I am a crowd supporter for Penn Jillette’s upcoming Director’s Cut movie and the story goes that Penn watched this movie and immediately sought out the director Adam Rifkin for a movie he had brewing in his head. The result, Director’s Cut, is poised to be the ultimate meta-movie, filled with found footage and movies-within-movies (I hope it turns out awesome). Look is a found footage movie that’s a tour de force of editing as a story telling device. The premise is that the movie is made up entirely of surveillance footage. There are three or four disparate story lines going on that eventually meet at the end. I thought it was going to be more of a commentary on surveillance culture, but the use of found footage is more of a thematic and stylistic device than a key plot point. And, while it takes a while to hook you in, once the stories start to pick up it’s pretty riveting.
This is another one of those CDs in my collection that I bought because I wanted to buy something while I was out at the Northwoods Mall Musicland. “Waterfall” was a MTV hit and I really liked it (and still do), so the rest of the record had to be just as good, right? Well, not really. There are way too many sappy ballads and nothing else comes close to the driving catchiness of that one single.
This was my introduction to Ween. At the time I thought of them as They Might Be Giants with profanity. In hindsight I think the appeal was that they were, like us, a couple of nerds playing around with a cassette four-track who weren’t afraid to try whatever they could to make a cool song. Listening to them now I realize they haven’t aged well. Nowadays, anyone with a computer can make songs a gazillion times more creative than this. That said there are a few great moments on this disc including “Push th’ Little Daises,” “Reggaejunkiejew,” and especially “Don’t Get too Close (to my Fantasy).” If you are going to buy a Ween album, this one will suffice.
With Mark and Helena’s marriage on the ropes, Mrs. Lassiter plans the ultimate weekend to spice things up. To complicate matters, the guests include Mark’s new secretary/fling, Helena’s photographer “friend” Ken, Mark’s buddy Ben and his showgirl gal-pal Trixie, Helga the naive niece from Minnesota and Mae, the bitter drunk lesbian author. Sounds exciting, right? Well, unfortunately this is not a terribly interesting story. While it has its share of sleaze, the story lacks the pulp/crime intrigue that I usually enjoy in these books.
There is the typical share of character pairings and debauchery, but the only minor moment of tension comes during a brief barroom brawl when one of the girls get accosted by a couple of drunks. The only worthwhile moment for me was in the description of a “wash martini.” So, for this book’s excerpt I have included that page here:
His infectious grin calmed her. “All right, I suppose there’s some truth in what you say. So what do you want me to do, go downstairs and give a strip tease?”
His eyes swept her from head to toe. “Mightn’t be a bad idea, Mae. But no, nothing that radical—I just thought you might like to know that Mark is concocting Martinis. Wash Martinis, to be more specific.”
“Wash Martinis? What in blazes—?”
He nodded gravely. “Wash Martinis is what I said. A rather fiendish mixture brewed by our genial host. Fill the cocktail glass with dry Vermouth, pour it back into the bottle and re fill with good yellow gin. Add a twist of lemon peel—then duck before it hits you . . .”
She could not help smiling. “That I’ve got to see. Deal me in, will you?”
“Come on downstairs. The clans are gathered in the living room watching the performance.”
She hesitated. “Look, Benton. Be a good sport and bring one up to me. I don’t feel much like facing the rest of the crew. You know, nerves and all that sort of thing. I’ve been a little on edge for most of the day and if I went down I’d probably do or say the wrong thing. How about it?”
“Sure, Mae, I understand. Guess that’s what they call author’s license. Sorry you won’t come.”
“Thanks . . .”
“Tell you what, though. I’ll have a pitcher sent up, and then you can get stinking from drinking. Maybe. that’ll snap you out of it.”
In terms of overall game-play, Skyrim stays pretty close to the system Oblivion used. You roam a giant open-world map, revealing new locations to explore as go. Along the way you receive quests that you can complete at your own leisure. Therein lies the danger of this game: it is easy to get distracted and veer off from your goals and before you know it you’ve wasted twenty hours just trying to level up your blacksmithing or collect ingredients. I have already sunk 126 hours into this game, completing most of the main quests, and there’s still the urge to keep playing. I think I “only” managed to log about 95 hours in Oblivion.
But, this isn’t just a re-skinning of Oblivion. There have been many improvements not the least of which was removing the scaling-up the enemy difficulty as your character advanced. It’s good to actually feel more powerful as you gain more and more levels rather than having to fight uber-powerful rats throughout the entire game. In addition, the dual-wielding controls feel a bit more natural now but the game’s inventory system, although improved, was still clumsy enough to force me to install the SkyUI mod to fix it.
The graphical improvements are notable especially in terms of character animation. It’s not near the level of polish as some other recent games I’ve played like Tomb Raider, but it manages to be a pretty realistic world to explore with tons of details and vistas to discover.
I found the main quest line to be not terribly interesting. The world is on the verge of ending because of a reemergence of ancient dragons. You must stop them, yadda yadda. At first I tried to immerse myself in the lore by reading every tome I discovered, but this got boring really quick. I suppose an Elder Scrolls lore obsessed player might think otherwise, but text info-dumps are just not a good way to reveal a fantasy universe in a video game. But, as my hours of playing will attest to, a riveting story is not the only way to keep players hooked. The exploration, the character building and loot collection are really what make this game so addicting and excellent.
The record is what happens when a band comprised of talented stoners is tasked with creating an LP’s worth of music but is not given any editorial oversight. There are a few good songs and plenty of hilarious, quotable passages (“Pollo Asado” comes to mind). However, there are also quite a few forgetful stinkers. In re-listening to this for the first time in a while there were tracks near the end of record which I had no recollection of ever having heard.
“I Know What Boys Like” was a personal new wave favorite for me as a kid. It was featured on K-tel’s The Beat new wave compilation—a comp which served as a launching point for so many bands for me (except for Graham Parker whose track absolutely sucked). The songs here are funny, energetic and fronted with snotty, attitude-filled vocals that are everything that 60s garage rock vocalists shrived for. This is also a rare example of saxophone working in pop music!
I bought this from a bargain bin at either Best Buy or some other big box retailer thinking that I would have the definitive collection of The Ventures’ classic instrumental guitar rock and roll. The neckerchiefs and wide collars on the cover should have been a dead giveaway for the disco-tinged crap that fills this CD. With the possible exception of “Hawaii Five-O,” I think all these songs are remakes of the originals. Remakes with funky bass lines and that steady boom-tiss disco beat that have more in common with Giorgio Morodor than Dick Dale. The songs border on being Meco’s “Star Wars & Other Galactic Funk” and straight up elevator music. There is a cheese-factor to this record that prevents me from getting rid of it, but it remains one of the most disappointing records I ever bought.
Another one of my wife’s CDs. I’ve never been much of a fan of this band but here, upon a second or third listen, I think I might like them despite Lou Reed’s singer/songwriter leanings (I care more about music than lyrics). The raw and seemingly untrained playing nicely exists somewhere between 60’s garage rock and 70’s punk rock. I will probably give there “official” releases a try soon.
