22/8/2004
It's been ages since I stepped into a cinema and came out thinking,
"Oh wow! What a great film!" Michael Mann's
Collateral is, unfortunately, not one of those films. The
very thought of having wasted a nice Saturday afternoon sitting (and
sleeping, for a couple of minutes) through the entire film irritates
the hell out of me.
To begin with, everything's just overly-stylized. It's all 'cool',
and 'slick'. Jamie Foxx is very obviously trying
hard to come across as a serious, credible actor but he's just so,
I dunno, transparent? Every onscreen moment of his just screams, "Lookit!
I'm dramatic! But I still exude a comedic edge!"
Then there's Tom Cruise's character Vincent who comes
from the increasingly dull and typical 'intelligent assassin' mould.
Full of skewed but seemingly intellectual opinions, cold and precise.
Who eventually – spoiler alert – gets defeated by a humble
cab driver. Who would've guessed, huh? And I hate it when films exaggerate
the use of technology just to keep the cool quotient up. Like when
Vincent keeps track of his hits with a PDA and downloads his hitlist
into a flash drive. Why? Because its 2004 and assassins no longer
meet their clients in dingy coffee houses with a creaking ceiling
fan to exchange documents and photographs of their targets. It's 2004
goddamnit! Assassins need their Windows updates too, you know?
And then there's that scene at the jazz club where the guy gets killed
over a question about Miles Davis. To anyone else
it might have been a really cool situation. Jazz and murder, what
a combination! But to me that's just over-the-top and ridiculous.
Thank you, Michael Mann, for ruining Miles' 'Spanish Key' for me.
There's also a scene where he uses a Calexico track
(I forget which). Thanks for ruining that for me too.
11/8/2004
Okay, an update's in order.
I took a day off from work today cos I'm down with the flu again –
the second time in two (three?) weeks. Usually I would've just gone
to work but I thought, what the heck, I need my rest. Besides, it's
not as if I'm using a slight cough to skive from work. I was really
burning up from a fever the moment I got back from work yesterday.
So yeah, I needed to just stay and rest at home.
It would seem that my second mix CD isn't as popular as my first,
considering the amount of people who mailed me for a tracklisting.
Either that, or it's just that most of the tunes are easily recognisable.
But personally I like my first mix better than the second one. In
fact I think the problem with Vol. 2 was that I actually planned it
ahead. Like, which track goes after which, how to segue from one genre
to the next. It's a lot less inspired, to say the least. No matter.
There's Vol. 3 in the pipeline, but until I sort out a couple of things
with renewing my web hosting service I won't be putting it up just
yet.
I never quite figured where to start when it came to Miles
Davis, and looking at the All Music Guide doesn't
help either cos every damn album of his seems to be an essential pick.
So thanks to Pitchfork's list
of the best albums from the 70's, I've been listening to Bitches
Brew, On The Corner and A Tribute To Jack Johnson.
My favourite has got to be Bitches Brew, especially the title
track and 'Miles Runs The Voodoo Down'. Sick stuff.
You wanna hear something interesting, entertaining?
Do ya? Huh? Yeah? It involves girls, and it goes a little something
like this. A friend of mine brought this girl out last weekend to
hang out. A cousin of a girlfriend, sumthin' like that. So she sat
opposite me at the table, right? And I took quick glances at her,
and she took a quick glance at me (she really did! maybe once …)
and I thought, "Dude, she ain't bad, you gotta talk to her!"
And another friend of mine was like, "Dude, she ain't bad, you
gotta talk to her!" So okay, I poured her a drink, and struck
up a conversation from there. Great. So we got talking. And I thought
I hit it off real well. Talked about being a writer. Studying overseas.
"Oh wow! You are so smart!" No, that didn't happen. It would've
been nice though.
So we were listening to this house band playing some Stevie
Wonder and we were still talking. Way to go Benny! Get her
number! Now, either I'm too drunk to remember how the conversation
led up to what she eventually said to me or it's just that she's been
waiting the whole night to tell me to bacdafucup, but out of nowhere,
she was like, "Oh hey, my boyfriend's at some sort of dinner
tonight … blah blah … that's why I'm hanging out with
my cousin ... what about you? You got a girlfriend?"
