As the old saying goes, things tend to come in threes and this month I was pleasantly surprised by 3 comedies I had relatively low expectations for – first a friend convinced me to watch Tropic Thunder, the Ben Stiller helmed comedy that mocks Hollywood pretensions and excess, The John C. Reilly/Will Ferrell vehicle Step Brothers and finally Role Models (co-written and directed by David Wain of comedy troupe/super group The State).

I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with Ben Stiller. The Royal Tenenbaums is easily in my top 5 favorite films of all time, Zoolander is a great hyperbolic comedy and his failed pilot (with Jack Black and Owen Wilson), “Heat Vision and Jack” is nothing short of brilliant. And then of course There’s Something About Mary, one of the best “gross out” comedies of the 90’s.

The rest of his career, though…(and yes, I remember Meet the Parents…but honestly, when was the last time you thought to yourself “Gee, I sure am dying to watch those crazy Fockers again!” ?)

In Tropic Thunder, Stiller has shown a variety of talents – the directing is spot on, his acting impressive and the script is pretty good too. While I don’t buy into the hype swirling around the film as much as some, it is a worthy addition to Stiller’s “good” column of works and proof he still has some great comedy left in him. However the best part of the movie is Robert Downey Jr., who steals the show. If anything makes it absolutely worth watching it’s his performance as a seemingl Daniel-Day Lewis inspired method actor who refuses to break character, no matter what the circumstance.

I came in to Step Brothers a bit nervous – I think John C. Reilly’s performance in Walk Hard is critically underrated and it very well may be the best film that Apatow Productions (which also produced Step Brothers) has made yet. However, Will Ferrell, like Ben Stiller, is another king of “hit-or-miss” comedies and Semi-Pro ranks high on the list of his bad works. While the plot is more or less inconsequential for most of the film, the chemistry between Reilly and Ferrell is undeniable, the jokes are the signature Apatow style of quirky and memorable, mixing bizarre threats and demands with oft obscure pop culture and other references.

While in Semi-Pro Ferrell often seemed to be being profane for the sake of profanity, here the more “adult” moments are spread more throughout and therefore carry more weight. A scene in which Ferrell plays his new step brother’s drum set with his testicles as an act of defiance is particularly memorable.

The rest of the cast is good enough, although Peter Jenkins feels painfully miscast. He did a fantastic job as the deceased cynical patriarch of the Fisher family in Six Feet Under, but he doesn’t do this kind of over the top comedy as well. His acting work often relies on a great deal of subtlely, which is something this film certainly lacks.

Role Models features another Apatow darling, Paul Rudd, and is a near perfect comedy. While Rudd’s Danny provides a more intellectual and level-headed sense of comedy, Sean William Scott plays the over-emasculated, breast obsessed Wheeler with an undeniable sense of glee all the way through.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin) proves himself to be more than a one trick pony, as his character is decidedly different but equally memorable to his SuperBad counterpart, and while Bobb’e J. Thompson had already proven himself a master of brash, foul mouthed comedy during his stint at MTV’s Human Giant, he continues to excel at the role and occasionally stops cursing and fighting long enough to give his character enough depth to be memorable and truly likeable here.

One friend called Role Models “effortlessly funny,” which is probably the best way to describe it – the whole thing has a sort of smooth rhythm to it and while it has enough emotional weight to make it more than just another buddy comedy these moments are juxtaposed well and never throw off the aforementioned comedic rhythm. Like the 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, this is a film that shows that with enough effort a film can be alternately profane and heartwarming.

So there you have it – two films worth renting and another well worth the price of admission at your local theater.

Eminem has been an outspoken figure about a lot of things, and once again he weighs in on an important issue – the Witch from the new smash hit video game, Left 4 Dead. For those of you who don’t know, the Witch is an enemy who, from afar sounds like a young girl crying. Once disturbed, though, the Witch will relentlessly hunt down whoever has disturbed her.

 
For the uninitiated, a run in with a Witch goes something like this, and is why it is such an apparent source of ire for Mr. Mathers.

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I constantly find myself gravitating towards little known bands, bands that don’t fit very well into any particular genre and never completely catch on, snubbed both by the indie and the “scene” crowd. The shortlist includes Brazil, The Snake the Cross the Crown and Codeseven (and two of them have disbanded in recent years).

Following the split of Codeseven, two bands were been formed – Telescreen (who also feature Jared Draughon of Classic Case fame) have been around for over a year now, and now Sundrone have emerged as well. Only two Sundrone songs have surfaced so far via MySpace; not surprisingly, they sound like Codeseven, but a bit more varied. The second track “And the Bees Made Honey” combines Codeseven’s spaced out synthyness with Minus the Bear’s fretboard gymnastics to create a sound that is wholly their own. If this is any indication, the split of Codeseven may have been to the benefit of all parties involved. Plus, we can always hope for a reunion tour.

