Now with the 2008 Wimbledon Championships stored away in the record books, I thought I’d conjure up another British import to segue out of tennis back to some other important life affirming topics.
There’s no rhyme or reason for this post other than I just plain love The Beatles and I wanted to share my current faves from the Fab Four collection:
The numbers don’t lie, man. By far, the entire B-side Abbey Road Medley is the most played section of my iTunes library.
done
Twist and Shout from the Anthology documentary turned me from a casual Beatles listener to a straight up Beatles-maniac.
And CQ, if you’re reading this post, Across The Universe - The shitty Movie still blows more than an over-aged, delusional fluffer desperately trying to break into mainstream media.
Not that I would know what that’s all about.
Seriously, I don’t even know what that last statement means.
Paul Thomas Anderson is kind of an idol for me. Between him, Lars Von Trier and Alfonso Cuaron, they are pretty much my trifecta of great modern day directors. They’re all head strong, self admittedly selfish and phenomenally brilliant.
If you don’t know what the film is about, read this. But really you should go into the film as clean and unexpectant as possible to get the full effect of this attempt at a signature masterpiece. Personally speaking, I think that Magnolia is PTA’s best work overall. It’s a film that has meant so much to me that it really deserves it’s own story. But most importantly and most simply put it bridged the gap in my life between thinking shit flicks were good to really understanding the true magic, greatness and an artform great films can be in understanding not only life but our place and relationship to it as well.
However, just because I think Abbey Road is my favorite album doesn’t mean I don’t love and appreciate the other kids any less. Sometimes my mood leans towards Let it Be… Naked, or Rubber Soul, or even A Hard Day’s Night.
My personal favorite PTA film. But I love all his children!
It’s the same with PTA. Sometimes I like having Sydney on in the background to get into a creative mode. Sometimes I feel like Boogie Nights. Punch Drunk Love actually has a very “hang out” playability to it. The point is, this guy is great at doing this thing: this sometimes bastardized commerce-meets-art medium known as filmmaking.
“Drainage!!”
I believe that films are very much a way for an author to communicate with the receiver. It just so happens to be an extremely expensive way in doing so. It’s a way to get to know someone else’s thoughts, points of view of the world and essentially their souls. A great director (and as Stanley Kubrick has told PTA that great directors usually write their own material as well) essentially is giving an audience a visual speech. That’s why when you see these jerk off filmsmovies waste of valuable time crap with a dozen writers, producers, directors, etc you get that cheated feeling. It’s like trying to get to know someone at an stadium sized rave party high out of your mind on ex.
Now there’s certainly a time and place for all that but those are very rare times for me lately. I value my time far too much now. Generally I like to spend quality time with quality people and that’s the type of interaction and reward I expect from the time and money I spend on films. I’m entertained by strangers everyday but the ones that really make a mark on your life and leave an imprint in your being are usually the ones that fulfill something in you that’s far beyond a lame punchline.
PTA (and the other filmmakers I’ve mentioned earlier) are precisely those type of people who make those types of films. Even when they don’t quite hit the mark, you can still feel something about their work that lets you know they really tried and wanted to communicate something special. Hey, we;ve all had bad days where we didn’t feel like ourselves. It just usually didn’t cost us millions to figure out we had a bad day.
There Will Be Blood is not my favorite film of last year. At the moment, I think I prefer Once. But over time I have a feeling that There Will Be Blood will mean something more to me every few years I revisit it. Great films usually succeed in accomplishing this. Maybe soon after I meet my future wife. Maybe after I get married. Most certainly after I have my first child. So on and so forth.
Not necessarily a feel good film but somehow still manages to give you hope in the end.
“Long way down with no punch.”
I don’t know why I’m even writing this entry. I don’t really have too great a point. If anything I guess it’s that I hope more people pick and choose how we spend our time more wisely and for the right reasons. It’s really the only way we can have any say in the high quality of our lives and the materials we choose to enter our hearts and minds.
I’m starting to sound a little empty preachy so I’ll end it here.
