Danger: Sludgy Metal Ahead

Note: The entire album is available for streaming on their Myspace page for a limited time

It started as soon as I was awarded the task of cleaning up the massive Chinese/Thai dinner consumed by the Missus, the Boy , and yours truly. The Missus wanted some fun time with the Boy who she hadn't seen since about 8:00 this morning, so I donned the ol' headphones (when I settle in for some serious cleaning, the headphones are an accepted part of the ritual) and cranked up High on Fire's new record, Snakes for the Divine.

That was over two hours ago, and I'm on my 2 1/2 time listening to it.  Awesome in that dirty/stoner/70s guitar God rock vein - fire and brimstone biblical apocalypse lyrics with massively cavernous drums, riffs that sound like they were bludgeoned into firm from granite and Matt Pike's signature raw howling that sound like they were a bloody gift from Lemmy himself.  

In other words, exactly my cup of tea.

Binder Challenge #2: Into the Wild

Does everyone have that moment, when the concrete, impossibly straight lines of our rigid lives seem too much to bear?  When we come to the realization that we've lost sight of happiness, of truth and beauty in simplest purity?  And then there's that yearning, the urge to break away with form, with the convention of our existence and just go away, pick up a rucksack, a tattered old paperback and just move.

I know that when I first came upon the story of Chris McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp in John Krakauer's incredible piece of journalism, it was at a time when I was far from that state of mind.  My son was three months old, it was the dog days of Summer, and I read sitting outside on the back porch, Jack sleeping in a tiny cradle covered with mosquito netting by my side.  Chris' story - a bright, charismatic young man who donates his savings to charity and leaves home without a word, traveling the country dealing with life on unbridled terms until he makes his way to Alaska where he vanishes for good - stuck in my head and refused to leave. It was one of those reading experiences where the time, place, and frame of mind mattered just as much as the words on the page.

It must have mattered to Sean Penn too, because he pours a lot of care into his adaptation, using the book and interviews with McCandless's family and people he met on his travels to as a springboard to imagine the life McCandless might have led.  INTO THE WILD is ambitious, and probably Penn's work as a director.  He has a way with images, and in its best moments INTO THE WILD has a grace and dignity in its images, actor and environment fusing in a raw and heartfelt marriage.  His handling of actors is also fantatsic - Emile Hirsch is brilliant as Chris/Alex, and the supporting cast, particularly Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook, all feel not just realistic but real - these are people you know or have known at some point in your lives.  When it all comes together there's a magic to the film that's undeniable.

It doesn't all come together, though.  Not enough to make it a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but enough so that you wonder during the good parts how they couldn't have foreseen the bad ones.  The entire opening feels like a different movie, and things don't really get started until Chris is on the road.  The choice to have voiceover narration by Chris's sister (played by Jena Malone) adds nothing but bland observations and backstory that feel awkward, especially since there's a huge section of the film where it's abandoned, only to return near INTO THE WILD's conclusion.  It's almost as if Penn didn't have enough faith in his images, and wanted the audience to be sure that nothing was left unspoken.  It's a shame, because left to its own devices the film conveys the sense of wonder and loss that the book captured so well.

"...At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again."

Henry David Thoreau

Binder Challenge #1: I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK

Bad start to the challenge: I had about half the review written when upon hitting the Save button Firefox decided it needed to ask for my Squarespace password again, and then promptly lost my entire post. Working on Safari now, so fingers crossed)

Coming off the heels of LADY VENGEANCE, the final entry in the critically acclaimed Vengeance Trilogy (the other two films being SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and the global phenomenon OLDBOY), Park Chan-wook decided to travel off the well worn path of revenge thrillers and brutal violence and move in an unexpected direction: a romantic comedy.  of course, this being a Park Chan-wook film, it's a romantic comedy filled with brutal violence and revenge.

Did you expect anything less?

I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK is a bit of a mouthful, barely mentioned in his Wikipedia entry, and a disappointment at the box office.  On the surface this seems a bit odd, as the film is filled with his signature style: everything is framed wonderfully, the camera zipping along as if it was a character in the film.  The visuals have a vibrant color palette, and his world is peopled by an oddball assortment of characters that all have a moment to shine.  And yes, there's the violence - played for laughs, sure, but still readily apparent.  But unlike his other films, and unlike the films I'M A CYBORG... brings to mind (I was specifically reminded of Terry Gilliam, Stephen Chow, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet), the images and moments fade away almost as soon as the credits roll.

It's an interesting premise:  Young-goon is a timid factory worker who, in the opening scene, attempts to "charge" herself by slitting her wrist, inserting exposed copper wires and then plugging herself into a wall outlet.  You see, she thinks she's a cyborg (but that's OK), and needs to charge her batteries instead of eating food.  It's a gorgeously choreographed sequenced, mixing the humor of the situation with a visceral punch as the blood flows down her arm.  Young-goon is admitted to an asylum where, in typical movie fashion she comes across an assortment of wacky patients, including Park Il-sun, a bunny mask-wearing kleptomaniac who "steals" the problems of his fellow inmates.

