Friday Notes

Here is an interesting take on the Star Wars movies from Slate. Don't forget to read the comments at the end of the article.

I watched The Legend of Zorro Monday night. It was bad. Real bad. Like the first one, only stupid. It had a couple redeeming parts, but Catherine Zeta-Jones's breasts can only carry a movie so far. With all the movies I want to see playing right now (Jarhead, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, The Squid And The Whale, Shopgirl), we've got nothing but crap at my theatre. Gonna watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang this Monday, hopefully that'll be better.

Got some more stuff in my survey of the post-1997 music scene. The last two White Stripes albums I like quite a bit. At this point I prefer the latest one though. But I've always liked albums that mix up genres. The Flaming Lips' album The Soft BUlletin is very good, if not as immediately catchy as Yoshimi was. Slanted And Enchanted by Pavement and Stephen Malkmus's Face The Truth I'm still working on. I took a long time to warm up to Pavement's Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, but eventually did. We'll see if that works with these other two. Finally, I got the latest My Morning Jacket album, Z, after the rave reviews Cameron Crowe gave them in various interviews promoting Elizabethtown (they have a song on the soundtrack). After only a couple listens, I dig it, especially the second half in which the songs grow about twice as long.

I also want to plug the website some guys I work with have set-up. Pjorno.com is fancier, funnier and much better written than this blog is.