Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles: While perusing the special features on the DVD of the 1966 Fahrenheit 451 I discovered an interview with old Bradbury where he said Martian Chronicles is not science fiction and he isn't a science-fiction author; it's more like Greek mythology. I wish I'd heard him say that before I started reading this, because the main thing I'm going to have to remember about the book is how hilariously slapdash it is. This book ISN'T science fiction; there's barely any science in it. Everybody on Mars is pretty much like everybody on Earth and there's no realistic consideration as to what a mass exodus to Mars would really be like, or what people would have to put up with if they lived there. And the whole thing is very 50s cornball pulp, full of sitcom-like situations and characters. Thank God it got better towards the end--following the dumbest story in the book--"The Silent Towns," about a guy who thinks he's the last person alive, only to get a random phone call from the last woman alive, and finds out that she's fat and ugly--the book does the same thing as Fahrenheit 451, it blows through a nuclear apocalypse in a matter of a couple pages. Then, the last couple of stories are actually pretty eerie and good. So I can't write this silly book off completely, because at least part of it is really for adults. Just do what the man said and prepare to read something that, whatever it is, it really isn't sci-fi.
MOVIES:
The Batman (REWATCH): I think I'm going to have to take back the majority of the moderately nice, on-the-fence things I said about this movie after I saw it in theaters. Watching it at home is really boring. The only scene in the movie I truly would care to ever watch again is when Colin Farrell breaks into that silly NYC accent during the car chase. Otherwise, nothing about the movie is really great at all--the Joker scene that should have been in the movie isn't in there, there's stuff ripped off from Se7en, Paul Dano blows it once the mask if off, the dull gangster played by John Turturro seems to inexplicably have more screen time than Dano and Farrell put together, the climax at the stadium is a lame tension-free mess, and the movie just plain isn't saying or doing anything we haven't seen before, just trying to cover its unoriginality up with loads of PG-13 "darkness."
Easy Rider (REWATCH): I bought the Criterion, which doesn't have nearly as many special features as one would think, and I think most of them were just on earlier DVDs. When I first saw this film in high school I hated it, when I saw it after college I liked it a lot, and now I'm just generally fond of it. It evokes the open road wonderfully, the songs are good and you get "we blew it" at the end, and isn't that the first big shot of what we'd see in movies and film from 1969 on, the Failure Of The Sixties? Well isn't it? Jack Nicholson is better than Fonda and Hopper and if Hopper hadn't made such a mess with the followup he'd have played a more interesting character in The Last Movie, which blew its chance to be an even greater film about the Failure Of The Sixties.
Mind Over Murder: A six-part HBO true-crime documentary about the general failure of the criminal justice system regarding the trial of the "Beatrice Six," who probably didn't kill an innocent old lady in Beatrice, Nebraska in 1985. That's why I watched this--I've been there many times and had never heard of a disgusting murder there before (and since we just had a thread about this, if you don't like gross crime scene photos or grisly details, don't watch this at all.) It's alright, but like pretty much ANY multi-part documentary, it says in six episodes what it could have said in about two or three. And I've seen several of these things now (We Need To Talk About Cosby, Q: Into The Storm.) Is this a side effect of streaming and "infinite content," that nobody calls these things out for being so damn long?
Messiah Of Evil: If you don't mind a lack of interesting characters, a "plot" that would barely cover three or four sentences if it made sense at all, and little-to-no good dialogue, but you can still enjoy a horror movie solely on atmosphere, have I got the movie for you! This film--directed by George Lucas's cowriters on American Graffiti who later went on to be responsible for Howard The Duck (!!)--is exactly that, and plays like the American equivalent of a giallo, which, come to think of it, also got by solely on atmosphere (and really grisly kills, which this movie doesn't really have.) Apparently it was barely finished, but God knows what sense it would have made if it had, as it was barely making any to begin with, just a girl with stringy hair and a cold face looking for her father, and lots and lots of encounters and walking around at night along 1970s locations that look like the night scenes in The Long Goodbye, but without any people. Oh, and an apartment filled with weird art, which we see from just about every angle. But hey, I liked it--and that supermarket/theater duo of scenes are as good as you all said they were!
