Songs For Expressing A Little Compassionate Hatred.
*Caring Is Creepy – the SHINS.
Harmonic, haunting angst, delivered in a hymnal package. Doubts about commitment never sounded this good...in fact they never sounded at all.
*When I Used to Love You – JOHN LEGEND.
John Legend gets his domestic discontent on – in a church! The choir comes in with an uplifting finish, and everybody’s laughing by the end – if your ex is the ironic type.
*Slow Night, So Long – KINGS OF LEON.
Back when Kings of Leon were a pack of tar-spittin’, gin-swiggin’ cowboys from outta nowhere, they made music that touched one’s inner cad. For the anti-gentleman, when halfway through a fumble in the dark, he realises he’s not having a nice time.
*I Don’t Know What To Do (With Myself) – the WHITE STRIPES.
I don’t know what to do with myself... but I’m almost certain I don’t want to do anything with you.
*Sick Sick Sick – the QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE.
Phwoar! Doesn’t condone breaking up abruptly with significant others, getting demonically trashed immediately afterwards, and then getting sick on their doorsteps; but we have to admit that’s very Phwoar.
*Razorblade – the STROKES.
The coolest band in the world put down a song four years ago, this one, that contained the lyrics “My feelings are more important than yours...” Need we say more?
*Another You, JOHN MAYER.
Remember that old adage about there being plenty of fish in the sea? John Mayer wrote a song about it before he slipped into an ocean of hot actresses with the paparazzi for day-jobs, and it wasn’t too bad. He’s got tattoos now, so we wonder if he still feels the same way.
*Not My Friend, NORAH JONES.
We cannot say enough about Norah Jones, and she hasn’t had an album out for years now. What is that? A deftly pressed piano key? A xylophone? One fantastic note, interlaced maybe with just one more, drapes the songbird in a blanket of flowers. You don’t deserve her, you DOGS!
*Annie, You’re A Star – the KILLERS.
Hot Fuss was the album that defined modern pop-disco, and the Killers were the band that did it. The song for breaking things off when you really don’t want to, because you’ve been apprehended in ladies’ clothing. That doesn’t make you any less of a man, big guy.
*I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked – IDA MARINA.
The indie anthem of the summer! – midway through the war of words, call in reinforcements. He/she won’t know what hit him/her. That/this is/was about it/the end maybe?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those most sentimental of sensations, the ‘butterflies’, and am compelled to investigate the nearness of their extinction. I’ve started by having a look at my anatomy, in the interest of full evolutionary disclosure. The results aren’t pretty, so cynicism drives me towards the present environment of 21st Century sexuality, or of all-round horniness, if you prefer; so I’ll begin from there.
The primary threat to the butterflies is, in fact, all-round horniness. What’s the fancy intellectual-sounding term, collective, for a bunch of butterflies? Whatever that is – let’s imagine ourselves to be walking, talking, shagging highways, chemically bundled collections of traffic, and the butterflies to be paper-planes taking off from five-year old runways on the sidewalk. Hardly jaw-dropping stuff, by any measure. I almost forgot to specify that the butterflies are practically always experienced by males – unless there’s a memo I missed, and thus neglected to wipe my behind with – in order to make the point that males devote much of their time now to nurturing erections; and ladies, with all due respect, to giggling at the sheer abnormality of it all, before opting to be more ‘polite’. I fear I’ve strayed, somewhat, into the murkier waters of a science that’s not my own, but must carry on.
It’s amazing, some of the things ordinary people will willingly do to each other nowadays – the places we’ll gladly put our mouths, our feet, and our noses, from whence Spock and Captain Kirk would gladly turn away, for an interplanetary siesta on Martian Madagascar. Conventions of Generation Right Now theme these dark but not so far-off bodily lands in line with some of our favourite dishes, and yet people only bother to actually flavour one another less than half of the time. Perhaps mankind should keep its clothes on and eat more sandwiches; or maybe not hit the rest-room every time it feels a little queasy, thus flushing butterflies into existential obscurity – or sewerage tanks.
