Super Awesome

I am a huge fan of the singer-songwriter Imogen Heap. Everything about her - from the music (a mix of electronica/alternative/Britpop) to her fashion sense - is completely unique and it feels original. She is easily the best female artists that you've never heard of, unless you've watched the final two-and-a-half minutes of Garden State. This year, after two years of vblogging (video blogging) sharing her journey on making here third album (fourth, if you count Frou Frou's Details), Heap is months away from releasing Ellipse to the U.S. And here's the cover to the album, which looks fantastic:



Basically, I can hardly wait.

A Fork In the Road

Do I turn left
or head right?
Should I stay and fight
or run away in flight ?
Will I wear something long and warm
or short and cool?
Is she really in love with me or
is she playing me for a fool?

Every decision we choose to make
Every chance we decide to take
A fork in the road always appears
And every road taken is not as easy as it seems.

And I thought Revenge of the Fallen was the summer's worst movie

Remember when I dubbed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as the summer's worst movie? Well, Michael Bay has been dethroned by director Nick Cassavetes (the man who spawned The Notebook) and his attempt to take an ethical premise and make it a shameless, overdone, made-for-TV family melodrama that demands you cry and sniffle at ever turn.

My Sister's Keeper starts off with one of the most disgusting and heartless concepts i've heard in a while: Sarah (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric) Fitzgerald's daughter, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) has leukemia, and neither parent have the DNA strands to keep their daughter alive. Their solution? Conceive a child that can be a living, one-stop shop for all of her needs. A bone marrow? Low blood cell count? No problem, just have Anna (Abagail Breslin) donate her bodily functions to her ailing sis.

Fast forward - Kate is 15, dying, and in need of a kidney. Anna is 11 and has had enough of giving up her life to save her sister's at mother's request, so she hires an attorney (Alec Baldwin, what the hell are you doing in this picture?!) to sue Sarah for emancipation for medical needs and all hell breaks loose for the Fitzgerald clan. Did I mention, they also have a son, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), who walks around like he doesn't exist to the family?

Will Anna win her case? Will Sarah be able to talk to her youngest into giving up her only kidney? Will the family ever be able to go back to being happy? By then, the only question you'll want answered is when this movie will end. For two hours, Cassavetes bombards you with overblown dramatic scenes that begs you to shed a tear, dab you eyes with a box of Kleenex, bawl hysterically, but cry damn it, cry! Instead of reaching for the next unused piece of tissue, My Sister's Keeper made me pull out my phone every seven minutes to check how long this film would drag on.

Instead of feeling for the characters, just about all of them pissed me off. Diaz's Sarah was the most disgusting, devolving into a cold and uncaring bitch who shrugs off Anna's and Jessie's lives to save another. Patric's Brian is distant and in once scene, doesn't even notice that his son has been out all night and has just come home. Alec Baldwin has demonstrated he's got solid dramatic chops before (see The Cooler and The Departed), but he's been reduced to cheezy courtroom showboating. Even Breslin's performance as Anna, as hard as she tries, falls flat.

The saving grace is Vassilieva, the one character even the filmmakers can't sully. She gives the movie its few touching moments - a day at the beach, the flashbacks with her cancer-stricken boyfriend (Thomas Dekker) - but its too little and too late. My Sister's Keeper, an ethical family drama that's supposed to make you weepy and uplifted, but in the end, you'll leave without feeling a thing.

* star out of ***

Transformers: The Worst Movie of the Summer

The good news: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen doesn't totally suck. The F/X department went all out on the look of the battling alien robots, the Decepticons (the baddies) and the Autobots (them's the good guys); they even brought in some new characters. Megatron - voiced by the great Hugo Weaving (Mr. Smith of The Matrix trilogy) - gets more screen time. And director Michael Bay knows how to put together an amazing spectacle of shit blowing up. He's like a kid who's been given the keys to a toy store, allowing imagination to run wild with ecstasy.

The bad news: Revenge of the Fallen wasn't very good, either. The charm that Shia LeBouf had in the first movie as the bumbling award teenager, Sam, is absent from the picture; along with the comic timing of Sam's parents (the 'family discussion' about Sam supposedly beating off in the first Transformers movie would do the writers of American Pie proud). That feeling in sharing Bay's excitement and kid-like, starry eyed wonder in the first blockbuster hit has turned his marvelous creations into a head-pummeling madhouse of horrors where things are constantly being destroyed for the sake of destroying. Even John Tuturro, back portraying his role as Simmons, who took the lines that were given and turned them into sheer delight and near-perfect comic timing, looks tired and embarrassed to be in this mess.

