I don’t normally do film reviews here unless they’re about zombies or superheroes, but in this case I want to make an exception. I’m a big Chris Nolan fan, so I was eager to see this flick. And it was good—very good. But there’s one huge problem with it: It doesn’t make nonsense.
The film is about people who travel in other peoples’ dreams, but every dreamworld basically obeys the laws of gravity (except when the interlopers create a disturbance between two connected dreamworlds), time and space. Sure, you can travel between dreamworlds, but even that requires an actual mechanism. Anyone who’s actually dreamed knows that you can start a dream walking on the beach with your wife and end it swimming in a pool of Jabba the Hut’s bile with a bikini-clad Princess Leia, with no real idea how you got from one place to the other.
I really enjoyed the movie, and found it very interesting in an analytical way, but there was no “wonder” to it. And that was the big flaw. My 9-year-old son noticed it right away, in the first dream-scene, when he leaned over to me and whispered:
“I would just dream I had super-powers.”
That’s my boy!

Star Wars Trash Compactor-Schleigho

Here at Berkeley Place, we’ve been supporting Zilla Rocca for years.  Beatgarden records’ crew of underground, unusual rappers may not always be perfect, but they’re always surprising.  And fresh voices are what we need the most in these days of carbon copy hip-hop and corporate lyrical placement.  And I’m happy to say that “Broken Clocks,” might just be the best thing Zilla has ever been responsible for.

Last year’s Slow Twilight was a solid release by the 5 O’Clock Shadowboxers, and fortunately, Broken Clocks isn’t just a bunch of B-sides that weren’t quite good enough for that release.  Yes, there’s some remixes, but these aren’t your (Puff) Daddy’s remixes.  The music beds, the guest spots, it’s all vastly different.  For example, “Bottom Feeders,” one of my favorite tracks off of Slow Twilight, may be instantly recognizable by it’s name and the phenomenal lyrics by the rap Jack Bauer, but Small Professor’s remix makes it pop with an intense urgency that isn’t on the original track.  He actually made it better.  And the blue collar anthem, “It’s Always 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” chops up Fela Kuti to great effect.  This is the song you want to hear in the club, no doubt.  You’ll find verses by all of Beatgarden’s best: Elucid, Nico the Beast, and my current fave, Curly Castro (on “Weak Stomach”).

Best EP of the year so far.

$5 at Bandcamp
http://player.groovebat.com/player.swf

5 O’Clock Somewhere

1.  X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. Of all the upcoming cape flicks, this is the one I’m second-most-looking-forward-to (first is Avengers, natch!).  Despite the title, the film will include not just the original 5 muties from the Stan Lee era, but also will have Banshee, Magneto (of course), Emma Frost, and Havok.

2.  ULTIMATE THOR. The “Ultimates” line used to be the gold standard for Marvel comic storytelling.  The relaunch, not so much.  But one of the most interesting, complex authors of our time, Jonathan Hickman, is beginning work on an Ultimate Thor title.  With art by Pacheco, I just don’t see how this can be bad.

3.  SHADOWLAND. I’ve read some pretty mediocre reviews for the debut of Marvel’s street-level, post-Siege, summer “event,” titled Shadowland, and I disagree with all of them.  It blew me away.  The new Daredevil costume is wicked cool, Andy Diggle did a terrific job at setting up the series as a stand-alone, so you don’t have to know what’s been going in the pages of Daredevil to understand it, but at the same time he made the book flow at a breakneck pace.  And Billy Tan might not be the best choice for this, but he’s still very good.  (Yeah, Maleev or De La Torre would have been terrific, but Tan’s no slouch.)  All in all, I can’t wait for the next one.  Of course, I’m a complete Daredevil whore.  I even bought that terrible Luke Cage/Daredevil Cagematch one shot from last month.  Ugh.

4.  THE END OF BRAND NEW DAY. If you’ve read my blog for any period of time, you know I’m a big fan of the thrice-monthly, rotating creative team behind Amazing Spider-Man, Brand New Day.  It was a great way to reconcile Marvel’s desire to make money with the character by publishing multiple appearances every month with the chaos that came from having several different Spider-titles, each with ongoing story arcs.  Marvel is putting a period on this experiment, however, with issue #647.  That will be a giant-size story with contributions from all the creative people who have worked on Brand New Day over the previous 100 issues.  The title will then go twice a month with one writer (Dan Slott).  Twice monthly is definitely enough Spider-Man (take note, Deadpool!), but my fear is that we’ll start to see a rising number of companion books, like the lame and poorly selling Peter Parker monthly.

5.  THE PREVIEWS BEFORE PREDATORS. Predators didn’t suck.  But it wasn’t great, either.  The big problem for me was Adrien Brody trying to sound like Clint Eastwood.  It would have been a lot better with a real “action hero” type in the lead.  But it was a solid release.  Best thing, though, was the preview for Robert Rodriguez’s next film: Machete.  Now, that looks awesome.

6.  R.E.D. (Retired—Extremely Dangerous). DC Comics seems to be making movies based on its imprint books more than its major heroes.  Another one is coming out in October, starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren (in an action role!), Morgan Freeman, and others.  It looks like it’s gonna be a scream.

