On Seeing Elf
Posted on October 31, 2003 at 10:39 am | No Comments
Can’t beat a beautiful day off, now can you? It’s a perfect fall Friday, a crisp, blue-skied halloween, and time for us to hit the highway to head northwards… it’s up to Vermont to officially usher in my ‘mid-thirties’. It ain’t nuthin’ but a number, right?
Caught a preview screening last night of Elf, which comes out next week, and I’ve gotta say… it was hands-down high-larious. Will Ferrell is, as always, one seriously funny man-child. The movie was just sweet, plain and simple. And I don’t mean “dude!” sweet … I mean, “awwww…” sweet. Jon Favreau set out to direct a timeless holiday film, and thanks to a good script and an great cast, he may have damn well done it.
Low on bitterness, high on straightforward sentimentality, very light on toilet-humor… the comedy comes straight from Ferrell’s reactions to the ‘real’ world of NYC after being raised by north pole elves. I can be pretty cynical when it comes to blatant attempts to manipulate and tug at the heartstrings, but this movie was enough to knock down those walls. Halfway through I realized my cheeks were starting to hurt from laughing so much. I was sucked in early thanks to all the blatant Rankin-Bass stylee in the first 1/2 hour… all those old stop-animation TV Christmas specials like Rudolph and the Year Without a Santa Claus that I loved so much as a kid. Hell, I still do. The opening credits, the perfect score, the animated characters… you’ll see.
They really pulled together a great cast for it, too… James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen, all excellent. The supporting players are almost all welcome familiar faces… Andy Richter, Kyle Gass from Tenacious D, Amy Sedaris, Faizon Love, along with comedy vets like Bob Newhart and Ed Asner. Even Peter Dinklage from the Station Agent shows up in a scene that just killed me. Pay attention to the way Will Ferrell delivers three simple words: “Look at you!”. Awesome.
Judging from the reaction of all the kids at the screening, this movie is going to be HUGE. This is an an unashamed family film, and it knows it. It walks this accutely self-aware line between over-sentiment and nudge-nudge, wink-wink sarcasm that no holiday film I’ve seen in years has done. They didn’t need to ‘spice’ anything up for the adults, didn’t need to throw in l.c.d. gross-out stuff to get a laugh from kids.
Amie summed it up best when we walked out… “That movie was just the cutest!”. Yeah, it kinda was.
“… and it’s halloween, tonight and every night …” – elliott smith
Death Cab for Cutie / American Analog Set review
Posted on October 28, 2003 at 12:55 pm | No Comments
When Death Cab for Cutie announced two shows in Boston, each with a different opening band, I didn’t have to pause and decide which one to go to. American Analog Set is one of my faves, so there was no way I’d miss the one-two punch of a AmAnSet / DCFC bill.
The show was last Saturday, and despite the best efforts of the club in question (more on that later), a mighty good time was had. Here, have some live photos.
American Analog Set, while not the best I’d seen ’em, played a shortened but solid set. Seems their drummer might be competing with Ted Leo’s for “fiercest touring beard”. I mean, he even had some snidely-whiplash-rollie-fingers mustache curl action goin’ on. Nice. On tour is probably the only place I’d ever be able to get away with that, too. (right, Aim?)
Highlights of the AmAnSet, er, set: Kindness of Strangers (such a great song) and the entire second half of Come Home Baby, which gets me every freakin’ time. The way that song eases from verse-verse-verse to instrumental build-up is pure brilliance. The layered keys, the entrance of the vibra-ma-phone melody … damn. Another song that never fails to move me is the one they closed with, the hypnotic, spaced-out “We’re Computerizing and We Just Don’t Need You Anymore”. Talking about building up to bliss … halfway through I instinctively close my eyes and it’s like I’m the only person in the sold-out crowd. F’in magical. Can’t wait to see these guys again with Album Leaf in December.