Revenge of the Fallen sends Sam Witwicky to college, departed from his hottie girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox) and his Chevy Camero/Autobot guardian, Bumblebee, while Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots forge a alliance with the U.S. military to hunt down the remaining Decepticons. The 'plot' - you really can't call this horseshit of a script from Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who penned May's stellar reboot of Star Trek - takes Sam, Mikaela, and the Autobots to Egypt to stop the Decepticons from finding an ancient device that can power another ancient device that can destroy the sun and harvest the lifeforce of the alien robots. You buying any of this crap? Didn't think so.

To paraphrase Peter Travers, movie critic of Rolling Stone Magazine - "Revenge of the Fallen has everything. Everything loud, dumb, violent, racist, and misogynistic that director Michael Bay can think of puking up onscreen." The action sequences serve little purpose but to leave a trail of destruction an becomes stale and unoriginal. Bay's movies aren't know for its solid acting chops, which I have come to accept, but this time 'round was so hollow and emotionless that it makes bay's other disasters - the insulting Pearl Harbor and the appalling Armageddon - look like they have been robbed by members of the Academy.

Fox was sizzling in the first Transformers flick, but was never cheapened to porn star status. Her, and Isabelle Lucas - a college student with the hots for Sam and a wicked tongue - could have been replaced by adult film stars Jenaveve Jolie and Jenna Haze and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

And the shameless, ignorant black stereotypes portrayed in Autobot newbies Skids and Mudflap (get this - both are illiterate, both love talkin' jive and street, and one of them have a golden front tooth) almost made me hang my head in embarrassment of the spectacle that was taking place in front of the screen. You can hear Bay shouting to the cast and crew: "Hey, more explosions! Megan, show a little more ass, toots! Shia, Josh [Dumael], and Tyrese [Gibson], less dialogue, more yelling you're lines! Megan, what did I tell you? Less talky, more jiggling your tits! And where the fuck are the explosions I asked for?! This is what my audience wants to see!"

There's still a long ways to go before the Razzies, but I won't be surprised if Revenge of the Fallen leads in all major categories in the end. It's Michael Bay at his worst, only this time dragging Spielberg (executive producer) and his kick-ass alien robots with him thought the grime and cow shit.

Ok, I take it back. Transformers 2 really did suck.

* 1/2 stars out of ****

The King of Pop has died.

This is fucked up. First First McMahon, then Fawcett, now Micheal Jackson.

We've just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived.

Once at the hospital, the staff tried to resuscitate him but he was completely unresponsive.

We're told one of the staff members at Jackson's home called 911.

La Toya ran in the hospital sobbing after Jackson was pronounced dead.

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince "Blanket" Michael Jackson II.

The man had his personal demons, but no one can deny that his presence changed the face of music forever. I can remember when I was just a child when Michael was still huge in the early to mid 90's. The world of rock-n-roll has lost a legend, and he will be missed by everyone who loved his music, worshiped his moves, or was inspired to follow in his footsteps.

Long live the King of Pop.

On President Obama

Let's get to the obvious: it's great to have a president who is articulate whenever he gives a speech. Its also damn refreshing to have a Commander-In-Chief that is willing to listen to all sides of an issue, rather than say its my way or the highway all of the time. The United States has been subjected to eight long years of an administration who's idea of diplomacy and the exchange of different ideas was basically do as we say or you're with the terrorists (in certain cases, if you disagreed with the agenda, you were either outed by Robert Novak, Scooter Libby, and/or Dick Cheney).

Having said that, Here's my take to my fellow liberals and President Obama himself:

To the liberals: I know you're disappointed that the President hasn't done some of the things we wold like (the defense of Defense of Marriage Act, not getting tougher on the banks, waterboarding-gate and not going after Bush administration officials, are some examples). I share your frustration, but we also have to remember one important detail - it's been almost six months since Barack Obama took office. The problems we're facing - from a recession to a health care crisis - won't be solved by Obama stealing Harry Potter's wand, and enunciating, 'Reparo,' and the economy will be thriving and Adam and Steve will be able to say "I do," legally. My honest guess is that he's picking and choosing his battles (e.g. - fix the economy and get Americans affordable health care now, get re-elected and tackle gay marriage and reforming how Wall Street does buisness in term two, possibly).

To the President: I know you're trying to get past the partisan and political divide that has poisoned the national debate for years by running as a president who'll reach out to both sides of the aisle, but in order for bi-partisanship to work, the other side must unclench their fist. The GOP, thus far, has been unwilling to do so. It's time to let the Republicans know that bi-partisanship is still on the table, but until they make the effort without acting like vindictive, shallow pricks, leave em' be. You have 60 votes (whenever Minnesota will seat Al Franken) in the Senate, a huge majority in the House of Representatives, not to mention the public on your side and an enthusiastic base eager to change our country. The Grand Old Party is, for the moment, irrelevant.

