Underwater Sunshine by The Counting Crows

I have been listening to this album for three months. The Counting Crows are one the bands that are always on my list of favorites. They actually are touring this summer, but did not come close enough for us to see them, which was a disappointment.

The Crows are not making much new music, just recently they released a Live album comprised of their classic debut album August and Everything After, and this album follows that pattern. Made up of covers of bands you have not heard of, popular songs of theirs never put on an album of original material and more the album may not be new songs but the Crows make every song they sing notably theirs.

The highlights on this album are many. The two songs that any Crows fans know but that only appeared on rare albums such as the August and Everything edition are Four White Stallions and Jumping Jesus. While both are strong Four White Stallions ranks in league with the best songs the band has ever recorded. Listen to the song a couple of times and you will never hear it without singing along.

Meet Me on the Ledge, Teenage Gravity, and You Ain't Going Nowhere are typical Crow songs. Adam Duritz vocals will always be easily identifiable from his talk sing approach to hos storytelling and some of these songs have the live feel that is missing from so much overproduced music these days.

The Crows could be one of the world's best cover bands, their version of Friend of the Devil is perhaps the best I have heard of that often covered song, and on this album their version of the Pure Prairie League seventies song Amii is, again, a song that you cannot help tapping your foot and singing along. A great version.

It seems like the legacy of Gram Parsons just gets longer and longer. Seeing Elizabeth Cook live a couple of weeks ago she did a Gram cover that was a highlight and Duritz and the Crows also do so. Not taking the easy route however the boys cover " Return of the Grievous Angel." No one betters Gram Parsons but the Crows arrangement is a little more folksy, a little less sparse, and it does well. The truth is each band should cover a Parsons song so that we can make sure new generations understand how great this singer who died way too young was.

This is a great album from a still great band.

channel ORANGE by Frank Ocean

Frank Ocean's solo debut album has been getting a great amount of buzz. Ocean has made news recently by admitting that he is gay, perhaps the biggest amount if news is how little most folks seem to care about this.

The album he has just released however is one of the strongest of the year. With a range of musical styles, rap, Prince, Sly Stone, and other early Soul musicians Ocean is playing with the big boys on this album.

The first single Thinking About You has a strong backing track and shows influences from Prince. Sierra Leone is a sing song that sounds like anything but a song from 2012. This song would easily fit on a pre Purple Rain Prince album.

Continuing on the soul train Sweet Life starts with Ocean stating " the first song wasn't the single "

The strongest song to me in the album is " Super Rich Kids" in which Ocean laments too much wine, green, white lines, maid service and not enough time with parents one can see this song having a strong meaning and yet being embraced by the the same kids and culture it criticizes. I told my oldest son about this album, I could easily see this song being played by his set.

Pyramids a nine minute melt again visits Uncle Prince is sound and scope and is followed by Lost, a ramble on getting lost in the moment of living the high life.

Forest Gump is a potential single with actual references to the movie and the character, a nice beat, and Ocean's telling us how his fingertips and lips burn from the cigarettes.

The song most talked about is Bad Religion, Ocean sang this on a performance on Jimmy Fallon. Ocean has admitted that the song was about a love he had for a man when he was in his late teens. The song however speaks to anyone who has lost a love. The intro organ sounds even sound like a modest bit of influence from Prince's Let's Go Crazy. Ocean talks about any unrequited love being a Bad Religion is it brings you to your knees. Certainly we have all been there, from my eighth grade daughter to the folks you see in the bars and meat markets every Friday night. We are all seeking someone to fill the hole in our lives and when that attraction is unrequited it is as Ocean says " a one man cult." This is a very strong song.

Clearly in this review I do not have a great deal of references and understanding of soul music but I can tell you that this is a great album. The music is much greater than the sum of its parts. I have listened to this over the last couple of weeks more than any other music. I am impressing my kids with my diversity of musical taste. This album has the language that one can find objectionable like much of the soul/rap music but this album has clear artistic intent. The cursing is not a cheap, lazy way to sell records.

Spend some time with this record, a very talented artist.

Game of Thrones Season Two

A couple of months ago when the second season of Game of Thrones was airing I wrote here that I was not pleased with the second season. As the story proceeds and many multiple story lines are moving along I found it hard to follow.