The meet cute/fall in love plot-line is confounded by Young-goon's insistence that not only is she a cyborg, but that she needs to charge up so she can fulfill her mission to kill all the "white-uns" for taking her grandmother away from her.  Park Chan-wook shoots a number of fantasy sequences where Young-goon's fingertips open up to display gun barrels, allowing her to blow everyone away in the hospital as her mouth spits out empty shells.  Park Il-sun, barely equipped to handle his own psychological problems, uses Young-goon's delusions to keep her safe as they both fall in love.

Just writing about the movie makes me almost think I liked it better than I did. The problem is, for all the dazzling visuals and comedic beats, I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK feels flat when all is said and done.  there's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it's missing the spark that fused his other films together, leaving this as a bland footnote in an otherwise exemplary career.

The Binder Challenge

I have a problem.

I know: "No shit, Dr. Jones," most of you that know are probably mouthing to your monitors right now.  "You have a lot of problems.  That's why we tend to stay at least 50 yards away from you and carry pepper spray."

Ha ha...thanks.  Now stop talking to your monitors and let's get back to the one I'm talking about.

I've talked before about the slowly growing pile of unwatched DVDs I have at the house.  Despite being near a library, despite access to tons of films online and a Netflix subscription since 2001, I can't help the impulse to actually go to a store and buy a film.  New movies, old movies...a double-dip or two when a Special or Limited edition comes out...it's an addiction.  And it's only gotten worse since I got a Blu-Ray player over Christmas.  To save space I started buying thick leather binders and getting rid of all the plastic, space-wasting cases.

Unfortunately now I have a massive pile of thick leather binders taking up even more space than the plastic cases were.

I've got to do something about it.  I've been thinking a lot about the lack of writing on the site, and about the fact that I'm wasting more money that I should feel comfortable with, especially when most of it's going to something that just sits there like a lump, unwatched and unloved.  So I'm setting myself a challenge that should take care of my spending, my lack of content on Geek Monkey, and that ominous stack of binders glowering at me in the corner of our den.  Thus is born the Binder Challenge:

1. Starting today, I will go through each binder and watch every unwatched film in the order they appear in the binder (the binders have zero order or structure to them).
2. After watching each film, I'll do some kind of write-up on Geek Monkey.  More often than not this will take the form of a review, except when it doesn't.
3. When I'm finished with a one binder I'll move on to the next one (*duh*)

Pretty simple, right?  Here are the two conditions:

1. Every single film needs a write-up; I can't watch another movie until I've written up the one I've just watched.
2. I cannot purchase another film until all the films in the binders have been watched.

There.  Nice, structured...I'll force myself to save money, see a lot of films that have been neglected for far too long, and I'll be writing a lot more on the site.  It occurs to me that if these are my biggest problems, life must be pretty good.  And it is.  I don't mean to belittle all the other things that are going on, both in the world at large and in my own personal existence.  But my hope (glancing as it may be) is that doing something like this will allow me to express some things that have been, for whatever reason, reluctant to come out.  Movies - perhaps even more than books - have always been a defining force in my life, and this might provide some sort of outlet for what I want to express.

If nothing else, you'll get a nice look at the type of movies that interest me.  So here's to the start of a new journey, one that will echo other paths I'm taking in my life.  Hope you hang in there with me and comment, share, predict, agree, argue...whatever your fancy.

Mud Mind and (the) Distractions

If I ever start playing guitar seriously again (fingers crossed, or at least curled to look like an open G-Major chord), that's going to be the band name...

The last ten days feel like a drug haze in the biting cold. I can barely remember getting up in the mornings, let alone the paces of the day. Part of that is the regular exhaustion that comes with staying up far too late (and getting up far too early) in order to get some private time away from everything, but another part stems from family and work revelations I can't really talk about on this blog.  They only peripherally affect me, coming in rippling waves that ebb and flow with a crystal clarity I suspect comes from the air, piercing cold and snapping you awake even as it drains the energy straight from your bones.

I find it so weird that the cold can do that, especially after you come back in to the warmth of your house or office.  I want nothing more than to drop into a chair (or better yet, a couch) and sleep for hours.  This morning I woke up around 7:20 after having a great night's sleep, falling immediately into dreamland after watching last night's "meh" episode of Lost.  I trudged downstairs feeling better than I had in weeks, and realized I hadn't taken the garbage out.  Spring in my step, I put on my coat, slipped into a pair of old sneakers and stepped outside.  It snowed another couple of inches yesterday, so after putting the trash out I grabbed the shovel and did the sidewalk and steps. It sky was a gorgeous blue, the kind you only see when it's really cold. I breathed in and shoveled.  Maybe 15 minutes of work.

I came back inside, the blast of heat hit me, and I barely had the energy to shrug off my coat and peel my shoes off with my heels before slumping on the couch for another 30 minutes of sleep.

This was originally supposed to be a post about all the things that have been keeping me occupied since my last post, but instead this is what came out.  And now it'stime for work, so...

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Side thought:  whenever I come back to revise a post before publishing, the two most common errors I find are semi-colons mistakenly pressed instead of apostrophes, and an overabundance of the word "that".