writhaus

It all started about three years ago. I was having headaches every day and couldn’t figure out what was causing them. After months of wondering (and being too stupid to just see a doctor), I self-diagnosed that it was all the damn Cokes I was drinking. Amazingly, when I cut the caffeine, the headaches went away and haven’t returned. Thus began my forray into being healthier.

Now I try to shop better. I know there are a lot of things that are nearly impossible to get around such as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), but I try my best. I found one variety of one brand of bread that had no HFCS. I drink mostly water, and I try to buy the purest juice I can find, as opposed to “juice drink.”

Last week, I saw and bought Ocean Spray’s 100% Juice: Cranberry. The packaging proudly proclaims that there has been no sugar added, although the fine print tells you it’s “cranberry-flavored juice sweetened with another juice from concentrate with added Vitamin C.” A nice disclosure, but still, I checked the ingredients. The juice from concentrate is grape. Ascorbic acid was added for the Vitamin C content. Ocean Spray is a company all about cranberries, so I bought a couple of containers and made my way home.

After it chilled overnight, I took my first drink yesterday. It had quite the pleasing taste, although the back end of it is quite tart, almost earwax-level tart. That isn’t to say the taste is bad. After you acclimate to it, the taste is quite enjoyable. The juice also mixes well with other juices as you would expect, because Ocean Spray blends cranberries with just about everything.

While I am sure there are other brands that aren’t sweetened at all, I find this less-manufactured cranberry juice to be quite tasty. I recommend it if you find it for a decent price.

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1 star

This record is the first record I was asked to review by someone. I totally admit new-school R&B music isn’t my thing. I’ve tried to be impartial, but I can’t help it. The Evolution of Robin Thicke is mostly garbage. Robin Thicke, the son of actor Alan Thicke, reminds me a little bit of Justin Timberlake, in that he sings in falsetto way too much. But even when he’s not singing in falsetto, he sounds like a wuss (for lack of a better word). While I was listening to the album, I couldn’t help but think about the field day Beavis & Butt-Head would have with Thicke.

The mostly cheesy lyrics bottom out in “Lost Without U”: “Tell me how u love me more and how u think Im sexy baby/That u dont want nobody else/U dont want this guy u dont want that guy/U wanna touch yourself when u see me/Tell me how u love my body.” Yes, all the lyrics are written in text language.

The musical sound is incredibly generic. It sounds like most of the R&B rubbish that dominates the charts nowadays. The opener, “Got 2 Be Down,” features Faith Evans and is perhaps the most generic of all. “I Need Love” sounds like that stupid McDonald’s jingle: “Ba-da ba ba ba. I’m lovin’ it.”

The record’s a little frustrating because it’s way too long. It’s also frustrating because Thicke shows some signs of potential. In “Ask Myself,” Thicke makes it clear he actually has a good voice. He’s almost Stevie Wonder-like in it. Why couldn’t he sound like that throughout this mess? “Wanna Love U Girl” features Pharrell and is funky and danceable, but the lyrics are very weak. “Can U Believe” is a well-written pop song, but Thicke’s vocal style ruins it. That high-pitched “Ooh” has to go. The two highlights of the album are “Everything I Can’t Have” and “Cocaine.” The former is a cool Latin song that is undeniably catchy. While listening to the latter, I found myself dancing around like an idiot in my living room. It’s great. The bottom line with this record, though, is don’t waste your time. Ba-da ba ba ba. I’m not lovin’ it.

Scale:
0. Shoot yourself
1. Poor
2. So-So
3. Good
4. Excellent
5. Instant classic

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I’ve enjoyed my two trips to Britain. On the first trip, the group I was in traveled to Windsor. The queen was in residence, as indicated by the flag over the castle. It was an odd realization knowing that there was royalty about, even though I knew I was in no danger of bumping into her while I was buying Scotch blankets for my mother.

It’s exactly this sort of aloofness that’s presented in Stephen Frears’ The Queen. Elizabeth gives off an air of detatchment from her people in the days following the death of Diana, former Princess of Wales. This aloofness puts her at odds with her subjects and is reinforced by her husband. All the while, the new prime minister, Tony Blair, tries to guide her out of the trouble she has found herself in. I wondered as the film started what role the queen’s grandchildren would play, but fortunately, they were scarcely in it at all.

