From the Mouths of Babes

"Ray, you're ridiculous." - My two and a half year old daughter to me this morning at breakfast.

Some Music and DVD Quick Hits

The new Killers record Battle Born is good, but not great. I applaud them for their unabashed emotion and devotion to the soaring radio hook, but there is no "When You Were Young" in this batch. *** out of *****.

Bob Dylan continues his streak with Tempest. Honestly, I more admire his recent work than love it, but he has definitely solidified a late career legacy since the 1990's. No rating on this yet, since I have only given it a cursory listen.

I'm a little baffled by the negative reaction to the new Band of Horses record, Mirage Rock. Perhaps I don't have really high expectations to begin with. I never thought that they broke any new ground or anything, they were just a really solid band. I guess I just always took their debut, Everything All the Time, as sort of lightning in a bottle and never waited for it to be replicated. But the new one is pretty solid, definitely better than the snoozefest Infinite Arms. *** out of *****.

I also thought that with Rick Rubin turning the knobs, ZZ Top had a shot at capturing some of that old down home groove. Not the case. La Futura is just more of the same overdriven sh*t they've been lazily slinging since the mid-90's. Billy Gibbons can still shred on the guitar, but his voice is pretty worn. Dusty Hill actually sings better nowadays, I don't know why he doesn't take more of the vocals. Why can't they play anything as subtle as "Asleep in the Desert" or "Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell" anymore? ** out of *****.

Looking ahead...

...Looking back, but remastered.

It is the 20th anniversary of Los Lobos's masterwork Kiko, and they have released the requisite remastered version with some bonus tracks tagged on. I didn't buy it, but I do have on the way from Amazon Kiko Live, a recent concert performance of Kiko from start to finish that looks really promising. Considering that the Lobos like to expand and explore their music in the live setting, it could be a great homage to Kiko without merely replaying it note for note. At least that is my hope, I'll let you know.

Speaking of anniversaries, it is the 25th anniversary of Peter Gabriel's commercial breakthrough, So. He is celebrating in similar fashion as Pink Floyd did recently, releasing it in three new versions. First is a remaster of the album. But since his whole catalogue was wonderfully remastered already rather recently (all of which I bought, of course), is this a remaster of the remaster? But what I am excited about is the Deluxe Edition which includes a full live show from the So tour. Now that is something to get excited about, live Gabriel from that period is awesome. There is also a $100 Immersion Box that not even I will be shelling out dough for (which, funny enough, doesn't even include the fantastic b-sides from that era. How immersive is it when you don't even have the b-sides?) Since Peter continues to disappoint with his recent work, I can at least get pumped about material from the vaults from better days.

Now, I am really pumped about the new Tragically Hip coming out October 2, Now for Plan A. Many Hip diehards were pretty disappointed with the glossy We Are the Same (I wasn't, "Morning Moon" is one of their most gorgeous songs, I actually really like it when The Hip go a little mellow), but the cuts I've heard definitely respond to that complaint with grit and drive. This new one sounds like it rocks hard. I am so pleased that "We Want To Be It" is finally getting an official release. It is a tune they've played for awhile live (known to fans as "Drip, Drip"). Such a great song. "Goodnight Attawapiskat" is also top shelf Hip. Still one of the greatest bands out there, people!

Neil Young's had a busy year. He released the wonderfully sloppy Americana earlier this year. He has a book coming out next week. And next month comes the double disc Psychedelic Pill, filled with epic length Crazy Horse workouts from the same recording sessions as Americana, but these are all originals. I hope the man never stops.

Question and suggestion: when Bruce Springsteen released his stunning concert from London in '75 awhile back, I thought that was supposed to be the first in a series of archival shows he was going to put out, like Neil Young has been doing with his Archives series. But there hasn't been any more clearing of the vaults. Bruce, PLEASE put out that show from the Winterlands in '78!! What the hell is wrong with you? Readers, do yourselves a favor and go to Wolfgang's Vault and listen to the boot of this '78 Boss show. The next time you've got about four hours to spare. It is worth the time.

On the DVD front, Steven Spielberg has just lost some of the good will he earned earlier this year for his superb Jaws Blu-Ray release. I have heard that the new Blu-Ray version of Raiders of the Lost Ark is equally impressive, but I won't get to see it. Why? Because it is not being released on its own. You can only get it in the box set with the other Indiana Jones Blu-Rays. I'm not paying $70 for one movie. I have no interest in the crappy sequel, the grossly overrated third film, and the completely forgettable 4th. Raiders is one of my very favorites, but f*ck you, Steven.

