This Is Not News

Full review of the new direct-to-DVD Babylon 5 work over at theLogBook. Short answer: one story was decent with some fun dialogue. One was dreadful.

I’ve been trying to put together some more iTunes playlists lately, even though I love just taking my whole library and sticking it on shuffle. It’s the closest thing to WDAVE I’m likely to get. But sometimes it ain’t a bad idea to have a defined playlist to fit a particular mood. Here’s my latest effort for a fairly up-tempo, reasonably upbeat mood. It’s heavy on the 90s alt-pop but then again, so is most of my library:

1. All This Time – Sting
2. Under the Milky Way – The Church
3. Regret – New Order
4. What Would You Say – Dave Matthews Band
5. Pain Lies on the Riverside – Live
6. Human Kindness – Neil Finn
7. Lost Horizons – Gin Blossoms
8. Big Bar Fight – Greg Edmonson (Firefly Soundtrack)
9. Tried to Be True – Indigo Girls
10. This Is Us – Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris
11. The Boy in the Bubble – Paul Simon
12. Someday, Someway – Marshall Crenshaw
13. Wait – Matthew Sweet
14. Seen the Doctor – Michael Penn
15. Cruel to Be Kind – Nick Lowe
16. Annie Get Your Gun – Squeeze
17. Stupid Songs About Love – Candy Apple Black (Joie Calio from dada)
18. Crystal Village – Pete Yorn
19. A Friend of Pat Robertson – dada
20. Bittersweet Me – R.E.M.
21. Main Title 1st Season (Extended) – Christopher Franke (Babylon 5 Vol. II)
22. Special – Garbage
23. Come Down – Toad the Wet Sprocket
24. Even a Child – Crowded House
25. How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Can Have Me) – Spin Doctors

The New Order song is one of those that is utterly tied to a specific memory. I believe this was the summer after I graduated from high school, and I was walking down Roosevelt Boulevard to the bus stop. I was listening to the radio on my Walkman, back when they were big enough to hold cassette players, and that song came on. As the “I would like a place I can call my own” chorus came out, I suddenly had such a rush of energy that I was practically jumping out of my skin. I’m thinking it was the fear and exhilaration of what was coming next, but regardless, I can’t help but smile when I hear the song.

Tried to Be True lets me sneak a second R.E.M. song on here, sort of, since Berry, Buck and Mills all play on the track.

I won a poster while I was on a college visit because I recognized Pain Lies on the Riverside when the campus radio station started playing it. Pretty sure it was a Spin Doctors poster.

Seen the Doctor is actually the first Michael Penn song I ever heard. Then I went back and found out about No Myth and the rest of March. I’m a slow learner sometimes.

I’m experimenting with sticking some of my soundtrack instrumental tracks on playlists with the pop songs. I think it’s working OK.

OK, I’ll open the floor for comments where you can all question my musical taste. 🙂

Comic-Con International in San Diego starts tonight with a preview night, and the panels and big events start tomorrow. I was talking with Earl earlier today, wondering when Comic-Con became such a huge event that the TV and film worlds paid so much attention to. If I had been looking for an example, this Reuters article about Lost season 4 news would have been perfect. When ABC Entertainment President Steve MacPherson said that there would be big announcements at the Lost Comic-Con panel tomorrow, the critics apparently got huffy that the news was being saved for a fan convention. They managed to get one tidbit from MacPherson that’s all over the wires tonight – including that article I linked to, so spoilers beware – but I’m willing to bet there’ll be more tomorrow. And that fan sites and word of mouth will spread the word plenty fast.

Man, I used to want to be a journalist, and this story makes me think they’re way too full of themselves.

I’m very happy to have Eureka back on the air. I’ve been going through the commentaries and deleted scenes from the season 1 DVD set – look for a review soon on that – and the first two episodes of season 2 have been strong. I think I’m most amused by the Live Smart PSAs you can view from the show’s website. Remember, friends don’t let friends destroy reality.

We went to see the new Pixar movie Ratatouille today. It was quite good, although the pacing was unconventional. As a result, I think there’s a little more distance between this film and me in comparison with Brad Bird’s left effort for Pixar, The Incredibles. The movie centers around Remy, a rat whose senses are so acute that he develops a fondness for excellent food and a desire to create it himself. His father and his fellow rats are less interested in gourmet ideals, but when Remy gets separated from his colony and finds himself in Paris, he lurks around the kitchen at the restaurant founded by his idol, Gusteau. Gusteau has been dead for years, of a heart attack brought on in part by a harsh review, and the restaurant has been trading on its former glory. Remy winds up forming an unlikely partnership with Linguini, a hapless lad who just wants a job as a garbage boy – and who happens to be Gusteau’s son and heir.

Spoilers follow.