Death Cab started things off fittingly with “Bend to Squares” the first song from their first record “Something About Airplanes”. Highlights for me were old songs like “Company Calls (epilogue)”, “A Movie Script Ending”, and the more recent “We Laugh Indoors” and “Photobooth” (pop genius). Some of the older songs were a little rushed and a little loose… you could tell their new drummer was still getting the kinks out and the back catalog down. The new stuff, though? Spot on. “The New Year”, the opening track from the just-released album, was extra-rockin’, and even better was “We Looked Like Giants”, my favorite of the new stuff. I was lookin’ forward to it, and it fulfilled. The low point of the set for me was their unfortunately faithfull cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin'”. Ben said from the stage: “If you don’t love Tom Petty, well, you’re just wrong.” Hey, if that makes me wrong, then I don’t wanna be right. Sorry, Ben. The cover was boring as hell and sucked the energy straight outta the set. Bleh. They recovered nicely, though…
They played for a seriously long time, and I gotta say, overall it was good enough for me to withstand my intense crowd-aversion (although I did scoot to the back during the closer, the mellow yet epic title track from “Transatlanticism”.) Actually, despite the fact that we were crammed into the Middle East down, this was one of the kindest crowds I’ve been part of in awhile. No elbows, no shovin’, no hair sniffing (long story), no attitude. At least in my little area. Thumbs up to the Death Cab fans (even though all you youngsters make me feel freakin’ old).
[ /end show review ] [ begin venting ]
The Middle East, though, they can go suck on ice. Yeah, I’ve been going there for years, played on the stages, have a lot of great memories, and friends who work there… but come on. They’re infamous for not sticking to scheduled set times, so I usually make sure to call their answering machine the day of a show just to make sure when the bands I want to see are going on. I know, things can run late, and that’s no big deal… shit happens, bands arrive late, soundchecks run long, totally cool. I get it. I don’t mind killin’ some time.
Saturday, though, I call the answering machine: It says American Analog Set at 10:15, Death Cab at 11:30. Ticket says doors at 8 o’clock. I figure we’ll head over at 9, hang out for awhile, catch all the action. Nope. We get there, the line is insanely long… no idea when they started letting people in, but it sure as hell wasn’t 8 o’clock. That’s ok, though… still plenty of time, right? Well, we barely made it in before 10 o’clock. Then, as we get closer to the entrance, we see the signs posted on the door: American Analog Set at 9:30, Death Cab at 10:30. Unbelievable. They moved the set times up. I saw more than a few people in line, myself included, who were really bummed to miss part of AmAnSet. Luckily we got in just in time to catch the start of their first song (whoever stalled, thank you), but dozens of people behind us were not so lucky.
So later on Death Cab starts up, and out of the corner of my eye I see this flailing arm, feel a pounding vibration in the railing next to me. Seems one of the guys who works there fancies himself a drummer, and he’s hanging out near us, watching the band and smacking one of the metal support poles. Constantly. All the time. To every song. With hardly a break. No subtle glances from the kids around him did any good… I mean, who’s going to give a ‘bouncer’ any lip? Not anyone who wants to see the whole show. So we suck it up, tune it out, focus on the rock in front of us.
And then the wall of smell hits us. The new, novel lack of ciggy smoke in the place (yay!) cleared the way for an intense burst of body odor. We’re talking pure, unfiltered, super-sweat. And guess where it was coming from? Yup, the aforementioned Middle East employee. I mean, it’s not like he was a well-groomed guy to begin with (I believe there were some guitar picks, a conga drum, and maybe a couple of very small roadies hanging out in his neck-beard), but damn… the more he pounded to the beat, the more his pit-stains grew, the more powerful the odor became. Eventually, Amie even had to bail out. I never thought I’d say this, but for one smelly moment there… I wanted the stank of the smoking back to mask the beastly b.o..
So, yeah, great show, crappy club experience. Chalk it up. Makes me appreciate the ever-improving environment of TT the Bears even more.
(P.S. To the Middle East, regarding your website design: What are you thinking? Just because you can animate something, doesn’t mean you should.)