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icepixieHmmm. Do I need to see the new Muppets movie in the theater? I was going to wait for the DVD, but it's been getting very good reviews. I might need to bump it up my priority list. (Pezzers, why aren't you nearby so we could see it together?)
Speaking of movies, I watched Super 8 tonight. If you ever wanted to see a movie where Mulder and Scully have been replaced by a group of fourteen-year-old boys (and Elle Fanning) and sent back to 1979, but still have a run-in with aliens and creepy military people, this is the movie for you.
I watched it because of the J.J. Abrams pedigree, since I usually tend to like what comes out of Abrams's crazy head--though, admittedly, I tend to like it more once it's been filtered through the heads of people who can keep details straight--and it did not disappoint on that score. Highlights: HOLY CRAP THAT TRAIN CRASH WAS AMAZING. It's worth renting the DVD for that alone. The alien making its ship out of the water tower and all the metal in the town was extremely cool-looking too.
The kids were appropriately kid-like, by which I mean the boys all had that over-excited shouty teenaged reaction to everything even mildly startling that kind of makes me want to muzzle them, but the main character was reasonably endearing, and the pyromaniac was kind of hilarious. So was the bossy director.
My memories of childhood start around 1987, so I'm about ten years too late for the nostalgic setting to really get to me, but I still enjoyed the use of songs like "My Sharona" and "Heart of Glass" and things like the gas station dude being all excited over his new Walkman. I've also never seen all the Spielberg films this is obviously evocative of (insert standard unamerican/alien baby/grew up on Mars disclaimers here ;)), but they've so permeated American culture by now that I could easily figure out what they were doing.
Lowlights: The criminal underuse of Elle Fanning. She was definitely the best kid actor, and yet she basically got to play the Juliet to the main kid's Romeo and then spent half the film kidnapped by the alien before he came to rescue her. Sigh.
*
Awww, look, someone made a Julian/Jadzia vid! Okay, the song actively makes me want to set fire to something, but but but Baby's First OTP! And no one ever makes vids for them, and literally there hasn't been a new fic written for them since 2003!
*
Finally, some more music recs. I've mentioned before that I have something of a like-hate relationship with The Innocence Mission, but recently Pandora started coughing up tracks that I actually love. Who knew these were their best albums?
First is Glow, which is from 1995 and sounds basically like the album The Sundays might have made if they were American. (For that matter, have my current favorite Sundays song: Can't Be Sure.) Again like The Sundays, this album is built around the sound of a hollow-body electric guitar. I only just recently learned that this instrument is what produces the sound I find so attractive.
Anyway, my four favorites from this album:
Brave
That Was Another Country
Spinning
There
Fast-forward fifteen years. Not long after Glow, their drummer quit, and they just...never bothered to replace him, which had a considerable effect on their sound. Where Glow fits in, albeit not perfectly, to the wide, wide field that was alternative rock of the early- and mid-nineties, by the time they got to My Room in the Trees they'd obviously decided they were a folk band, by god, and so like some of their others I've recced, this is much more piano-driven and generally quieter. But my quibble with much of their other work is that Karen Peris lets the melody noodle around unattractively for ages and ages until she gets back to the chorus or another verse, and while I like variations and inventiveness as much as the next person, these just make me want to yell at her to get back to the point. Thankfully, this tendency is much less in evidence on this album, and in particular on my two favorites:
Gentle the Rain at Home
North American Field Song
Annnnd one more for the road, entirely unrelated to any of the above:
Follow the Arrow - Rosi Golan & Human. Dunno who Human is, but this sounds exactly like one of Golan's bouncier solo tracks.
Speaking of movies, I watched Super 8 tonight. If you ever wanted to see a movie where Mulder and Scully have been replaced by a group of fourteen-year-old boys (and Elle Fanning) and sent back to 1979, but still have a run-in with aliens and creepy military people, this is the movie for you.
I watched it because of the J.J. Abrams pedigree, since I usually tend to like what comes out of Abrams's crazy head--though, admittedly, I tend to like it more once it's been filtered through the heads of people who can keep details straight--and it did not disappoint on that score. Highlights: HOLY CRAP THAT TRAIN CRASH WAS AMAZING. It's worth renting the DVD for that alone. The alien making its ship out of the water tower and all the metal in the town was extremely cool-looking too.
The kids were appropriately kid-like, by which I mean the boys all had that over-excited shouty teenaged reaction to everything even mildly startling that kind of makes me want to muzzle them, but the main character was reasonably endearing, and the pyromaniac was kind of hilarious. So was the bossy director.
My memories of childhood start around 1987, so I'm about ten years too late for the nostalgic setting to really get to me, but I still enjoyed the use of songs like "My Sharona" and "Heart of Glass" and things like the gas station dude being all excited over his new Walkman. I've also never seen all the Spielberg films this is obviously evocative of (insert standard unamerican/alien baby/grew up on Mars disclaimers here ;)), but they've so permeated American culture by now that I could easily figure out what they were doing.