I’m not in the habit, personally, of eating already satisfactory snacks off of other people, but on the other hand, I do not understand the urge to call a doctor at the onset of butterflies: the mental sperlunk to nowhere, the inconstant heart-rate, the burning need to pull one’s pants down and detoxify like its New Year’s Eve. Butterflies are initially unpleasant, gradually over-demanding, and do not effectively run free-market economies, so it’s not surprising to find that a couple million years on, we’re about ready to do away with them altogether- be we mice or rabbits, meek or all-conquering, Michael Cera or Gerard Butler. That leaves us in a literal dead-heat: a world where romantic comedies are nothing more than deal-clinchers for a little rumpy, and movies about butterflies, no matter how good, offer futile, dying resistance.
Your first favourite scene in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is going to be the one that introduces Kat Dennings, the film’s female lead, because it’s going to be perfectly legal to gawp at how hot she looks in a prep-school uniform – thereafter, you’re going to gawp at how hot she looks period. The music, the maybe-not-so-infinite-playlist, will work its charms on you the entire time, but not quite before it occurs to you...that young Michael Cera, Nick, will play Michael Cera for the rest of his acting career, and that it’s a damn good thing he’ll get away with it. You’re going to love that his character Nick drives a sh*tty car, has gay friends for a posse, whom he plays with in a band, which is alternately referred to as ‘Sh*t Sandwich’ and ‘Fistful of A-Holes’, amongst other unkind things. Did we mention that this is a movie about a girl, a guy and his band scouring New York City in search of her favourite band and what in rock circles is commonly referred to as ‘the new sound’? Marvellous, because that’s exactly what it is: baked beans on the tin, and baked beans on the in.
Infinite Playlist has the bubbliest script any rom-com has presented us with in ages. Not since Juno, a good two years ago now, have a rough ninety minutes of boy-meets-girl dialogue given us such a mind-job (that’s exactly what you think it is), and Peter Sollett, the gem’s director, makes sure the film has no pretensions about itself. Everybody involved is in this to provide a great yoghurt-in-pyjamas experience, provided an cinema will have you, and the simple purity of that is hard to put down. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist feels a lot like Christmas – tingly inside, as if it were snowing all over your heart, or as if butterflies...
It couldn’t be, and it really isn’t. Like Christmas, however bright, however shiny, however well intentioned Infinite Playlist is, you can’t fully suppress the feeling that it’s all somebody somewhere’s marketing illusion. You sense there’s a glaze too tender over what’s supposed to be a night from hell, Norah’s life beyond the plot is much too perfect for her circumstances (Kat Dennings is far too perfect for her circumstances), and it’s heinous, absolutely heinous, that Michael Cera will sail along without ever having to break a sweat...but once you express yourself out loud, you’ll feel like a complete killjoy, and a lemony alkali will replace all your saliva. At least Cera is one of us, and you’d be a total ingrate, if you had anything negative to say about a whole plate of Kat Dennings.
The true disappointment, as epic as any you’ll ever suffer, is that you will feel nothing. While Sollett, Cera and Dennings dress trees in tinsel and deck the halls, plotting you an escape, you’ll dip a single toe in its fiction, wide awake to the notion that you’re witnessing a fairy-tale. You will fail to disengage from the realities beyond your seat, because butterflies are dead.
Our helmets, and our arms, are respectfully lowered.
POPCORN: This is not a review! – it’s a funeral; with Red Bull and ice-cream and air-guitar. A perfect little movie, unwittingly crafted for an imperfect world.
Our Five Favourite Scenes!
From Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist...
1- When Michael Cera, as Nick, tells his gay best friend forever that “it’s hard being hetero.” Amen.
2- When Kat Dennings’ blonde best friend forever, totally WASTED!!!, drops her gum in a coffee-coloured toilet bowl – then picks it up and chews it some more.
3- When Nick’s troublesome ex, packed full of vendetta, dances in front of his headlights by a pier, to that ‘I Believe In Miracles’ track from The Full Monty. If she’d been clumsier, the whole thing might have gone down in movie-history. We think.