Also, I understand you're trying to the president for everyone, which is a noble goal, but at some point, you're going to have to take a strong stand on key issues we liberals voted for you on. In order to get health care and other legislation passed, you have to draw a line in the sand and say, 'this is what I, and the American people want, and this is what we're going to do. Don't like it? Tough shit.' In order to get done what needs to get done, sometimes you're going to have to risk pissing people in Congress off.

They're as mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore!

I, or course, am talking about David Letterman's joke about Sarah Palin's kid getting knocked-up by Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees. Now the conservatives want him.....(drumroll, please)......fired from his gig as hos of The Late Show on CBS.

Sebastian Gray at HillBuzz has been giving lessons this week on how to get David Letterman fired for his rape jokes about Gov. Sarah Palin’s 14-year-old daughter, Willow.

Today he has a post explaining that Republicans do not have the same tenacity as Democrats in working the system to get what they want — in this case, persuading CBS to fire David Letterman. He is correct. However, there is a bonanza of empowerment in it for Republicans if we make this a fight we are determined to win.

Sebastian says it will take 30 days of daily letter-writing to CBS and Letterman’s advertisers. That’s because for the first two or three weeks, they’ll just wait for the tempest to blow over. Not only do we have to keep it up, we have to make it build. This is our line in the sand. Letterman MUST BE FIRED NOW!!!

So I take it Jay Leno and Bill Maher should be protested as well? Both comedians have made jokes about the Governor of Alaska and her daughter, Bristol.

Furthermore, Letterman didn't mention Palin's 14 year-old, Willow when making that joke. She did that all on her own. Letterman's joke was tasteless (IMO, political leader's kids are - or should be - out-of-bounds), but Palin is out to make this bigger than what it needs to be.

You'd think the two apologies he gave this week would get him out of the trouble storm, right? Not with her supporters, apparently. And you know, when protesting, they only did it with class; no, unlike that dick on the late night comedy circuit, they would be protest their outrage, but would be respectful and not make total asses of themselves for all to see....

Random Notes

* On President Obama - Let's get to the obvious: it's great to have a president who is articulate whenever he gives a speech. Its damn refreshing to have a Commander-In-Chief that is willing to listen to all sides of an issue, rather than say its my way or the highway all of the time. The United States has been subjected to that kind of mindset, and we all know that turned out in certain areas. Having said that, allow me to address the conservatives, the liberals, and the president himself:

To the conservatives: Please shut the fuck up about how Obama is driving the country on a road to socialism, or how he's a far leftist, or how he's the fucking anti-Christ. The man's already done many things that have pissed off our side (not going after Bush admnistration officials for waterborading detainees at Guantanamo Bay, his defense of DOMA - Defense of Marriage Act, to name a few) He is a pragmatic, left-of-center president, not the second coming of Joseph Stalin. Get a grip, and come back to us when you can a.) tell us us what you're for, b.) drop the Christian Right from your party, and c.) reach out to minorites and the youth without having right-wing talking heads drive us awan further.

To the liberals: I know you're disappointed that the Preisdent hans't done some of the things we wold like (see above). In a sense, I share your fustration, but we also have to remember one important detail - it's been almost six months since Barack Obama took office. The problems we're facing - from a recession to a health care crisis - won't be solved by Obama stealing Harry Potter's wand, and enuncitating, Reparo!, and the economy will be thriving and Adam and Steve will be able to say "I do," legally. My honest guess is that he's picking and choosing his battles (fix the economy and get Americans affordable healthcare now, get re-elected and takle gay marriage and reforming how Wall Street does buisness in the second term).

To the President: I know you're trying to get past the partisan and political divide that has poisoined the national debate for years by running as a president who'll reach out to both sides of the aisle, but in order for bi-partisanship to work, the other side must unclench their fist. The GOP, thus far, has been unwilling to do so. It's time to let the Republicans know that bi-partisanship is still on the table, but until they make the effort without acting like vindictive, shallow pricks, leave em' be. You have 60 votes (whenever Minnesota will seat Al Franken) in the Senate, a huge majority in the House of Representatives, not to mention the public on your side and an enthusiastic base eager to change our country. The Grand Old Party is, for the moment, irrelevent.

* On the Palin v. Letterman war - How did this become a hot-button issue? And why, now, after ever comedian from Jay Leno to Bill Maher roasted her and how Bristol got knocked up during the campaign, is she now outraged that a comedian made a tasetless joke about how one of her daughers was knocked-up by A-Rod of the Yankees? David Letterman clearly stepped over the line, but then again, who hasn't in the world of late-night television? And why are some conservatives in the blogosphere now calling for Letterman to be fired? By that logic, everyone who cracked on Palin's family and her would be on the unemployment line.

Delilah

I cannot recall the warmth of the sun
Nor the taste of my lover's lips
When she pulled my face close to hers
Under sunny skies as we experience our first kiss.


These hands don't remember the rush of the sea
Or ever the touch of your soft and silky skin
When we played in the ocean
Clinging together as the morning tide came crashing in.