I cannot wait for Universal's deluxe Blu-Ray restoration treatment of their classic horror films from the 30's, 40's and 50's. The original Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Mummy, Invisible Man and Creature From the Black Lagoon are all being meticulously restored and from what I hear, will be absolutely beautiful. Can't wait.

Anything of interest that you know of?

Is 'Breaking Bad' the Best Thing on TV Since 'The Wire'?

Yes. I'm a little late to the 'Breaking Bad' party, but my wife and I are a bit obsessed with the show at the moment. It is currently in its 5th season on AMC, and over the past two weeks (through the glory of streaming Netflix on my PS3), we've watched the first three seasons and are into the 4th. For those of you who do not know, it is the story of Walter White (played brilliantly by Bryan Cranston, of 'Malcolm in the Middle' fame). White is a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher. He is a genius chemist who could have done great things, but success passed him by and he spends his days teaching bored students and working part time in a car wash for extra dough. His world is rocked when he finds he has terminal lung cancer. In order to make sure his wife and two children are provided for, he does the logical thing. He becomes the most sought after meth cook in New Mexico and the Southwest, making the most chemically pure meth the world has ever seen. Joining forces with one of his drop-out former students, Jesse (played wonderfully and with much nuance by Aaron Paul), they stumble into the drug world. I haven't spoiled anything, as this is all laid out in the first episode of the series.

Two things make this show really stand apart for me. First, the characters are so great. Yes, some are played broad and for laughs at times (and the show is laugh out loud funny quite often), yet as the seasons progress these characters get more and more interesting. And it does progress. So far, each season has built on the last and is better than the last. One of the rare shows that seems to get better as it goes (at least so far, and I hear outstanding things about Season 4, so I'm excited to dive into it). But while Walt and Jesse remain the center of the show, I love Dean Norris as Walt's badass brother-in-law Hank, who happens to work for the DEA, and Walt and Jesse's sleazy beyond compare lawyer (Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman), who schools them on money laundering techniques, among other things. Hank is the perfect example of a character who seems to be played for laughs initially (and he is really funny), but gets much more depth as the seasons roll along.

Also, as creator Vince Gilligan puts it, he wanted to create a show where the "protagonist becomes the antagonist." Walt is incredibly sympathetic initially, but he becomes increasingly less so as he gets deeper and more proficient at navigating in this dark underworld. One of the key themes is how Walt reluctantly gets sucked into this dangerous world of competing drug lords and dangerous cartel killers, and he gets better and better at it and most crucially, starts to enjoy the thrill. He gets more and more reckless, yet is more rewarded for his behavior. At least so far.

I can't recommend this show enough. I have been exhausted at work for weeks now, because after we put our daughter to bed, my wife and I try and catch at least three episodes a night. Midnight rolls around and "just one more!"

If You Like Politics...

There is a lively political discussion going on over at my friend ANCIANT's blog regarding many of the important issues we are facing with this election. Here's the link. Instead of repeating all of the points, because there are some marathon posts there, I'd just direct you over there. Watch as Dez and Saxo give both ANCIANT and JMW an intellectual thrashing.

Clint Eastwood is America

Did you see Clint Eastwood’s surreal 12 minutes of performance art in the guise of a speech on Thursday night at the Republican convention? If not, go here to see it all. I laughed, I stared at the TV with disbelief, I cringed, I said “yes!” and I wondered what the hell he was talking about…all within his 12 minutes of glorious crash and burn. Clint riffed, he let his mind wander and seemingly talked about whatever crossed his mind at the time. It was a dangerous and not altogether smart thing for the RNC to do. In a tightly scripted and controlled convention that had gone very well up to that point (so scripted that Ron Paul was not allowed to speak because he refused to let them vet his speech ahead of time), you’re gonna let Dirty Harry loose on the night Romney needs to try to win over more voters? It was not Clint’s finest hour. He rambled, seemed confused at times, and was pretty crude and unnecessarily disrespectful of our current president. But again, what did you think was going to happen? My understanding is that he was supposed to speak for about five minutes and had given his remarks to the RNC ahead of time. But once onstage he tossed his planned speech aside and just improvised for twice as long as he was given. Are you going to yank Philo Beddoe?

