Completely Unnecessary

Earlier this week, I made the mistake of watching Microsoft’s advertisement for their new product, Songsmith.

[Valleywag, which has some Songsmith remixes, urged me not to click the link to the video - I am passing on their warning. The horribleness stuck in my head and I actually sang it in the shower. You have been warned.]

The upshot of the product is that you sing into a microphone, and the program creates a midi monster to ‘match’ your vocal stylings.

Wrongsmith [via Metafilter] is compiling Songsmith remixes of popular songs and organizing them by artist.

I immediately clicked on The Clash (surprise!), and was treated to the most horrible rendition of Should I Stay or Should I Go that could ever possibly exist. Joe Strummer is rolling in his grave.

What’s great about Songsmith, though, is how incredibly it stuffed the song up. (I haven’t had any music theory since I was 14, so I’m just going by ear on this.)

It’s so off that at first I thought it’d gotten the timing of the beats wrong. But, no, it appears that it managed to figure out that Joe mostly comes in on the two beat (or just before).

It works for The Clash because of the sparseness of the music; overloaded with midi chords and beats, it sounds incredibly off.

Second, it’s misjudged the key, resulting in horrible, horrible shifts and key changes as it tries to accommodate both the song and Joe’s tendency to (intentionally?) go flat at the end of phrases.

Actually, possibly the worst part is Songsmith’s inability to recognize the end of verses and choruses. It just elides the whole song together and is awful.

The nadir is after the bridge (at about 2:16). It’s been jamming along on it’s own little midi piano thing, when suddenly the singing starts again. Ear bleeding ensues.

I haven’t listened to any of the others on the site, but I can’t imagine them being worse than this.

Update: Actually, Billy Idol’s White Wedding is pretty wonderful. Wrong, wrong, wrong - but, with the video, sublime.

And Wonderwall is laugh out loud funny, but kind of works in a weird way.

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There’s little more that can be said about Katherine Hepburn except to note again that she is freaking awesome.

This 1979 60 Minutes interview is 5+ minutes of sheer greatness. Kate riding a bike down Manhattan streets, cantankerously abusing the 1970s film industry, brushing off all Morley Safer’s compliments.

The wonderful thing about Hepburn is how at ease she is in her own skin. The way she sits in the chair- legs apart, leaning back -  expresses her unpretentious confidence in herself, even as she unflinchingly analyzes her avoidance of the Academy Awards.

The Great Kate [Jezebel]

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I borrowed a slew of movies from friends of mine a while ago. American History X has sat, untouched for weeks, on top of our TV cabinet.

Though it’s been nearly ten years since I first saw it, I couldn’t bear to watch the curb scene again.

And I mostly avoided it. I wound up watching the actual moment peering through my fingers, but it wasn’t as graphic as I remember. It’s more the fear in the victim’s face before the act that sets up the terror of the moment. (By the way, this is not so much a I-don’t-want-to-give-it-away-moment as an I-don’t-want-to-describe-it.)

Anyway, the film is a mixture of brilliance and maudlin. Edward Norton’s white supremacist, Derek, (who predates Ryan Gosling’s Jewish neo-nazi by two years) is clearly the emotional center of the film, despite narration by his younger brother.

I have trouble connecting with Norton’s voice, though. There’s some strange Fight Club/Primal Fear holdover that makes it difficult for me to engage with his dialogue. It’s like I mistrust what his character is telling me… His body language and intensity, however, is why he’s one of the most highly-regarded actors around.

Horribly, the curb scene is the highlight of Norton’s performance. The manic joy in his eyes as he awaits arrest is both repellent and intoxicating. In the next scene, the moment is made all the more compelling via the deadness in the eyes of Cam, Norton’s character’s mentor.

There are highs and lows, most of which are summed up by the uneven, heartstringy ending. After a dramatic moment, we’re left with more questions than answers of what this might mean for the characters. The soundtrack during the rather predictable jail rape scene is overwrought and belies an unnecessary terror on the part of the composer (I feel as though few movie composers find themselves prey to incarcerated gang rapes).

Derek’s brother Danny (Edward Furlong) narrates and acts well, and there are strong moments from Doris (Beverly D’Angelo), the brothers’ mother. There’s a strangely stilted performance from the almost uniformely fine Elliot Gould; there’s no question he was directed poorly in both of his scenes.

Even if you have bad memories from the first time, American History X is worth a re-watch. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that it made me want to re-watch The Believer as well. There’s only so much neo-nazism I can take - it’s not really the genre I was looking for this week.

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In two sentences or less:

The Notebook (film): Meh. Too much or not enough softcore (especially in the deleted scenes), I can’t tell.