Simply put I was premature in my criticism. Over the last couple of weeks my wife and I have watched the last seven episodes of Season Two, we had them tivoed, and the show has been stunning. I have come to the resolution that this is not a show that I can watch once a week, it just has too much going on.

In the future my plan will be to watch all 12 episodes in a short period.

So much is going on it is really not possible to write about it. With seven different people vieing for the throne nothing is close to being resolved.

Some highlights and things to look forward to. The sitting King Jaffrey, product of his mother and uncle's illicit romance has turned into the character you most want to see get his comeuppance. Peter Dinklage as the King's dwarf uncle is perhaps the most complex and likable character in the show.

We have the North Guard the keepers of the wall, Stark's bastard son John Snow is part of the guard and now on a mission beyond the wall chasing wildlings.

We have the dragon lady with her three young dragons which she birthed in fire at the end of Season 1.

As the last episode of Season Two ends we finally see The White Walkers everyone talks about. They do exist and they are on the move.

Bring on Season Three. I still wish they would cut back on the sex that in most places is extremely gratuitous. However this might be the most complex, best done show on television. It is well worth watching, but it is not a show you can half watch. You have to invest to keep up.

Elizabeth Cook Live in Portland

Two weeks ago tomorrow my wife and I traveled to Portland to see Elizabeth Cook in concert. For those of you who do not know Elizabeth Cook is a country, kind of , singer. I say kind of because she is an interesting mix of what could be called traditional country, outlaw country and roots rock and roll. Cook, also hosts the very popular show called Apron Strings on the Outlaw Country channel on XM radio.

I suspect that Cook's persona is one that is either love or hate but for me at least I very much enjoy her music and her personality.

So I dragged my wife, who is always willing to do anything or see anything, to Portland to One Monument Square, a small venue off State street. When I say small, I mean small. This place was small. 200 people maybe in removable chairs. When we arrived we literally could have sat in the front row but instead decided on the third row at a good angle to the stage.

Cook's opening act was her guitar player and husband Tim Carroll. Carroll played some interesting songs and clearly has talent. He told some interesting stories and referred to his headliner/wife as the Good Witch of the South and with a wink" hoped that she was not listening just then."

The first thing noticed when Cook takes the stage is she is not nearly as tall as I thought. Wearing boots, an above the knee skirt and blonde hair she is an attractive lady but she also is forty and in her face looks like she has spent plenty of time at second rate dives on the road trying to make a career.

When she took the stage she did not look happy through the first couple of songs. My wife commented later that it was a shock to her, as her personality on her radio show is so flighty/bubbly it was a shock to see her with an almost frown stitched on her face. Soon after a couple of songs the reason became apparent, the monitor in her ear was not working and she was struggling to sing on note and pace correctly. Once this corrected she became the Elizabeth Cook we expected.

When she smiled at the end of a song and the wrinkles or perhaps better said crinkle lines appeared at her eyes she was a very attractive woman.

Beyond that though this lady can sing. She can wail as I have said in other descriptions. Quite a drawl makes her a bit hard to understand for the uninitiated but she has a solid catalog of songs that most of the faithful there well knew. We heard Heroin Addict Sister, Say yes to Booty ( A crowd favorite she describes as about drunk sex) and her most popular song El Camino. El Camino is an outlier however, not like most of her songs but her ode to a creep in an El Camino who " must have slipped quelide in my beer" is a tough song to not like.

What made the concert special however was her promotion of her new gospel rock album. Ending the show with Burn this Building Down and gracing us during the show with Gospel Plow songs like the Velvet Underground song Jesus we heard a gospel range that is perfect for Sunday morning after a tough Saturday night.

Cook has a deep appreciation for her musical heritage, a wonderful cover of Merle Haggard " I started loving you again " which her soaring vocal was wonderful for. She played a song of the recently deceased Doc Watson, and a fifties singer, I forget his name, now a car salesman in East Texas, who Cook deadpanned " was making dozens of dollars a year from her singing his song."

The stories Cook tells were personal and while rehearsed and told at all stops were still winners. Hearing about her Mom and Dad's hillbilly romance, her being the first child or their union, her ten older half brothers and sisters, her Dad's time in prison for running moonshine, and her Mother's pragmatic approach to their romance are all parts of the show. Hearing her and Tim tell us the story behind the song they call " The Roof Song" makes all understand the challenges of performers on the lower end of the pay scale.

