Iron Man, Redbelt, Sarah Marshall, Dirty Projectors, Scott Pilgrim

Iron Man was entertaining enough, I guess, and the principal actors were all certainly very fine, but it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless. Trying to make a rock-em, sock-em comic book movie relevant or timely or whatever by setting a major portion of the plot in Afghanistan seems, rather than allowing the one to enrich the other, kind of an insult to both. In his Chicago Reader review, J.R. Jones bemoans the fact that Favreau as director makes no direct commentary on the fact that the Tony Stark character acts as a metaphor for the U.S., but I think Jones is slightly off the mark. I think using Stark's single-minded mission to destroy the weapons he's sold to the 'bad guys' as such a driving force of the plot and such a hinge for his character arc implicitly acknowledges that everybody knows this is how arms get distributed to questionable people with questionable motives, and everybody knows this is the same charade of self-righteousness we've been watching on TV every day since 9/11. It's so obvious that it needn't be remarked on. But, the fact that it needn't be remarked on doesn't take away from the reality that it's a pretty despicable thing to build a supposedly escapist summer blockbuster around, a blockbuster where we're supposed to cheer for these virtuosic displays of ballistic might.

Redbelt was likewise a bit of a snooze-fest and letdown. Over the course of his career, Mamet has perhaps done his job too well--by continually railing against seedy, amoral Hollywood wheeling and dealing, he's made it impossible to believe that anyone would be as starry-eyed and gullible when confronted with the kind of too-good-to-be-true offer from a solicitous actor/producer team that Chiwetel Ejiofor's Mike Terry character is handed. (Esp. a character with the avowed integrity and honor issues that he has.) Though the plot strained credibility in many places, I'm always happy to watch Ejiofor do anything, and I thought the casting of Tim Allen was inspired.

I suppose I should have had problems with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but it won me over in spite of myself. Sure, the female characters were fairly one-dimensional and disproportionately hot in comparison to their more schlubby male counterparts, but I felt like, on the whole, it had a pretty good sense for all the different kinds of stuff that hangs in the air, unspoken, between people--between old lovers, new lovers, friends that aren't really friends, and people you feel threatened by. Plus, when is Paul Rudd going to step away from these disposable comedic walk-on roles and start carrying movies on his own again? He's a demonstrably better actor than most of the guys in Apatow's stable and shines with a ridiculous amount of on-screen charisma. When he breaks into a smile in that scene when he's trying to figure out how old he actually is, I felt like my retinas were being seared. Damn.

I've been listening to Dirty Projectors' Rise Above a lot lately and liking it a ton. Since I have absolutely no familiarity with the Black Flag album it's re-creating/reenvisioning, though, I find myself listening to Rise Above in much the same way that I used to listen to original cast recordings for musicals I'd never actually seen performed. There's something enjoyably elliptical about just jumping in blind and assembling the plot, such as it is, to the best of my abilities with the clues left behind by the music and lyrics. This way of listening has also helped smooth over some of the songs' sudden crazy tempo shifts and jarring vocal affectations--they're easier for my ears to acclimate to if I hear them as out-of-context scene changes and moments of character development.

Speaking of character development, I've spent the last three evenings immersed in the Scott Pilgrim books (and plan to finish the fourth today)--holy crap, I'm just completely in love with this series now. It's so smart and funny and delightful. And Canadian. I don't think I've grown so attached, so quickly, to a group of characters like this since I first started getting into Deadwood. I just want to give them space to continue to rattle around in my brain like a catchy power pop melody. So good!

Concerts and Camera

Kittens! How've you been? I've missed you.

First and foremost, I have to let you know that I got a new camera. So far, I'm extremely pleased with it and its flexibility. Many thanks to JH, who recently bought the same one and let me fondle it for a while, which helped me make the decision to purchase one of my very own.

Had the pleasure of seeing Jim White live for the first time last Friday at the Old Town School of Folk Music. (Jim White the Southern Gothic troubadour who records for Luaka Bop, not Jim White the drummer for the Dirty Three.) Setting aside for a moment the fact that the well-to-do yuppies in the crowd probably bugged me more than the garden variety rude, unkempt hipsters I usually encounter when I'm out at a show, it was an enjoyable night. He talks incessantly between songs, unspooling these long, insane monologues about these insane (and often quite poignant) experiences he's been through (watching with panic, fear, and fascination as waterspouts writhed and twisted on the beach in Florida, talking heretical smack to Jesus-lovin' Sleepy LaBeef at a Canadian bluegrass festival) and though there's obviously a bit of polish and raconteurishness to these stories, I get the sense that if you just ran into him in a coffee shop somewhere, he'd probably talk your ear off in a similar way. I bet it's somewhat exhausting, but ultimately quite rewarding, to know him personally. It's the same sense I get about Quentin Tarantino whenever I see or read interviews with him. In fact, White's music and persona exist for me at this funny intersection of a whole collection of other artists, in addition to Tarantino, I have particular fondness for, which, even though I'm not an avid fan of his, really just makes me inherently sympathetic to and curious about what he's doing. There's the Tarantino talkiness, but also the dark, lyrical Americana of Denis Johnson, the joie de vivre informed but unbowed by life's more unforgiving realities of John Darnielle, the childlike silliness and deceptive simplicity of Jonathan Richman, the quirky country parables of Lyle Lovett. (I'm sure there's probably some others in there that I'm forgetting at the moment.) I wasn't familiar with the majority of the material he played, much of which comes from his most recent album Transnormal Skiperoo, but that's OK because he started the show with "A Perfect Day to Chase Tornados," as heartbreaking, tender, and transfixing a song as I know.

