Mad Men Shocker: Glenn Beck Will Be Featured in Season 5 Episodes!

St. Vincent Does An Elvis Costello Fake Out on 'Conan'

Brand New and Its Fans Get Born-Again at the Croc Rock

Concert Review

By Ryan Sartor

As rock screamers Brand New took the stage Thursday night, they did not conjure up images of musicians ready to play, but rather a group of priests preparing for holy mass—albeit in ratty t-shirts and jeans. The reverence with which Brand New is treated by its fans (and to a lesser extent, how the band treats itself) is sort of an anomaly. Their debut album, “Your Favorite Weapon”, was not dissimilar from other work in the pop/punk/emo factory that produced bands like Taking Back Sunday and New Found Glory. But in the years that followed, Brand New consistently showed contempt for their listeners, releasing the moody, depressing, but melodic and harmony-infused “Deja Entendu”(an album that felt ambitious enough to make them the heir apparent to Radiohead), only to follow that up with the even more moody and depressing, although stripped of any pleasant sounds, “The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me”, which with its slow-building, go-nowhere tracks and incessant screaming, felt like a band refusing to give their listeners anything to enjoy. 

Such an attitude can lead to backlash, but Brand New’s fans embraced this attitude, wanting all the more to know what they had done to upset lead singer Jesse Lacey, begging him to please love them. Lacey and his band mates upped the ante with 2009’s “Daisy”, a screaming escapade through anger and misunderstanding, which would never have been mistaken for the work of a band that penned the tongue-in-cheek song “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad” if their moniker didn’t accompany both LPs.

In a 2009 interview with music magazine “Kerrang!”, Lacey described the making of “Daisy” by saying, “We were thinking a lot more about what we'd want to play when we were up onstage rather than actually what you'd want to hear on a record.”

Seeing the band on stage, this statement makes all kinds of sense. The incessant screaming in half of the songs shouldn’t work, but it does. The melodies buried in “The Devil and God” and “Daisy” come roaring to the front, and the capacity crowd in Allentown (who all seemed to be 17-years-old, which could make one feel ancient) screamed along to just about every tune. There were a few concert-goers who remained silent during tracks from Brand New’s later albums, but these people were rocking out with them best of them as the band powered through their early hits. In recent tours, Brand New would play a few songs from “Deja Entendu” and one from “Your Favorite Weapon”, but at the Croc Rock, they performed six “Deja” songs and four from “Your Favorite Weapon”. Granted, tracks from both albums were updated with Lacey’s screams and the band’s thrashing instrumentation, but fans were happy all the same. Unexpectedly, Brand New’s early tracks (featuring impossibly immature lyrics like, “I hope the next boy that you kiss has something terribly contagious on his lips”) feel completely at home next to their more recent, contemplative efforts: through sheer will, Brand New pushes early naught pop/punk whine-o tracks through the crucible of legitimacy. 

Throughout the show (which lasted nearly two hours), there was crowd surfing and a few impromptu mosh pits, but just as often fans were singing with their eyes closed, on the verge of tears, connecting with the band in a way that is rare for even the most intimate shows. Concert-goers came from New York and New Jersey, eager to worship at the altar of Brand New. It would be foolish to predict what their next album will sound like, though at a Baltimore concert two days before their show in Allentown, Lacey told the audience the band was “tired of bumming you guys out. We’re trying to write something happy.” Listening to the band’s records, one could be forgiven for thinking Brand New never cares about their fans’ happiness. At the Croc Rock Thursday night, they proved nothing could be further from the truth—at least for this tour.

"Beeswax": My Favorite Film of 2009

I started writing a top ten list and found that while certain films were great and definitely worth seeing, you've probably seen something similar to anything I'd recommend that was just as good. I mean SEE whatever you're going to see. And check out the Best of '09 lists by Christopher Bell and Alex Megaro for some great titles to add to your Netflix queue.

