The Greatest Singles of My Life #1-2

Another list! The plan is to have several of these going at once, so that I always have something to update on those days I'm feeling listless and uninspired: you know, most days.

This is a list of what I consider the greatest music singles to be released during my lifetime, or at least during the time that I was aware of current music. This list, as all of my ongoing lists, is NOT in any particular order, so don't try to read anything into the numbers. All right, let's go.

1. "Seven Nation Army," The White Stripes

Regardless of your feelings re: Jack White, and regardless of whether you think he's overrated, pretentious, or plays guitar like an orangutan (some people actually think this stuff), this track is an undeniable masterpiece. Built around a simple but powerful riff, this marries together all the elements that make The White Stripes such a unique musical personality: spare instrumentation, Cro-Magnon drums, Jack's amazing voice, and the result is their biggest hit and quite possibly the song that will render them immortal. It's just that good. If you hate this song, you're an asshole.

Favorite Lyric: "And the stains coming from my blood/Tell me go back home."

Favorite Musical Bit: When the ever-present riff switches into searing guitar wails toward the end.

Video: Here.

2. "Mama Said Knock You Out," LL Cool J
The title song from LL Cool J's "comeback album" (don't believe him when he says it's not a comeback), this song was ever-present during it's time on the charts, and rightfully so. On an album full of immaculate jams, this was the one destined to worm its way into everybody's ear. And worm it did. The beat is undeniable, the rhymes are vicious, and this is such a raw statement of intent to kick your fucking ass, that it became even more of a disappointment when LL immediately pissed away all of the good will this album engendered with his subsequent shitty ones. Oh, well. Nobody's ever always as good as their greatest single, right? When LL performed this on Unplugged with an all acoustic backing band, I thought it was the start of a bold new direction for both him and hip-hop. Turns out that The Roots picked up on that whole live instrumentation thing and left LL and his contemporaries in the fucking dust. But OH! What a fucking song.

Favorite Lyric: "I'm going insane/Starring a hurricane/Releasing pain/Letting you know, you can't gain or maintain/Unless it's in my name."

Favorite Musical Bit: The old-school drum loop.

Video: Here.

DVD Review: STUCK

First of all, yes, I know this movie is four years old. I totally meant to see it when it came out, because it sounded intriguing, and the real-life case it was based upon has always fascinated me as an example of the selfishness and casual cruelty that humanity is capable of. But what can I say? I never got around to it. Life intervened. It wasn't playing anywhere near me. Blah, blah, blah...

Good thing that my lady put it on the NetFlix queue, then, huh? Because I'd honestly forgotten all about it.

This movie is basically just a fun, gory good time.

For those unfamiliar with its story, or with the real-life case that inspired it, it boils down to this: a party girl is driving home drunk one night and hits a homeless man due to her own negligence. She drives straight home and parks in her garage, and rather than help the man, leaves him there to die while she goes on about her life. That's the basic story, but it gets a lot more fun from there. Among other delights, this movie features one of the best deaths by writing implement I've ever seen. Too late for this list here, unfortunately, but if I ever do another one, it's in.

The performances of the two leads are fantastic. Stephen Rea makes you feel every second of this man's pre-crash degradation and post-crash agony. It's a bravura performance, and who thought that a sleazy little exploitation flick is what Stephen Rea needed to rescue him from the acting doldrums in which he'd been drowning? As for Mena Suvari, an actress who I've frankly never liked, she is trashy and selfish and violent to exactly, but no more than, the degree needed. It's a truly fine and unlikeable performance by an actress I've discounted for a long time. Perverts will also appreciate her extended topless sex scene.


This is just a short, mean little number that I can't recommend highly enough. If you're a fan of the outre Lovecraftian films of director Stuart Gordon, give this more down-to-earth but no less bloody outing a try.

Top Five: TV Deaths that Hit Where It Counts

5. Special Agent Charlie Francis (Kirk Aceveda)--Fringe
Charlie Francis was Special Agent Olivia Dunham's unfailingly loyal partner and friend throughout Fringe's first season. He had several close brushes with death during that time, and I started to think that he was the "Wedge Antilles" of the show, always in peril but inevitably coming out on top.