7.  RUNAWAYS. And speaking of film projects about lesser-known comics, Marvel is ready to begin filming the Runaways movie at the beginning of 2011. The comic is a pretty cool book by Brian K. Vaughan (Ex Machina) and Adrian Alphona about six children of supervillains who become superheroes and try to defeat their parents.  Yeah, it’s borderline Oedipal, but it worked for the first several issues, at least.  And Vaughan wrote the movie script.

8.  3D THOR AND CAPTAIN AMERICA. Yeah, they’ll be 3D.  Headaches abound.  But this pic is pretty cool.

9.  BATMAN #701. And last but not least, this week Grant Morrison and Tony Daniel produced Batman #701, which fills the gap between Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis, explaining how Bruce survived the helicopter crash at the end of R.I.P. only to be R.I.P. at the end of Crisis.  I always suspected Morrison intended to kill Batman in the ‘copter explosion, but D.C. wanted their Crisis to end with a bang so they made Bats survive, without explanation, only to get “murdered” by Darkseid.  I can’t prove it, but that’s always been my hunch.  Otherwise, why was that storyline called “Batman R.I.P.”?

I almost never post links to single tunes.

But for my man Langford, I make an exception.  Homie is the last living channel to Joe Strummer.

Check out “Getting Used to Uselessness,” the first MP3 off Old Devils, the forthcoming record from Jon Langford and Skull Orchard. (Out this August.)

I’m not really sure what to say about the first full-length release by Boxer The Horse. It’s definitely good–a fun, peppy collection of quirky tunes with odd lyrics produced by the guitarist from Two Hours Traffic.  It’s not going to change your life or anything, but it’s hard not to smile and tap your toes when it comes on.  And really, how many albums actually change the way music is made?  A handfull.  Sometimes (most times) it’s enough just to hear something really, really good.

This fits the bill.

Mary Meets the Pilot

If the lastest release by El Da Sensei and The Returners sounds a little old school, there’s a reason for that.  El Da Sensei formed The Artifacts with Tame One back in 1994 and got a major label deal out of it.  And he deserved it.  The ‘Facts were part of the original backpacker movement, mixing raw reality with intelligent, uplifting philosophy.  El kept this going in his solo career, working with old school rap elites like Sadat X (Brand Nubians) and Paroah Monch, as well as new(er) jack backpacker types like J-Live.  We haven’t heard from him in a while, but he’s risen again with another release that a has a “classic” sound mixed with modern production by Polish hip-hop producers The Returners, and guest spots by Treach of Naughty By Nature, Sean Price of Boot Camp Klick, Akrobatik, and Tiye Phoenix, among others.

If you call yourself a rap fan, you owe it to the game, to the groundbreakers, and to yourself to buy this album.

Toxic Words feat. Reks & John Robinson
http://player.groovebat.com/player.swf

I’ve really enjoyed Grant Morrison’s Batman & Robin title—much more than any of his prior Batman work. Usually, his stuff feels fragmented to me. It seems like he’s planting a bunch of seeds, but I never feel like they all work together or make sense. “Batman and Robin,” on the other hand, has already opened and closed a few distinct arcs and with issue #13, Morrison appears to be ready to bring together several of the remaining open plotlines. Most of all, the story actually makes sense—there’s enough linear progress that the reader can pay attention to the development of Dick and Damian. Grayson has become increasingly competent and confident (although in issue #13 he makes some pretty bad missteps), and the brashness of Damian’s youth is put to excellent use in this latest installment. In it, Joker is in custody and Batman, Robin, and the Gotham PD are interrogating him. And it looks like Robin is the guy most willing to do anything.
The issue also introduces a new regular artist, Frazer Irving. I was reluctant to accept him, because the last two artists on this series, but it turns out his use of light and dark are a perfect compliment to an increasingly frightening title. It almost feels like this should be a “D.C. Knights” title—if there were such a thing. It’s mature, scary, violent, and threatening. Morrison is willing to allow his Grayson-Batman to fail, and to allow his Wayne-Robin to be even more violent than Grayson was in Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin. We’ve never seen this before in the world of comics, where an iconic sidekick takes the place of his iconic leader, and the iconic leader’s son takes on the role of the sidekick. The role reversal is providing Morrison with fertile ground, and he’s making very good use of it. Let’s hope he keeps the seeds growing. I honestly can’t tell where he’s headed once Bruce returns. And that’s
exciting.

Okay, so the band name “Evangenitals” is like, probably one of the worst I’ve ever heard.  Fortunately, the band is a lot better than their name.  And forgive them their artiness–the band consists of a playwright/director, who also calls herself a reverend (Juli Crockett); an opera/jazz singer (Lisa Dee); and instruments that range from the esoteric (accordian) to the unusual (fiddle) to the comparably mundane (guitar, bass and drums).  Mix these seemingly clashing ingredients together, and you get a pretty cool collection of Southern indie pop that will appeal to Indigo Girls and Shawn Colvin fans, without offending their boyfriends.  Yeah, it’s liberal-arts hippie-bracelet freak folk, but it’s also interesting and emphatically not preachy.  It’s tough to find this kind of combination.  Next time they’re in town, I’m taking that blonde who lives in the flat across the hall.  The one with the dog who shops at Fresh Fields and always has a Starbucks cup cradled dangerously in the crook of her elbow.  I think I’m pretty much guaranteed to get laid.

I dare you to listen to Work Song.  Go ahead.  If it’s not stuck in your head for days, you’re a better man than I am.

Work Song
http://player.groovebat.com/player.swf

Hello
http://player.groovebat.com/player.swf