To those of you who weren't lucky enough to score tickets to Radiohead in the 0.0029 seconds before they sold out (and those of you who weren't crazy enough to pay the legalized scalpers a bazillion dollars to get in anyway), I can only say this: rest assured, Radiohead is still the best fucking band on the planet, period.
For the record, I was one of the crazy ones, not the lucky ones. But I'm OK with that because, despite the too-short setlist, it was worth the $210 I paid to an also-crazy friend who had bought them from StubHub.
Why? Because the new stuff is great. Great, I tell you! Great! "Open Pick", the second new song, got everybody clapping and cheering, and the band and the song were so tight I got goosebumps just knowing there was a new awesome Radiohead song that I was hearing for the very firstest time. "Down Is The New Up" was mind-blowingly superb, too. And the other six new songs were merely excellent.
When they weren't busy wowing us with new songs, they were wowing us with old ones. Thom opened up with "You and Whose Army" while tottering at the piano and peering into a camera, with his face projected onto a fractured collage of rhombus-shaped screens on the stage set, and everyone loved it. "Paranoid Android" (the quintessential Radiohead song, if there is one) got everybody singing and hooting and hollering, but my second goosebump-inducing moment was when they ripped into "There There" to close out the main set. In-fucking-credible.
Outside of the new stuff, the set list was liberally sprinkled with Amnesiac and Kid A. (Not quite enough songs from Kid A, though--I still haven't heard "Optimistic" or "How to Disappear Completely" in concert. When will you play them for me, Thom? When?!?!? I digress.) If I was an amnesiac, I might have thought I was seeing the Amnesiac tour. Still, I can't complain--they gave us a cutting "Knives Out" and served up an awesomely mellow "Like Spinning Plates" (on piano, as it should be), and they even threw us a "Bones" in the first encore. (I've always thought "Bones" was an under-rated song. At least, by Radiohead standards. Then again, what do I know? I didn't get into them until relatively late. I tend to confuse bands that have similar names with one another, so I thought Radiohead was Motorhead. Why is everyone talking about Motorhead in the late 90s? I wondered. Then I realized--different band. Again, I digress.) Other established artists play the old stuff to placate the crowd; here it felt more like something they were just doing for the sheer enjoyment of being together and back on the road.
Through it all, when he wasn't sitting with piano or acoustic guitar, Thom jumped and jerked and did his crazy little Thom dances. And everyone else...well, to be honest, I didn't pay them any heed, because I was busy watching Thom. (What makes Thom so watchable? To be honest, maybe I like him because he reminds me of the me I used to be when I was an awkward, spastic, uncomfortable junior high kid. Like me, he retained that persona. Unlike me, he became a super-incredible musician in the process. Dorkiness plus complete awesomeness. How cool is that? An inspiration for us all. Yet again, I digress.) Except for a muffed vocal at the beginning of "Morning Bell," he and the band were damn near perfect. Near the end, I actually thought they were finally going to falter; Thom launched into a distorted, tired "True Love Waits", and everybody kind of sighed, but then mid-opening he segued into "Everything in its Right Place," and once again, it was the truth.
Setlist as published on radiohead at ease. * indicates new songs.
01 You and Whose Army?
02 The National Anthem
03 15 Step*
04 Morning Bell
05 Exit Music (For A Film)
06 Open Pick*
07 Videotape*
08 Knives Out
09 The Gloaming
10 Nude*
11 Down Is The New Up*
12 Paranoid Android
13 Bangers 'N Mash*
14 Like Spinning Plates
15 Spooks*
16 Idioteque
17 There There
Encore 1
18 A Wolf At The Door
19 4 Minute Warning*
20 Bones
21 Lucky
Encore 2
22 House of Cards*
23 Everything In Its Right Place
Monday, June 19, 2006
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Pottersville
OK, for those of you new to this blog, I wrote a book recently. You can buy it on Amazon.com if you're interested.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
The Departed - Martin Scorsese
So Martin Scorsese’s pulling a Quentin Tarantino and remaking Hong Kong crime movies. What’s this world coming to, with The Master now imitating his most fervent disciple? Hollywood being Hollywood, a whole constellation of A-listers have jumped on board anyway, hitching their star-power to his wagon in the hopes it will finally complete its Oregon-Trail-worthy trek to the Oscar podium.