I thought that right up until Charlie was killed by a shapeshifting douchebag from an alternate reality, who then added further insult to injury by stealing Charlie's identity and trying to get Dunham alone so that he could kill her too. Olivia eventually shot and killed the shapeshifter, and the deception was uncovered, but she had to deal with some misplaced guilt for killing a man who looked just like her friend (becuase this show dumps grief on Dunham like she's a member of the Mulder family).

4. Lt. Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stephenson)--M*A*S*H
For the first seasons of the long-running show (the only war during which everybody's hair turned gray), Henry Blake was the commanding officer of the M*A*S*H 4077th. He was an affable though not entirely competent officer, whose skills were best applied to the operating room rather than to matters of logistics or authority. The lovable rogues he commanded were constantly pulling pranks on him, and he took it all in mostly good humor. Despite the occasional dramatic moment, he was nearly entirely a figure of fun, which is why it totally sucked when...

Blake received his orders to fly back stateside, and the guys he commanded gave him a nice going away party. This beloved character was finally getting what everybody in the unit wanted most of all: to fly home to his wife and get out of this shit. He flew off on a helicopter, and everybody was both sad and happy for him. Until, that is, they received word that the helicopter had crashed, killing everybody aboard.

So much for the goofy, lovable Colonel Henry Blake.

What really made the death sting was the eventual revelation that Blake was written off the show (permanently) because McLean Stephenson was trying to get more money out of the producers, who responded by not only firing him, but ensuring he'd never be able to even do a guest appearance in future. Classy, guys.

3. Melissa Scully (Melinda McGraw)--The X-Files
Melissa was the sister of Special Agent Dana Scully (starting to get the idea that being an FBI agent isn't very healthy for the people you care about?), and there was a little tension between them, brought on by her New Age flightiness butting up against Dana's belief in science and discipline. Still, it was always fun when she showed up, and not just because she was kinda hot (this was before Scully transformed into the sexiest woman in the FBI).

She was never a regular, just a sister who showed up every now and then, so what's the worst that could happen to her? Well, I don't know, maybe she could enter Dana's apartment when she wasn't home and get mistakenly shot by double-agent (triple? quintuple?) scumbag Alex Krycek.

Eventually, Mulder and Scully lost every member of their immediate families over the course of the show (including Mulder's long-lost sister: don't get me started on that), but this is the one that hurt the most, since Melissa was in essence an innocent who had no part in all of this conspiracy rubbish.

2. Dolores Landingham (Kathryn Joosten)--The West Wing
Every great man needs a strong woman behind him, the saying goes, and President Josiah Bartlet had two: his wife, and the simple, unassuming personal assitant who had been with him since his college days, Dolores Landingham.

The relationship between Bartlet and Landingham was one of the delights of the show's first season. She was loyal and always attentive to his needs, but wasn't afraid to tell him off when he was being a little shit. There was obviously a great love and affection between them, and Joosten's performance as the character was basically flawless.

So what happened? Well, this lovely little cantankerous woman was killed by a drunk driver, off camera, in the show's second season, soon after buying her first ever car. The unjustness of this event prompted one of Martin Sheen's greatest acting moments of the show, where he rages at God in a cathedral with epic anguish, but I don't think that even that moment was worth this woman's death. It was a truly tragic, meaningless death that still upsets me if I think about it too much.

1. Tara Maclay (Amber Benson)--Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Could anything else take the number-one position but the most hurtful character death in the history of television?

Tara, in case you all forgot, was the woman Willow Rosenberg met at college, who introduced her to a greater world of both witchcraft and lesbianism. The love between these two was palpable, and for all of the Angel/Buffy talk, this was truly the epic love story of Buffy's seven seasons.

So, what happened, because Joss Whedon is a goddamn motherfucker, is that Willow and Tara had a falling out prompted by Willow's increasingly dangerous addiction to magic. After showing Willow suffering in Tara's absence for several episodes, they eventually got back together after Willow proved that she had given the magic up. After one amazing night together...

