Planetarium - politics/music/culture/smarts

As promised, the holiday film guide now commences. Today is a pretty short one, for obvious reasons. The film I'm going to tell you about needs no real examination, no serious inquiry into the pluses and minuses, because, honestly, the whole movie is just one big minus. Did you guess it yet?

That's right. I'm talking about that most disasterous of films, The Cat In the Hat, starring that most one-note of comic actors, Mike Myers. A friend of mine put it very well tonite, when he said "Screw that movie. Screw it in its creepy cat ass." You have to be deranged to want to see this film. Do not go. I beg you.

Tomorrow, a better film. Yay!

Posted by alex at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Planetarium feels like there's rarely more than a few bands out there at any one time who actually INHERIT the great spirit of classic pop music. Not to say there's not other good pop bands out there, but that true ennui of great bands past is really only carried on by a very small number, wouldn't you say. And that spirit was carried for a good number of years there in the nineties by none other than....drumroll please......The Posies.

In order to illuminate how great they are a little better, allow me to present the logic analogy:

The Posies:Big Star::Big Star:Beach Boys

You follow? So rush right out there and pick up a copy of their classic 1992 major-label debut (and the best one), Frosting On The Beater. I wrote a review of it waayyyyyy back then about how the Posies were always kind of the band that it was cool to trash, but how they're inevitably worlds better than whoever's currently dissing 'em. So give yourself an early holiday treat, and check it out.

Buy it here.

Posted by alex at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaking of turkeys, Clay Aiken was on Jay Leno the other night. Don't you think he sort of looks like the bastard child of Brad Pitt and Camryn Manheim? Just a thought.

ANYWAYS, the reason for this post is to inform you that, this year, Planetarium would like to suggest an alternative to whatever your usual charitable Thanksgiving donation is. See, the reason so many more hungry jobless people are out there this year is because of one thing: George Bush. So, in the spirit of goodwill towards all people, why not donate to MoveOn.org, , BootBush.com, or any number of other important enterprises? It'll help, I promise.

Posted by alex at 08:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 5th.

Uptown Theater, Minneapolis.

Bubba Ho-Tep.

'nuff said.

Posted by alex at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow. So the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill passed. What a fuckin' boondoggle. Even the uber-Libertarian Cato Institute is decrying this bill as a giant giveaway to pharmaceutical companies. Basically, it steals money from the Medicare system, gives it to private HMOs, without lowering the cost of drugs at all. Pretty awesome.

Posted by alex at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry, I couldn't resist the faux-headline. Seriously, though, check out the picture the New York Times slapped alongside their story on him. Sweet Jesus, I can't believe anyone would see that face and NOT imagine it molesting little boys.

Posted by alex at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hey, hey, how about that: Massachusetts wants gay people to get married. Okay, I predict, with my amazing intellect, that another wave of aarticles will hit the press talking about how this will only bring another wave of anti-gay backlash. Just like the one that materialized, just as predicted, after the anti-sodomy laws ruling. Oh, wait, that was just a wave of articles saying there'd be a backlash, but it never actually happened. That darn liberal media...

Posted by alex at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the other day....let me tell you, it was actually good. I can see why it topped the ol' box office for like two or three weeks straight there. Jessica Biel does a lovely job of screaming and running, which is primarily what the script requires of her. But it was surprising: as a fan of the genre, I have to say that I'm not scared very often by them. But massacre contains some honest-to-God creepy moments, and makes a great date movie. You know, if you're weird.

Posted by alex at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OKay, so the high-concept Hollywood train is about to leave the station, the leaves have pretty much all fallen, Joe Lieberman is doing his best to out-right-wing the right-wing, Britney Spears has a new album coming out....it must be that special time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Actually, not quite yet. But I'm anticpiating it because, golly, there's just so much to look forward to. Not the least of which will be the fact that Radio, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s latest aborted fetus of a movie, will finally be gone from theaters and minds of Americans foreverafter. What's that? You don't find aborted fetus references funny? Well, screw you. It's hard to be witty on here, sentence after sentence, every single day. (Ideally every single day, i should mea culpa, i suppose.) So just sod off. Okay, let's see, back on board the Cuba Gooding Jr. premise train! Whoo-whoo! It's leaving! Say, what do you think dinner conversation at the Gooding Jr. household is like? I think it might go a little something.....a-like this:

Cuba Gooding Jr.: Hi, there, family, it's me, Cuba Gooding Jr. You might not remember me from such films as Chill Factor, A Murder of Crows, and Snow Dogs. You likely WILL remember me as the who won an Oscar for shouting "Show me the money!" Hee-hee. I bet those Academy people are kicking themselves every day over that one.