I didn't see as many movies as I should have this past year, but the one that I liked best was BEESWAX, Andrew Bujalski's third feature film about... I'm not sure any description would make you want to run out and see it (I don't know if you could find it if you tried - at the bottom of this page I've posted theatres its opening at throughout February, none in the North East - maybe download it, it comes out on DVD in April).

What I LIKED about the film were the performances Mr. Bujalski got out of his actors. Just to use an example, a film like BROKEN EMBRACES is great, but the performance that one gets out of a trained actor will nearly always be less authentic than one out of a non-actor. For the most part, Mr. Bujalski works with non-actors. And if the people have acted before, it's been in films LIKE his own.

"Beeswax" is subtle like a Raymond Carver short story, except more fun. You watch each scene, studying the speech, looking for clues, trying to determine WHAT the people on screen are thinking. You often have no IDEA what these characters are up to - the miracle is that Mr. Bujalski is always determined to let everyone on screen act like a human being.

The film is about a pair of twin sisters. One is thinking about teaching English as a 2nd Language abroad, and the other owns a vintage clothing store and is on the verge of being sued by her co-owner. Mr. Bujalski has said in interviews that this film was difficult to write as it required a great deal of exposition, but his films are always just about people talking anyway, so it was kind of funny to read that.

The secret to BEESWAX's success, and the reason that it is difficult from every other film released this year (that I've seen), is that Mr. Bujalski's agenda is known to no one and yet simultaneously everything seems so mundane, so ordinary, so everyday. When Mr. Bujalski refuses to explain what the title BEESWAX means, he says that he thought the meaning was obvious, but when people started asking, he decided it was more interesting to not explain it.

Mr. Bujalski's previous film, the excellent MUTUAL APPRECIATION, seemed equally mysterious upon first viewing - but upon second viewing became a great indictment of human nature and went from being a fairly light comedy to a rather bleak view of humanity, or at least a foreboding one.

I don't know if additional analysis of BEESWAX will yield such answers. I think that Mr. Bujalski has learned his lesson and nothing will slip through the cracks this time. It's worth mentioning that I laughed harder during BEESWAX than I did any film this year. Naively, I thought BEESWAX would be Mr. Bujalski's first film to really expand and get a big audience - but it's been doing the usual roadshow through the country. I know it must be frustrating for him, but as long as he keeps getting just enough money to make these small, subtle, interesting films, the cinema is better for it. Many a great filmmaker has been ruined by success. I don't think success could ruin Andrew Bujalski, but if he stopped making these types of films, I think my heart would break (just a little bit).

Here's where it's playing in the future if you're near these places:

JANUARY 2010
January 26, 2010 - Real Pizza Cinerama, Bar Harbor, ME
January 26, 2010 - Tropic Cinema, Key West, FL

(That's Andrew Bujalski on the RIGHT ---->)

FEBRUARY 2010
February 5, 2009 - Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL
February 5, 2009 - Capital Theater, Olympia, WA
February 12, 2009 - The Screen, Santa Fe, NM
February 12, 2009 - Angelika Film Center, Dallas, TX
February 19, 2009 - UW-M Union Theatre, Milwaukee, WI
February 26, 2009 - Zinema Two, Duluth, MN

NBC Never Wanted Conan to Succeed

The whole late night debacle going on with Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and NBC is really interesting. Firstly, I am amazed that all of this is being discussed so publicly. The argument that affiliates would have gone public with complaints about The Jay Leno Show doesn't hold water. If that were true, then NBC could have let the affiliates speak out, and then the public would have had some sympathy for them when they announced that they had to cancel The Jay Leno Show. Either way, the cancellation of The Jay Leno Show should not have affected The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

One could argue that they never should have forced Leno to leave The Tonight Show in the first place, but the fact that they did shows that the NBC executives realized how terribly unfunny Leno has always been, and wanted to get someone exciting like Conan O'Brien to host The Tonight Show.