A few months back I was bored and scrolling through PerezHilton.com (gay red flag #1) when I came across a youtube video of this gorgeous chick with the caption saying something about some unknown British girl wowing Simon Cowell of Britain’s “X-Factor” (gay red flag #2).
I watched the video and was pretty impressed with her performance. But what really impressed me more was how she so graciously accepted the the judges’ reactions to her performance. She looked very genuine in her complete and utter unawareness of just how damn good she is. And it wasn’t a well choreographed reaction either. It was the real deal. (The fact that I’m still writing about this calls for: gay red flag #3)
Now I don’t watch American Idol or X-Factor or any of these talent reality shows. I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m far too busy writing homo-mysterious blog entries here to do that.
However, I’ll watch just about anything with Gordon Ramsay. That dude’s a pimp.
I’ve never bought any of these talent show discoveries albums or singles or videos. My company once repped one of those idol finalists a while back but that was as close to that as I’ve ever gotten to those shows or anything related to it. Although the reality of the modern day music business is to respect Idol and what it’s done for the industry as a whole (good and bad), if anything I purposely avoided anyone from those shows because of one simple rule: I couldn’t imagine The Beatles ever being on a show like that. But talent always rises to the top no matter the road they took to get there. This chick and her abilities are certainly the exception and not the rule.
Simon is pretty right on with his comments here.
Then I forgot about it for a little while and went back to listening to “Abbey Road” for a few days when suddenly (I don’t quite remember if someone sent it to me or if I found it on my own) I watched this video where she sang that song that Kelly Clarkson first made famous a few years ago.
Leona blew away Clarkson’s version out Clarkson’s booty-hole! (gay red flag #4)
Pretty bloody well done!
Okay, maybe that’s a bit overdramatic but I thought it was obviously much better than the version below. What can I tell you?
Good but not quite as good when you compare side by side.
(I’m halfway through with the album so far and it’s prety damn good — gay red flag #5)
As I said in my first (and probably only) iTunes review for the album I hope this begins a great career without the BS that later surfaced for Mariah Carey’s career (the comparisons are unavoidable).
Nicely done, Leona. Hopefully this will turn out to be your “Please Please Me”.
(Gay red flags #6, 7, 8 and probably 9)
Does owning up to 9 gay flags in one posting make one gay?
BTW, she is BLOODY GORGEOUS! And I’m not just saying that to cover myself.
Small world. As anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t get star struck. I’m an Angeleno. I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve gone to school at one of the most prestigious places in town where my doubles tennis partner was in the #1 prime time network TV show (back when AOL 1.0 was pretty much the only game in town), back when being #1 in TV still meant something kinda cool. Other classmates included kids whose dad was (until recently) the CEO of Disney, Olympic athletes, politicians’ offspring, future pop stars, future TMZ staples, etc, etc.
The point is that this was never a big deal to either me or most anyone else in our school. To the student body, these kids were just our classmates. Mostly douchebags (like me) at that.
More to the point, I never found myself at a point where I was starstruck by any of it. I think to most LA natives, you tend to find the whole celebrity-mania thing more of a nuisance to your otherwise sun filled life than anything else. It’s usually the more than fair percentage of other city transports who give this city and it’s truly cool people a bad name. And the older I get, the more I believe that the majority of the lame transports who come to this city only to further clog up our freeways and generally stink it up big time come from here.
A giant green turd? The silhouette of a cranky old man? No, this is the State of New Jersey: The Asshole of America.
Wait a second. What the heck was I talking about? Jeez, I really gotta work on that whole concentrate on one thing at a time thing. This is way worse than that time I partied with those characters from Alice in Wonderland.
That cake scene still freaks me out!
Anyway, I worked today with the son of one of “The Guys” (The Fab Four sounds too overused) and I gotta say: TOO COOL!
What’s more ridiculous is that I actually started this entry off in order to talk about how crazy the rest of my day was and somehow I ended up just talking about the first hour of it.
I promise myself that I’m gonna begin putting forth some better effort in these personal entries. It’s just the price one pays for unplanned, honest, freeflow blogging.
