Daddy Like!!

[Gary Rabuzzi]

(I do a weekly pop culture review blog on my myspace page - comic books, movies, bands, cds, restaurants, bars, whatever grabs me. So, I decided to try to re-post it over here, as a way to get more people into my writing in general. Please let me know what you think, and I if enough people are into it, I will re-post here every week. Thanks!)



War, Inc. - John Cusack's "little satire that could" has been compared to films like "Dr. Strangelove", and "Wag The Dog", but it really feels more like Richard Kelley's "Southland Tales". It exists in a world only a few logical steps ahead of our current situation, where war has been completely privatized and whored out to a Nascar-like maximum. Golden Palace Poker ads adorn the sides of tanks, and there's a Popeye's in the downtown heart of the fictional, war-torn country of Turiquistan. Enter Cusack's Brand Hauser, a corporate assassin afflicted with existential ennui. He's a man so detached and isolated from society, that he regularly downs shot glasses full of hot sauce, in an effort to quell his moral revulsion, and his only confidante is the voice on the other end of his OnStar navigational service (voiced, strangely enough, by Montel Williams). Hauser is tasked by his warmongering overlords at Tamerlane, Inc. to kill a man named Omar Sharif, while posing as the headman at a war toy trade expo. His ringside seat for the amoral havoc-wreaking of his superiors gives him a crisis of conscience, and places his squarely in the path of Marisa Tomei's world-weary journalist, as well as Hillary Duff's sexed up Middle Eastern Pop Tart (think Britney, in a belly shirt and Burkha). Lest you think that this flick is a message-heavy treatise on our dubious involvement in the Middle East morass, or a bittersweet character study of a man in the throes of a mid-life crisis, Hauser seems to exorcise his angst through copious expenditures of bullets, kung-fu and even an air-pressure corkscrew. This movie is kickbox-tacular, two guns firing at once-pendous, and explode-riffic! This movie is every bit as good as "In Bruges", which was one of my favorite films of the year. It's smart, funny, and the performances are universally great. Joan Cusack, as Marsha Dillon, Hauser's twitchy, high-tension aide-de-camp; Dan Aykroyd's constipated, consternated former vice-president (certainly completely fictitious, and based on no one, living or dead, wink, wink...); and improbably, Hillary Duff's satire within a satire of the sexbomb/scared little girl. Cusack's take on Hauser contains his trademarked hangdog likability, and he throws off one liners as afterthoughts that a lesser actor would try to turn into catchphrases. Vince Vaughn didn't invent that schtick out of whole cloth, you know... If I have one beef with this flick, it's the seeming lack of an available soundtrack. The music in this film (as with every New Crime Production) is stellar- Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros ("Get Down Moses" is one of the greatest songs ever!), David Bowie, Duff's spot-on, breathy pop rocks, and the spaghetti western homage music that plays over the first scene, which is so Ennio Morricone, that Cusack should be wearing a poncho, instead of a parka. I'm giving this flick a 10 out of 10. Yes, it's an important statement, yes it's "No advertising dollars spent" ethos is pure punk rock, but s***- buy it cuz it ROCKS.

Ultimate Spider-Man 127 - this is the book of the week. The fact that Brian Bendis has written every issue of this comic himself, and put it out on time month after month, is reason enough to praise it. But that he seems to have found renewed zeal for scripting the exploits of teenaged Peter Parker and his wall-crawling alter ego (The "Ultimate" line is a modern retelling of the Marvel mythos, for a new generation of readers), amid the Universe shifting he's currently doing with Marvel's biggest toys in "Secret Invasion", is just gravy. This issue finds Peter being blackmailed by Eddie Brock, to get back the Venom symbiote, or he'll go to the Bugle with his identity. And, when Spidey swings into Manhattan to get some super-powered help with his problem, he finds the Ultimates, Nick Fury, and the Fantastic Four are all out of town. If that wasn't enough, Gwen, Peter's formerly dead friend, is back, as the mindless killing machine, Carnage. This may be an updated re-telling, but Peter's famous "Parker Luck" is the core of the character, what makes him so appealing and relatable. And I am in love with Stuart Immonen's art. Along with Adam Kubert and Humberto Ramos, he may be my favorite current artist. I feel I have to also mention the inker, Patrick Von Grawbadger, not only because his work over Immonen's art is perfect, but because his name is Patrick Von Grawbadger. This is the best Spider-Man book on the racks. Tell your friends.