A very good show, a great singer, a funny entertainer and a nice night. My wife who knew next to nothing going in of Elizabeth Cook said she had a great time and thought she was a very good singer.

And still hearing that twang asking if anyone out there drove any " Creepy Cars" in the intro to El Camino proved that she was the girl we loved on the radio.

If you get a chance see the girl next door Elizabeth Cook.

The Reason For God by Timothy Keller

I have read a couple of Timothy Keller's books before. They never disappoint. He is the pastor of a church in New York City so if it is one thing he understands it is having members of his congregation who are both seekers and doubters.

In this book he talks of The Reason for God. Not only the actual reason God exists but how the case for God's existence can be made.

He addresses both the Leap of Faith needed and then the Reasons for Faith that make one continue to believe in what he calls " an age of skepticism"

Mentioning Christianity's Critics by name, Harris and Dawkins for example, Keller makes a cogent appeal. Addressing many of the peripheral reasons folks turn away from religion he shows how, for example, many of those folks who proclaim thier own religosity from the rooftops and thus feel superior are missing much of the message of Jesus.

First and foremost is the fact that there is only one way to get to heaven and that is through the grace of God. Good works, being a good person, honoring the commandments these are, to Keller, outward manifestations of a desire to please God, but they in no way get you to heaven. If we were to get to heaven by our own works no one would be there. We all would fall short. Therefore God's s grace is the only way. Once one realizes this then feeling pride and better than those you feel live not as Godly as you do is silly. You all, rich and poor, those living in mansions and on the street, those who go to church and those who do not, will all only get to heaven by the goodwill and grace of God.

Talking of folks uncomfortable in church, turned off by what they perceive as hypocrites in churches Keller cautions that you will find sick people in hospitals and you will often find broken people in churches.

The book is not easy, it requires you to think about what he writes. It is broken up into sections and chapters and takes you on a good course through the book. As Keller says you do not have to wait to have no doubts to embrace God, if you do you might never do so. Let God find you.

A great religious writer Keller provides what he calls clues to God and makes a very plausible, not on just religeous means, but on secular truth and reasoning for those who want evidence that not only was Jesus real but divine. That he did die on the cross, their was an empty tomb and that he was seen after the resurrection. Depending heavily on Paul's letters which were written less than two decades after crucifixion he makes a historical case for Jesus and the resurrection.

If you are a seeker but faced with skepticism so common amongst the educated in a secular world this will not answer all your questions. It will make a case one can believe in however without feeling like they are believing in fairy tales.

Simply put the case for God and the creation, and Jesus and the resurrection is one that can be made. Alternative answers are just that , cases of their theory. For me I choose to believe in Jesus. I did before. I still do. This book however does offer some heavy arguments for apologists to believe in.

Mean Streets

This 1973 Martin Scorsese film is often referred to as a landmark film and highly influential as to how future movies of the genre were made. I was looking forward to seeing it.

In the movie Charlie played by Harvey Keitel is a young Italian trying to move up in the Mafia organization run by his Uncle. Charlie lives next to and is a good friends with Johnny Boy, played by Robert DeNiro. I think right after this part DeNiro must have got the part of young Vito in The Godfather II but I am not sure of the chronology of his parts.

The movie is lauded for it's symbolism. Charlie is a devout Catholic and the movie takes place with the neighborhood celebrating a Catholic festival, Charlie is trying to balance his duties to his belief in the church and his place in the Mob. His Uncle has paternal feelings for Charlie but cautions him against associating with Johnny who he feels is a two bit hood nor Charlie's sister Teresa who is epileptic and this to be shunned.

Little does he know that Johnny is Charlie's pal and little does he or Johnny know that he is sleeping with Teresa.

In the end Charlie tries to walk a fine line. Johnny is in trouble because, as he says, he has borrowed money from everyone in the neighborhood and paid no one back. Finally a shark is adamant about wanting his money and Charlie tries to intervene and keep Johnny from getting himself in deeper.

Charlie sets up a meeting with the shark for Johnny to show good faith. Johnny is seemingly incapable of playing it straight and insults the man to whom he owes money and pulls a gun on him. A gun he later admits was not loaded but the damage is done.