My eyes can't recall the colors of a rainbow
Or ever the blinding rays of light
Or how beautifully the moon and the stars
Shined as lovely as you did at night.


Nothing has been the same, my darling Delilah
Since the day you departed from this world
And I know there's nothing God or his Angels can do
To unthaw this heart that has gone cold.


This is a wound time alone cannot heal
Your death is something that shall haunt me unto the end
Until the slow decay of time or by my own hand
Will I be able to once more look upon your beautiful face again.

May Nights

Movies, Best: It's a no brainer. Star Trek, a movie franchise thought to be left for dead after the fiasco that was Star Trek Nemisis and the atrocious TV show prequel Star Trek Enterprise rises from the ashes to provide the film to beat this summer at the movies. All the actors excel, notably Chris Pine capturing the swagger and charm of Captain Kirk, Eric Bana as Nero the Romulan villain with an ax to grind against the Federation, Simon Pegg is a gut buster as Montgomery Scott; but the scene stealer is Zackery Quinto as Spock. From the pointy ears right down to the first officer's actions, he scores every scene he's in. But the real credit goes to director J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossible 3) for injecting explosive action, humor and heart into a franchise who's best days (The Wrath of Khan, First Contact) seemed long behind them.
*** 1/2 stars our of ****

Up: Let's get to the obvious - the wizards at Pixar are to movies and animation what Radiohead is to rock-and-roll, and music in general: neither have put out a godawful piece of shit; even the weaker works (A Bug's Life, Cars, and Monsters Inc. for Pixar; Amnesiac and Pablo Honey for the Oxford quintet) stand alone as a unique work of art. Does Up stand with works like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and last year's WALL-E? Hard to tell. But Up is one of the funniest - and most poignant works the animation company has made. You can feel the love between Carl (a superb Ed Asner) and his sweetheart Elle even from the time they first met. The opening sequence that takes the lovers from childhood to marriage to Elle's death is a whirlwind of joy and pain and is a study of undying love that has never flamed out. It's one of the most moving scenes in years and is more real than the forced charm tossed out in movies these days (yes, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, i'm talking to you). And the rest of the movie doesn't miss a comic beat.
*** 1/2 stars out of ****

Disappointing, most: X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Talk about a huge let down. What was supposed to be the balls-to-the-wall, sucker-punch kickoff to the summer movie season left me feeling cold and betrayed. Hugh Jackman, back as mutant with the killer claws keeps intact the humor and the badassery status he earned throughout all the X-Men movies, but it's still not enough to overcome a bland script meant to excite, intrigue and tie up all lose ends, which instead confuses (Wolverine and Sabertooth are brothers?!). Wolverine is a clear demonstration of two things: that too much can be a bad thing (see Pirates of the Caribbean, The Matrix, and High School Musical) and as kickass Logan is, he still needs the rest of the X-Men at his side.
** stars our of ****

Surprise, biggest: Spock returns! No, not Quinto. Lenord Nimoy playing Spock in Star Trek. Confused? Don't be. just sit back and be amazed. Not to be outdone, the Governator returns to the screen as the Terminator?! OK, it was a CG Arnold, but it still was cool to watch him throw Christian Bale around like a rag doll in Terminator Salvation.

Performances, best: The cast of Star Trek. Not a weak performance from any of the leads and supporting actors. Everyone from Chris Pine, to Bruce Greenwood as Captain Pike to John Cho (yes, Jon Cho from the Harold and Kumar movies) as Commander Sulu to Winona Ryder (WTF?!) playing Spock's mother, everyone has a chance to shine and everyone is dynamite. Runner-up is also a surprise: Porn queen Sasha Grey as a Manhattan call girl in Steven Soderbergh The Girlfriend Experience. As good as Grey was, it has been reported that the 21 year-old porno actress has plans to keep doing movies and continue to have sex for the camera. Take that, Hannah Montana!


Underrated, highly: Angels and Demons. Lost in the Wolverine, Star Trek and Terminator shuffle is a thrilling, faced-paced sequel to the 2006 blockbuster The DaVinci Code, that never lets up. Director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks, reprising his role as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon caught a log of flak from the critics last time around: DaVinci was too talkative and too boring and Hank's haircut sucked. This time Hanks ditches the hair-don't and Howard moves at a faster, edgier pace. The plot is a mess (Langdon returns to Rome to stop the Catholic Church's old enemy, the Illuminati, from using the stolen antimatter from blowing Vatican City to Kingdom Come, but the group has infiltrated the walls of the Vatican and everyone is suspect. Huh?), but the action sizzles and the actors are solid, particularly from Ewan McGregor as Father Patrick McKenna. It may be more religious psychobabble, but its still a great time even if Star Trek and Up are sold out at the box office.
*** stars our of ****