Wuthering Heights (book): Sister Emily should have sold the story rights to Charlotte.

The Girl with the Pearl Earring (film): I can’t take seeing Cillian Murphy tragically wasted in another film this week; two was enough. Also, as a character note: I hope to she sold that shit.

Maus (book - graphic biography?): Wonderful - still not sure how I never read the original since Maus II has been a favorite of my bookshelf for years.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (book): Getting better. I know it’s a noir, but it shouldn’t take me 100 pages to care.

Buffy (Season Six, Disc 2 - ‘Life Serial’, ‘All the Way’, ‘Once More With Feeling’, ‘Tabula Rasa’) (tv): Maybe my favorite three episodes of Buffy ever. ‘All the Way’ would make it four if Dawn’s grisly murder had been a plot point.

‘Life Serial’ gets an additional two sentences, since Warren’s (Adam Busch) outburst during one of The Trio’s James Bond arguments still makes me laugh out loud anytime I hear it or think of it:

I mean, there’s a shot of, like, pigeons doing double takes when the gondola blasted by!  Moonraker is inexcusable.

I think that’s honestly the best combination of writing and delivery I’ve ever seen.

Angel (Season Four) (tv): Kinda zzzzzzz. Narrative structure, much?

Herald Sun (newspaper): I actually had to read some of the HS for some research the other day - hands down the worst newspaper I’ve ever read. HS is inexcusable.

[Things I forgot! -Ed.]

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (online video) - Awesomely wonderful. If I’d know there was only a short period of time to watch it for free, I would have done it a bunch more times.’

Possums (animals) - So cutie pie and so everywhere. I lure them over with the promise of food, but then get a little nervous and ride away.

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How pretty is Chicago?!?!

That’s my takeaway from The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s new installment in the Batman series. In short: it was great.

But back to my pretty city. In Batman Begins, most of the action focused around ‘The Narrows’, a CGI island plunked in the middle of the Chicago River. In Dark Knight, however, the city is filmed with a lot less computer fussing and frequently during the day.

The river even looked clean! It was the best the city’s looked since The Fugitive. And it’s the closest to feeling homesick I’ve been since returning to Oz. It’s really funny to watch chase scenes running up and down Lake St. and the ending up somewhere completely different. (Look out also for the awesome ‘GTA’ bus.)

And, of course, there’s the obligatory chase scene on Lower Wacker Dr. I was just joking to my friend Avi, which whom I watched Batman Begins the other day, that any movie filmed in Chicago must involve Lower Wacker. And as a cop yelled, “Go down to Lower 5th Avenue!” (or something like that), I turned to Avi and said, ‘See? Here we go.’

Which is not to say that those pesky things like plot, action and acting weren’t present as well. The story was a little overpacked, even with a runtime of 2.5 hours. But that’s not a major complaint. There just wasn’t always time to digest everything that was going on with the large number of characters.

I was thinking the other day that Zodiac is basically a who’s who of who’s good in Hollywood these days, but the Dark Knight cast has it beat, actually. Plus, this movie was also more or less a who’s who of men I’d cheerfully marry if it came to it. Or even just suggested, really.

Heath Ledger’s performance, as has been widely speculated, etc., was amazing. It’s clear that he was coming into his talent in a big way, and would probably have been one of the greatest performers of his generation. The only thing that detracted from his turn as The Joker was that it was almost too nuanced for film. There was so much going on in his face and eyes, that I sometimes missed what he was saying for watching him so intently.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is a happy replacement for Katie Holmes as Rachael. Aaron Eckhart is great as always. Gary Oldman gets better material to work with this time around; I thought the writing for him was really bad in the first film.

Strangely, Bruce Wayne kind of got left out of this movie. There were few scenes with Christian Bale as Wayne - and he was often shot from the side or from behind his shoulder. The person part of the character was subsumed by Batman, but I think that’s the point. It’s definitely a second in a trilogy, darkest before the dawn kind of thing.

Nolan really knows how to make beautiful set pieces. The Bat… Lair(?) this time around is beautifully minimalist in stark blacks and whites.

That all being said, I am so jealous of those of you who get to run around beautiful Chicago. Go play in the Lake and see The Dark Knight when it cools down.

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Has there ever been a better television show than My So-Called Life? I think not.

In fact, reading Amelie Gillete’s recaps earlier today has completely derailed my plan for my afternoon. Instead of editing this thing that simply must be in tomorrow, I’ve been reading about MSCL, Buffy and LOST.