All in all, this was a very well-put-together movie. The shot selections are solid, and the acting is quite good, as you might expect from a cast that includes Helen Mirren and James Cromwell. The editing is good, if not outstanding. In the end, though, I feel more as if I watched a well-produced television movie than a theatrical release. This is a feeling that is creeping more and more into dramas, with only the avant-garde such as The Chumscrubber pulling away, if only because of their oddness.

What this film does do very well is give us a glimpse into what the rationale might have been that week in September 1997. I appreciate this look inside the British monarchy and feel better educated for having done so.

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Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg saw great success with their 2004 film, Shaun of the Dead. They haven’t been slacking off since that film’s release, though, and have had their new film, Hot Fuzz, released in the United States by Universal’s Rogue Pictures. I watched it tonight with a packed house in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

In the film, Pegg plays Nick Angel, a man born to be constabulary. After acing all his training and becoming something of a one-man taskforce, the department realizes he is showing up the rest of them and ships him off to sleepy little Sandford, where nothing seems to happen at all.

Angel the supercop rounds up a dozen or so collars his first night in town, much to the chagrin of locals who understand being a little looser with the law. Just when you think the film will devolve into a “boy, Angel just needs to learn to lighten up a bit” sort of film, everything is turned on its head when real crimes start happening in the small town, and Angel is the only one who notices what’s going on. Lest you forget this is a comedy from this description, I assure you the British dry wit is evident throughout.

First, the bad news: This film is long, especially for a comedy. Five minutes easily could have been shaved, leaving us with a much spunkier film.

That said, the editing of this film is top notch. It keeps your eyes firmly on the screen and gives you scant time to look about the theater at the people surrounding you. The sound design deserves note, too. Rarely has a comedy, even a police-themed comedy had this explosive of a mix. This film definitely will make a fine holiday HD DVD release for Universal.

Next, the writing astounds. There are so many jokes and quick one-liners that you’d be hard-pressed to keep up with them all. The acting is spot on, as well. Pegg nails Angel. His comic timing is perfect, as are his mannerisms. A perfect example is when he is forced to impersonate the village idiot, who is only heard uttering one syllable. Nick Frost is in perfect form as the well-meaning but somewhat-inept son of the burg’s inspector. The supporting cast is great fun, too, including Martin Freeman, Timothy Dalton, and Bill Nigh, among others.

This is a great film to see in a packed theater. There were numerous bursts of laughter and applause throughout the film in the packed auditorium in which I watched it. It bodes well for Pegg, Wright, and moviegoers in general.

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What’s red and silver and runs into walls?
A baby with forks in its eyes.

How do you kill a blue monster?
Shoot him with a blue-monster gun.

How do you kill a red monster?
Hold his nose until he turns blue. Then, shoot him with a blue-monster gun.

These two sequences have something in common. They are both jokes. Should I be banned from the Internet for publishing them here? Given the outrage over Don Imus’ one-shot joke about what inner-city kids look like, some people probably think so.

The Oxford American Dictionary defines humor as “the condition of being amusing or comic (less intellectual and more sympathetic than wit).” That means humor is lowbrow, comparatively speaking. Lowbrow humor turns on the bawdry and the offensive. Have you ever heard Larry the Cable Guy? He’s funny and pretty lowbrow. Andrew “Dice” Clay made a living off lowbrow humor in the late ’80s and early ’90s before trying to go more mainstream. Imus had intellectual content while generously dipping into the lowbrow whenever he felt like it.

Lindsay Leupelt doesn’t think that’s an excuse for what he said, but she can see where someone might use such a “tasteless, rude, ignorant, and uncalled-for comment.” She understands why he was fired. There’s been a lot of bad press after all. She understands and can appreciate tasteless jokes, though: “A joke is supposed to be funny, not a hidden way of taking a stab at someone. Also, don’t intentionally say rude, vulgar [things].”