Cuba Jr. Jr.: Daddy, is there anything else you can possibly do to damage the respect, dignity, and progress of black people everywhere?

Cuba Gooding Jr.:, Well, I suppose I could back in time like the Terminator and assassinate Malcolm X, but that'd be hard for me to pull off.

Please hold my coat while I slide down into hell. ANYWAYS, there are a whole boatload of movies coming out during this time, some great-looking, some not-so-great. (You gotta give it up for Ben Affleck, though: His next film's called Paycheck. I applaud him for having the guts to just come out and say it. Look for his next two films, Summer Home and Phoning It In to drop sometime next year.) But I just wanted to clue you folks in to the fact that, starting next week, from the day after Thanksgiving to the day before Christmas, Planetarium will be chiming in with all the best capsule reviews of music, films, and books as a public service for those of you unable to come up with your own gift ideas. You're welcome.

But don't worry- that means I've got about a week or so here to do some serious farting about some recent political disasters. (Quick- here's my impression of Howard Dean: "Hey y'all! Y'all Southerners? I LUV me some good ol' redneck hillbilly, methaphetamine-snorting racist voters! I surely do! Y'all come vote for Howard 'round this here time next year!") And of course Planetarium would be sorely remiss in his duties were he not to mention the exciting news that Julianne Moore is starring in a Vampire movie coming out next summer. I love this new trend of Oscar winners turning to the occult to spruce up the ol' resume. Though Halle Barry apparently can't handle REAL goths, so she just has to name her silly Flight of the Navigator re-hash that. ("Halle! Wake up! While you were sitting in a sanitarium, the rest of us here on Earth aged eight years! Except for Robert Downey, Jr. He aged forty years.")

That's enough pedantry for now. Gotta go look up X-Box games to ask my family for come Christmas. And don't worry, Planetarium will post his Amazon wish list here, so any of you who really love him can buy him something from it.

Posted by alex at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't believe someone didn't hit on this idea sooner: A website devoted to reviewing the trailers of upcoming movies, and very humorously deciding whether or not they're any good. I rarely laugh out loud at anything placed on a computer screen, but this site is great. Allow me to especially recommend their review of Charlie's Angel's: Full Throttle. Which is a damn fine film in it's own right. No, seriously. How come no one believes me when I say that?

Posted by alex at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I do apologize. Planetarium has been starting a new job this week, which hath kept us from our multivarious Internet duties. So, a quick recap for those of you who are jonesin' for some inside scoops:

There is a box of Golden Grahams right next to the keyboard this is being typed on, and near the side of the cover, it reads "The irresistable taste of Golden Grahams has everyone after your box!".

Apparently, the Matrix: Revolutions is way better than the last one, which I interpret to mean that, at the very least, it doesn't totally suck.

Today The looking glass hoists Tom Friedman, very deservedly, by his own petard:

A few weeks ago, Tom Friedman was mocking the French for proposing "some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government" -- a proposal that they could only be advancing, he claimed, because it was doomed to failure, and failure was what they wanted to see. Today, he makes his own proposal:

There is much talk now about the need for "Iraqification" of the police and armed forces, so Iraqis can take over for U.S. troops. No question, this is necessary. But it's not sufficient. We could have 100,000 Iraqis in the police and Army and it would not be enough — without one other person. We need an Iraqi leader (or a leadership council) elected as a result of an Iraqi constitutional or political process. ...
This should be our drop-everything priority.

Which is, of course, very different. It was not proposed by the French.

Another lovely media blast comes courtesy of Atrios:

David Corn describes an recent encounter with Ann Coulter on Hardball where, true to form, Ann was making shit up. The show concluded with Matthews saying, "Facts mean nothing to you, Ann." As Corn notes, "If so, why continue to have her on?"

The country is still being led straight to hell by Bush et. al.

The new Neal Stephenson book is pretty good so far.

The Vets played a great show last night.

What more do you want?

Posted by alex at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another Monday, another great New York Times article by Paul Krugman. He seems to get more accessible and and smart with each subsequent posting. This new one's a succinct, and eminently logical, piece on how the Bush administration likes to close its eyes and pretend bad things will go away. The sad part is, as far as the media's reporting on them is concerned, they may be right.

Posted by alex at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)