4- When Norah’s indie-punk-ska ex, in a little leather, a pair of Converse, and hair-gel, tries to plug her his band’s album. The band’s called ‘Ozrael’, presumably ‘cause he’s Jewish, and the star of David looms on the CD’s cover. Classic.
5- When Nick’s entourage, Norah and all, walks into a transsexual strip-bar, where a trannie is butchering the words to 12 Days of Christmas. On the fifth day of Christmas, he – she? – wants five Taye Diggs; we want 50 Kat Dennings’s.
Our war on rom-com is commenced! Pick a side if you dare, and blame it all on Michael if you pick the wrong one. Your weekly dose of Phwoar! is about to get bigger - we're bringing you a video-service on acid soon, and ads you'll actually enjoy!
I am heart-broken: I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and I can barely masturbate – I am about to massacre a Paul Rudd movie. Our chopper’s ready to lower down on the quarry. It’s one of those massive ones you can fit a Humvee into when an imperial dictator’s been misbehaving, but on this landing we’ve plumped for a mouthful of soldiers. I look across the space at the tragic expression on Chipo’s face – if I somehow haven’t made the grade, he is the ultimate picture of regret right now, a soul-dead assortment of colours too sombre to have names. Michael couldn’t care less; he’s hooked up to an iPod full of cat-porn, trying to psyche himself up for bloodshed. Cat-porn makes him...angry.
An assault rifle is my new best friend, the reason I’m also wearing a sash of ammo; a nice haul of grenades represents my new circle of confidantes, other than the band of brothers surrounding me. When the battlefield apparent introduces itself – a camouflaged wasteland of self-assuredness, bad jokes, and deceptively pretty actresses – we’re like the Americans approaching Iwo Jima, the Allies coming down on Normandy. Tension swells my toes in my boots, and I can’t believe my eyes; oh my God, OMG, and holy Thanksgiving niblets, Batman: I’m about to go Apocalypse Now on Paul Rudd’s ass.
When the trailers first started seeping out, the boys and I were dancing. Paul Rudd had finally snagged his big movie, and there was no Judd Apatow, Steve Carell or Seth Rogen in sight; there was finally an effort, a piece of cinematic chutzpah you could stand up and call a ‘Paul Rudd movie’. No more windy references that summoned the trenches of people’s papery memory, to that gloriously milk white guy with the oddly Freudian disposition. Given that his appearances on the Daily Show were always stellar, his shimmies always Sinatra-esque and his T-shirts sweetly ordinary, it was about freaking time.
In my excitement, I went so far as to suspend my infatuation with Sarah Palin, just so I could launch a wonderfully mediocre campaign for a Paul Rudd presidential push in 2012. Maybe we don’t have to go Apocalypse Now on Rudd’s ass; maybe we could go Saving Private Ryan on him, but everybody died in that one.
The political campaign is a work-in-progress, and so’s I Love You, Man, which we abandoned half-voluntarily after little more than an hour. There’s little one should find offensive about a movie called I Love You, Man, unless you’re homophobic and it happens to be set in Austria. At first glance, there’s nothing remotely offensive about I Love You, Man; on a whim, I’d probably return the sentiment. It’s got Jaime Pressley in it, Jason Siegel, that hot admin. employee Jim’s postponing Pan the receptionist with on The Office, and, oh, looky here, Jon Favreau. Did we by any chance mention Paul Rudd? All the marketing suggests you should recognise it as the first ‘bromance’ ever – not because it actually is, but because it’s the first rom-com (sorry: brom-com) to just come out and call itself that. They’re trying to be nice about it, really, but it still smacks of Columbus pulling one over the Indians.
Try out the adjective ‘milky’ on your tongue. Milky. The first five minutes of I Love You, Man are milky, but in a bad way – you know how a pint of milk will start to smell like morning breath somewhat, if you boil it too long? You may presume, like we did, that once Rudd’s character is done proposing to the hot admin. employee from The Office, you’ll be allowed to settle into a nice a nice neurotic bowl of corn-flakes. But the film just gets cheesier, ‘cause that jar of milk’s curdling very slowly.