I think Republican leaders were so excited to get some star power on the conservative side of the Hollywood ledger that they didn’t quite understand what they were getting into with Clint. Had they never seen “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly”? “Every Which Way But Loose”? This dude does his own thing. He does not follow institutional rules. That is his whole persona! He is less a straight conservative than a libertarian. For a party that clings to traditional social values, why would they invite a prime time speaker who within this last year in an interview said about gay marriage: “I don’t give a sh*t about who wants to get married to anybody else. Why not?” Or a guy with seven children from five different women? Didn't conservative leaders criticize him for doing the voiceover on a Super Bowl commercial that seemed to praise Obama's auto bailout?

All you need to do is to look at his remarkable career as an actor and director to see that you cannot pin any neat and tidy ideology on this guy. He supports gay marriage and is known as a bit of an environmentalist, yet he also is a fiscal conservative. Who knows what he thinks about foreign policy? Could you tell what he felt about Afghanistan from his speech? I couldn’t. You could take what he said about it either way.

ABOVE: The chair doesn't have a chance

In an excellent article by film critic Carrie Rickey here, she points out that by looking at his filmography, Clint reveals a complex and rather ambivalent view of America. Not your typical convention speaker.

Take a look at his early Westerns with Sergio Leone and his own directorial debut, the bloodthirsty, revenge fantasy “High Plains Drifter.” He is in one sense the ultimate American archetype. Loner, ruthlessly self-sufficient, man of few words (read: not dithering European powers) but one of devastating action (America). His Man With No Name is who we’d like to be, a man with a set of ethics, but also ruthlessly efficient in getting what he wants. Consider “High Plains Drifter” through a 9/11 lens. He was done wrong and almost beaten to death, but he returns and reigns hell fire on his attackers with relish. What Clint’s character was able to do there is what we wish we could do after 9/11 in regards to those who attacked us and aided them. Many of his characters represent a certain strength (albeit flawed), that we collectively feel we have lost as a nation and as a people. Clint gave us a confidence through film like Reagan did through politics and leadership (whether you like Reagan’s policies or not).

He's been attacked from both sides throughout his career. As Rickey points out, in Nixon’s America when his early Dirty Harry films came out, Clint was called “fascist” by Lefties. (I don’t see it, the Dirty Harry films were expressing the angry, conservative backlash of too much mushy Great Society coddling. A vigilante fantasy, yes…fascist, not quite). But later, his films take a much more ambivalent look at the violence that he used to dispense so effortlessly. Conservatives may roar with approval as Dirty Harry blows away scumbags on the streets of San Francisco with his .44 Magnum (“the most powerful handgun in the world…now, you gotta ask yourself, do ya feel lucky? Well do ya? Punk?”), but they weren’t so comfortable with his dark ruminations on the consequences of righteous violence in “Unforgiven.” Red blooded patriots of the heartland were not comfortable at all with his brilliant and sympathetic look from the Japanese perspective in one of his finest films, “Letters From Iwo Jima.”

To quote Rickey: “The first half of Eastwood’s career he played men who shot first and thought about it later. The second half of his career, he’s largely devoted himself to exploring the consequences of that gunplay. Is that Republican? Is that Democrat? I think it’s American.”

Clint Eastwood did embarrass himself somewhat Thursday night. But that is American too. We stumble and make mistakes. And those mistakes are magnified because of who we are on the world stage. (If France makes a fool of itself, it doesn’t really matter, does it?) But Clint is also one of our finest popular film artists, both as an actor who personifies so much of our complexity, but also as a director who chooses to explore these complexities. He can be crude, yet explore issues thoughtfully and deeply. He is independent. He cannot be controlled or told what to do. I’d like to think that he planned it all along. “Yeah, I’ll give them (the RNC) a five minute speech to look at. But once I get up there, I’m going to do what I want. I’m Clint Eastwood.” Dumb move by the RNC. They should have known. Clint cannot be controlled or vetted. He cannot be contained, and he will do what he wants to do. He’ll try to be thoughtful and do the right thing as he gets his way, but things get complicated sometimes. Sometimes you gotta break things along the way. That’s Clint. That’s America.

RIP Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012

I can't add too much to the flood of much deserved praises for Armstrong. But two observations.