And me being me, I jumped at the chance to attend an advance screening at Pipers Alley here in Chicago. I mean, Goodfellas is probably one of my top five favorite movies ever, a huge influence on my own screenwriting, so like all the A-listers, I was hoping this would be the movie that finally gets Scorsese a little gold statue.
It probably isn’t.
The Departed is a fascinating movie, a glorious sloppy mess of a movie that can’t quite decide what it wants to be. Is it a Goodfellas-esque epic, with Boston Irish and Irish-Italians standing in for New York Italians and Italian-Irish? In the beginning, it feels that way, and when they started playing “Gimme Shelter” over the opening scenes, I actually felt a little…sad. (I mean, I love Let It Bleed as much as the next guy, but using that just made me compare it unfavorably to the mind-blowingly awesome use of that and “Monkey Man” in the final frantic coked-out days of Henry Hill’s mob career. I hope they pick something different for the final cut.) Is it a straight-up pulpy thriller with a few twists thrown in? For most of the movie, yes, which makes all the star power actually seem a little distracting and unnecessary. Is it a Shakespearean drama about lies and ambition and family and all those grand themes? That’s what the end seems to be angling for, and although that aspect of it is great, it contrasts with the thriller pulpiness.
Speaking of Oriental, this is a very yin-and-yang movie, with Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio chasing each other around (and chasing the same beautiful police psychologist) in a big vortex of a plot, swirling faster and faster until their inevitable catastrophic collision. Damon plays Colin Sullivan, a smarmy Boston Southie hand-picked by mob boss Frank Costello to infiltrate the Massachussetts State Police from the ground up. (As to why they wanted him to be a state trooper rather than, say, a Boston policeman, I have no idea.) And Leo’s William Costigan, another Statie chosen by his superiors to go undercover by doing time (the Underworld equivalent of the Police Academy) and infiltrating Costello’s gang. Standing over them are the aforementioned Frank Costello, played with devilish glee by His Satanic Majesty Jack Nicholson, and a white-haired Martin Sheen as Captain Queenan, the closest thing to a God-the-Father-like good guy Scorsese’s ever given us.
Damon’s great; he slips into this role like it’s a comfortable pair of shoes he’s been breaking in all his life. His early scenes with police psychologist Madeline are some of the best in the movie, and some of the better romantic scenes Scorcese’s ever directed. Alec Baldwin’s very effective and convincing as a Beantown G-man; he has some great early scenes with Mark Wahlberg’s Dignam, another Statie who basically alternates between being Queenan’s lapdog and his attack dog. (Scorsese does cop scenes remarkably well in this movie; surprisingly enough, I liked the cop scenes better than the gangster scenes.) As for Leo, he does a capable job, and Scorsese does a lot with the relative physical similarity between him and Damon. Still, I don’t quite like him as either a gangster or as a cop acting as a gangster; playing Howard Hughes in The Aviator was a better role for him, though he was more believable in this than in Gangs of New York.
Somehow this ended up as slightly less than the sum of its parts. There were some collective gasps from the audience at the right moments, but there also was a groan or two, and there’s never a good moment for that. The plot was too clever by half; surprisingly enough, given the director, I felt it crowded out the character development to the point that DiCaprio and Sheen and (to a lesser extent) Nicholson and Damon ended up feeling like plot components rather than real people. (I actually haven’t seen Internal Affairs, the movie this is a remake of, yet, so I can’t compare it to that, but I hope there’s more of a sense of the divided loyalties that cops-as-gangsters and gangsters-as-cops must feel, a la Donnie Brasco; in this movie, neither Damon nor DiCaprio bond with their peers quite as much as one might have expected, although one gets some glimpses of the fallen-angel-kind-of-hoping-for-redemption in Damon’s character.) I gotta admit it glued me to the chair, though; even though I knew The Master himself was probably in the back row watching us watch his movie, my fanboy ass resisted the urge to get up for a “bathroom break” and a chance to see him, and I instead stayed until the screen said (Insert Credits Here) and they started passing out the little survey thingys. (Unfortunately, me and my budding-auteur buddies weren’t invited to stick around for the post-screening discussion, so we had to stick around for half an hour outside to get our glimpse of Scorsese.)
Anyway, I liked it, but I’m really hoping Scorsese cuts this into something with a more consistent feel, even if that cuts into its epic ambitions. I’m looking forward to seeing the final cut, even though I suspect it won’t be quite as good as everyone (myself included) probably hoped.
