Titles are hard

So I just typed out this really long political rant in which I was discussing a couple of bumper stickers I Saw that worked me up a bit. But after re-reading it, I realized it read like a wet sponge and didn’t come out as eloquently as I had hoped, so I deleted it. 

Suffice it to say this: If you have a problem with a choice someone else has, don’t make that choice for them. Your bumper stickers both started with Have the COURAGE, so maybe instead of blaming others you could have the COURAGE to mentally deal with it when someone makes a choice that makes you uncomfortable. Not take away their right to choose. Or take away their right to marry.

You fuck.

That I listen to far too much depressing music. I have a lot of music, I just listen to the stuff that’s depressing most of the time. I often find myself listening to a song and thinking “Man, this makes me think back to this time when I was sad” or some emo crap like that. 

So I request from anyone reading this some happy music! Anything upbeat, in a major key, and with lyrics where someone maybe doesn’t die or lose something they love. 

Yeah. 

Released: 1944

Starring: Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine

Overall Grade: D

I love the monster movies made by Universal in the 30s and 40s. LOVE them. I have a  27 movie collection of them. But this one…missed the boat. House of Frankenstein has the same quality and basic plot of the other movies. The script is awkward, and this one involves Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, AND the Wolfman. It seems the chronological order of the movies is Frankenstein/The Wolf Man, then Bride of Frankenstein, then Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, THEN House of Frankenstein. At the end of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the two are seemingly washed away. It turns out, actually, that they’ve been frozen! The same thing that preserved the monster when The Wolf Man found him in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. 

The movie has the same inherent problem as almost all the other Universal monster movies, which is that it focuses on the monster so much that, while having a side plot, the side plot doesn’t really get resolved by the time the monster dies, which is when the movie abruptly ends. And this one is super awkward as it has 3 monsters to finish off, though the trailers and posters tout that it has Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, The Wolf Man, a Hunchback, and a Mad Doctor (the last played by Boris Karloff, choosing that role over the Frankenstein’s monster role that he originally played 13 years earlier).

SPOILERS FROM HERE OUT

When I was young, my parents used to jokingly tell my sisters and I that everybody died in a book or movie. For instance, my mother would read to us, and would often say: Chapter 13: Everybody died. The End. I always found it funny.

But guys? 

EVERYBODY DIES. 

Karloff’s character, Niemann, and his hunchback Daniel travel the world with the skeleton of Dracula in a coffin, and is revived upon the removal of the stake. Sure. Whatever. Anyway. They revive Dracula to get revenge on the Burgermeister who had imprisoned Niemann. They eventually get Dracula to kill the Burgermeister, but they ditch his coffin during the ensuing chase scene and Dracula burns up in the sun. First 15 or 20 minutes of the movie (That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels like it). Then they find Castle Frankenstein. Daniel falls in love with Lady whose name is something weird, and I can’t remember it. I want to say Etelka, but that’s the name of a coworker. Anyway. She falls in love with Daniel AND with The Wolf Man in human form, Larry Talbot Jr. Niemann promises to cure The Wolf Man of his curse, much like in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, but gets distracted by Frankenstein’s monster, much like in that movie…what was it called? Oh, that’s right. Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. The last half of this movie took the plot of Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man and copies it almost exactly, only changing the romance from girl/scientist to girl/scientist’s assistant. So anyway, Wolf Man kills a villager, the town then riots as they do. In the ensuing panic, here’s how everyone dies:

Wolf Man is killed by Ilonka (I had to look up her name) with a silver bullet, thus releasing him from the curse upon his death so that his soul will be at peace.

Ilonka dies in the process of doing this. Shock? Wolf Man bite? I can’t remember. I just know she dies, which makes Daniel angry and he blames, naturally, Niemann, who had nothing to do with it.

He attacks Niemann and Frankenstein’s monster, now roused from his ice nap, throws Daniel out of the window to his death.

Frankenstein’s monster carries the recently-attacked and now somehow completely feeble Niemann on their flee from the interview the castle and the mob, but runs in to quicksand, which is native to Germany, and they both sink to their deaths in the quicksand. 

So 8 deaths, I believe. All of the main characters. The movie is only 71 minutes long. But feels so much longer and not at all in a good way due to seemingly combining the Dracula story and the Frankenstein/Wolf Man/Hunchback story.

All in all, as much I love the classic monster movies, this one misses the mark by a long shot.

Also, over the past week, I have obtained 7 new albums. They are as follows, expect some reviews on them soon.

Sunday’s Best - The Californian

Son Volt - Trace

Van Halen - A Different Kind of Tomorrow

The Shins - Port of Morrow

Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday

Ben Gibbard - Home

Alexi Murdoch - Time Without Consequence

Is NOT by listening to Son Volt. Jay Ferrar’s voice is so melancholic (amazing, but gloomy) that it always keeps me in a look-back-on-all-the-mistakes-I’ve-made mood. Which is sometimes great, but I also had a dream last Saturday night that echoed all of those things, so maybe I’ll turn off the Son Volt for now.

If it wasn’t so good.

Released: 2010

Overall Grade: A

Starring: Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin, written by Jacques Tati

This French movie comes from Cine B, the studio who brought Triplets of Belleville, and is a similar movie in feel. There’s little to no talking, and it relies on visual elements to convey the story with a lot of inference going on. I love movies like that, personally, and this one continues in that vein. 