Anna Karenina: The one from 2012, directed by Joe Wright and written by Tom Stoppard, whose only real conceit here is to have lots of scenes seem to be taking place on a theater stage, as a way of saying everything in Russian high society circa 1875 was like being on a stage. Well...okay. Whatever. I kind of expected a movie based on such a complicated book would have to jettison most of Tolstoy's societal commentary and just concentrate on being a tense story about a forbidden affair, with a gilded 19th century setting and the potential for much scandal, and yeah, that's pretty much what this is, but it won't kill you or anything. A bespectacled Jude Law, sporting a receding hairline and total restraint as Karenin, gives the best performance, and at least it's an improvement on Atonement, which I really hated. Watch for Alicia Vikander, Domnhall Gleeson, Bill Skarsgard, Sam from Game of Thrones and Cara Delevigne.
Fahrenheit 451: Francois Truffaut's only English-language film was apparently not only a critical and commercial disaster in 1966 but a terribly painful production for the director, which has me wondering if this film doesn't count as sort of the original "intellectual auteur gets mismatched with genre and material and makes a mainstream bomb" sort of like Lynch's Dune or anything people would like to attach Guillermo Del Toro or Quentin Tarantino to. Truffaut didn't speak English, didn't like science fiction, didn't care for Bradbury's book much (just some of its ideas) and fought bitterly with his miserably miscast lead actor Oskar Werner, who suggests a tall, chilly, unsmiling, humorless, Teutonic David Hemmings, and who resembles the character from the Bradbury novel not a bit (for whatever reason, the movie also appears to be taking place in future London.) Julie Christie fares a bit better in a dual role, and the depiction of huge flatscreen televisions on people's walls brainwashing them with dumbass reality programming is the film's one lasting strike, but the ending is truly pathetic; in place of Bradbury's rushed (but not entirely ineffective) nuclear war, we get...a bunch of people who have changed their names into books wandering solemnly around. No war, no resolution, just The End. Oh, and a really bad special effect with some flying policemen. You've GOT to see that.
The Fearless Freaks: That Flaming Lips documentary from 2005. I just watched it because it seemed weird that I hadn't. Nobody seems to remember anything from this movie, or talk about anything from it, except for the scene where Steven Drozd pathetically shoots up heroin right on camera while blabbering a bunch of excuses for about five minutes. The story of the band's rise is rushed and spends more time talking about Wayne's dumbass hated movie Christmas On Mars than about The Soft Bulletin, and Jonathan Donahue and Ronald Jones barely figure. Oh and it's from 2005 and the band's story has gotten even more interesting since then, so it's already a time capsule at best. I don't think old footage of the band playing live is very good, but it's cute that Wayne has a bunch of brothers who look like him. No chance I'll ever watch this again.
ALBUMS:
The Rolling Stones, Flowers: This doesn't really count as an album, but I'm really glad I heard it, and if it does count, it's my front runner for the best album I've "discovered" in 2022 (there's a month left though and I really hope that changes.) What it ultimately proves is that the songs I like best from the pre-Satanic Majesties Stones are the weird songs, the ballads, and the hit singles....not their R&B and blues much at all. I guess that wouldn't surprise anybody. Much of this was rediscovering songs I'd acclaimed before but hadn't listened to in years--"Lady Jane," "Ruby Tuesday," "Backstreet Girl," "Out Of Time," "Mother's Little Helper," and (most importantly) "Let's Spend The Night Together," which I'd always written off, but which has a cool organ sustain towards the end. "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby" is a new one for me, but I liked it, and...you know, since I liked The Who's hated "Please Please Me" and the Ramones' hated "Baby, I Love You," it shouldn't surprise anyone that I like the Stones' hated "My Girl" just fine. No big reason for it--I just do. "Take It Or Leave It" and "Ride On, Baby" weren't bad either.
Kate Bush, Never For Ever: At first, all this really seems to be doing is maturing slightly and taking the style of Kate's first two albums to a sort of logical "extreme," but by the seventh or eighth listen I swear it really came together, really congealed somehow and I think about seven or eight songs here are really good. "Babooshka" is of course the best (and God was she ever hot in the video) but the spiteful "The Wedding List" and mournful "Breathing" (about a fetus experiencing nuclear war!!) are great too, and "Delius (Song For Summer)," "Blow Away (For Bill)" and "All We Ever Look For" have impressive atmosphere for such a young artist. Oh, and "Violin" kinda rocks--it VERGES on being a bit corny but never gets there, IMO. Is it just me or were she and Peter Gabriel BOTH predicting 80s film/TV music somehow in 1980? This really does seem a few years ahead of its time, and I couldn't even find very many reviews of it online (there's a lot of reviews of The Kick Inside.) I hope that isn't because of the dumb album cover where mythical beasts are coming out of Kate's neither regions, but who knows. The Dreaming is *probably* her best album (and certainly crazier and a bit more substantial, and I don't think anything on NFE counts as "world music"-influenced either) but this is neck and neck and I say very underrated if so.