They announced the cancellation fo The Jay Leno Show, and that Jay would host a show at 11:30, because they wanted to piss off Conan O'Brien and force him to quit. From the exiling of Friday Night Lights to DirecTV, to the bogus cancellation of Southland, NBC has only made money-based decisions in the past year.

Which brings us to Dick Ebersol. Why the chairman of NBC Sports has an opinion on late night is beyond me, but Ebersol is very upset at Conan O'Brien for speaking out publicly against Leno, calling it “chicken-hearted and gutless to blame a guy you couldn’t beat in the ratings.”

Okay, Mr. Ebersol, let's look at the facts: people watch shows at 10 o'clock, and then keep the television on through the local news, and then watch whatever late night program is on. The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien debuted on June 1st. No one is watching prime time television in June, because there's no new programming on the big four aside from reality competitions based on Japanese game shows. So, there was nothing to draw people into Conan's Tonight Show and build an audience. This was deliberate. NBC was scared and wanted to keep Leno at this point, but knew if they backed out of their deal with O'Brien, they would have had to pay him $45 million.

So then they wait until September to debut The Jay Leno Show, a non-starter program that no one watched. It sucked up guests that Conan would have gotten and its presence showed a general lack of confidence in Mr. O'Brien's ability to hold down late night TV on NBC. If they really believed in Conan, they would have told Jay that he could take his business elsewhere, but they didn't.

Mr. Ebersol is claiming that “what this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan.” How could Conan have ever succeeded, Mr. Ebersol? Who is going to tune into NBC at 11:30 to watch a guy talk to celebrities, do a monologue when that previously happened in nearly the exact same fashion, minus the laughs, at 10 p.m.?

“I like Conan enormously personally,” Mr. Ebersol said. “He was just stubborn about not being willing to broaden the appeal of his show.”

If by "broadening the appeal of his show" he means putting on a show like Leno's, then he's an idiot. Conan O'Brien has always been funny, and Jay Leno has always been a moron. Everyone knows this except the money men, and idiots who live in the Midwest.

Here's the Times piece on Ebersol.

Sawed by guest critic Adam Perry

A look at the Saw films by guest critic Adam Perry


What came first, Tobin Bell or the Saw franchise?

Last night, a disturbing vision came to me. I was standing in a friend’s bathroom, taking a break from an intense but friendly card game. The game went on into the wee hours of the morning, ending up touching the pillow at six thirty A.M. So it is about four, five. I’m standing in this bathroom, collecting myself, as the routine types and amounts of substances have been passed about throughout the night. I look to my left, my reflection looks to its right. I see the bathtub. And I think, I’m about to be sawed. Sawed is the extremely scientific and clever-sounding term I developed over six straight years of watching the Saw horror films. To be ‘sawed’ is to be targeted by the main villain, Jigsaw (or just Saw,) as one who is not appreciative of their life and therefore must be subjected to numerous punishments, each more horrifying and gruesome than the last. Jigsaw, a cancer patient with an indeterminate amount of time to live, targets those who have abandoned life as a worthy pursuit, taking for granted time that he would literally kill to have. So he designs traps and mazes and punishments that are meant to teach the subject a lesson or two about the value of life.

Saw is unquestionably the franchise of the 2000s (or whatever we are choosing to call this decade.) In six short years, from 2004 to 2009, every October has brought with it a new film in the series. The first, released in 2004 with a budget of one million dollars, made almost twenty times that its first weekend in release. The first film, one of only two to not premier in first place (eat one, Paranormal Activity) ushered in the characteristics that would “define” the franchise.