Charlie, Teresa and Johnny set off for Brooklyn so that Johnny can lay low for awhile. As they drive they are cut off by another car and shots are fired. It seems they have been followed. As he was driving Charlie was talking to God bemoaning his unsuccessful efforts to please everyone and as the movie ends and Johnny is taken away in an ambulance after being shot and Charlie has been shot in the hand the movie ends.

What does it all mean. I have no idea. I just was not that impressed with the movie. Keitel was fine and DeNiro played a punked up no brain as well as could be expected. The imagery was vague and unclear. The ending was muddy, we not only do not know what happens to the characters we do not really even know the point of the movie.

Not being sold as a day in the life the movie has no meaning.

Perhaps it is grittiness and realism it was influential for later, better movies but on it's own merit it is nothing special.

Author's Note

As most of you who are reading this may know I have a medical condition which is progressive and affects my muscles. I have been having more and more trouble typing without pain and so am in the process of attempting to dictate my blog entries to Suri on my Iphone.

It appears to be going pretty well and I try to catch mistakes but I do hope that any mistakes you do find can be treated with forbearance by you the reader as it seems to be the best and perhaps soon only way which I can continue my entries.

If by chance I make a glaring mistake that defeats the obvious intent of my entry please do not hesitate to leave a comment letting me know.

Thanks for your patience and loyal reading.

Just Go With It

Last night in our summer movie marathon we continued on with the Adam Sandler comedy just go with it. Adam Sandler has taken a beating lately in the press and with recent movie reviews, most often deservedly so. This movie was a bit different however, it certainly was not an Oscar-winner, but it was an enjoyable flick.

In the movie Sandler plays Danny Mackaby a plastic surgeon. His office assistant is Catherine Murphy played by Jennifer Aniston. Catherine is a single mom with two children who is often the foil for Dr. Danny's sense of humor.

As the movie begins we see Danny has a young man about to be married to a woman who is marrying him despite not being in love with them because he is going to be a cardiologist, but at the same time is very mean about the size of his nose. After leaving her at the altar Danny goes out to drown his sorrows, and even with a nose that goes into a ZIP Code a day before he does he discovers that a wedding ring is a great attraction for a lot of women.

At a party one evening, Danny, now a successful plastic surgeon, meets a woman named Palmer a very attractive schoolteacher played by Brooklyn Decker. The evening takes off well for them and they end up together waking up in the morning on a beach. Palmer, however, discovers the wedding ring that Danny had in his pocket and assumes he is actually married. It turns out that she is the one woman who is not interested in dating married man because her parents had broken up due to such a fling.

This leads to Danny needing to convince her that he's not married, in fact is about to get a divorce. He convinces Catherine to play his soon-to-be divorced wife, and play it to the hilt she does.

Of course it would be a short movie if this is all that happened, so at the end of the evening Catherine takes a phone call from her children which of course leads Palmer to understand that Danny has children and changes her whole view about their potential relationship. What Danny has to do to convince her to continue dating him leads to the plot of them.

The cast is strong. Sandler is often likable even in his worst roles. Aniston, they'll getting older, will always look like a girl you wished you dated in high school. Nicole Kidman has a part as Devlin Adams Catherine's nemesis from college.

Dave Matthews, yes that Dave Matthews plays her husband. And of course for anyone who is seen the commercials for the movie when it was in the theaters Brooklyn Decker Pl., Palmer. Decker the supermodel married to tennis player Andy Roddick has a few noble scenes, mostly those scenes are when she is in a bikini. She plays Palmer, as a naive nice girl and surprisingly it's fairly believable in the role. But let's be clear, she is in the movie because of how she looks. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Interestingly, in the movie Anniston's Park Catherine is played as an average girl, one then nobody really notices with her lab coat and glasses. When Catherine this roadster jump in the lake the look of surprise on Danny's face and seeing how attractive she is makes one wonder what he was seeing the whole time that we could clearly see from the beginning.

It does not take a genius to see where the movies going but it is still an enjoyable ride. A good movie for night when you don't want to think too much.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I have been very looking forward to watching this movie. The reviews were wonderful, John Lecarre has been one of the best spy novel writers for a long, long,time. His writing is not wooden, not clunky, it is very literate and it is more of a challenge than the typical spy book.

I should add that we watched the movie on a very hot night, with the AC blasting as I was attempting to do a bit of multi-tasking. In short, the time I should have been spending watching the set up of the movie I was not paying close enough attention.

