Pocket Symphony

Ron Dante, the man behind the Archies, dropped by the office today.

The folks over at They Shoot Pictures have come out with their newest version of the 1,000 Greatest Films list.

After careful consideration, I’ve decided to scrap the expanded version of the list that I posted in July (the 1000 Greatest Films + “must see” films + best films of the 21st century) and just go for the 1,000. It’s still going to take me a while to get through it.

I watched The Treasure of The Sierra Madre this morning. 

R.I.P., Fred C. Dobbs.

Having been blogging lately (obviously). Been busy at work. And WE JUST BOUGHT A HOUSE!

I promise to post more about it soon.

Until then, here’s a neat picture I took today.

Last Monday night, I decided to watch a movie. Not really a surprise, right? I’ve admitted that I love movies, my DVD collection is pretty big, and my TiVo’s hard drive is almost always full. A couple of months ago, I made the announcement that I was going to try to watch every movie in the TSPDT list of 1,000 greatest films (plus the best of the 21st Century films so far), and I have a pile of movies recognized as “great” sitting on a shelf, just waiting to be viewed. So when I assessed my evening and decided that I had a couple of free hours, I reached for…

“Stephen King’s The Mist” by Frank Darabont.

Don’t bother looking… it’s not on the “top movies” list.

When I was a teen, I loved Stephen King’s books. The Shining, Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot… they were all greedily devoured by my young horror-obsessed mind. The Stand was an epic work that lasted an entire family vacation in Cape Cod. The movies based on King’s novels were pretty amazing, too. DePalma’s “Carrie”, Cronenberg’s “The Dead Zone” and Kubrick’s “The Shining” were and remain favorites of mine.

But then a couple of things happened. My taste in literature started to mature and King’s novels started reading more and more like fleshed-out movie treatments. I still respected the man, but I slowly stopped reading his work. The movies started getting worse, too. “Cujo”… “Christine”… and many mediocre (or worse) TV adaptations… culminating in King’s own destruction of “The Shining” in what was probably one of the more wrong-headed moves in an industry known for wrong-headed moves.

Occasionally, there would be moments of genius. The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, for example. But for every good Frank Darabont adaptation of a non-horror King story, there was a bad Mick Garris adaptation of his horror work. 

So last year, I started seeing commercials on TV for a Darabont-helmed Stephen King movie. And it kinda looked like a horror flick. The ads were pretty vague… so as not to give anything away. They showed a bunch of people holed up in a grocery store in a giant cloud of fog. “There’s something in the mist!” is one of the memorable lines in the trailer. My initial reaction: “Possibly interesting. Looks like a rip-off of ‘The Fog’. And the remake of ‘The Fog’ was completely unnecessary.” I put it on my “maybe one day” list and then forgot about it.

Mark Kermode

As a former podcaster, there are still a bunch of shows that I still always download to my iPod. One of them is a weekly download from the BBC, called Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews. Not exactly the catchiest of titles, but very clear in its labeling. Mark Kermode is an outspoken film critic, and a complete and unrepentant film geek. He’s a big fan of the horror/sci-fi/fantasy genre (when it’s done right) and will always find a moment or two to praise “The Exorcist” - even in the most unlikely situations. But his criticisms can be brutal, so when a film in one of his beloved genres isn’t good - he tears it apart. More often than not, I find that his opinions about movies mirror my own, so a “must see” from Kermode is taken very seriously by me. When he reviewed “Stephen King’s The Mist” favorably, it moved the movie from “maybe one day” to “should see this sooner rather than later” (I have way too many lists).

When the movie came out on DVD, I didn’t buy it. When I bought my blu-ray player, I decided that I wouldn’t buy any new movies on the older format, and decided to wait for the blu-ray (see my previous post on “double-dipping”). My pal Jeff doesn’t yet own a blu-ray player, so he went ahead and grabbed a copy of the DVD. He’s a Kermode fan as well, so his first viewing was (by Kermode’s recommendation) of the Director’s “preferred” version of the movie - presented in black and white(!) as a bonus feature in the DVD set. After he watched it - he told me that I needed to see the movie. A nod from both Mark and Jeff pushed this movie to the top of my “I’ll buy it as soon as I can” list. Last month, nearly five months after the release of the DVD, the blu-ray was released. I bought it and promptly stuck on my shelf.