In Newsweek, NBC’s David Gregory said, “Imus was living in two worlds. There was the risqué, sexually offensive, sometimes racially offensive, satire, and then there was this political salon about politics and books. Some of us tuned in to one part and tuned out the other … Whether I was numb to the humor that offended people or in denial, I don’t know.”

I think most of the time, people just got the joke. In 1729, England went crazy when Jonathan Swift published “A Modest Proposal,” in which he suggested the cure for Irish hunger was cannibalism. Educated people might have gotten the satire, but the general public was clueless.

That isn’t to say what Imus said was satire or on the same level as Swift — or even South Park, our modern day equivalent. Jokes are jokes, though. People tend to get upset when it should just roll off their backs. Political correctness has infected our world so strongly that we are becoming incapable of filtering anything out. The end result of that quite possibly could be frightening. Even Rosie O’Donnell is afraid of the thought police.

One thing is for certain, says Leupelt: “This week was a waste of time,” and the time could have been better spent “getting [the troops] home.”

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Whenever I see Clive Owen, I wonder what the world would have been like had he been discovered when he was 25. His presense always conveys the attitude of the anti-hero. While I haven’t always enjoyed the movies he’s acted in, I always appreciated what he brought to the film. Sadly he always lacked that breakout starring role — until Children of Men, anyway.

Children of Men is a societal polemic based on the 1993 novel by P.D. James. Set in 2027 when no child has been born for 18 years, the world is in shambles. Director Alfonso Cuarón deftly brings this world to life, letting the medium of film help tell his story. Eyes must be kept open during Cuarón’s films. Otherwise, you will miss the headlines on the old papers in the Fish’s interrogation chamber or the backstory for Janice’s catatonic state.

The film’s plot follows perfectly cast Owen’s Theo Faron as he helps his radical ex-wife (Julianne Moore) smuggle a girl out of England. The supporting cast is filled with such fine actors as Pam Farris and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who I always thought of as an African Tim Curry. The production design of burned-out buildings, urban streets, and rural escapes are lavish. Cuarón’s budget is visible on the screen.

The cinematography is inspired. There are layers and layers of things happening in every scene. The action sequences are handled with care and aplomb. One would think Cuarón wanted to match the fantasy impact of Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth with gritty reality. The HD DVD transfer by Universal lets all of this flow through into your living room.

The film rewards multiple viewings because of its depth. You may not notice the boxes of Quietus lingering around the film, and after you do, another viewing will help you understand the characters’ motivations for having them. Cuarón embraced the canvas he was given to tell this story, but he expects us to pay attention.

I heartily recommend this film to own. The story told is worthwhile and important. You deserve to see a film of this quality.

I reviewed this film based on three viewings: The theatrical exhibition, the HD DVD presentation, and the standard-def DVD.

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3.5 stars

Modest Mouse maintains their trademark manic style during much of their latest release, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. The question is: Is their unique style still a novelty, or have we been there and done that? The answer is somewhere in between.

The opener, “March into the Sea,” makes it clear you’re listening to a Modest Mouse record. It’s followed, however, by the surprisingly accessible first single, “Dashboard,” that has my vote for Single of the Year so far. It’s very catchy, and it’s a blast. The lyrically fatalistic song sets the lyrical tone for the rest of the record. Most of the tracks have a “man, I used to be stupid” quality to the lyrics: “You gave me some sound advice but I wasn’t listening.”

Other than “Dashboard,” highlights from We Were Dead include “Missed the Boat,” which is about how stupid we are to think we know anything, “Parting of the Sensory,” “We’ve Got Everything,” and “Spitting Venom.”

Huge fans of Modest Mouse will enjoy this record. Others familiar with the band might be a little tired of the band’s sound. Modest Mouse certainly deserves respect for not selling out and continuing to be genuine, but they certainly are not as refreshing as they once were. It doesn’t help that this record is a long one. The once-common 62-minute record seems a little bloated by today’s standards. In general, though, Modest Mouse has put out a solid album here with many good songs.

Scale:
0. Shoot yourself
1. Poor
2. So-So
3. Good
4. Excellent
5. Instant classic

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