The movie also had the disadvantage of having to fit a full, intricate plot in a two hour movie. The movie was done very well but for me it was a great challenge. Much of that was my fault and my viewing habits, but it was further complicated by the fact that the actors, and thus the characters, all looked similar and all sounded alike.

As we watched the movie I had a good sense of what was happening but not a full sense, and all the details only made complete sense after I read a movie recap online. With that information the movie made good sense.

Still I do feel the movie was excellent and any struggles were my fault. The actors were first rate, the plot was superb, and the twists were unpredictable.

This is a great movie. Just pay attention from the beginning.

Summer Television and I Don't Care

There are many new summer television shows each year. This summer is no exception. I had intended to check out Charlie Sheen's new show Anger Management and even thought that revisiting Southfork with the new Dallas reboot might be interesting.

Howard Stern made America's Got Talent something to check on for a week or two but some of the acts they put through are just so bad it became a farce of itself.

I know that Big Brother has returned and I know people still watch it but I do not know why. HBO has a new series starring Jeff Daniels but we are HBO less this summer and we never invested in True Blood so we are not watching much TV this summer.

My wife loves Ellen and even she has been off for over a month. Perhaps the networks need to just go off the air in the summers, tell people to go outside. Can you imagine if that happened.

Do not get me wrong. I love television. I heard about the return date of The Walking Dead in the fall and was very excited and I know that a great many people are anxiously awaiting the return o Breaking Bad tonight even.

Still for me, I am tan, I have been reading about six books at once, eventually i will finish them then it will not look as if I have taken the summer of from reading too, and I have enjoyed spending time with my wife as she is off in the summers.

We have watched a few Netflix movies, she has watched some cooking shows as she and my daughter enjoy those and soon enough we will be back in the school routine. The networks will then entice us to watch them again but for now it is a nice quiet summer.

Ted

This past spring I saw the the trailers on Youtube for the movie Ted and thought it looked a little interesting. Clearly the movie was nothing very edifying. Still some of the movies that I saw when I was a teenager and in my early twenties were not the kind you write home about.

The premise of the movie is sweet. A young boy in a suburb of Boston grows up and has trouble making friends. A funny scene right away has a young boy getting beat up by other neighborhood kids but they all stop, the beaters and the beatee to inform the boy, John Bennett, to go away and get lost.

For Christmas that year the boy gets a stuffed teddy bear, bigger than most, and he loves it. One night he wishes that the bear could be alive and they could be best friends forever. The next morning he wakes up and the bear is awake. Once the boy gets over the shock he is thrilled. Nothing special in this scenario, we have seen premises similar to this many times.

Fast forward 25 years however and the movie is very different than the sugary versions we have seen. Ted now is sitting on the couch next to John getting stoned. Ted, voiced by Seth McFarlane, is obscene, vulgar and rude. F this and F that are his very famous words.

Seeing a stuffed bear acting rude, getting stoned and swearing is funny, for a minute. There are surely lines and moments in this movie that made me laugh. There are also many scenes where my wife sitting next to me mouthed an OMG and made me feel guilty for subjecting her to it.

Mila Kunis plays John Bennett's longtime girlfriend. She has a successful job and is convinced that John is being held back by his stoner teddy bear. See, the movie is really little different in this way than many other movies we have seen where the girl does not like the best friend and issues an ultimatum. It is just in this case that ultimatum is about a teddy bear.

Have I seen dumber movies? Surely. Is Mark Wahlberg and his accent perfect for a loser from Boston? Yes. Is it funny to see the bear walking, cursing, and yes having intercourse? Actually yes, in places, very funny.

So my wife was mortified that she took our son to the movie, being R Rated he needed us to take him. It was pretty over the top in some of it's jokes. Still he did not look too scarred and he said he enjoyed it. I would not go see it again but I did laugh out loud once or twice. That must be worth something. And as I told my wife it surely was not as bad as Friends with Benefits.

Mila Kunis appears now to be the it actress. I am sure it does not translate to me. She is cute and appealing but for me at least there are quite a few actresses that are more easily seen in the girl next door role or girlfriend roles. Of course most of them probably would not do a movie like Ted.

So when it comes out on video, enjoy it, just make sure you do not expect too much. Prepare yourself as well for this, it has made a ton of money and a sequel would not be hard to do.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

I usually check Amazon for new books and books about to be published. Having done so I was familiar with this book when I saw it at the library last week. Knowing that the main character was a twelve year old girl I picked it up for either my daughter or wife to try.

