“This Is All Audio!”: A Review of Mitch Hedberg’s “Do You Believe In Gosh?”

Mitch Hedberg rarely ever made the top ten in people’s lists of best-known comedians, but those who had experienced any of his performances could always walk away with ten lines that needed to be shared amongst friends.  Tragically, this voice was lost all too soon back in March 2005 when Hedberg passed away at the age of 37.  But fortunately, we all get one more chance to experience the late Mitch Hedberg in all of his half-baked glory with the recent live album release, “Do You Believe In Gosh?”, which was originally recorded two months before his passing at the Improv in Ontario, California.

First-time listeners might want to write his material off as Steven Wright sounding stoned, but there’s a lot more depth to Hedberg than that.  Hedberg’s style is chockful of short bits and one-liners (“I’m sick of ‘Soup of the Day’; it’s time we made a decision!”), often dabbling in amusing wordplay, bizarre non-sequitors (like in “The Improv Fairy Tale”) and clever observations that consistently catch the audience off-guard and always laughing.  Noted for his stage fright and honesty, Hedberg regularly made jokes out of his own failed jokes, and playfully messed around with members of his audience.  The fact that he would own up to bad stuff and interact with his audience only made him more endearing (“You guys know what I’m talking about? [pause] I don’t.”).

But what is most interesting about this particular album is the setting in which it was recorded.  Given the understanding that it is a posthumous album, it’s worthwhile to note that the producers (one of whom was Lynn Shawcroft, Hedberg’s widow) didn’t offer the best recording from some perfect audience, which most comedy albums tend to be like.  Here, certain audience members are involved from time to time, playfully heckling in between the jokes (the “Phil’ track is a fun example of this).  And Hedberg is not one to just tune people out or make weak “I had your mother” jokes; he actually invites response only to drown the target out with more of his own brilliant repertoire.  So though the whole effort may come across as unpolished, that fact only accenuates the hilarity.

I’m deeply appreciative for this honest aspect to the album, but what’s even better is to have witness Hedberg’s final evolution as a comedian, something most of us had not been privy to before.  With his first album, “Strategic Grill Locations”, Hedberg starts off slowly, even a bit timidly, but builds it up to a terrific performance.  In the second album, “Mitch All Together”, he is bolder, louder and swifter in his delivery.  With “Do You Believe in Gosh?”, Hedberg’s confident voice seemed to have finally reached that point where he felt his jokes were as gold as that Improv “M” he claimed he stole.  Everything works; the funny jokes are side-splitting, the bad jokes are covered by his own unique self-deprecation, and the frequent asides glue it all together for an enjoyable though bittersweet experience.

My Review:  5 out of 5

 

A Cautionary Tale Against Cool Concepts – A Review of “Vantage Point”

Led by a promising review from a local source and and some other minor info, my girlfriend and I were misled into watching the recent thriller, “Vantage Point”. When she told me the premise of the story, I considered it a neat concept and wanted to give it a try as did she (she ended up not liking it either). I should have remembered that films with neat concepts often have little else, and such is the case with this film.

“Vantage Point” is a political thriller involving the assassination of a U.S. President coupledwith a terrorist attack, as seen from the eyes of several persons involved. Secret Service agents, the President and his advisers, news-people, witnesses and other involved parties and assailants all have their own perspective shown. The pace is brisk and there’s no denying there is thrilling action. By limiting perspectives to a case-by-case basis, the audience is presented with many mysteries and possibilities. Early on, the film feels somewhat promising if a tad cliched. The cliches then get much worse, as does the film.

The two greatest problems with this film are the Hollywood-esque moments and the utter lack of focus. Too often does the film lend itself to predictable stock characters and premises, and that feeling culminates into a final half-hour to hour of sheer disappointment. Veteran actors like Dennis Quaid and Forest Whitaker (among others; yay, ensemble casts) are given paper-thin characters that they have to figure out, to the detriment of the plot’s believability. So many moments, betrayals, twists and so on feel absolutely hackneyed and even lazy. Little here is original, you experience more than a few familiar filming gimmicks, and the ending is guaranteed to make you mock everything you just witnessed.

