Culture Snob At the request of my wife – who is irritated that Red Sox Haiku isn’t updated more frequently – I offer this poetry gem, written in crayon by us over beer one night.
Culture Snob favorite Fiona Apple apparently is being held hostage by her label. Actually, her record is, and some fans are miffed and demanding the CD’s release. Extraordinary Machine was finished in 2003 and deemed not commercial enough by Sony Music/Epic Records. A protest action is planned for the week of January 24.
Watching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou initially created a pleasant sensation — ah, yes, my old friend Wes Anderson — that over two hours turned tedious and finally grating. Anderson has taken his love of artifice and dry humor to its logical end and proves that it doesn’t work. Now, hopefully, he can go back to making rewarding movies.
Butchies, The, Make Yr Life, PJ Harvey’s Uh Huh Her, Tift Merritt’s Tambourine, Probot, and Annie Quick’s Bigger
Rolling Stone collects its critics’ individual top-10 lists here.
Slate’s always enjoyable Movie Club is back in action for a pillow fight over the movies of 2004.
Maria Full of Grace is a straightforward, clinical, nearly artless movie that starts out as a rote tract on the human cost of the drug trade and eventually builds itself into a story in which the audience has an emotional investment. In the end, it sits somewhere between the brilliant and razor-sharp British miniseries Traffik and its obvious, too-condensed American re-make Traffic (directed by Steven Soderbergh).
There’s no doubt that Sideways makes for an entertaining two hours, but if this is the best Hollywood has to offer in 2004 – and it might be – it’s been a pretty sorry movie year.
I liked 2002’s The Bourne Identity a lot, but I didn’t think the character/premise could sustain itself over a series. I was wrong.
As flawed as it is and even though its freshness and shock value have been diminished by imitation and time, Eyes Without a Face still works amazingly well – primal, raw, troubling, and real. Its authenticity makes it superior to 95 percent of horror movies, and it illustrates how horror operates even when it’s not terrifying.