As these things happen though, I found myself tired of the LBJ biography I am reading, a great book but did Caro have to write them so long, needing a break from David Copperfield, and caught up on The New Yorker, so I picked this up and read the synopsis on the book jacket.

Turns out this book has a bit of an end of the world plotline and I have a hard time resisting those so I picked it up. Ten pages in I was hooked.

The book opens quickly, " the news broke on a Saturday." Somehow, inexplicably, over a couple of days the revolutions of the Earth that create night and day have slowed. Day and night are now taking longer, that is the Earth's spinning is slowing. Julia and her parents are in shock, her Father a physician says that everything will be fine, while her Mother a drama teacher is less sure. Some people react with fear, hoarding food, and proclaiming the end of the world. Julia's friend Hanna, her best friend, leaves with her large family to go to Utah to await the end that is near.

The end does not appear to be near though. The days and nights keep expanding. Soon up to 30 hours. No one knows how long a day will be. This creates problems with clocks which become useless the periods of light and dark soon do not match any prescribed expectations.

Finally as the days continue to stretch the President and Congress say that people should and that the government and businesses will continue to operate on a 24 hour day. This means that people will at times go to bed in the light and go to school and work in the dark.

More is at stake however. As the days lengthen to 30 and 40 hours the issue of food becomes an issue. The wheat point is passed, a point where wheat can no longer be grown. Unbeknownst to me crops need sunlight on the rhythm they expect, twenty hours of sunlight does not make up for the same in darkness.

Some people refuse clock time and insist the body can change it's circadian rhythms. They succeed for awhile but they become outcasts, people do not trust them, they when it is light at the " prescribed night time" are out and about while everyone sleeps.

For those not like me, and who need more than this angle the story also tells the tale of Julia. A normal, geeky, twelve year old girl who is still struggling with junior high, boys, her parents, a secret she knows about her father and the lady down the street, the ever expanding list of people in her life who have disappeared as the days lengthen, her mother's gravity sickness and her grandfather's conspiracy theories.

There is a great deal of story in this book of less than 300 pages. Not a book I would ever presume to read but a very good book. The praise it is receiving is well earned.

Now it's back to LBJ.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

This novel has been on many of the best lists since being published earlier this spring. Amazon featured it has one of their best books of the month and other reviews have for the most part spoken very highly about this book.

Unfortunately I disagree. First off it should be noted that satire is not one of my favorites. This book has been called a the Catch 22 of the Iraq War and I should admit that I was no great fan of Catch 22 either.

Fountain's novel centers on Billy Lynn, a nineteen year old army private who along with his platoon has taken part in a heroic mission in the war that America is celebrating. It is because of their efforts on this mission that Billy and his fellow soldiers have been pulled from combat and taken on a two week trip through the United States. A publicity tour to sell a positive from the war and Billy and his fellow soldiers are used and know they are being used.

As we join Billy it is Thanksgiving Day and he and his cohorts are being taken to the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving game. They will get good seats, they will be presented to the crowd at halftime and they will provide patriotic Americans both in Dallas and watching on television an opportunity to feel good about themselves and the war effort.

As the day progresses Billy takes on flashbacks but for the most part the book takes place in that one day. We hear Billy's internal thoughts about how often and frequently the soldiers are thanked, and how while appreciating the sentiments it often makes them feel uncomfortable.

Billy is nineteen years old. He does not have any big picture ideas. He wants to drink, he would like to find a girl to take his virginity and he would like to not have to go back to the war.

Why is the book bad? For me it was profane. The characters were not enjoyable. Now the fact that this book illustrates that a good portion of the soldiers doing are fighting are poor, under educated, of color, with limited options or some combination of the above does as much to illustrate separation of the military from American society as does Rachel Maddow's book Drift which attempts to illustrate that point.


Outside of that though the book is profane, digressing, loud and yet dull. I was sorely disappointed in this book.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

This 2011 comedy features Steve Carell as Cal Weaver, a forty something man who married his high school sweetheart and has the life he wants. As he and his wife Emily, played by Julianne Moore are out to dinner one evening she abruptly tells him she would like a divorce. On the way home while she drives out of nervous energy she keeps talking and spills details that she slept with her coworker David. Cal is stunned and eventually jumps out of the car.

