A dish best served cold:
Mystic River and Kill Bill are both about revenge but are otherwise complete opposites. Mystic River is a contemplative and brooding look at guilt, pain, and vengeance, while Kill Bill is a brilliant triumph of style over substance.
I loved Mystic River because Clint Eastwood gives his actors room to find depth in their characters and allows them to search for the painful truth on their own terms. He gives each scene time to resonate and ends up hitting some excrutiatingly emotional chords. Two more things: Tim Robbins and Sean Penn are so good in this movie it made me want to cry AND wet my pants (actually, Sean Penn is always that good). Also, it was great to see Laurence Fishburne do some real acting rather than walking around with a stick up his ass "prophesizing".
I loved Kill Bill because it was everything Mystic River was not. The plot isn't deep at all. REVENGE. At any cost, in any way possible. The Bride must kill those that have wronged her. There is no time for resonance or for characters to search for emotional truth. They are too busy trying to not get their heads chopped off. My boy Ebert puts it best, "Kill Bill: Volume 1 is not the kind of movie that inspires discussion of the acting, but what Thurman, Fox and Liu accomplish here is arguably more difficult than playing the nuanced heroine of a Sundance thumb-sucker. There must be presence, physical grace, strength, personality and the ability to look serious while doing ridiculous things."
Mystic River makes you think and feel at the same time, Kill Bill makes you cringe and cheer. Mystic River is intelligent, dark, and open to many interpretations. Kill Bill is an exhilarating martial arts extravaganza with one simple message: Don't fuck with Uma Thurman when she has a sword in her hands.
Go see them both. Now.
*****
I'm so happy the basketball season has started...
"Allen Iverson with the ball in traffic. This is on my list every year. Screw big men moving predictably and unimpeded. Forget Tim Duncan. Never mind Shaq. Give me this paradigm-shifting, shape-shifting, taut wire of a little man every time out. Give me an underdog who makes guys twice his size cry mercy. Every game AI plays is a treatise on heart and stamina, and a command performance of sick, syncopated skill."
----Eric Neel, Page 2 columnist and fellow lover of the ART of basketball
(stay tuned Pizzle denizens, for more on AI and the redefinition of hoop)
I'm glad the Academy has come around and did away with the Palestine-isn't-really-a-nation bullshit. It would be a shame for this movie to be denied wider recognition for purely political reasons.
Almost entirely plotless, Divine Intervention is an intelligent rumination on the absurdity of trying to carry on with daily life in a perpetual war zone. Some of the more comic scenes include an Israeli policeman asking a Palestinian prisoner for help in giving a tourist directions, and a bizarre ninja-death star fantasy sequence involving a Palestinian women defeating a group of Israeli security officers. Mixed in with the comedy, we see glimpses of Palestinians finding ways to reclaim their lives and their freedom through the smallest of acts: a beautiful Palestinian woman brazenly walks through a checkpoint despite the presence of heavily armed Israeli guards, two motorists lock eyes at a traffic light and refuse to look away even when the light changes and people start to honk, two lovers stealing a moment to hold hands in the parking lot of a checkpoint.
Divine Intervention is funny, but the sadness and frustration that simmers just beneath the surface makes for a truly stunning and affecting film.
****
"Virtue isn't virtue unless it slams up against vice. So consequently, your virtue's not real virtue. Until it's been tested... tempted."
---Andre Braugher as Det. Frank Pembleton from Homicide: Life on the Street (one of the best TV shows ever)
Updates:
The Singapore 2001 album now has captions and a Austin '02-'03 section is forthcoming to a browser near you.
*****
I don't understand the scientific "value" of such a study. To me prayer is a personal, spiritual act, and whether or not prayers from an anonymous set of Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Muslims (where are the Hindus, the Zoroastrians?) benefit random patients is totally irrelevant.
First of all, trying to measure the effect of prayers on other people is missing the point. The entire purpose of prayer is to make a personal connection with God, or whatever higher power you believe exists. It's not even important that you fully believe God can affect events on Earth. It's an act of trust and submission. Prayer makes me feel better, more at ease. Once you realize that certain things in this crazy, crazy world are out of your control, it's sometimes comforting to leave everything in the hands of the divine. Equally, when someone else is praying for you, it gives you strength and hope to know someone cares for you enough to pray. Prayer is all about personal connections between you and the divine and your loved ones, it has nothing to do with science.