I’m an hour in on this debacle of trash trying to pass itself off as an artistic interpretation of the greatest music to ever see the light of day and I want to kick Julie Taymor in the nuts. Not only do I want to kick her in the nuts, I’m starting to wonder if I really enjoyed Frida as well. I thought I remembered having some nice thoughts about Salma Hayek’s “passion project” but maybe I was hypnotized by her badass monobrow.
Here’s the deal: the fault wholly and solely lies in Julie Taymor for allowing herself to convince herself that she has any clue about anything as it pertains to The Beatles.
I’m sure on paper (and in her crazy mind) it sounded great.
I got it. I got it! It’ll be a period film set in the 60’s built around the music of The Beatles! And we’ll put some pretty faces to play characters whose names are actually in Beatles songs! It’s just simply a no brainer! Ooh, Ooh! Plus! It’s set during a revolutionary time where there’s a war nobody wants and where the disenchanted youth of America seem to really care about what’s really important (love, meaning of life, goodness, happiness, sour cream & salsa pork rinds, etc.) So? So, it’s like we’re kinda talking about the present times… but indirectly! Oh my goodness, I’m getting wet! This is exactly the kind of film I’ve always wanted to make! The kind masterpiece movie that has so many different levels! This is genius! This is fantabulous! This… THIS IS: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE!! OH MAN! OH Man! Oh man! Oh man. oh… man… Say, how’d that liquid puddle get there under me?
First off, yes us Angelenos use terms like “fantabulous”. It’s cool. End of story.
More importantly, you don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken. Not only that, you don’t try to add, take away, reimagine, reinterpret, upgrade, modernize, bring to a whole new generation and you SURE AS HECK DON’T DO ANYTHING TO THE MUSIC OR LEGACY OF THE BLEEDING BEATLES!
Unless your name is Paul, John, George, the other George and occasionally Ringo, don’t touch the music or try to do anyone any favors. Even Yoko knew that simple rule.
True, there are a very VERY few select people outside of the above mentioned who have been known to pull off the near impossible. This is one example.
But these are extremely rare exceptions and downright flukes. The fact is most artists really can’t improve or even touch The Beatles work. That’s like trying to improve the wheel. At best they might hover around the ballpark, but even then it’s like, “Great. Good for you. Nicely done. Still prefer the originals. And you really suck dirty, old vagabond testicles for attempting it.”
But Julie Taymor didn’t even get to the respectable “vagabond testicle tasting” ballpark. Not only was she not allowed to come near the ballpark, she was told that the game was being played somewhere else. Far, far away from the place where the actual game was being played.
(Shit, I don’t think that that diss was communicated properly.)
The point is: no one likes Julie Taymor enough to invite her anywhere. She’s a tool who forever contributed in soiling and sullying up some great art and in the process forever made America a little weaker for, among many other things, inferior filmmaking (Really? Was this underwater sequence really something you thought was cool?
Like this was something so original and artisically fulfilling? Like beyond anything any number of lovesick high school dumbass, outcast, artist wannabes hadn’t come up with before? Or maybe a cheesy eau de toilette ad from the 80’s? Or even…
To say that a Ben Stiller flick is better than any other movie… that’s saying something.
Hey, I don’t fancy myself as the next Scorsese but chances are that if I was making a movie and I find out Ben Stiller used the same shot idea as the one I had in my shot list, and HE ACTUALLY DID A BETTER JOB… I WOULDN’T USE IT! YOU HACK DOUCHE OF A FILMMAKER!
I don’t blame the actors. They need the work to stay relevant. And at the end of the day, films are generally the director’s medium just like theatre is a writer’s medium, just like TV is the advertiser’s medium, just like Patricia Arquette plays some psychic cop on NBC’s Medium.
(Pause for groans)
“But dude, the music from ‘Across the Universe’ is great! It’s been on the top ten list on Amazon and iTunes for like a year! You’re the douche cause you don’t like the movie or the reimagined versions of the classic Beatles’ music. F-U!”
Ya know what? Hannah Montana’s music was also on the iTunes top ten list forever now.
“Oh now you have something against Hannah Montana? That just proves you don’t know anything about music! It just proves it, man!”
Posted by cap
Posted by cap
Posted by cap