Lowlights: The criminal underuse of Elle Fanning. She was definitely the best kid actor, and yet she basically got to play the Juliet to the main kid's Romeo and then spent half the film kidnapped by the alien before he came to rescue her. Sigh.
*
Awww, look, someone made a Julian/Jadzia vid! Okay, the song actively makes me want to set fire to something, but but but Baby's First OTP! And no one ever makes vids for them, and literally there hasn't been a new fic written for them since 2003!
*
Finally, some more music recs. I've mentioned before that I have something of a like-hate relationship with The Innocence Mission, but recently Pandora started coughing up tracks that I actually love. Who knew these were their best albums?
First is Glow, which is from 1995 and sounds basically like the album The Sundays might have made if they were American. (For that matter, have my current favorite Sundays song: Can't Be Sure.) Again like The Sundays, this album is built around the sound of a hollow-body electric guitar. I only just recently learned that this instrument is what produces the sound I find so attractive.
Anyway, my four favorites from this album:
Brave
That Was Another Country
Spinning
There
Fast-forward fifteen years. Not long after Glow, their drummer quit, and they just...never bothered to replace him, which had a considerable effect on their sound. Where Glow fits in, albeit not perfectly, to the wide, wide field that was alternative rock of the early- and mid-nineties, by the time they got to My Room in the Trees they'd obviously decided they were a folk band, by god, and so like some of their others I've recced, this is much more piano-driven and generally quieter. But my quibble with much of their other work is that Karen Peris lets the melody noodle around unattractively for ages and ages until she gets back to the chorus or another verse, and while I like variations and inventiveness as much as the next person, these just make me want to yell at her to get back to the point. Thankfully, this tendency is much less in evidence on this album, and in particular on my two favorites:
Gentle the Rain at Home
North American Field Song
Annnnd one more for the road, entirely unrelated to any of the above:
Follow the Arrow - Rosi Golan & Human. Dunno who Human is, but this sounds exactly like one of Golan's bouncier solo tracks.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 04:29 am (UTC)I just got back from seeing it, and So. Much. Love. ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 05:19 am (UTC)I had such a huge unconscious crush on Dax when I was a kid/teenager. I shipped her with Julian soooo hard until Worf showed up, and then I was conflicted for that entire first season he was around. By the time Ezri was on the show, I knew I had a crush on her. Coming out via Star Trek?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 06:44 pm (UTC)I NEVER LIKED WORF. He broke up my Riker/Troi OTP, and then he moved over to DS9 and broke up J/J! Ohhhh, I HATED HIS GUTS when I was, like, fourteen. I wrote reams of fanfic where he met various horrible demises and Julian and Jadzia got together quickly afterwards. (Thankfully, I don't think any of it exists anymore.)
Coming out via Star Trek?
Always good?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 03:11 pm (UTC)Mind, the Muppet performances are always hilarious. But what I'm picking up from the reviews (though they are not saying this directly, quite) is that the writing this time out is right. That is, that it captures both the innate zaniness of the Muppetverse (which most of the Muppet features do) and that very carefully calibrated degree of sweetness that makes you almost cry in the right way at the right moments.
Or to put it another way: I caught an uploaded bit from the recent Muppet invasion of Saturday Night Live in which someone asked Kermit the difference between a puppet and a Muppet. To which Kermit replies: "A puppet is controlled by an actual person, whereas I am an actual talking frog." I have the distinct impression that the movie writers understood this....
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 07:30 pm (UTC)The one element of the classic-era program I remember liking at the time was the original Chevy Chase-anchored "Weekend Update", because the writers of that one tended to realize that the trick to writing funny fake news is to make it just plausible enough to be believable right up to the moment you deliver the sting...and even the sting has to be played perfectly straight. But that sort of writing went out the door with Chase, and all the funny in SNL pretty much went with it.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 06:52 pm (UTC)I didn't even know there WAS fic for them!
This is pretty much the only good one. Well, there's this and this, both of which I loved back in the day, but I'm not sure how they hold up now.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 06:15 pm (UTC)It's wonderful, both a great story about bringing the Muppets back and a great Muppet movie, sweet and funny in all the old ways. The original songs are by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords, and manage to be Very Conchords and Very Muppets simultaneously. There were literally tears in my eyes on several occasions, and a lot of that was the sheer joy of seeing the Muppet Show I remembered as a little kid brought back to life on the big screen.
It's worth seeing epic, and I really hope it does well and Disney finds out the unique awesome of the Muppets can be huge for a whole new generation.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 05:48 am (UTC)I reviewed Super 8 for NeonTommy this summer. If your interested in my reaction to it, here's a link: http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/06/super-8-not-so-great
no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 07:03 pm (UTC)I totally missed the kids' zombie movie at the end of Super 8! Rats. I'm sure it's on YouTube, though.