Tara is shot by titanic asshole Warren Mears, who was hoping to kill Buffy. Tara's blood spatters Willow's face, and she dies nearly instantly, sending Willow into a world-threatening orgy of rage-fueled violence, which none of us watching can really blame her for. Luckily, Xander Harris talks her down with a story about crayons.

Willow eventually hooks up with a super-hot piece of near-jailbait in season 7, but it's not the same, because nobody will ever replace Tara. Fuck you, Joss.

DVD Review: THE INVENTION OF LYING

I saw this movie a couple weeks ago, but I'm just writing about it now, the reason being my conflicted feelings about it. On the one hand, I could watch Ricky Gervais all day, and I think the religious satire is sharp and spot-on (although allegedly not as sharp as in the original script). On the other hand, I found the shoehorning of a romantic comedy plot rather desperate, and I didn't think any of the movie's many ideas came to fruition.

But of all my problems with the film, here's the one that was the most responsible for my ultimate thumbs down: the premise fundamentally does not work.

In case you're unfamiliar with the story, the premise is thus: there is an alternate world where nobody ever lies, and Ricky Gervais tells the first lie in this world, setting off a chain of events that don't really, actually go anywhere or change much of anything (but that's a complaint for maybe later in this review). For the first act of the movie, you witness overly-honest people call Ricky Gervais fat and pugnosed, tell him stories about how they want to kill themselves, share their disdain or in some ways outright hatred for him, and generally treat him like complete dogshit.

Here's my problem: just because nobody can lie, it doesn't mean that tact doesn't exist. In fact, in such a world as we see in this movie, tact would be even more crucially important than it is in our own world. With no tact, with this bizarre compulsive need to overshare that is possessed by everbody in this film's universe, there would be wars raging constantly; murders in the street; constant brawls. Society would not be able to function in any recognizable way. But still, this movie shows us people being outright dicks to each other on a regular basis, and there are never any repercussions. Beyond that, how would it be possible to be a little bit different from everybody else in this world? Closeted homosexual? Not any more. Like to wear frilly panties? Now everybody knows. Are you a pervert? Bad news for you, because whenever you meet a woman, you're going to blurt, apropos of nothing, "I'd like to chain you to the toilet and sodomize you all night long." Just because you're being honest, it doesn't mean you have to reveal everything going on in your mind.

Now, the one thing this movie gets right is that everybody in this universe seems completely miserable, all the time. Unfortunately, Gervais's discovery of lying doesn't start a revolution that makes everybody's lives better. It does at first, as he learns to tell people what they want to hear, but soon he accidentally starts religion, and people go back to being miserable again. Nobody else learns to lie, which I think is what a smarter movie would have done. What's the point of "inventing" something if nobody else catches on?

At the end of the film, nothing has changed. Gervais has won the girl, but the world is virtually the same as when we came in. This terrible, terrible world, that they continue living in, and which will continue to treat them like shit. A glimmer of hope is that Gervais's son is shown to possess the skill to lie, but that's just a bullshit cheat out of actually having to craft a resolution to all of the issues this film raises.

Apart from that, the movie also contains too many cameos and about three too many montages.

Conclusion: an ill-thought-out premise provides a few laughs, but they are hampered by a needless romantic comedy plot and by the movie's own unwillingness to carry its themes through to conclusion.

TV Badasses #3-4

3. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner)--Star Trek
Who He Is: Captain of the USS Enterprise, fighter, lover, diplomat, scholar, and all-around most kick-ass male in the galaxy.

Why He's a Badass: He can short-circuit robots and omnipotent computers just by giving a rousing speech, woman are constantly coming on to him (far more than he actually beds, in fact), he appears to have his own patented form of martial arts (Kirk-fu), he never gives up no matter how hopeless the situation looks, oh, and:
He once clubbed a guy with what appears to be a plaster cast of his own penis.