First and foremost is incredibly poor acting, no matter the caliber of the actor hired. Bear in mind we are discussing a film that brought out Danny Glover’s worst performance, and gave us the worst piece of acting on screen of all time with Cary Elwes as Lawrence Gordon. Everyone is either a ham-handed, are-they or aren’t-they villain or a shrieking victim. The difference between the two is minimal, as almost every character of relevance, and I use that term loosely, spends screen time occupying both roles. I would be inclined to say that the acting was most tolerable in the second film, although Donnie Wahlberg and future Saw-ee Lyriq Bent make me regret typing that statement. Saw III saw the exit of many players, such as Jigsaw (live Jigsaw at least; Bell lives on in that most atrocious of storytelling techniques: the flashback) and his preening, shouting assistant Amanda. Saw III also gave us our first look at Mark Hoffman, an investigative officer of some sort (another Saw trait: law enforcement officers are always of indeterminate origin) who has connections to Jigsaw. Saw V had the bad acting showdown between Costas Mandylor, who plays Mark Hoffman, and Scott Patterson as the main character being sawed, Agent Peter Strahm, both cop characters seem to be vying for worst law enforcement officer ever. Saw VI, the first since the original to not open at number one (also opening about 4 million fewer than Saw I,) featured the lamest acting.

The second trait that one can readily link to any Saw film is that each film tries to outdo the past in terms of the twists and turns taken by the story and the shocking nature of the ending. In regards to this, logic and consistency tend to be abandoned. Sure, the endings of II through V all have a certain mathematical logic to them. Saws III-IV had one of the best plot twist combinations ever, where the two were running concurrently, and the end of Saw IV encompassed and continued the end of Saw III. This was where the series indisputably hit its peek. However, the altering of the Saw-niverse that occurred to accommodate these plot twists was rather preposterous. In the first Saw, John Kramer emerges as the villain, the presumed dead body that lay between the two main characters for the whole film. John Kramer is a regular, cancerous Joe in the first film, nothing making him special except for the fact that he was dying, and this made him angry about those who took life for granted. Over the course of films III-VI, John Kramer is revealed to be some huge mogul of sorts; flashbacks show his face on the cover of numerous magazines, and he is shown as an intellectual, man of industry, and philanthropist, occupying all roles to a certain amount of accolade from the public. This is the kind of character development that occurs on the fly. Nobody planned for this at the beginning of the series and so therefore you can feel the extremely forced nature of the change. But no matter. Tobin Bell could make reading the phone book nefariously hilarious, and as long as he has screen time the series will have something going for it.

The third and most predominant trait the Saw films are the production values and direction, both of which resemble that of the sub-par student film. Grimy, dank locations are the setting for everything, from torture chambers to police stations to doctor’s offices to doctor’s homes. Nothing can escape the production designer’s appetite for grays and dark blood reds and general grime. The city in which Saw takes place must be the most depressing to live in, making Gotham or any Alex “The Crow”  Proyas-designed city look downright like Pleasantville. Jigsaw’s warehouse/funhouses always have a permanent coat of rust and stain about them; he seems only to use junkyard scrap when building his traps, not caring a bit about the germs and contaminants that inhabit rusty metal. And for such hazardous looking contraptions, they all seem to work as if there was no rust or damaged part about them. The makers of these films realized early on that budgets could be kept low using shitty locations, and that it would also be in keeping with the themes they were going for.

So here I am, standing in this bathroom, thinking that it is something like a scene out of Saw. And a realization hits me. I feel that way because I deserve to be sawed. I hold down no job, honest or otherwise, and contribute nothing to society other than tax revenue. I panic, thinking that Mark Hoffman is waiting behind those shower curtains in a pig mask, ready to strike, and unleash me upon a warehouse full of my captured friends and plenty of bloodletting devises. Then I snap out of it, and return to the game, the only fear in my mind that there won’t be a Saw VII.