Cal moves out right away and soon takes to spending his time in bars at night. He settles on a bar and each night as he imbibes talks loudly about his wife leaving him, cuckolding him, cheating on him. Eventually a lothario who often frequents the bar named Jacob Palmer calls him over to his table and tells him he is embarrassing himself. He offers to help Cal learn how to get women, change his image, to become a player. Cal agrees to the deal and soon starts spending time with Jacob. Ryan Gosling does a great job as Jacob as night after night Cal watches him pick up a different women always ending with his best line, " You want to get out of here." After a week or two Cal begins to doubt the effectiveness of his " training" until when Cal offers him a couple of questions he realizes he has absorbed it all.

Eventually Cal starts picking up women too and soon word filters back to his ex wife that he is a dating machine.

Emily did not really know what she wanted when she asked for a divorce. She had cheated on Cal but did not love or really even like David. Kevin Bacon plays David as a shady womanizer and does well.

In the meantime Emily and Cal's 13 year old son has fallen for his babysitter Jessica, a 17 year old, that upon hearing of the separation of his parents comes down squarely on the side of Cal, in fact she has developed a crush on him. Cal, oblivious to this says things that make her love him even more. In the meantime Robbie, the son, keeps professing his love to Jessica. As you can imagine this is a very tangled web.

We also have Hannah, a young woman who at the beginning of the movie turns down Jacob, one of the few women who does. She is getting ready to take her bar exam but upon passing is disappointed to find out that her boyfriend's, played by Josh Groban, promised big question is not to marry him but to become a permanent lawyer in the firm. Upset and embarrassed by this she walks into the bar where she had met Jacob and asks him if HE " wants to get out of here." He of course complies but strangely when they get back to his place instead of the expected they end up talking all night.

Soon Jacob is in a relationship, foreign territory for him, with Hannah.

In the end all of these story lines tie together, surprisingly, in one uproarious scene that is very very funny.

Emma Stone as Hannah plays an attractive and likable character, Moore is always strong, and as I have said before I just enjoy Steve Carell.

There is nothing in this movie that makes it great and it is not, it is however a very good movie. One I strongly reccomend.

Hero by Edward Sharpe and the Magnificent Zeroes

Over the last month or so I have been seeing quite a few references to this band. Rolling Stone raves about them which does not always mean I will like them, but at least it means that it might be worth seeing what all the fuss is about.

Today I gave a full listen to both albums thus far released by Edward Sharpe and The Magnificent Zeroes. They should be given an award for a name hard to forget. Certainly Magnificent Zeroes is one you will not forget easily.

This band makes some very interesting music. Often referenced as a throwback band with a lot of sixties vibe I found, on certain songs, to see that. A female singer is featured prominently on many of the tracks and I found that the songs that featured her most prominently were the ones that would have felt at home with the Woodstock Generation. Much of the time though I heard a lot of the same things that can be found in today's folk revival from the likes of The Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons.

On their second album Here, Man on Fire is the first song and is a hit in the making. Well, perhaps not a hit, but a popular song on Alt Radio which is the bands home. On One Love to Another we hear the significant influences of Bob Marley and reggae music. Certainly One Love in the title and the accompanying sound makes it clear that the band knows full well who they are being influenced by in this song. Another standout track is a song called Child that is simply one of the best new songs I have heard this year. Sounding like a cross between a southern twang and early acoustic White Stripes this song is one that will get in your head. Also strong is I Don't Wanna Pray which sounds like it belonged on the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou, a hand-clapping beat and one that again will be an earwig in your head. My foot is tapping as I listen to it again as I write this.

When Spotify then played me their first album which was self titled, the first thing I noticed is that the featured song on that album is one that I, that we all most likely , have heard already. Home is a nice, rhythmic song, that is pretty much irresistible, and has been featured on a commercial that we all have heard on NFL Commercials. Another strong song on the album called Janglin' has been used on Ford Fiesta commercials. It used to be that selling out by putting your song in commercials was frowned on, now it has become one of the easiest paths to success. Also strong is the song Jade, which one can again here the White Stripes influence but in this song the most relevant influence I hear is Ray Davies and the Kinks.