Which brings me to Monday. The evening was a little chilly by LA standards. Heather was out of town for business. I was alone with the dogs. It seemed like a perfect night for a horror movie. So I popped in “The Mist”. What a great movie. I hesitate to write too much about it because a cold viewing is the best way to appreciate it. I think the fact that I had read certain adjectives describing the ending was almost too much. However, while trying to avoid spoilers, here’s what I’ll say:

• It’s not a rip-off of “The Fog”.
• It’s definitely a horror movie - in multiple senses of the word (or multiple understandings of the genre).
• The script is intelligent and the characters are well-formed and interesting.
• The special effects (yes, there are special effects) are pretty darn neat.

This could be one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in a very long time.

Do yourself a favor. Go out and rent or buy this movie. Go for the 2-Disc version (on DVD or blu-ray) and watch the black and white cut. You can thank me later.

OK… so it’s been a little over 13 months since we moved to LA… and my love for this city is only growing. This is a good thing, because we’ve decided to buy a place here - but more on that later (as in “another post”, because you know me and tangents…).

Anyway, in April of this year, I went to my local rock club and stumbled upon The Mae Shi, who remain my favorite local band. This kind of fortuitous occurrence only happens when you go out and take chances on new things, so I’ve made it a habit to always try to get out there and try to never say “no” out of hand to any new opportunities. I know that I’ve been neglecting Pocket Symphony for a while, but had I been posting like I should, I could talk about discovering ridiculously cool artists like Walt Hall and Jennifer Lewis, attending yet more movie screenings at some amazing movie houses, seeing great comedians like Bruce McCulloch and Sarah Silverman playing in theaters of less than 100, getting to not only see Spiritualized (did I promise a video? I know I did…) in a small club, but meeting a bunch of cool people as a result… Y’know what? I better start sharing more of this stuff here… 

Anyway… back on topic.

Last Saturday night, I went to The Smell, a fixture in downtown LA for the past decade. It’s an all-ages, no-alcohol punk club. The atmosphere reminds me of a cool rec center. There are couches and comfy chairs lining the walls, there’s a bookshelf full of interesting books that visitors are encouraged to take down and read - in all, it’s less of a club and more of a community hang out. The show that night was a benefit for Obama, so the cover at the door was $10 instead of the usual $5, and the crowd was a little lighter than I expected, but the mood was festive.

I’m not going to bother describing the rest of the night… if you want to see pictures, check out my previous iPhone experimental post… let’s just say that the first two bands, Widow Babies and Bastida, were both very good. I’m not sure I’d go see either one of them as a headliner (in the near future, anyway), but I also wouldn’t show up late if they were the openers again. The audience encouraged both of them, and they played off the energy very well.

I knew that The Mae Shi were going to rock (although this was the first time I saw them in their touring line-up of 4 - generally their LA shows have 1 or 2 other local members adding to the mayhem), and they did not disappoint. But, like that fateful night at Spaceland half a year ago, the band that came on next to last were a wonderful surprise. They’re called Bad Dudes, and they’ve been around for a few years (I’m late to the party - again!). After the gig, I asked them if they had either of their CDs for sale, but since this was a benefit show, they’d decided not to bring them. Luckily, they told me that they’d be headlining The Smell on Thursday (that’s October 16th - my sister’s birthday), and they would be bringing merch. So I’m going to be going back downtown in just three days.

So what do they sound like? I think I’ll wait until the weekend to really get into a description, because their music is still sinking in (I couldn’t wait and went to Amoeba and bought their latest CD already). All I’d like to say now is that like Ratatat (who I saw open for Bjork this year), they respect the rock. As proof, here’s a video for the title track of their new album, Eat Drugs.