It tells the story of a magician who is having difficulty keeping his career going, and a girl who decides to join him in his travels because she thinks his tricks (I’m sorry…illusions. Tricks are what a whore does for money) are real and that he has magical powers. It’s a great story and is very moving. The artistic style is really great, with some incredible visual effects to support a phenomenal score.

SPOILERS FROM HERE OUT

 So this is an incredibly sad movie. Amazing and a really good story, but very sad. It starts out as this funny story that has a couple of of downish moments, but you assume there will be this happy ending where he finds someone who loves his magic and gets a job and is able to provide for the girl he’s essentially adopted. THERE ISN’T SUCH AN ENDING. He tries and tries and tries but is unable to make it work and winds up setting his pet rabbit free (one of the saddest parts of the movie, albeit understated) and leaving the girl a note that disillusions her. It’s an incredibly heartbreaking ending to what is otherwise a light and funny movie. There’s also a story about a few other performers including a ventriloquist who has to sell his dummy and winds up becoming a drunken bum; it’s incredibly sad. I haven’t cried that hard at the end of a movie in a long, long time. I LOVED this movie, but it’s very sad.

Music post! I’ve been into The Mountain Goats for a while, but just recently REALLY got into them. Let’s read more about them!

Members: John Darnielle

Formed: 1991

Disbanded: Still around!

Originally from California, but currently based in Durham, North Carolina. 

So aside from my love of the fact that it’s one guy with a plural band name, I really like the style of The Mountain Goats. I feel like it’s how I would write songs if I wrote good ones. It’s mostly one guy and a guitar, though he has had drums and a bass featured on recent albums, featuring Peter Hughes and the bass and Jon Wurster of Superchunk on the drums. His earlier stuff was mostly lo-fi, and the recordings had a rough and unpolished sound to it that I really love. It makes it feel more personal, in my opinion. In recent years he’s started recording in studios and sounding more polished, which is also good. I had a few of his songs that I really liked, but didn’t have a full album until a few months ago, when I was on iTunes (getting songs I’d heard from Pandora) and listened to bits from his album The Sunset Tree. 

The Sunset Tree is an album that really caught me off guard as compared to his other songs. Listening to the lyrics, it’s clear that the album is autobiographical and details the events of his childhood with an abusive stepfather. For as dark a tone as the lyrics have, the music is uplifting most of the time, done in major keys and sung in a style I can only call depressingly optimistic (or optimistically depressing). 

The next album of his I got was The Life Of The World To Come. The tracks on the album were all inspired by and titled after bible verses, but doesn’t really get religious. It’s a very interesting album, with a lot of different musical themes played out within. I really enjoyed this one, it felt more like the Mountain Goats I was used to before The Sunset Tree (not to discount that album, it’s probably my favorite of his, it just was a different feel than I expected). 

I’ll likely post a song of his up here after this one once I figure out how to do that.

Enjoy!

Released: 2010

Overall Grade: B+

Starring: Josh Radnor, Malin Akerman, Kate Mara, Tony Hale

This movie is Josh Radnor’s Garden State. He wrote, directed, and starred in it, and I’m excited to see more of his directorial work when Liberal Arts comes out later this year, another wrote/directed/starred in movie. 

The movie is essentially 3 different stories, detailing the relationships of 3 (or really, 4) different groups of people: a man (Radnor) and a little boy who gets separated from his family on a subway, a couple contemplating a move from New York  to California, and a woman suffering from alopecia and a coworker who takes a shine to her. 

The story of the couple and their potential move is the only thing I didn’t like about the movie. It wasn’t particularly compelling, and it was fairly static every time we saw them with the exception of a couple scenes. I feel like we launched into the problem with their characters before we really got to know them enough to be invested. I like the way it came to a resolution, though. Once we got to that point of the story I was invested, but not emotionally as much as just feeling committed to it based on the time I’d spent watching them.

The movie on a whole, however, is very enjoyable. The music is good, the story-lines are great, Tony Hale is awesome as always. I recommend it!

SPOILERS FROM HERE OUT

The story that I liked the most was Tony Hale/Malin Akerman’s story. I mean, Radnor’s story-line with taking care of this kid who doesn’t want to go back to foster care while also falling in love with Mississippi (Kate Mara) and dealing with that was a good story, but the message from Hale/Akerman’s was really good.

It was about self image, as Akerman’s character has alopecia, and therefore has some self-image issues that make it tough for her to accept when someone is interested in her, so she originally pushes Tony Hale away. He finally convinces her to go on a date, and as they continue, she gets to the point where she tried to break up with him. He then makes her close her eyes and delivers this amazing speech about her being beautiful. It sounds super cheesy, but he gets all teary as he’s saying it, which makes it that much more powerful. As some of my female friends will tell you, I feel very strongly about self-image, and I hate it when anyone feels like they aren’t beautiful. I keep typing out this long rant getting on my soap box about it, but then deleting it because it’s pretty off-topic. Suffice it to say, whoever is reading this, that you are beautiful. Anyway, when Akerman is telling her friend about it later, she talks about when she opens her eyes, she sees him in a whole new light, as this attractive man now (she had said she didn’t like him because he wasn’t attractive).

The Radnor/Mara love story is a good one, a bit predictable, but still good. And the deal with the kid he helps is a really enthralling story. 

I really enjoyed this movie. I hope, if you see it, you do as well!