Gouda, cheddar, mozzarella –it’s an absolute convention out here, of people called Kevin Claven whose diet of depressing news comes from their Voicemail, who shorten words like pleasure into ‘pleaj’, who update their significant others on every little thing going in or out of the microwave. The jokes in between would be pretty funny if it didn’t all feel like such a dental appointment, if “the waste of such a brilliant cast” (Chipo) didn’t sound like a group of Americans impersonating Americans.
When the F-word is employed, a flattering gesture meant to assure you you’re not just watching another PG-13, you’re going to feel like such an adult, unimpressed by a 10-year old’s seemingly daring attempts to get noticed. When it’s Jason Siegel’s turn, as he yells at an enormous man in the street to mind his “mind his own f_hole,” you can’t help but imagine Vince Vaughn making better use of the liberty. Speaking of Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau looks pissed to be here, notwithstanding how pissed his character is already, and that’s probably because everybody’s playing the foil to somebody else – nobody’s taking charge of any scenes, except when Rudd rocket-pukes all over Favreau after a drunken poker game, which is so 2006. Like we’re supposed to believe any sane realtor eats that much oatmeal.
How do you review a movie you haven’t even finished seeing? You stumble out of the theatre gagging. Our work here is done.
POPCORN: We didn’t have any, but we might have cleared out half the box – and that’s just me being mathematically illiterate. A movie so far up its own rear-end it forgets to come up for air. Disappointing, depressing even, but at least it’s not all Paul Rudd’s fault.
There’s a kind of poem, in a now legendary volume of Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, that perfectly embodies how we feel just now. We’d like to transcribe it for you, but first we’d have to get our lawyer to negotiate the copyright, and we haven’t actually got a lawyer; though if you ask me, sitting through three seasons of Boston Legal ought to count for something other than an Emmy award for William Shatner. Or was it David Spade? Anyway.
The kind of poem’s called ‘Yukon Ho’, which is Canadian for not giving a hoot anymore, I think. It’s kind of our job to see Ghosts of GirlfriendsPast sometime soon, being a brash young trio of movie-bloggers for hire, but as far that goes, we’ve been procrastinating plenty; so we sat down in front of a bunch of DVDs we’re really fond of and tried tacking an explanation to our procrastination. (Rhyme’s a crime...in Turkmenistan.) The proof was in the pudding Michael keeps as a pet in his refrigerator – Ghosts of Girlfriends Past was none of those DVDs we’re really fond of, and nowhere near as brash as we are. So we buttered up some mayonnaise sandwiches and we procrastinated some more.
We quit procrastinating when we our imaginary frined Ezekiel pointed out a giant elephant in the room.
What if it didn’t end there...what if some crazy lady-director, or some really fruity man-one, made another Phosts of Girlfriends Gast – uhh – or another How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days, or another Hitch, or another Christmassy bar-fest where Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet trade houses for no sane or rational reason? Or what if (tactfully-drawn-out-cries-of-astonishment!) Matthew McConnaughy made another movie?! (Feminine-scream-from-deep-inside-a-male-voicebox!) If we didn’t stop procrastinating and rise to halt this vampiric plague, it could overwhelm us all. And halt it we shall.
There’s a thin line indeed between There’s Something About Mary (a classic) and WhatStays In Vegas (a North Korean torture technique); between Shallow Hal (a classic) and that Jack Black flick where Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet trade houses. For no sane or rational reason. We’ve had enough! – we will not coalesce to run-of-the-mill ‘cinema’ that makes a line-graph of love, pitting grown men and women in childishly grandiose situations that leave plenty of time over for perfect jobs and perfect lives, yet sparing scope for flawlessly ludicrous dates. We want more real movies about real comedic love, like Intolerable Cruelty, and My Super-Ex Girlfriend, and Borat.
It’s likely we’ll only stem the surge, what with The Proposal coming right up...but to our last breath we shall resist!