Badass Moment: How to pick just one? Fuck it, we'll just go with the Corbomite Maneuver. Look it up.

How Does He Go Out? He doesn't in the show, and we're not going to get into any fatal wrestling matches with Malcolm McDowell in this post.

Badass Dialog: "This is the Captain of the Enterprise. Our respect for other life forms requires that we give you this... warning. One critical item of information that has never been incorporated into the memory banks of any Earth ship. Since the early years of space exploration, Earth vessels have had incorporated into them a substance known as...corbomite. It is a material and a device which prevents attack on us. If any destructive energy touches our vessel, a reverse reaction of equal strength is created, destroying the attacker. It may interest you to know that since the initial use of corbomite more than two of our centuries ago, no attacking vessel has survived the attempt. Death has... little meaning to us. If it has none to you then attack us now. We grow annoyed at your foolishness."

4. President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen)--The West Wing
Who He Is: Controversial two-term President of the United States.

Why He's a Badass: His principles are inflexible. He can't stand intolerance in any form. He survived an assassination attempt. He was originally intended to be a recurring character on the show, and almost immediately took over the entire thing.

Badass Moment: There are several tense faceoffs with diplomats, religious leaders, and the press, but my favorite moment is this deeply religious man's smackdown on God after his beloved personal secretary was killed in a car crash.

How Does He Go Out? His term ends and he passes the torch to Jimmy Smits (possibly for a new West Wing show that never happened).

Badass Dialoge: "You're a son of a bitch, you know that? She bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver. What? Was that supposed to be funny? 'You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God,' says Graham Greene. I don't know whose ass he was kissing there, 'cause I think you're just vindictive."

DVD Review: THE COTTAGE

The Cottage is a thriller/horror/comedy from the UK about two brothers (Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith) whose poorly-conceived quickie kidnapping scam is interrupted by a run-in with a stereotypical, deformed country psychopath.

It was recommended by a friend, and while it has a couple laughs (provided mostly by Serkis) and some decent gore shots, it fails at nearly all of its ambitions. The comedy is undercut by an intrusive, "wacky" score and the overly broad, UK sitcom acting stylings of Shearsmith, the horror is undercut by terrible makeup (an obvious mask on the killer and a truly terrible "bald spot" shaved into Shearsmith's scalp) and a thinly-conceived villain, and even the "thriller" aspect that makes up the first act is cliched and lacks suspense.

So what's good about it? Andy Serkis. This guy has such a wide acting range, it's insane. He can do so much more than play Gollum and bounce around in a monkey suit. I don't know why he's not one of the most in-demand character actors in Hollywood, but the only genuine moments in this movie are provided entirely by his character.

So, it's uncreative, the acting is all over the place (save for Serkis), and I didn't even find the villain that intriguing. What did I like (save for Serkis)?

This shot:


Hats off to you, makers of The Cottage! But I cannot recommend this movie, even with a gratuitous shot of a large-breasted blonde on the toilet.

Actresses We Love to See Naked: Lena Olin

If you have ever seen a movie featuring Lena Olin, odds are you've seen her breasts, because not only is she an awesome actress and a (now MILF-y) serious piece of ass, she seems to have virtually no issues with on-screen nudity.

I can't remember when I first because aware of her, but I was already well aware of her beauty before I saw her in Romeo Is Bleeding (pic to the left), a post-Tarantino crime romp featuring Gary Oldman and plenty of sexy-psycho femme fatale action from Ms. Olin. This is the movie when I developed my Olin Crush, which didn't last very long (because she doesn't appear in many movies), but was super intense during that period.

It was reactivated by her appearance in The Ninth Gate, Roman Polanski's wacky underrated thriller/comedy about Satanist book collectors. Again she played up the hot vilainness thing, since it's what she does best (how was this woman never in a Bond movie?), and her character is a consistent delight.

She does small movies and television now (most people probably know her best from her recurring role on Alias), but if you have a chance, you should check her out, even in the movies where she doesn't take her clothes off.

Lena Olin's IMDB page.
Her Mr. Skin page.