The Who, WHO: Good job, I s'pose--because they didn't just flat-out embarrass themselves. Honestly, this really is no worse or better than any other Who album made after 1973--I'd rate just about all these albums the same (two and a half or three stars out of five), and feel no particular affinity for any of them, in part because little to no new stylistic ground was broken--the Who never really wanted to leave behind early 70s stadium rock. I also feel nothing towards Daltrey's voice, which everyone has been complaining about for a quarter century or so now, right? He just doesn't bother me. I have no reason why. The album is neither misproduced nor really produced in any way that enhances it. "Beads On One String," "Break The News" and (I think) "She Rocked My World" are the best songs, if you care. Go out on a passable, harmlessly forgettable note while you still can, guys!
Stevie Wonder, Music Of My Mind: This is not bad, but it's a little disappointing, because all four of the big followups through 1976 were all definitely better. A couple of these songs are good but would be great if they weren't so long, IMO--the first two, "Love Having You Around" and "Superwoman", both definitely could have lost a couple minutes IMO, and "Keep On Runnin" has a great groove that it then beats into the ground. "Happier Than The Morning Sun" is okay but that keyboard sound was better used in "Big Brother" later the same year, so the two best songs are "I Love Every Little Thing About You" and "Evil," where Stevie's melodramatic delivery makes up for the fact that he kind of redid this super-heartfelt song as both "You And I" and "I Believe When I Fall In Love With You It Will Be Forever" on Talking Book. I would be willing to own CDs of all four of the followups but probably not this one, even if it's not a bad album.
Faust, The Faust Tapes: This didn't work for me much at all. Off the top of my head, the only "fragments, not songs" album that's ever worked for me is the Soft Machine's Volume Two, and those were really songs, anyway. Speaking of Soft Machine, a song from Volume One gets ripped off here--the silly repetitive "We Did It Again" was remade by Faust as the annoying, stupid "J'ai Mal Aux Dents," and elsewhere I'm detecting no less than TWO ripoffs of Tago Mago--"Two Drums, Bass, Organ" and some other song I can't remember ripoff parts of "Peking O" and the "auuuuuuuuuuuummmmm"-like vocal sections of "Aumgn." I did like one piece, the somewhat moody "I've Heard That One Before," but otherwise this is just a similar experience to Zappa albums I didn't like such as Weasels Ripped My Flesh. I will hear the fourth Faust album but I'm guessing I'm not going to like it much and if I don't, I'm moving on.
Pavement, Slay Tracks (1933-69) EP: Four crappy, unmemorable, ugly, poorly-recorded, amateurish indie-rock songs and the passable jangler "Box Elder," which I was familiar with from live recordings. I've been told that Pavement's three early EPs got a lot of good press from underground critics and magazines and whatnot back in the day, but nobody seems to talk about them now and that may be why I'm just now getting around to hearing them, a good 16 years after the last time I heard new Pavement music. Well whatever--this stuff just plain sucks, and if it weren't for Husker Du's Land Speed Record, this would be the worst opening shot I can think of by any band that would go on to be worth a shit.
Big Black, Lungs EP: Just 19 year old Steve Albini, looking like a dumbass high school freakazoid on the album cover, and his drum machine and his distorted trebly guitar, in 1982...83, was it? 1982? I have listened to "Steelworker," with its funny pissant lyrics and unbelievably primitive, poor-sounding drum beat for years, and have always liked it, but it's by far the best of these six or seven DIY tracks, easily the one with the most character. The only other one I liked was "Dead Billy." Kinda disappointing, but I do want to hear the three EPs Albini put out before Atomizer.
The Moody Blues, Prelude: I really hate this album, because I liked all of it--but that's it, just LIKED. Not a single song on here is wonderful, but dammit, none of them are really bad (except "Late Lament," which is just the dumb poem from the end of their biggest hit.) It's a compilation from 1987 that's probably completely out of print today and it all sounds like B-sides or bonus tracks type stuff, pleasant if not mind blowing. Some of it is stuff they recorded before Days Of Future Passed and is jaunty and lighthearted instead of mellow or orchestral. "Please Think About It," "Gimme A Little Something," "Leave This Man Alone" and "Love And Beauty" are probably the best, but don't quote me on it.
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