OVER THE TOP!!!
The Last Romantic Comedy You Saw Was...
CHOLA: Fool’s Gold. No, wait, it was the Bucket List. Does that count?
MICHAEL: Fired Up – I’m being completely honest.
LONGWA: What’s a romantic comedy?
The Last Romantic Comedy You Actually Liked Was...
CHOLA: Ally McBeal, which I never actually saw.
LONGWA: Which never actually was a romantic comedy.
MICHAEL: Don’t know, don’t care.
LONGWA: Hot-Rod. (MICHAEL: Are you serious – as in, seriously?)
CHOLA: Come on, Mikester! That’s going to look sh*tty when I type it up.
MICHAEL: I can’t say Fired Up – can I say The Other Boleyn Girl?
CHOLA: You are truly half-assing this now.
MICHAEL: I can’t say Wedding Date- I can’t come out of the closet NOW.
LONGWA: Then again aren’t all comedies romantic?
CHOLA: You found Superbad romantic?
LONGWA: That was a romantic comedy – Cera and Hill hooked up, didn’t they?
MICHAEL: You know what, screw it, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.
CHOLA: Then you’re –uhh – you’re uhh... you’re fired!
MICHAEL: You can’t fire me, dipstick!
LONGWA: Forget him, he’s dead inside.
CHOLA: More like flaccid.
MICHAEL: NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST! – JESUS!!!!!!
The Average Romantic Comedy Should Aspire To Be More Like...
LONGWA: Hot-Rod.
MICHAEL: Underworld Evolution. No, Queen of the Damned.
CHOLA: Patsies.
LONGWA: More romantic comedies should aspire to be more like patsies?
CHOLA: No, you’re patsies.
LONGWA: There should be no feelings in romantic comedies.
CHOLA: Fantastic idea, but that’s not the question. This douche just dropped two vampire-love flicks on us; you’ve got a thing for blood-based love?
MICHAEL: No – just sadder endings.
LONGWA: It’s messed up when you know exactly who’s going to hook up. Imagine if there were more body-snatchers in these things – you wouldn’t have a clue!
MICHAEL: The fellatio would be amazing.
CHOLA: Genius! I don’t even know what to say anymore. Romantic comedies should be more scientific-fictional-psychedelic!
LONGWA: What?
CHOLA: I said it in a sentence so it’s MINE!
+/- : What’s a romantic comedy? How do you define a romantic comedy exactly?
- : A piece of crap movie with a piece of crap notion that can’t be proved or disproved with real science. Love? Love, my tush.
+: What was Bring It On - was that a romantic comedy?
-: Now you’re just being a horn-dog. Okay, wait, maybe- did two people hook up at the end?
+: I hooked up with two people...in my mind...
-: I hate movies that start before they end.
-: Like romantic comedies.
-: Like romantic comedies. You’re presented with a scenario at the beginning, and you’re invited to play a guessing game which you’re probably going to win. I’d rather watch rugby, which I hate like fish.
+: I like fish.
-: They’re just not that funny. Why do they even call them romantic comedies?
-: Ever heard of a big-budget romantic comedy? It’s like we’re stuck in the Sixties, freaking sexually charged humour getting everybody off like we’re live at the Apollo.
+: I like the pretty actresses.
- : Notice all the actresses are pretty. I wanna see some big chicks get laid.
+/-: Wasn’t there some big love in Phat Girls?
- : No one watched it. Anyone who did ... (melodic tone) issues!
-: Are romantic comedies even romantic?
+: That’s like the tenth existential question you’ve asked today – what the hell, Charlie Brown?
-: There’s no... romance.
+ : People get laid and they make out. What more do you want?
Chipo on Michael:"He's very...warm."
Chola on Michael:"He's a magnificent douche."
Michael on Chipo:"Scheming and manipulative."
Chola on Chipo:"An emotional pineapple."
Michael on Chola:"My pet chipmunk."
Chipo on Chola:"My very own Tina Fey."
Michael on Chola