FOX has recently announced two cancellations. The first is the long time coming axe for MadTV, which, while occasionally brilliant, was still little more than SNL light and has never exactly brought in the ratings (although they do get kudos from me for being smart enough to hire a young Patton Oswalt, back before he was the well renowned actor and comedian he is today). The second cancellation, King of the Hill, while not entirely surprising, is far more upsetting.

The Hills are a genius creation – a cartoon family that in many ways could have worked just as easily in a live action setting, with interesting and unique personas. Peggy’s self-perceived genius often causes trouble for herself and the rest of her family, but she remains blissfully unaware of (or at least completely unwilling to acknowledge) her damaging hubris. Hank is hardworking and oldfashioned and seems completely befuddled with how exactly to deal with his son, whose dream of being a prop comic ala Carrot Top (or as he is parodied in the show, Celery Head) mortifies his former high school jock father. Luanne is a ditzy and occasionally promiscuous trailer trash gal who often displays poor judgement and bizarre mood swings.

It is the sheer absurdity of the show that also is a testament to how great it is. In one of the most touching episodes in the series, “Now Who’s the Dummy?“ Bobby begins toying with a ventriloquist dummy and soon begins to project qualities he thinks Hank would like in a son on him. It starts to bring them closer, but Hank becomes so obsessed with tinkering with the dummy in his work shop to make it capable of doing things like throwing a football that he stops spending time with Bobby. The episode ends revealing Hank, after a confrontation with his concerned wife, has instead made a dummy which is almost an exact replica of Bobby and then presents it to his son. The final scene shows Hank asking Bobby to watch football with him, and Bobby instead convincing his father to watch something else instead. Hank accepts with an air of acceptance and resignation. Here the normally unemotional Hank is doing his best to show his acceptance of his oddball son for who he is, and in any other show it might seem either too pretentious and weird of an approach to work or, on the other end of the spectrum, too silly to have any real emotional impact. Instead it is one of the better episodes in the whole series, revealing a subtle emotional core beneath what may appear to some as little more than an odd animated sitcom.

Rumors have it that the show may be picked up by ABC, and I’ve certainly got my fingers crossed.

My love of Haruki Murakami originated during my sophomore year of college, when I picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on a whim while wandering around a Barnes&Noble in New Haven. I became absolutely enthralled and read Kafka on the Shore not long after, and have been making my way through his works ever since. On my quest to read all the Murakami I could, I hunted down a copy of Hear the Wind Sing, his debut novella, on eBay for the scant price of about $10, with shipping (bear in mind it was shipped from Japan, making this an especially good deal).

I went to Kansas City, MO about a week ago and read the entire book more or less in one shot during my flight.  It’s an interesting read for fans, although not as developed or focused as his later books. It is more a series of vaguely connected vignettes than a novel (his love of Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America is apparent) but still a nice quick read that any fan is sure to enjoy.

[This was written as my first of what was supposed to be a series of columns for PLAY Magazine, a weekly New Haven arts/entertainment mag I once interned at and still occasionally write for]

The 10th anniversary edition of Infinite Jest (image courtesy of Amazon.com)

            I’m writing this, my first in what I hope to be the first a series of columns for PLAY Magazine, less than a week after the death of the author David Foster Wallace. Wallace was a brilliant iconoclast, a man who wrote about everything from David Lynch to lobsters, but the most celebrated of his works was the now decade-plus year old Infinite Jest.

            Reading Infinite Jest is a labor of love. It is a thousand plus page tome, with more than 100 or so of these pages consisting solely of footnotes. DFW was prone to using obscure terminology and wrote with a denseness that is often compared to Thomas Pynchon. However, anyone brave enough to try and read the book will find their investment more than worthwhile.

            Describing the plot of Jest is a hard enough task in and of itself. It focuses on several characters, most notably the Incandenza family, most of whom reside at the Enfield tennis academy, Don Gately and the residents of the halfway house he helps run and a group of Quebecois separatists/terrorists in search of “Infinite Jest” a film that James Orin (J.O.), the now deceased head of the Incandenza family made that is allegedly so entertaining that anyone who watches it will lose all desire to do anything but watch the film ad nauseum.

            The characters themselves are genius enough; Donald Gately is an odd sort of anti-hero, a drug addicted burglar gone clean now trying to help others but gritting his teeth all the way. The Incandenzas are an aloof bunch who seem like something straight out of a Wes Anderson film. Hal, who along with Gately is the main character in focus of the book, is emotionally detached and heavily reliant on smoking pot just to make day to day life tolerable.