What surprised me was that the movie resolves the Gusteau’s will plotline with a good 40 minutes or so left in the movie. I expected that the “rightful heir discovers his identity and claims his birthright� plot to figure into the climax, as it does in so many Disney movies. But instead, that just turns into the catalyst for the final act, where Remy and Linguini have to confront a chef’s arch-nemesis, the food critic, while they resolve their own interpersonal conflicts. It’s an interesting dynamic, and I’m still trying to figure out how well all the threads come together. The ending also pulls the rug out from the heroes right at their moment of triumph, but lets them land on their feet. It’s an example of Bird’s effort to inject a certain amount of realism into his fantastic premise, although I find myself overthinking the ramifications of a world where it becomes clear that rats are capable of higher-level thinking and communication. I probably shouldn’t hold that against the movie, though.

Technically, the movie lives up to the Pixar standards – the rats all have individual character, Remy is extremely expressive, and the many chase sequences are involving but never distracting. The voice cast does a great job, with many of the actors using accents that made them unrecognizable to me. All in all, it’s a fine piece of work.

Not counting my PC, I haven’t owned a video game machine since my brothers and I shared a Super Nintendo back in the proverbial day. I must admit that the upcoming Star Wars game The Force Unleashed and BioWare’s forthcoming Mass Effect have me seriously reconsidering that, as soon as the change under my sofa accumulates a heck of a lot more. There’s fodder for a rumination on video games as a new narrative medium here, but other people have covered that ground and I don’t know if I have the mental juice for it at the moment.

Then again, there are always placed like the 1984 Arcade, a place from which Earl has just returned. Check out pictoral evidence of the pilgrimage over at Scribblings.

Don’t know if I’m gonna write a full review or not, but here’s what I’m thinking after three passes through the new album:

• If Wikipedia is correct about which four songs the full lineup worked on with Steve Lillywhite as producer, I think it makes sense to view Time on Earth as a Neil Finn solo record with a Crowded House EP attached. There’s a fairly substantial shift in tone and style on the full lineup songs: Don’t Stop Now, She Called Up, Even a Child, and Transit Lounge. They’re four of the fastest songs on the record, and they have a certain playfulness that’s not nearly as prominent on the other songs. The backing vocals on She Called Up and Transit Lounge in particular provoked a double-take.
• The other tracks were produced by Ethan Johns, who also produced Glen Phillips’ solo album Abulum. There’s a similar quiet, melancholy vibe on those two albums, and it’s not unpleasant to listen to by any means.
• Even a Child, co-written by Johnny Marr, is a fantastic, high-energy pop song and if I had paid 11 bucks just for that track, I’d call it money well spent. If that Modest Mouse thing doesn’t work out, I think I’d like to see Marr collaborate with this band some more. Didn’t think I was gonna say that before I heard the album, but he fit in really well with the whole crew.
• I really, really hope the full band heads back into the studio as soon as possible. I don’t know if this lineup can top Together Alone, but I don’t put it past them.

I had this whole post going about Live Earth, and then I deleted it before I could save it. So go check out this AP article to see Neil Finn paraphrased about the need for musicians to factor carbon offsets into their touring plans, and check out this interview with Al Gore where he discusses Live Earth as the beginnings of a major PR campaign.

For my part, I’m waiting for MSN’s live stream of the Sydney show to get around to showing Crowded House’s set again, in hopes of catching the encore I missed when I watched it the first time. (The sun was up in Philly by the time they played “Weather with You,” and I needed to get to bed.) I also got the laundry rack out of storage and I’m gonna see if I can make a go of drying the laundry without using the dryer. Every little bit, right?

On the way home from watching fireworks at my mother’s house, I was discussing my plans for obtaining the new Crowded House album which will be released in the US on Tuesday. Should I order from iTunes or Amazon?

The plus side for iTunes:

• Practically instant availability.
• Environmentally friendly – less packaging and shipping.
• Two bonus tracks – plus a third if I pre-order, although that third track is a live version of a song I already know.

The plus side for Amazon:

• Liner notes.
• At the moment, it does look like Amazon is a dollar cheaper than iTunes.

Part of me can’t believe I’m even still debating this – I’m gonna look at the liner notes once, maybe twice. But part of me still wants that artifact and access to whatever knowledge is found within.

My hunch is that I’m gonna err on the side of one fewer thing to clog up the house, but you never know.

One of these days I’m going to talk about Garlic and Sapphires, a memoir by a former restaurant critic for the New York Times. Until then, check out this AP article about Inquirer critic Craig LaBan, whose photo on the philly.com web site obscures his face behind a number of large rolls. (Anonymity is key for a restaurant critic.) Turns out he had to be deposed on camera for a libel suit a restaurant owner filed against him – which, if you read the article, seems to hinge on whether LaBan ate a strip steak or a ribeye. Talk about your high steaks, I mean stakes.