Oh my god, Son of Rambow is absolutely the movie that Be Kind Rewind wanted to be. I don't know what I could possibly say that would convince you that you need to see this film at your earliest convenience, but please pretend that I've just said it. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. The British whimsy, the ways that little boys can be such beautiful idiots, the emotional intelligence about the trickle-down economics of bullying--Garth Jennings is just firing on all cylinders here. I was in a total state of suspended delight through the whole thing. Highly recommended.

Also caught the Laura Veirs solo show at Schubas this week. I try to catch her whenever she's in town just because...well, just because. It's like, what else am I supposed to do when it comes to someone who's written and recorded so much music that's insinuated itself into my life so thoroughly in such a relatively short period of time? I show the fuck up at the shows and clap like my life depended on it and buy the merch, that's what. Though I missed Tucker Martine and Karl Blau's contributions, when she plays without her backing band, the songs can reveal their impressively sturdy roots in old-timey country, folk, and bluegrass idioms (an impression which was definitely helped by her playing "Freight Train," which appears on the Two Beers Veirs tour EP, and by then pulling out her banjo to play "Cluck Old Hen," complete with audience participation) and her skill as a guitar player really shines. Liam Finn--New Zealander, son of Crowded House's Neil Finn, with a likeness of Johnny Burns from Deadwood--opened, with a little vocal help from the sumptuously lovely EJ Barnes, and fucking owned the room. Pics here.

Even though it's ostensibly just two guys playing music on a mostly dark stage, I'm tempted to tag this video (via) of the Dodos playing "Fools" as NSFW because, um, holy crap, it's kinda sexy. (Also, WTF, is Casey Affleck playing drums for them now?) Yes, darlings, I'm just using my twenty-ninth year to get some good cougaring practice in before I hit 30...

Jamie Lidell fans, please be sure not to miss this shit-hot remix of "Little Bit of Feel Good." Not only does the track itself knock me out, I was fucking pleased as all hell to discover that remixer Son Lux is actually an old pal from college whom I've obviously lost touch with in the intervening years. Looks like he's making quite a name for himself among the tastiest of the tastemakers in New York. An awesome discovery for the week.

In Which AMF Once Again Must Contend with the Disillusionment Wrought by Becoming Overly Enthusiastic About Certain Movie Previews

Gak. So, The Forbidden Kingdom was awful, awful, awful. So disappointing. It totally felt like it was made by committee, which is to say it felt utterly bland and almost messianically bent on being as inoffensive as possible. The preview fails to intimate that the whole reason white boy Michael Angarano is in the movie in the first place is because of a ridiculous Wizard of Oz-esque framing device wherein he's transported from his seemingly sad life in present-day Boston (why Boston?) to the vaguely mythical China that finds him teamed up with the Jackie Chan and Jet Li characters so he can return some mystical staff to its rightful owner and, in so doing, restore peace to the kingdom, etc., etc. Ugh. It started out promisingly enough, with a kicky, self-aware, pseudo-70s credit sequence inspired by the vintage Hong Kong action movie posters that decorated the Angarano character's bedroom walls, and I hoped that maybe the movie was going to do some interesting stuff with the way that young white dudes so fetishize HK action movies, but...no dice. You know me, I like to try to come out of a movie with at least one nice moment that I can remember about it, but I'm hard pressed to be able to point at anything here. Jet Li when he's in character as the Monkey King, perhaps? At least there's some life on screen then. Aside from that, not much else. I never felt emotionally involved with any of the characters, and even the fight sequences weren't that interesting. A shame.

The Music Box hit us this weekend with the first of a series of Jimmy Stewart flicks, beginning with Call Northside 777. What a treat--set in Chicago (where the skyline shots were all just, like, the Tribune Tower, the Merchandise Mart, and the river), revolving around a whole bunch of Polish characters and their attendant crazy last names and cozy Polish neighborhoods, featuring a textbook (which is to say charming, engaging, and sharp) performance from Stewart as a hard-nosed newspaper journalist. I loved that, even though the movie has the happy/expected ending, the narrative never explains why the crime went down the way it did or why Wanda Skutnik altered her testimony to indict the wrong guy. I also loved Stewart's few all-too-brief scenes with Helen Walker as his wife; they had great chemistry and she was feisty as all get-out. I'd need a grad student to do the research for me, but I'd love to know where this film falls in the continuum of "cutting edge technology saves the day" movies. I'm bad with remembering plot in much detail, but somehow the climax revolves around Stewart's character needing to prove that Wanda Skutnik saw the fall guy a day before she claims she did, and they do this by enlarging a photograph 200x or more in order to read the date on a newspaper being held by a paper boy hovering somewhere in the background. So, not only are they zooming in on the photo, but then they have to transmit these enlargements over the wire from Chicago to a newspaper office in the state capital. It's tempting to chuckle at how wowed the characters are by this great new technology, but shit--I'm just impressed that they were doing this kind of stuff in the late '40s at all. Indistinguishable from magic, indeed.

John Darnielle at LPTJ on Jamie Lidell's new album: "…one thing pop music is good for is remembering that somewhere inside us is the potential for unvanquishable joy: clearing a space for that remembering, broadening that space. Jamie Lidell’s present project seems to be focused on illuminating that joy-containing space, hanging signs that point toward it." OMG, bring it. After his set at the Pitchfork fest last summer, I've decided that, if I can possibly help it, I just can't miss his live show whenever he tours through Chicago. I'm counting the days until June 4. Abbey Pub. See you there, bitches.

Also, a great big happy birthday to my boy Michael, captain of the Geeks, today. Be sure to celebrate your Cinco de Mikow in style!