And me being me, I jumped at the chance to attend an advance screening at Pipers Alley here in Chicago. I mean, Goodfellas is probably one of my top five favorite movies ever, a huge influence on my own screenwriting, so like all the A-listers, I was hoping this would be the movie that finally gets Scorsese a little gold statue.
It probably isn’t.
The Departed is a fascinating movie, a glorious sloppy mess of a movie that can’t quite decide what it wants to be. Is it a Goodfellas-esque epic, with Boston Irish and Irish-Italians standing in for New York Italians and Italian-Irish? In the beginning, it feels that way, and when they started playing “Gimme Shelter” over the opening scenes, I actually felt a little…sad. (I mean, I love Let It Bleed as much as the next guy, but using that just made me compare it unfavorably to the mind-blowingly awesome use of that and “Monkey Man” in the final frantic coked-out days of Henry Hill’s mob career. I hope they pick something different for the final cut.) Is it a straight-up pulpy thriller with a few twists thrown in? For most of the movie, yes, which makes all the star power actually seem a little distracting and unnecessary. Is it a Shakespearean drama about lies and ambition and family and all those grand themes? That’s what the end seems to be angling for, and although that aspect of it is great, it contrasts with the thriller pulpiness.
Speaking of Oriental, this is a very yin-and-yang movie, with Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio chasing each other around (and chasing the same beautiful police psychologist) in a big vortex of a plot, swirling faster and faster until their inevitable catastrophic collision. Damon plays Colin Sullivan, a smarmy Boston Southie hand-picked by mob boss Frank Costello to infiltrate the Massachussetts State Police from the ground up. (As to why they wanted him to be a state trooper rather than, say, a Boston policeman, I have no idea.) And Leo’s William Costigan, another Statie chosen by his superiors to go undercover by doing time (the Underworld equivalent of the Police Academy) and infiltrating Costello’s gang. Standing over them are the aforementioned Frank Costello, played with devilish glee by His Satanic Majesty Jack Nicholson, and a white-haired Martin Sheen as Captain Queenan, the closest thing to a God-the-Father-like good guy Scorsese’s ever given us.
Damon’s great; he slips into this role like it’s a comfortable pair of shoes he’s been breaking in all his life. His early scenes with police psychologist Madeline are some of the best in the movie, and some of the better romantic scenes Scorcese’s ever directed. Alec Baldwin’s very effective and convincing as a Beantown G-man; he has some great early scenes with Mark Wahlberg’s Dignam, another Statie who basically alternates between being Queenan’s lapdog and his attack dog. (Scorsese does cop scenes remarkably well in this movie; surprisingly enough, I liked the cop scenes better than the gangster scenes.) As for Leo, he does a capable job, and Scorsese does a lot with the relative physical similarity between him and Damon. Still, I don’t quite like him as either a gangster or as a cop acting as a gangster; playing Howard Hughes in The Aviator was a better role for him, though he was more believable in this than in Gangs of New York.
Somehow this ended up as slightly less than the sum of its parts. There were some collective gasps from the audience at the right moments, but there also was a groan or two, and there’s never a good moment for that. The plot was too clever by half; surprisingly enough, given the director, I felt it crowded out the character development to the point that DiCaprio and Sheen and (to a lesser extent) Nicholson and Damon ended up feeling like plot components rather than real people. (I actually haven’t seen Internal Affairs, the movie this is a remake of, yet, so I can’t compare it to that, but I hope there’s more of a sense of the divided loyalties that cops-as-gangsters and gangsters-as-cops must feel, a la Donnie Brasco; in this movie, neither Damon nor DiCaprio bond with their peers quite as much as one might have expected, although one gets some glimpses of the fallen-angel-kind-of-hoping-for-redemption in Damon’s character.) I gotta admit it glued me to the chair, though; even though I knew The Master himself was probably in the back row watching us watch his movie, my fanboy ass resisted the urge to get up for a “bathroom break” and a chance to see him, and I instead stayed until the screen said (Insert Credits Here) and they started passing out the little survey thingys. (Unfortunately, me and my budding-auteur buddies weren’t invited to stick around for the post-screening discussion, so we had to stick around for half an hour outside to get our glimpse of Scorsese.)
Anyway, I liked it, but I’m really hoping Scorsese cuts this into something with a more consistent feel, even if that cuts into its epic ambitions. I’m looking forward to seeing the final cut, even though I suspect it won’t be quite as good as everyone (myself included) probably hoped.
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