The focus of the film gets so diluted over time that you feel like director Pete Travis was given a hairball to freshen up. The supposed “switching-perspectives” tactic becomes inconsistent and therefore boring. I’m reminded of a friend’s criticism of “Memento” (a film I like) in that taking the cool concept away makes for a boring and predictable film.  I think that film has many other strengths, but “Vantage Point” does not. Creating unnecessary cliff-hanging moments only help to make your eyes roll. Also, the writer and director never seem to had been able to figure out if this is a statement piece or action flick, so the hopeful expectations one has before going in are thoroughly dashed.

This film could have been a lot better if they made one of two changes. One, turn the work into a straight-forward thriller-mystery as all parties try to cope with their circumstances, lengthening story time. Or, maintain the “vantage point” concept but piecing together a better mystery and perhaps eliminating some perspectives. What you end up with is a 23-minute story stretched into 90 and the producers’ desperation at figuring out how to fill that time.  As it stands, the plot is certainly intricate but has some holes that hurt its credibility.

If you choose to dumb your expectations down quite a bit, you can find “Vantage Point” enjoyable. The mystery and action is there for those who crave it, and that’s mostly what keeps this from being a horrid experience. But those who think will find all of that trite, so it’s difficult to consider this even an okay film.

My Review: 2 out of 5

Lasting Appeal: Avoid, unless you want pure escapism on a weekday evening, but there’s better stuff out there.

 

Not For My Brit Friends – A Review of Stephen Colbert’s “I Am America (And So Can You!)”

You’ve gotta love Stephen Colbert, or at least I think so.  He and his production team not only created a great show and concept in “The Colbert Report”, but Colbert’s wit and self-promotion have worked tremendously well in sustaining its popularity.  So, just like when I heard “The Daily Show” staff was putting out their America textbook, I was pretty excited at the fact that Colbert was putting out a book, and was more than satisfied with the results.

Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!), like his television program, is another perfect satire of punditry and all of its problems.  The book is itemized into chapters of general topics and Colbert’s various “stances” on those issues.  While the text itself is both enjoyable and amusing, the quick laughs (as with his show) is reserved for the additions.  Many chapters end with amusing segments like “Stephen Speaks for Me”, where a fictitious person represents their approval for the Colbert platform, and the satiric “Fun Zone” activities.  Like with America, the fun is in the additions.

But the premium material can be found in his side notes outside the margin (damn, I can’t remember what to call these) and his footnotes.  Like the “Word” segment on the “Report”, the notes accentuate the comic value and intent of the book, and work especially well when Colbert delivers one of his finer in-text jokes.  But the slight predictability of the Colbert-character’s styles makes it such that there were plenty of pages where the best jokes were in those side notes and not the text.  Just as the “Word” bulletin notes are funnier than Colbert’s own dialog in that segment, so are the side notes often the most amusing here.

As predicted, Colbert’s book sends up the conventions of the typical pundit book (something I’m often critical of) well.  It seems a relatively simple task to put in written word what Colbert does on TV (just like those he parodies), but Colbert and his fellow writers are brilliant enough to know how to encapsulate that aspect in ways both hilarious and fresh.  It may seem like a short read, yet the desire to read it again at some point helps alleviate that criticism.  The book may be only as enjoyable as the show can be (so if you don’t like the show, you won’t like the book), but those who tire of the overabundance of the newest Hannity or Moore book may certainly find this a refreshing take on things.  But have a great sense of humor; Colbert seldoms pulls punches.

My Review:  4.5 out of 5

Lasting Appeal:  Own.  It’s a book that you’ll maybe read once or twice more, but an excellent book to lend.

 

I Feel Nauseous – A Review of “Cloverfield”

Hesitantly, I took my girlfriend to this film on our second date, as I really wanted to take her to the movies, but this was the best possible choice at the moment.  She’s not much of a horror fan, so I was hoping that PG-13 rating would bail me out.  She didn’t hate me in the end, but there were a couple of scenes where I thought she would.  Whew.

