Blurbing For The Weekend 6/14/24

In my last BFTW post, I pronounced “as there’s not much money to be found in hot takes on hot acts, ultra-contemporary music - though thoroughly worth experiencing - has to get in line with everything else worth experiencing.” A couple days later, I learned that BEAK> had surprise released their fourth album, >>>>. I immediately threw it on, needing to hear just how Geoff Barrow would mewl over these new krautrock homages pronto.

In case you don’t know, Barrow is the musical mastermind behind trip-hop torch song legends Portishead (now in a gap longer than the one between 1997’s Portishead and 2008’s Third - still their latest album). These days, he spends most of his time co-creating the music for Alex Garland's movies. But when he's got an open schedule and money for studio jams, he plays in BEAK> with Robert Plant bassist Billy Fuller and keyb/guitar guy Will Young (who replaced Matt Williams after the second album). On their 2009 debut, the trio would improvise and record live, only using edits to shape the songs. Gradually, their albums became more songful, with the new album featuring not just overdubs but harmonies! Get a load of the Beatles over here!

Thankfully, there's still a deliciously offhand, queasy energy to the band, helped by a predisposition for woozy "analog" synth sounds, improvised first takes and Barrow’s eternally amateurish vocals placed modestly in the mix. Someone who isn’t a fan of woozy "analog" synth sounds or eternally amateurish vocals will likely say BEAK>'s shit all sounds the same. But the slight steps away from their initial minimalism have led them to resemble less the late ‘60s NY synth duo Silver Apples than ‘70s German jazz-rock consortium Can (“Ah Yeh,” first released as a B-side a few years back, is a shameless imitation of that band’s loping peak-era grooves with singer Damo Suzuki). It’s too soon for me to say where >>>> ranks with >, >>, and >>>, but expect to see me reaffirming my love for their nauseated funk by year’s end.

Despite watching more than a few re-runs of Fantasy Island as a kid (it must have played before the cartoons when I’d wake up crazy early), I never realized that the show had a mystical element, with Ricardo Montalban’s generous host Mr. Roarke implied to be an immortal with magical abilities. He even implied he met Cleopatra! I must not be the only person who merely remembered the show’s resort as an expensive but earth-bound place where guests engaged in harmless but educational live-action roleplaying, though. When it was announced Blumhouse planned a horror reboot for 2020, the response was 100% sardonic disdain. 

Turns out that, while it’s not much of a movie, Fantasy Island would have made a solid pilot. I won’t spoil how the supernatural exposition compares to the original show's lore, but Michael Pena does a fantastic job of modernizing Mr. Roarke and making his motivations ambiguous, while still providing us the most important aspect of Montalban's original performance: imperious, flavorful enunciation. It takes wit and humility to avoid camp, or merely copying a famous performance, while respecting that people will want to hear “fantasy” pronounced “fahn-ta-see.” The guests played by uniformly likable actors - particularly Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Jimmy O. Yang and Ryan Hansen - but nobody you'd race to see on the big screen (ok, maybe Q). Despite the film’s modest success, an unrelated sequel series to the original show came out less than two years later (impressive, considering fucking COVID). What differentiates the film from what brackets it is director Jeff Wadlow’s concept of the resort as a real monkey’s paw of a vacation spot, rather than an unexpectedly dramatic source of spiritual redemption. Where the shows prioritized the vistas and elegance, the movie makes sure you realize nobody’s glad they came. But me? I could have gone for at least three seasons of it. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

And now, some recently revisited POPCORN CLASSICS…

Observe And Report: Seth Rogen is Ronnie Barnhardt, a mall cop who wants to be Dirty Harry but doesn’t realize he’s Travis Bickle. You might assume Jody Hill (The Foot Fist Way, Eastbound & Down) intended this as yet another Danny McBride vehicle, but Ronnie has a childlike sincerity that’s way more befitting Rogen than McBride’s burly swagger (McBride does make a cameo, natch). The movie initially looks like another Hollywood comedy where nobody acknowledges what an insufferable lunatic the lead is, until Ray Liotta’s cop blows his top and does just that. From this point on, we’re dealing with a dark classic of surprising tenderness and brutality. Featuring Anna Farris and Collette Wolfe as Ronnie's Miss Wrong and Miss Right, Celia Weston as Ronnie's doting, drunk AF mom, and Michael Pena retroactively playing Luis from Ant-Man’s darkest timeline. 

Pineapple Express: the beginning of David Gordon Green’s adventures in Hollywood hackdom, getting the lighting right but bringing remarkably little inspiration or ambition to a movie intended as Team Apatow’s action blockbuster. Seth Rogen and James Franco respectively play a frustrated slacker and his ingratiating drug dealer, on the run after Rogen witnessed a mob hit. It’s a clumsy, underwritten affair that settles for bromosexual autopilot far too often, but the cast keeps it chugging along, particularly Craig Robinson & Kevin Corrigan as mutually resentful hitmen, and Danny McBride as a seemingly unkillable, drugrunning middle-manchild. There’s one fight scene between McBride, Rogen and Franco that reaches Raising Arizona levels of batty chaos, and the ADR is amusingly matter-of-fact, peaking when Rogen yells “I hate you!” while grappling with Gary Cole’s big bad.

Everest: This 2015 chronicle of a 1996 tragedy at Mount Everest is oddly pointless, neither providing an inspiring tale of selfless rescue nor an admonition about failing to respect nature. It’s just a cavalcade of stars playing a surplus of professional mountaineers and their rich clients, running and employing a business for cheating death atop a natural wonder of the world…because they can. Josh Brolin’s loud Texan is arguably the most interesting character for being the most transparent and self-aware case of What Men Will Do Instead Of Going To Therapy, explicitly noting he’s less depressed when mountaineering. But - as with all the narratives - the outcome of his story is basically “well, that happened.” Jake Gyllenhaal is unsurprisingly endearing as the mountaineer least burdened by responsibility, and everyone from John Hawkes to Keira Knightley do solid jobs as people who found themselves in this self-made nightmare and now have to watch it play out. Maybe the filmmakers had too much respect for those involved to imprint too strong a moral on the drama, or even make explicit the question of whether this was all worth it. Thankfully, director Baltasar Kormakur knows how to make the climbers’ experience tactile, making Everest an easy matinee watch despite that oddly uncritical distance. Throw it on this summer when the fan needs help.

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