            What makes Jest even more of a gem, though, is that it seems to touch on nearly every emotion as well as every facet of American life. The dark comedy and 1984-esque vision of the future is brilliant. We have now entered subsidized time and years are sponsored rather than numbered (most of the book takes place during the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, for example). J.O. Incandenza commits suicide by putting his head in the microwave, an act that seems to confuse more than upset any of his family, who are more concerned with how he made the microwave door air tight enough to pull it off that why he decided to “eliminate his own map” (another DFW-ism). Most of New England and southern Canada is now a landfill known as the “Great Concavity” rumored to be full of genetic mutants such as oversized infants. The outrage caused by this act leads to the growth of the above mentioned separatists, who also, by the way, are all wheelchair bound as a result of a bizarre ritual requiring inductees to jump in front of a moving train before they can enter the group.

On the flip side, at one point Avril Incandenza delivers a heart breaking speech on the nature of emotional suppression and drug and alcohol abuse are a central theme. The stories of the prices paid by the residents of Ennet house and the Enfield tennis academy are heartbreaking, Gately’s own back story, particularly his relationship with his mother and her abusive boyfriend, as well as the recount of J.O.’s slow descent into alcoholism especially. Poor Tony Krause is a drug addict whose harrowing experiences with withdrawal are documented in incredibly graphic and emotionally devastating detail. Orin, the eldest Incandenza son is prone to meaningless sexual acts, constantly sleeping with married mothers and then throwing them aside in a not so subtle attempt to get back at his mother, whom he resents deeply.
            I’ve written nearly 600 words and I’ve still only begun to touch on what makes Infinite Jest one of the most important novels I’ve ever read, both on a literary and intensely personal level. David Foster Wallace effectively produced a snap shot of what it means to be an American today: our intense preoccupation with entertainment and technology, the unrealistic expectations of beauty and wealth they create, the prevalent drug culture, the increasing problem of just where the hell to put all the garbage our ever-consuming lifestyle creates and how intensely lonely, helpless and disconnected it can all make us feel.

PureVolume, the website that appeared to fill the void left by the demise of mp3.com, has in the past few months begun posting acoustic sessions with various artists, including among them Eisley, Portugal. The Man, Piebald and I Am the Avalanche.

This kind of exclusive content along with exlcusive material provided by Pitchfork.tv may be leaning towards a new alternative to MTV and FUSE, as both channels become less and less focused on the music end of Music Television.

[Full disclosure: I freelance and do reviews for Wonka Vision. But what kind of blogger would I be if I wasn't a tad self-servient here and there?]

Wonka Vision, the Philadelphia-based magazine, record label and music promoter is now looking to expand its website to include a variety of web exclusives. This started with the launch of the new Wonka Vision Reviews page, which so far includes reviews of albums by artists including Microphones, Jason Collett (formerly of Broken Social Scene) and Colin Meloy (of The Decemberists) among others. In coming months the magazine is hoping to expand this to include even more web exclusives and to have the web site be its own separate magazine wholly independent of the print arm of the Wonka Vision family.

[A Place To Bury Strangers, one of the bands prominently featured on Pitchfork.tv]

Not too long ago I made a post about Pitchfork.tv, the indie rock taste-maker PitchforkMedia.com’s attempt to create an online music channel to provide an alternative to channels such as MTV and FUSE who have lost focus on the music aspect of music television. The first week showed some impressive exclusives, including plenty of music videos, a live performance and exclusive tour of Death By Audio, the studio of A Place To Bury Strangers (and also the moniker the band’s frontman uses for his company that produces custom made effects pedals) and an exclusive live performance by the kings of the alt/indie rock world, Radiohead, that even featured (get this!) frontman Thom Yorke playing the drums. Oh yeah, and an exclusive basement performance by weirdo noise rock band (and close friends of the afromentioned Radiohead) Liars. In addition there were documentaries about The Pixies and Man Man and there will be new exclusives every week. Kill your TV and allocate some some bandwith; long live Pitchfork!

New London Fire (who are actually from New Jersey, not the small city in Connecitcut where their moniker comes from) have announced plans to release all their material digitally from now on and to forgeo physical releases for the time being.

From a MySpace bulletin posted earlier today under the title “awesome announcement (sic) – “After a year of struggling through the turmoil of doing a physical commercial release of our music we’ve decided to go down a different road. In the future our intentions will be to put together digital EP’s and singles or what we would like to call digital 45’s.

This will give us the ability to release our songs when we finish them so we can provide a good amount of content. We’ll spend most of our time writing and recording and far less time worrying about retail, deadlines, long pointless tours, and the other headaches that go along with releasing physical commercial copies of our music. Let’s face it no one is buying CD’s…retail sales for most labels have plummeted over the years and the industry is changing in ways no one person can seem to follow or understand.

This is not to say we won’t do it in the future but we will concentrate on doing it this way for as long as we can. The freedom to release things when we see fit is very liberating.”

New London Fire – “Different” from their latest LP, I Sing the Body Holographic