugs... I mean, playing with Superjoint Ritual (who pale in comparison to Down, the other, better Anselmo side project). "Do you think that you're better than me? You better wake up, 'cause you know it's a lie." That's the chorus of this song. Now, Pantera were never known for their great lyrics, but at least Phil Anselmo tried to be creative. These lyrics are just atrocious. Pat Lachman, former Damageplan vocalist, was a GREAT lead guitar player/backup vocalist for Rob Halford's group titled, duh, Halford. When I heard he was going to sing in Damageplan, I wasn't too excited. Their debut album has maybe 3 or 4 okay songs, but it made you realize that Phil Anselmo kind of was the heart and soul of Pantera. He might not have written all of the music but he had a good ear for good metal and could mold the Abbott Bros. into writing innovative stuff. This album showed that they could only write boring, uninspired rifffs without him. This song is almost nu-metallish, and it just doesn't work on any level. Dime doesn't even have a good solo in this song, making it all the more worthless.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Fire" - Mother's Milk (EMI, 1989)

One of my favorite cover songs that the Chili Peppers have done, this blazing take on Jimi Hendrix's "Fire" shows just how energetic and explosive these guys were in their younger days. While some of their later output can bring me to snores, this take on "Fire" is pretty faithful to the original, but a lot faster and with a lot jumpier bass work from Flea. John Frusciante also does a great take on Jimi's leads, something he still does to this day on songs like "Dani California." Clocking in at a whopping 2:03, the Chili Peppers leave you wanting for more at the end of this great cover.

All in all, this was a pretty bad random 10. I'd probably only listen to "Fire," "Killers" and "The Haunting" on a regular basis, and maybe a few others within the context of their respective albums, but that's the risk you run when your music library consists of close to 10,000 songs, I suppose.

Matt Steele

Film Review: The Dogs of War

The Dogs of War (1981)
Director: John Irvin
Principle Actors: Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger

"Central America, 1980." The film opens with a chaotic scene: explosions abound; civilians run scared; military forces do their best to contain the mob; helicopters streak overhead. Amid the unrest, a jeep carrying a half-dozen heavily armed Caucasian men streaks toward a lone airplane in the middle of a grassy field. Among them are Jamie Shannon (Christopher Walken), Drew (Tom Berenger), Terry (Ed O'Neill), Derek (Paul Freeman), and Michel (Jean-Francois Stevenin). If there seemed to be any question about the nationality of these men, the discrepancy is soon resolved when they force their way onto the civilian plane at gunpoint. A gatekeeper, in place by the door, waves the men away, "This plane is for members of the provincial government only!" Jamie’s retort: "Which men do I kill to make room for mine?" Shannon and his crew are mercenaries. They wage war for cash and without regard to the political, economic or social outcomes resulting from their actions. When the job is done, they get the hell out of dodge.

Back home, at his New York City bachelor pad (where a pistol sits next to cans of Budweiser in the fridge), Shannon has little time to unwind before being approached by Endean (Hugh Millais), a representative from a British mining firm. Endean's company is interested in the platinum deposits of Zangaro, a fictitious African country. After a short speech in which he elucidates the finer points of economics, Endean offers Shannon a job: a reconnaissance mission to Zangaro, in order to get a feel for the political climate and gauge whether or not the country's leader, a General Kimba, would be responsive to overtures from the mining company. Shannon agrees.

Posing as a naturalist, on a trip to study birds, Shannon makes his entree into the fictitious capital of Zangaro. His ingress hardly goes unnoticed in a locale where white faces are few and far between, and he is the object of suspicious glances wherever he goes. What he discovers is a political situation that seems so banal by today’s standards that it is almost laughable. General Kimba, a dictator, rose to power by fighting for independence against the colonial government alongside two other prominent men: a Colonel Bobi (George Harris) and a Dr. Okoye (Winston Ntshona). Once the colonial oppressor was vanquished, however, Kimba assumed control, exiling Bobi and subjugating Okoye. He resides in a military garrison and presides over the country with an iron fist, murdering as he pleases to inspire fear among the citizenry. Kimba’s word is law, and it is evident that he would not be welcoming of any Westerners whose efforts might threaten his supremacy. Shannon gets the intelligence he came for, but not before being arrested, savagely beaten, imprisoned, and summarily deported back to the United States.

To this point, the film is quite engaging. Frederick Forsyth, whose novel the film is based on, first made a name for himself with The Day of the Jackal, which follows the machinations of a nameless gunman in his attempt to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. That story was adapted into a 1973 film of the same name, starring Edward Fox, that is every bit as meticulous and suspenseful as the novel; it follows the book explicitly and with extraordinary results. I am not familiar with the Forsyth novel in this case, and thus am not qualified to comment on how well the film adheres to the book. Having read The Day of the Jackal and also The Odessa File, I would say, however, that I am familiar enough with Forsyth to know that something goes strangely wrong in the execution of the second half of the film, which is devoid of Forsythian precision.

Shannon returns to New York still bearing fresh bruises only to be again propositioned by Endean: concerning a coup d’etat, “Could a well-trained, well-equipped mercenary force succeed?” His imprisonment has left him incredibly jaded, and frankly, Shannon wants no part of it. Here is when the story begins to falter.