First, the guy was a bad ass with The Right Stuff. The Apollo 11 mission was almost aborted. As the lunar module was descending to the moon, the computers went a bit batty and started to steer them towards huge boulders and craters. Neil took the controls, looked out the window and landed the thing manually, with less than 20 seconds of fuel left.

Secondly, what a humble and modest man. He rarely did interviews and generally steered clear of the public eye. In this day and age of people seeking instant fame on reality TV for doing just about anything, this guy walked in the moon. This guy was the first human being to set foot on a world other than our own. The first human being to stand on the f*cking moon, OK? He could have soaked up the spotlight for the rest of his life. Instead, he lived quietly and with dignity.

They don't make men like Neil Armstrong anymore. RIP.

It Is Here

It has finally arrived. After years of regularly checking Best Buy shelves and Amazon.com, they have finally put it out. Jaws is out on Blu-Ray. And I am pleased to report that they have done it right. In celebration of their 100th year anniversary, Univeral has picked a handful of their treasures and fully restored them. This isn't just a little boosting of the sound and throwing the same print that was on the DVD onto the Blu-Ray. Even for a diehard like myself, Jaws looks (and sounds) like a whole new film. They went back into the Universal vaults, retrieved the original 35mm film print, and restored it from there. I can't tell you what a difference this makes. In one of the many impressive accompanying documentaries, they claim that this new HD version of Jaws is now clearer by a multiple of 10 from the previous available versions. I believe them. I put it in late last night and cranked up the sound on my glorious 72 inch TV and just let it flow over me. The colors are now sharp, finally fixing that somewhat washed-out coloring that has plagued versions from the first VHS to even the most recent DVD release. The sound jumps out at you, the night water sparkles in the moonlight, the shooting stars are sharp in the night sky over the Orca. I was almost in tears.

As for the extras, the same documentaries (including the 2 hour "Making of Jaws") and visuals are here that were on the most recent deluxe release, but with one crucial addition. The more recent documentary The Shark Is Still Working has been added, and what a glorious doc this is. Made by a group of Jaws superfans who started out just wanting to document the Jawsfest held in Martha's Vineyard for the 30th anniversary, they somehow eventually got access to not only Spielberg, Roy Scheider (who narrates the doc), Richard Dreyfuss and the other heavyweights, but they tracked down any extras and character actors they could find for a true fanboy/obsessive/homage to Jaws. And there are some funny stories told. The doc focuses a lot on the obsessive fans (basically, Jaws Trekkies) and their quest to collect any prop from the original film they can find.

Especially intriguing from the doc is the fate of the Orca boats. Even casual fans of the film recall that the creaky boat Orca in the last third of the film is a character unto itself. There were two boats used, one a full boat and the other a half boat with no bottom. The original Orca, the Holy Grail for Jaws fans, was carelessly stored on the Universal lot for years. In a touching interview, Spielberg talks about how once he got big, he would still go to the lot when it was empty, climb aboard the Orca, and sit and remember. Then one day he went out there and it was gone. The studio decided to chop it up and get it out of the way. Nearing tears in the interview, the most powerful of directors speaks with visible anger that his Orca was so thoughtlessly destroyed for, essentially, firewood. As for the Orca II, a local businessman in Martha's Vineyard recovered it, and parked it on his beachfront property. It became a pilgrimage of sorts for Jaws fans, and in a funny but also sad sequence, footage of the boat is shown as the years pass. It simply disappears, piece by piece, as fans take souvenirs. Finally, this rather dimwitted owner decides to take what's left and save it in his house. What's left are a couple of pieces of wood that were on the hull.

Anyway, this set is a long-awaited gift for fans of this film. I know that JMW and I have had this argument before about all of the extras added to these films (the docs, interviews, etc.) But for the fan, it is a way to get closer to something that means a hell of a lot to you. The movie and characters are like old friends. And you want to know everything you can about them. During The Shark Is Still Working, I found myself smiling widely and laughing out loud, as these earnest fanboys not only get great stories out of Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss, but also out of the two goofy fishermen who caught the tiger shark in that one scene. Or the lady who played the grieving Mrs. Kitner, who in that famous scene slaps Scheider's Chief Brody for not closing the beaches sooner, as she talks about fans hunting her down to this day and demanding that she slap them in the face just so they can say they also were slapped by Mrs. Kitner. And how she happily obliges.