“Cloverfield”, along with Korea’s 2006 “The Host” and Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” to an extent, is perhaps the beginning of the return of the big monster film.  Set in New York and filmed almost entirely with a handheld digital camera, the story follows a small group of party-goers sending off one of their friends to Japan as they try to survive a sudden attack by the Cloverfield monster as both it and the military tear up the city.  Beginning slowly as major characters and plot themes are revealed through dialogue, the viewer sits through the drama and cheer of the festivities for quite some time before, naturally, a sudden explosion alters the course of the film.  The group of friends scramble through city streets with plenty of other New Yorkers, trying to survive the night as the beast goes through its rampage.

Given the subject matter, this is a film where acclaim chiefly rests on two elements, the monster’s design and suspenseful utilization of such, and the quality of the camera work.  I have to say that I liked how the filmmakers handled the monster (a CGI creation), whose design and proportions are both intriguing and nightmarish.  Unlike the infamous monster movies of the past, “Cloverfield” is a monster that calls on a higher imagination, and it may be difficult for the viewer to equate the monster to something already known (like how you’d say “Godzilla” looks like a dinosaur), improving the fun and horror for the audience.  Director Matt Reeves does a decent job at slowly revealing “Cloverfield”, carefully giving just enough at select moments to titillate but not so much that the suspense is lost.

The camera work is done from the viewpoint of one of the characters (a la Blair Witch), and that is the film’s double-edged sword.  It certainly makes the film more interesting as you see people running from city streets, dodging all sorts of chaos, and that adds to the suspense and thrill of the moment.  The film gained notoriety for the shaky nature of the filming, adding realism but giving some audience members motion sickness (poor peeps), another intriguing facet to the experience.  This also gives the story more ambiguity, which is actually a good thing here; it’s not necessary to have all the details of the monster or the characters, and character-perspective shooting avoids such hassles.  The problem, however, that occurs in all of these films with character-perspective shooting is that it’s difficult to suspend reality enough to believe that these characters keep filming naturally, turning the camera on and off at choice story and cinematic moments.  “Cloverfield” improves on “Blair Witch” in this regard, but it’s still a conflicting device for any feature film.

In just about all other respects, the film is pretty standard fare.  Most of the acting is honest if cliched, with some touching moments.  The film is paced well and has some truly memorable scenes, but the suspenseful moments after the initial shock often seem obvious, limiting the ingenuity of the camera work.  A great deal of debate and criticism has been lent to the post 9-11 themes in the story, as people struggle to survive and cope with the sudden chaotic nature of an attack.  Personally, I find the complaints in this regard to be overreaching; while seeing a parallel of any kind is for some a hard pill to swallow, I believe it would be less of a film to not have risked challenging that reaction.  The film is about a giant freak of nature, angry and hungry and ready to destroy.  I wouldn’t expect much else.

In the end, “Cloverfield” is an enjoyable film for its technical aspects but pretty average otherwise.  It doesn’t indulge in as much cheesiness as other horror films of recent memory have, but the inability to reconcile certain aspects in filming and story keep the film from being great.  “Cloverfield” is better than average, but not necessarily a keeper.

My Review:  3.5 out of 5

Lasting Appeal:  Rent.  It’s worth watching on the big screen, and a good weeknight-scare to watch, but it doesn’t have a great deal to it that encourages multiple viewings.

 

“Don’t Be One Of Them!”: A Review of Robert W. Harris’s “101 Things NOT to Do Before You Die”

I tend to like subversive observations on all things topical, and I utterly despise most self-help books (check here for more on that noise).  So I couldn’t help but to pick up this little gem:  101 Things NOT To Do Before You Die by Robert W. Harris.  It’s a collection of 101 things that he suggests you either avoid or don’t get all that worked up about.  In a time where we’re seeing 1001 must-do these of this and 7 highly successful things of that on the store books, Harris’s 101 tidbits are a breath of fresh air that I found fervently enjoyable.  But certain features in the book keep me from delivering a high grade on this little gem.

Starting with the good points,  Harris is clever, nerdy, smart and pretty creative with what he puts down.  His list is a fun cocktail of simple and obscure observations, going from suggesting better adjective use to not letting the conundrum that is “Gilligan’s Island” get to you.  Many of his quips are understated and sudden, and he never comes across as preening or  apparently partisan on many things.  The reader finds comfort in his observations not being tied down by a sentimentality other than that of the goofy guy telling jokes at some dinner party.  The organization is similar to many books of its type, where you can jump around if you wish or check the contents for the more interesting-looking “tips”.