My So-Called Life is one of the few cult classics that I loved from the outset. I wasn’t a Buffy fan until the final year, I missed the first two (defining) episodes of LOST by being in Europe, I didn’t watch Arrested Development until the third season because I get bad reception on FOX, and my recent obsessions with Angel and Veronica Mars are just that - recent (and methinks, fleeting).

But ah, MSCL - I watched each and every episode (with one exception, below), and I think it’s fair to say that it pretty much defined my 8th grade experience. I sighed when Angela (Clare Danes) sighed, I mooned over Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto), and I yearned for Brian’s (Devon Gummersall) success in winning Angela’s affections.

I was one of the thousands who wrote letters to ABC begging them not to cancel it. Yet the 19 (more or less) perfect episodes are all we have to relish Clare Danes in flannel sack dresses. Between that and Kurt’s suicide, it’s lucky I made it to HS at all.

The one episode I missed was due to live coverage a plane crash one Thursday night in October. The audacity of a plane to crash during My So-Called Life! I honestly remember stomping around the basement, praying that they would at least cut back to the last half of the episode. Angela and Jordan had just, like, officially gotten together at the end of the previous episode!

And then they were broken up the week after.

I had to wait, I believe, until my junior year of college to find out what happened during Angela and Jordan’s brief and tempestuous official coupledom. (And, seriously, what a jerk!)

It was traumatic is all I’m saying. In all fairness, it was probably also traumatic for the people on the plane, though I can’t imagine they were experiencing the same degree of agnst..

There was a point to all this (and I do thank you for hanging in there after yesterday’s interminable post). I realized today that Angela might be the reason that I begin so many sentences - both when speaking and in my casual writing - that begin with “So…”

She does it a LOT. And so do I.

Sadly, there was no one at my HS with Jordan’s locker-leaning abilities. Oh, how the girls swoon over a manly, affected lean.

if you do one thing this summer/winter (because my brain is still confused by the necessity of legwarmers in July), get My So-Called Life out on DVD. And dye your hair Crimson Glow.

Just before I was about to hit post, I checked IMDB. Here’s the strangest fact ever: AJ Langer (Rayanne) married a English Lord, and will one day be Countess of Devon (which is bizarre since two actors on the show were named Devon. It’s a pretty small cast; it always seemed crazy, and now even weirder…).

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Part of the Universal lot burned today. This makes me very, very sad:

Officials say the iconic courthouse square from “Back to the Future,” has been destroyed, and the famous clocktower that enabled star Michael J. Fox’s character to time travel has been damaged.

What a shabby way to go. It should have been destroyed with 1.21 gigawatts!

Unfortunately there’s no youtube video of the lady shaking the can screaming ‘Save the Clocktower!’ That would have been perfect.

Universal Studios Fire [AP via HuffPost]

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The Library of Congress has started uploading photos like the one below to their Flickr page. They have black and white sets from the 1910s and color sets from the 1930s-40s.

The Bennett sisters look formidable…

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Dith Pran died today of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65.

Dith is most famous for his partnership with NYT journalist Sydney Schanberg. The two covered Cambodia during the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

Unlike Schanberg, who had an American passport, Dith was unable to escape Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. He lived through a time in his country’s history that remains nearly unspeakable to this day.

It seems impossible to believe that he survived so much, only to be felled by his own cells. It is tragic that his life (as well as the lives of all who died as a result of the KR regime) was cut so short.

If you haven’t read The Death and Life of Dith Pran, I highly recommend it. Dith and Schanberg were also the subjects of the Academy Award-winning film, The Killing Fields. The film is good, but I recommend the book. If you get interested in the Khmer Rouge period, I also recommend, Stay Alive, My Son.

The NYT also has a photo gallery of Dith, including some of his work with the paper after his escape.

Link:
Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Photographer, Dies at 65 [NYT]

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The Onion’s AV Club, consistently one of the best reads the interwebs has to offer, has apparently had some time on its hands.

To wit, they came up with a list of ‘12 surprisingly controversial Wikipedia pages‘. We probably shouldn’t think too hard about the Wikitrail that led this endeavor (or the number of hours ‘wasted’) because it’s hilarious.

My favorite is #4: Rotary International.

As users AndyJones, Aldux, and Bridesmill try to repair the damage, M. Larcin starts sections called “CONTROVERSY OR SEGREGATION? vote here!” and “The blanking of Rotarian Conferencemakers by BridesMill- Polemic,” while accusing his opponents of being “pro-Episcopalian theists” and “racist against French.”

My brief perusal of the ‘talk’ section yielded the comment in the title. Another random grab below:

I am a democrat, I mean a French socialist. I mean that I am then a traitor, a cynical, a pervert and a *foul language removed* communist.

Priceless.

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