Hold me over–

Thought I’d get you all warmed up for my mix with a little something I like to call my personal “claim to fame.” This is a video of my great uncle, Francisco “Charro” Avitia, performing one of his most beloved mexican folk songs… Wait for the climax. Don’t worry folks, those are blanks…

And here are a few film blogs I’ve been following closely as of late:

*Observations of Film Art:  Good discussions, sometimes too academic as just an RSS feed.

*Green Cite: Keeping a finger on new DVD releases, the festival circuit and a few pod casts ta’ boot.

Shooting Down Pictures: a terrific catalog of rare and orphaned films reviewed by a very bright dude.

*Like Anna Karina’s Sweater: I could take it or leave it.

*links fixed. 🙂

Adieu friends!

Gilmore Boy (or Post Grad)

This is just to say that Nick Becker has a review of Post Grad on Tiny Mix Tapes and that you will most likely be seeing other reviews of other films by the same man on other occasions soon. Keep an eye out. I’m so proud.

I watch the Watchmen

It needed the squid.

Keeping with the negativity, Leonard Cohen would be rolling in his grave if he wasn’t alive and on tour. I mean seriously, who the fuck thought it was a good idea to attach Hallelujah to soft core super hero porn? Calling the soundtrack decisions dubious would be a compliment.

With that out of the way, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the adaptation. While earlier I worried about the hyper fidelity of the work, I now feel it worked well in an unintended manner (more on that later). The potentially cheesy moments were not as pronounced as they may have been. I mean sure, the angsty and thin philosophizing is there but it does not serve itself much worse than it did in the actual book. The weak moments of the novel were predictably weak on screen (Manhattan on Mars waxing about the miracle of sex for one).

The stand outs  are the visceral moments. This is a gratuitously bloody film. While this can be held against it, I personally see it as the adaptation’s greatest strength. You forget how superfluously dark Watchmen is while reading it. You don’t while watching it. In action some of the scenes are truly horrific – mostly the Rorschach stuff. The film brings out the nihilism of the novel and asks you to look at the mess for what its worth. Beneath the petty philosophy of the work is a burning core of violence, anarchy, and vacancy. The film nails it. In a way, Snyder’s vision unwittingly acts as an exposé.