Kings Of Leon - have you ever kind of "missed" a band that you know you should like, but either never got around to checking out, or heard them once, and dismissed them? I bought the first KOL album when it came out, because I'm a fan of the kind of swampy garage rock they supposedly purvey. But I didn't "get" it. It didn't grab me. But, lately, as I have been reading more about them, I've wanted to give them another shot. After all, when I was a kid, and I heard the Clash, or Tom Waits, I didn't "get it", either, and now, those two bands are practically all I listen to in my car. So, I had a guy from work burn me a copy of their best stuff as he saw it, and I dropped it onto my ipod. Yeah, the vocals take some getting used to, muffled and mush-mouthed as they are, but the musicianship is tight form the word "go". One of the best bass players I have ever heard on an album. And once you can discern the lyrics, the vocals grow on you, too. My fave tracks so far, are "Four Kicks" (about beating the s*** out of a guy), "Molly's Chambers", and "Knocked Up" ( a seven minute ode to, umm, getting a chick, umm knocked up, I guess...). And, aside form that last song I mentioned, all of the tracks are relatively short! None of the mindless, droning, noodly stuff that rockers seem to like to do nowadays.

The WolfMan: The Legacy Collection - I needed a definitive version of this film, before the re-make, with Benicio Del Toro, hits theaters next spring. So I ordered this two disc set, which has the most famous, Lon Chaney Jr. film, the (in my opinion) far superior sequel, "Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man" (scarier, more moody with the lighting, more Wolf-man, and wierdly, Bela Lugosi as the monster! Just an overall better film...), "The She-Wolf Of London", with June Allyson, and the only film I haven't watched yet, "Werewolf Of London". Plus, a nice little documentary about the original film, narrated by John Landis. The only thing I didn't like about this set, is that it came out about the time that probably horrible film, Van Helsing (it looked so stupid that not even the presence of Kate Beckinsale could make me watch it...), did, and so there's a featurette with the director of that film, Stephen Sommers, that coat-tails the flick onto this classic film. Keep your chocloate out of my peanut butter, you hack! (mmmm, chocolate and peanut butter...)

Pride And Glory - there's a long tradition of great movies about corrupt cops, from "Serpico", to "Copland", to "Training Day", to "Narc". And this is a perfectly respectable addition to the canon, starring as it does Ed Norton, and Colin Farrell. It didn't surprise me to see in the credits that this film was co-written by Joe Carnahan, who wrote the aforementioned "Narc", because the styles were quite similar. The plot is thus: four cops are killed, walking into an ambush, and the investigation of the bloodbath, by Norton, uncovers a seedy underbelly of graft and corruption. It's meat and potatoes. It's not a landmark film, by any stretch of the imagination, but all the performances are solid (Farrell does a meltdown scene with a baby and an iron that should win something form someone, somewhere), and Jesus, Jon Voight is in EVERY movie ever! Remember when he used to not be able to get work? I mean, he's a decent actor, but I'm sick to death of seeing the guy! Bottom line, if you like flicks like "We Own The Night", you'll llike this film. I give it a seven.

The Big Book Of Werewolves, by Timothy Green Beckley - I admit, the upcoming holiday has me werewolf-ing, and zombie-ing out, more than usual. Grabbed this book off Amazon, because I had an idea for a decent werewolf movie (which now, I'm thinking, novella). I needed some research materials. I wanted something that not only talked about the origins of the myths, the folklore, and the legends, but that gave a pretty comprehensive overview of the werewolf films that have come before. This book had all of that, and more. It has a chapter dedicated to the Bray Road Beast, a local legend that any amateur cryptozoologist worth his Bigfoot plaster already knows. It also had a chapter in which they interview a nutjob "werewolf hunter", and a reproduction of an ancient text that was considered to be the medieval encyclopedia of lycanthropy, cannibalism, and "werewolf-ism". The book is abviously a low-rent affair, with dozens of typos, and sensationalistic hyperbole, but that pulpy, creature-feature feel was just what I wanted.

Sukiyaki Western Django trailer - one of the few extra features on the "War, Inc." DVD was this trailer, for what promises to be the BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. Directed by controversial Japanese cult filmmaker, Takashi Miike, and starring a poncho clad, cheroot smoking Quentin Tarantino, it's Miike's loving ode to spaghetti westerns, typically overdone in the kinetic Asian style. I don't really know what to say to explain this film, so just look on my (myspace) page. I posted the trailer. I wait, with bated breath. My God, it looks like genius!