In a desperate attempt to get out of the game for good, Shannon contacts his former flame Jessie (JoBeth Williams), who, after a quick romp, leaves him, knowing that his promise to leave the run-and-gun way of life behind just isn’t a reality. It’s too little, too late for Jessie and for the viewer. Excepting the film’s final scene, this episode is the only glimpse we are afforded into the personal life of the protagonist. For the rest of the film we see Jamie Shannon as a professional carrying out his task—personal matters simply have no place in the world of international intrigue. Shannon’s rejection is supposed to be a crucial emotional moment, the impetus for his going back to Endean and accepting the job. The scenes are too brief, and they do a poor job of conveying the gravity that this episode is intended to have on Shannon’s psyche and on his humanity.

Rebuffed, Shannon assembles his team—minus Terry, whose wife is apparently a hard case (shades of Al and Peg Bundy?)—and they head to Europe to wheel and deal. Shannon tells his cohorts, “Run hard deals. These guys put up a million dollars, so let’s make sure there’s change cuz I figure we ought to keep it.” They buy up weapons and ammo, and make arrangements to charter a freighter to Zangaro. Before sailing, Shannon meets with Endean and the exiled Colonel Bobi, who plans to reemerge in the capital on the day of the coup. The avaricious Bobi looks to be a man no better than the ruthless Kimba, but unlike his former comrade-in-arms, he is willing to play lap dog to Western businessmen. Shannon leaves with a curt warning: “Don’t be late.”

The scenes in Europe, where the mercenaries are cutting deals with various power brokers should be among the best in the film. In The Day of the Jackal, the assassin’s preparations make up some of the most unforgettable moments of both the novel and film. Here, the preparation scenes are brief and rather unremarkable. In addition, we are afforded absolutely no background information on Drew, Derek, and Michel, Jamie’s fellow soldiers of fortune. Yes, Jamie Shannon is the protagonist, but one would hope that the film would expound on the plurality of canines featured in the title. The trivia section for Dogs on IMDB states that Tom Berenger has said in interviews that half of his role was omitted from the release. This makes sense. His first appearance after the opening scene comes literally out of nowhere, and his few lines consist mainly of threatening remarks and war-whooping. His eventual death (trust me, I’m not ruining anything) is predictable and insignificant. It’s tough to feel for a character one knows nothing about.

The actual military coup in Zangaro takes place in the last ten minutes of the film, with the mercenaries leading two dozen of Colonel Bobi’s former troops in a raid on General Kimba’s military garrison. They rock the garrison with explosions (courtesy of several prominently-featured chrome grenade launchers) and the insurgents unload what seem to be thousands of rounds against a faceless enemy (Kimba’s forces are nowhere to be seen for at least the first five or six minutes of fighting).

The film finishes when Endean and Colonel Bobi find Shannon in the quarters of the deposed—and now deceased—General Kimba. Shannon informs Endean, “You’re late” and introduces Dr. Okoye as Zangaro’s new leader. An enraged Endean insists that the country has been “bought and paid for.” Shannon very naturally waxes Bobi and tells his benefactor, “You’re gonna have to buy it all over again.”

When Shannon shoots Bobi in the final scene, it should be cathartic, but it doesn’t feel that way. In that moment, a man who is supposed to be unfeeling and more importantly, apolitical casts aside his professional modus operandi, and injects his personality into the situation. Why he does this should be clear, but it isn’t. Surely, his imprisonment on the reconnaissance trip, a mission whose risks were known to him, is not sufficient to explain Shannon’s final action. It seems to me that his rejection by Jessie is the explanation, but that episode, as previously stated, is but fleeting. When she refuses his plea to runaway with him, Jessie extinguishes any chance Shannon has of leading a normal life. Waging war is no longer solely his métier, it is all he has to live for. His personal and professional lives merge, and he can no longer function as a disinterested party to the turmoil generated by his exploits. Unfortunately, personal struggle is overshadowed by gun-slinging, and whatever the film seemed to promise in terms of psychological complexity is obscured.

The conclusion is too abrupt. Too much is packed into too little time. The way it is presented, Shannon’s recon trip to Zangaro—which is largely exposition—consumes about half the film’s running time. None of the events which transpire after Shannon’s deportation are afforded proper treatment. This is surprising considering that the film was directed by John Irvin, who, only a year before, directed a flawless adaptation of John Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for a BBC mini-series. Michael Cimino, the immensely talented but ill-fated director was initially slated to direct Dogs, and had written a script, which apparently underwent much revision when he abandoned the project. It’s tough to imagine that Cimino—as much lauded for his perfectionism as he was criticized for it—would have produced a script that was anything less than impressive. The film might have ended up being four hours, but that would have been to its credit. I suspect that Walken, who had starred in Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (for which he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) and Heaven’s Gate, originally agreed to the project when the director was attached. Why he stayed on is perhaps as much of a mystery as whatever was lost in the script rewrite, and whatever ended up on the cutting room floor.

The origin of the title is in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Cry, ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.” The film is not terrible, but it certainly is not Shakespeare either.

C

Notes: Paul Freeman and George Harris would appear together in Raiders of the Lost Ark the following year, as Belloq and Katanga, respectively. Terence Rigby, who portrayed Roy Bland in Irvin’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy the previous year, appears as Hackett. Jim Broadbent appears as part of a British documentary crew in Zangaro.

Mike Keefe