Saw VI certainly did not kill the franchise. While researching facts for this article I stumbled upon a screeninglog.com article, stating that “Saw VII 3-D…David “Saw V” Hackl’s film will open in theatres Oct. 22, 2010.” (I have already marked my 2010 calendar.) So we can see that it will take world’s more than a sub-30 million theatrical run to put the final nail through Jigsaw’s coffin. The danger of Saw VI is alienating the real fans, such as myself, who enjoy such trash films as long as their intelligence is not insulted. Saw VI, tried to be topical, making the lead villain an evil life insurance provider who had at one point rejected John Kramer, Jigsaw, on the grounds that he had terminal cancer, which did not fit this magic “formula” the agent had invented. “But your formula fails to take into account the most basic of all factors, the will of the patient to live.” John Kramer warns him. Well, five years or so later I’m sure he regretted it, after what Jigsaw posthumously subjected him to. This poorly written farce dumbs down the relevance of the real crisis facing us from drug companies and insurance agents, not to mention the fact that no one is in this theatre to watch “The Informant!” or “A Civil Action.” Saw VI was also about 40% made up of scenes from other Saw movies that were literally lifted right out of them. Other films in the series, however illogical, did not feel the need to over-explain the plot twists with scenes that audiences had already seen once, or even twice. Hopefully Saw VII will have a nice million dollar budget, very doubtful given it’s 3-D nature, and return to the basics of the original film. Until that happens, and Cary Elwes returns, it’s game over.

Luna Nueva and Terminator Four reviews by Adam Perry

Special guest critic Adam Perry weighs in on New Moon and Terminator: Salvation

´"Ten million flies can´t be wrong. Eat more shit."

-G.C. Hill

How long did it take Twilight to storm the most mundane hill in the world, that of mass appeal? The book Twilight came out in 2005, the final one, Breaking Dawn, in 2008. There are also apparently unpublished retellings and second parts to books one and two. The third book is called Eclipse, the second, New Moon. I think each book sold over ten copies. The author is Stephanie Meyer, a Mormon. She has never seen an R-rated film, except for parts of Interview with a Vampire.

The first film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, came out on November 21st, 2008. Twilight the movie looked as though, from it´s exceptionally atrocious previews, like everything was saturated in grey. Maybe those were the creative differences that drove Hardwicke from the film, although it was allegedly the production timeline for New Moon. It took three hundred and fifty-seven days for New Moon, re-titled The Twilight Saga: New Moon to appear onscreens, unless, like me, you were in Spain, in which case it came out two days earlier than it did state side.

I saw the first trailer for New Moon before Where the Wild Things Are. It was a single scene, consisting of Kristen Stewart, the heroine, being threatened by an unseen attacker, and a shirtless Taylor Lautner, who nearly went the way of Hardwicke himself, run and turn into a wolf, defending her. The effects were so horrendous looking that I thought to myself, I have to see this film. Twilight´s extremely poor-looking production value and foolish greys had already tempted me, and here was new moon, with a release date falling on my birthday, tempting me again. The first full trailer of the Chris Wietz directed film looked so awful I couldn´t believe it was from a real movie, thus solidfying my need to see it.

However, things, as always, did not go according to plan. I had an opportunity to travel with a good friend, and although it meant missing both Bad LT. Port of Call New Orleans, I had to leave the country. However, as was to be expected, New Moon was playing worldwide, even earlier than in the states! I bullied my friend, a reluctent fan of the first film only, not the books, into seeing New Moon in spanish.

Since I knew nothing of Twilight or New Moon's plot, the movie did not make much sense to me. I know that New Moon starts on Bella´s birthday (because I remembered from Spanish class that cumpleaños means birthday), and that she is almost assaulted by one of her vampire lover Edward´s friends. This prompts Edward to leave the story, which I figured out because I was only seeing shadowy images of Robert Pattinson, which let me know he was in those scenes only in Bella´s mind. I knew that she was growing close to the Ducky-like Jacob (soley in personality, as Jacob is muscular enough to shame any gym-going man), who turns out to be a wolf also. Then Bella travels to a foreign country I didn´t know because I don´t speak spanish, Dakota Fanning showed up for no reason, some ancient vampires lead by Michael Sheen let Edward go, and he and Bella return to the states. The film ends with the most anti-climactic confrontation between werewolf and vampire.