Certainly a band that one can hear this many influences from is a band that can be varied and broad in their musical choices. I think this music was interesting, but more than interesting they are actually not just musically, but also lyrically strong. The music is often music that gets your feet tapping and certainly is far and above much that one can hear these days.

Edward Sharpe gets and A plus from me, nothing close to a zero. Strong music, gives one hope that good music is still being made. Of course the influences for the most part going back a generation or two it seems even The Zeroes know that you have to look backward to make good music.

Badlands

Terrence Malick is well known for being one the more reclusive personalities in the movie business. We have placed his most recent movie Tree of Life on our Netflix queue so when this movie appeared on television I decided it was a good chance to see another Malick flick.

Released in 1973 Malick's first film starred Martin Sheen as Kit a rebellious greaser type and Sissy Spacek as Holly, a teenage girl who becomes his girlfriend. Kit, as the movie begins, is working on a garbage route but then decides that is not for him as, as after meeting Holly who tells him that her father would not approve of her seeing a boy who works on a garbage truck.

Of course Holly's Dad would not approve of her dating a man ten years her senior, which at 25 Kit is. This does not stop the couple, they are soon finding places to meet in secret. Soon after their relationship becomes advanced Holly's father finds out and punishes her by keeping her home and not allowing her to see Kit. Kit goes to Holly's house one day to gather her things together, presumably to prepare for them to run off together, but is interrupted by Holly's father. As the man yells at Kit and goes to call the police Kit calmly shoots him. Kit is certainly a psychopath, he shows no emotion when he kills him, and Holly, under his spell, has a muted reaction herself.

Now on the run they move into the woods until they are spotted and a posse shows up. The movie is narrated by Holly who by talking in romantic notes about Kit and his reasoning for what he does provides a severe contrast to what we, as viewers, see on the screen. Kit continues to run, Holly becomes more and more ambivalent about their future, but still speaks lovingly of him as the body count rises.

The movie was loosely based on the Starkweather murders of the fifties, the same murders that set the scene for Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Still the movie is fiction as the stories are not the same and while Holly in the movie eventually gets probation and Caril Ann Fugate, Starkweather's accomplice, served a long prison term.

Sheen and Spacek are top notch in the movie, Sheen especially adept at playing a killer so personally attractive with so much charisma that the police officer's who arrest him all shake his hand as they give him up to the South Dakota policemen who have come to extradite him. Malick shoots the film beautifully and one can easily see why right away he was known as a Director and Film Producer to watch. Malick has made fewer movies than one would expect, and his movies are rarely big hits. He does not do the most accessible movies but this one, despite the dark material, will hold you.

Not a great movie, but a very good one.

Wild Hogs

The other night, in between sending and receiving movies from Netflix we ended up with the kids in the living room with us for a few minutes and watched this movie.

From 2007 the movie had plenty of star power but did not receive good reviews. Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William Macy star as four middle aged friends who enjoy riding motorcycles together. As middle age settles heavily on them, boring jobs, demanding spouses, and realizing that the lives they have are not what they expected in their younger days they decide that they must do something to break out. In short they have become responsible, and thus boring, adults.

Woody, played by Travolta, urges them to take a cross country motorcycle trip. All agree and off they go. William H Macy plays Dudley, a computer programmer, and nerd of the group. Tim Allen is a dentist and Martin Lawrence a salesman whose wife has him on a very short leash.

The movie is not great. A few moments are funny, Macy is probably the actor with the strongest performance, playing against his normal type, and he does a good job. This movie is a far cry from The Cooler or Fargo.

Ray Liotta plays the leader of a real motorcycle gang who takes a strong exception to what he deems are pretenders. A funny scene is when he guesses and then criticizes the lifestyles that the Wild Hogs are stepping away from and when Dudley, Macy's character, amazed at his accuracy asks him " what color am I thinking of?" As I said the movie has it's moments.

Marissa Tomei plays a waitress who becomes a love interest of Dudley. Travolta and Allen are a bit muted in this movie, Lawrence has a few moments of over the top acting but Macy really is the strongest. Tomei is generally underrated, and enjoyable in this as well.

The reviews in some cases were pretty nasty. I surely did not think it was that bad. It was what it was, cute in some places, with some broad farce, but generally entertaining.

A special nod should go to Peter Fonda who has a small part in the movie as, what else, a legendary motorcycle figure. If your movie is about motorcycles and you get Peter Fonda in it cannot be all bad.