Caught these:-

Highlander : The Search for Vengeance

Two big disappointments - the cover said it had something to do with Cowboy Bebop and it doesn't. And all the sex scenes have been axed. This is another version of that campy Sean Connery-Christopher Lambert movie of the mid-80s except the story is nowhere near that hugely entertaining affair. Mainly a revenge tale of two immortals, this one is set in a post-apocalyptic future rife with the usual cliches. Ordinary people who are rebelling against the administration, huddling underground with bad food - check. Controlling elite in high-tech securitised block - check. Ruined buildings - check. When are they gonna come up with some new scenarios for a ruined future? Totally lousy, even if the director did the Program episode of Animatrix.

Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex : The Laughing Man

Just that bit better than Solid State Society though nowhere near the first two GITS movies. This one concerns a super hacker who can hack into people with cyberbrains, plus copycats who also do this for corporate terrorism. If that doesn't make much sense, nevermind, this is GITS, after all. All this leads to a big government cover-up of an effective cure for a disease which afflicts people with cyberbrains. The animations is not that good and the art is kinda torpid but it moves along fairly well.

The Big Sleep (1945 pre-release version)

Not the 1946 theatrical version, this one has a more elaborate explanation of everything that happens and is closer to the book. Even then, the fluid prose of Chandler's prose isn't really transferred that well by director Howard Hawks and what you have is a pretty staid and dull affair with none of the verve of the book. And of course, those moral guardians in the 40s didn't allow the fact that the girl was posing nude or that Geiger was running a porn book business to be mentioned, leaving the audience kinda guessing. I heard the 1946 had more snappy repartee and sizzling Bacall-Bogart scenes but as it is, this is a pretty uninteresting detective story.

Wolverine (leaked unfinished version)

This one created quite a hoo-hah recently as someone in the editing department filched a copy and put it on the Internet. What can I say? This is actually more enjoyable than the finished version, showing the process of producing a dumbfuck superhero movie.

Highlights include:-

1. Polygonal CAD-ish planes and sea.
2. Visible stunt wires.
3. CGI guns which are out of alignment with the character's hands.
4. Fake plasticky logs.
5. Driving and flying scenes where the backdrop looks fake.
6. Wolverine turning into that liquid metal dude from Terminator 2.
7. Slowed-down action scenes.
8. A painful drop where Wolverine skims endlessly over water.
9. Dialogue cues on-screen.
10. Written instructions for special effects.
11. Disappearing claws.
12. Bad syncopation resulting in two Deadpools at the end.
13. And the gorgeous CAD climax.

S'fun. Thank you, you mofugging pirates. May you never stop.

PS - I saw bits of "Be Cool". Is this shit even supposed to be funny?

The Cars - The Cars

Got this on the fact it was in the recent Babble Top 100. It's quite hooksy. I'm just mostly familiar with the singles, especially "Just What I Needed" but the album tracks are also quite good. They prove to be the master thieves on "My Best Friend's Girl", with a standard I-IV-V chord, a cliched rockabilly riff and the instrumental break from The Beatles' "I Will". Even the fillers are quite interesting, "Don Cha Stop" being an obvious one, but still listenable anyway. And I like the closer "All Mixed Up" which is what New Wave Prog would sound like.

The Cars - Greatest Hits

Mostly overplayed on radio. I should know, I used to listen to a New Wave Internet Station non-stop so not much surprises here. The best song here is "Since You're Gone" which does a pretty good approximation of a what if? scenario had Dylan gone electric and invented New Wave in the mid-60s. "Drive" is pretty much maudlin shite, but isn't it EFFECTIVE maudlin shite? The eerie lonesome synths, the disembodied female vocals. My most vivid memory of this song was the Live Aid benefit where they used it as background music to starving Ethiopians. Most inappropriate. No food also, where got cars? Otherwise, "You Might Think" is highly fun, although "Magic", with its gated reverb drums, and "Let's Go", with its synthesised handclaps, sound incredibly dated. It also has the title track from "Heartbeat City", which I thought was the weakest song off the album, anyway.

Saw these over the weekend:-

Donnie Darko

Generally feel this is over-rated, except for Jake Gyllenhaal's excellent performance. The mainfold discussions on predestination and time travel are cliched and not presented in an engaging manner. I think the whole basis here of using mental disorders as a pretext for the surrealism is a bit underwhelming also, given that Philip K. Dick presented much better ideas on paper. The ending is also trite and blah!, a style already overused by other films. Still the ending packs an emotional wallop, if ham-fisted. That aside, there's some pretty good cinematography and kudos for doing something different anyway. I prefer the messier "Southland Tales" anyway although nobody is gonna agree with me on this.

A Night in Casablanca

Think this is a lesser Marx Bros. joint. The jokes aren't that funny, and feels recycled. The main plot is kinda aimless. I liked the ending sequence, where the Marxies chase an escaping plane, which is a blueprint for quite a lot of action movies. After the razor wit panache of "A Night of the Opera", Groucho's verbal jabs return to the hit-and-miss. And there's not the political sarcasm as "Duck Soup", with this one being a Nazi-bashing routine. Still, there's a nice piano bit by Chico and a brilliant harp solo by Harpo to savour.

Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG : Solid State Society

I always liked Masamune Shirow's creation being brought to the anime level, but this one has just too much talking and little action. And the psycho-babble isn't even that interesting, about future social welfare and education. Unlike GITS 2 : Innocence, where I thought the bad subtitling made it into something profound, this one just meanders and meanders. Future Japan is exposited well in the Ghost in the Shell series, but it's feeling kinda drab by now. And I didn't even finish watching this, the psycho-babble was getting on my tits.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

Generally a step down for Miyazaki. The excellent premise in the first few minutes degrades down into another run-of-the-mill fantasy romp, except that it is hardly as fantastical as his last two movies, "Spirited Away" or "Howl's Moving Castle". Generally made for a younger crowd, this is basically just a twist on the Little Mermaid fable. And my copy, though original, have shadows of people walking back and forth in the cinema. Geez!

Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

Mostly picked this up because of the comparisons with Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. I have heard this before.

Mostly stripped-down sparse folksy melodies. It's quite an intimate affair, I suppose, although there's overbearing space in the songs that needs to be filled up. He does put in some glockenspiel and mandolin but it still sounds barren.

All of the songs are I-IV-V chords so they sound predictable. The lyrics are nice, though the obsession with blue collar workers I do not get, he should have gone for more universal characters or at least some diversified class groups.

Best song here is "Highway Patrolman", a simple story and direct yet not forceful. "State Tropper" is a pretty good version of Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop", complete with a simulcra of the fuzz synth drones and the same screams, even if the intent is different. The Chuck Berry-ish "Open All Night" is different kinda approach, yet its solo electric guitar reminds me of Black Francis' solo concerts.

Pretty ok, I guess, what's interesting is that he followed this up with the crowd-pleasing Born in the USA, a 360 degrees turnaround.