I knew when I was supposed to laugh, as the audience´s laughter told me something funny was happening, and more importantly, when I wasn´t supposed to, which would be when I was the only one laughing, usually at Robert Pattinson´s hilarious ghostly images.

First, the good. The soundtrack, the entire theatre letting out a collective orgasmic gasp the first time Jacob appears shirtless, and any time Robert Pattinson is on screen.

The bad. The differences between vampires and humans in this series seem only to be strength and agility. Nary a fang or even a bite is shown, and vampires walk about during the day time freely. I´m all for reinventing the wheel and everything, but it should be reinvented with talent, not a bunch of illogical and, frankly, uninteresting stylistic choices.

At least Chris Weitz allowed a color other than grey into the film. Next job: getting Kristen Stewart to crack a smile. Current grade: A for a hilarious time. I plan to watch and review both Twilight and New Moon in english.

This morning I re-watched Terminator: Salvation. I had seen it in theatres and left taking only the discovery of Sam Worthington with me as a positive, hating the rest. This was mostly because the trailer for the film that debuted with The Dark Knight looked amazing, with the best Nine Inch Nails song (the day the world went away) playing throughout. However, upon second viewing, the film can be seen as, if nothing else positive, ambitious. Unlike the first three Terminator films, which were exaclty the same film no matter what any one says, McG and his crew cooked up a plot that did not just involve running from a machine that is unstoppable until film´s end. He split the movie into two parts, one that followed Christian Bale as the fourth person to play John Connor (yeah, I´m counting The Sarah Connor Chronicles), and the other following executed criminal Marcus Wright, played by the revelatory Sam Worthington. The film lumbers along inoffensively and is even somewhat satisfying, but it has three major problems that can make it flunk-worthy to purists.

1) the marginalization of John Connor.

for the main character of the film, John Connor is actually outmatched by Marcus Wright for screen time. It doesn´t help that the scenes he does have are full of tired shouting and predictable struggles with superiors, while Wright is an interesting, compelling, mysterious character that the audience will find way more interesting and exciting to follow. As John Connor, Christain Bale doesn´t really bring anything to the table, not giving a bad performance, but certainly not making the audience miss him when he is gone.

2) References to the other films

there are three of these that I find intolerable, one somewhat O.K. Young Kyle Reece, suprisingly not terribly played by Anton Yelchin, tells Marcus Wright "Come with me if you want to live." strike one. The second, which is atually somewhat more subtile, is Wright teaching Reece to tie his shotgun to himself, as Michael Biehn does in Terminator 1. The third is John Connor telling his wife, this time played by Bland, I mean Bryce, Dallas Howard, "I´ll be back." Not only does infuriate me to think how much that original line is taken out of context as it is, this "homage" solidified it. The fouth, and most unforgiveable, is a fake Arnold as the main terminator at the end of the film, revealed as though it is a huge surprise. Don´t treat me like an idiot McG, especially not after the dollars I pumped into Charlie´s Angels I and II and all the time I spent defending you, I know that ain´t Arnold Schwarzzenegger. Absolutly pointless.

3), and finally. the hated PG-13 rating

No, I did not want to see Moon Bloodgood naked. I wanted the old fashioned, and never abandoned unbrideled carnage of the first three films. Even the huge action set pieces that plagued Rise of the Machines were filled with the requisite creative blood-letting that had defined the franchise. The decision to make the film PG-13 felt purely financial, not artistic at all, and the bitch of it all is that Terminator: Salvation was a financial disappointment.

The film is worth it to watch simply for the Marcus Wright storyline, but mediocrity, along with the above stated issues, weigh the film down. It depends on the viewer as to how much. Marcus Wright parts, A-, Christian Bale: C-, film C plus (there is no plus sign on this spanish keyboard)

thanks for reading guys. -Adam