Secondly, by attempting to measure faith and the effects of prayer, the Duke researchers are ascribing human characteristics to something that is supposed to be beyond human ways of understanding. Well if you can't understand God on human terms, how are you supposed to understand him? You don't. That's the point. At least, it is for me. If you have enough faith to pray in the first place, you should realize that there is a fundamental difference between the measurable, earthly world of science and the world of divinity. You can only understand what you believe to be true, and if your faith is strong enough to pray, you shouldn't need numbers to confirm that your prayers are working.
*****
What I can't stop listening to:
We're A Happy Family - A Tribute to the Ramones - I usually don't like tribute albums, but this one is a revelation. Green Day, Rancid and the Offspring offer their homage in true punk form, while U2, Metallica, Tom Waits and Pete Yorn give their brilliant and exciting takes on Ramones' staples. The most fun, and I hate to admit this, comes from Kiss' anthemic makeover of "Do You Remember Rock n' Roll Radio?" For a more well written piece on why this tribute album is different from others, read the liner notes by Stephen King.
Deliverance - Bubba Sparxxx - Two years ago he was a novelty. A fat, white Southern rapper spitting slightly funny rhymes over Timbaland's signature quirky bounce. This time around Timba swaps the synths and beat-boxes for harmonicas, banjos and fiddles and the result is one of the most innovative and enjoyable hip-hop releases in a long time. Bubba rides the country beats with an assured drawl and a confident, if not terribly remarkable, flow. Throw in some psychadelic-funk-rock beats by Atlanta's Organized Noize (think Aquemini-Stankonia era Outkast) and you have some of the best music I've heard this year.
Here Comes the Fuzz - Mark Ronson - My musical wet dream. This will get a longer pizzle treatment one day if I ever get around to updating the Spins, Flicks and Words section, but for now suffice to say that it is a sweeping, genre-bending, head-bobbing, funky ride into how satisfying blending musical tastes and styles can be. It reaffirms my long-standing belief that all music is one. Except music that sucks.
*****
"I'm not becoming them Maggie, I am them."
----Johnny Depp as Donnie Brasco
Singapore 2001 is fully up and organized, although at the moment, captionless. Due to the sensitive nature of some of the pictures it is password protected. Once you're at the gallery, click on login in the upper right corner, the user name is User. Hit me up at sheelpi@sheelpi.com and I'll send you the password.
word up.
I don't know why pizzle updates have been so few and far between. I really don't do much besides work and then after work, try and keep myself busy with books, music and movies. Keyur's departure leaves me drained alot of the time. But I think it's time I plowed on.
First, new tagline. My brain is still unstable, and I'm still fucking handsome as hell, but after much deliberation I've decided to go with the best line from the most climactic moment in the final scene of 8 Mile . The entire movie up to this point was about Jimmy struggling to find his voice. It was about his fight to define his identity on his own terms. Throughout the different battles in the last scene we can see Jimmy slowly gaining confidence, moving from timid to confrontational and whimsical,
"You look like Snoop Dogg just got a fucking boob job"
and finally, to complete rage and defiance,
"You don't know what the fuck I been through. "
Like Travis Bickle, he'd had enough and he was standing up. Living his life, however imperfect, his way.
******
Secondly, with the help of G, I've set up a photo gallery! It is still heavily under construction, but I'm super stoked about being able to offer a pictoral glimpse of the Shlep (since, as some of you know, I'm not so good with the words).
Right now, I'm working on the albums making up my two most formative experiences, dorm living at Moore-Hill and studying abroad in Singapore. The Dorm pics are many, but I hopefully have made semi-entertaining captions and I also hope my compatriots do not get too embarassed. There is also a plethora of Singapore pictures that I'm still organizing, but for now follow the link in the sidebar and enjoy what is there, there's plenty more to come!
*****
"When Microsoft asks me to send in an error report I usually don't because it feels like I'm tattling on my own computer."
----David Fleming, senior writer for ESPN the Magazine