All of his “tips” consist of three or four short paragraphs, often but not always followed by fun facts (not all being facts, of course), fake quizzes, pertinent quotes and even reading and Internet browsing suggestions.  The best stuff can be found in his “fun activites”, which tend to be silly and optimistic alternatives to the negative situations he is warning you against, and also his “questions to ponder”, which highlight the topic in thoughtful or sardonic ways.  Even if you ultimately don’t like the book’s intent or agree with much of it, you finish it with a treasure trove of references to explore with.

But all of that said, it certainly does leave you wanting more.  The book is easily digestible, but that’s a problem if you find yourself enjoying it.  When I finished, I wished that Harris had put even more work into it.  A much longer list or another format (doing a textbook like the Daily Show America book comes to mind) or even more detail and anecdotes would improve the appeal of a book that as is can be finished in scant hours.  The message is appreciated, but one cannot help but to want more for their money.  The book is probably best suited not for a straight read, but as a coffee table book that you jump back to every now and then, or a joke book you pass around to friends.  As it is, you can go through it as quickly as a compilation of Letterman Top Ten lists.

The humor will definitely be lost on some people.  It’s very light and understated as mentioned, but it’s also decidedly culturally American in some passages, so my Brits friends will look at a few points with perplexity.  And even then, the references are a bit out-of-date, mentioning things like “Dallas” and, well, “Gilligan’s Island”.  Harris is not writing to the 20 and maybe 30-somethings, unless those people are like me and like this kind of humor.  Some references also get a bit repetitive (he has a mild fixation on watching your sodium intake, though that’s not a bad idea).

The book has some potential to it, as it can be fun to return from time to time like all humor books, and can be shared with like-minded friends that could use a quick laugh.  It doesn’t make too bad a gift, either.  But most people would benefit from either borrowing it from the library or reading it at the bookstore.  It’s a great reality check for those that depend to much on the self-help and guidance books, but only if they “get it”.

My Review:  3 out of 5.

Lasting Appeal:  Borrow.  Owning depends on your sense of humor.  It’s a great book to pass around.

Go here for the B&N page on this book.

A synopsis of the book on his own site.

 

Mushi? Mushi!: A Review of “Mushishi”

Picture this: An enigmatic character (who looks and dresses like no one else) drifts about the countryside, conveniently showing up at some remote locale to investigate some bizarre, supernatural occurrence that has most of the town residents crapping their kimonos off. He then promptly informs them that little bug-things are the problem, tries to help a bit, then high tails it. And he does this some 25 times.

Well, that’s not a very selling endorsement of the critically-acclaimed anime series “Mushishi”, but it’s an amusing way to break it down. The series takes place at an unidentified time in Japanese history, presupposing a world where exists “Mushi”, basic organisms that have a profound and often confusing effect on the greater world. The main character is Ginko, the quintessential drifter, but also by trade a “Mushishi”, a person skilled in identifying and handling such creatures. The 26-episode series documents his journey to various places, as well as his confrontations and relations with various Mushi and people.

The production qualities of the series are of especial note. Heavily concerned with the poetic and pastoral nature of the story, the animation quality is expressed best in its vibrant and bold color contrasts, as well as the flair and detail in its landscapes. More so than most other anime, viewing “Mushishi” is like viewing a moving canvas. There is a plainness in some of the character designs, but the fact that characters as consistently disposed of at the end of each episode (not to mention the fact that everybody’s wearing a similar outfit) makes this somewhat forgivable. The viewer ultimately favors the scenery and the strange designs of the Mushi more than anything else.

Sound quality is not only excellent, but just about always appropriate. The musical pieces establish the appropriate moods of tension and mystery quite well, and dulcet music often encapsulates both the ideal, pastoral nature as well as highlighting the calm after the denouement. You yearn for a soundtrack before you finish the series. Voice quality is done well (I viewed Japanese with English sub-titles), with all the important characters having some personality to their lines. Yuto Nakano, the seiyu for Ginko, is enjoyable for his ponderous and relaxed voicing of the character. It’s also important to note how well the series does in “quiet moments”; the production team does well in knowing when silence is golden.

The series is of an episodic nature, meaning that each episode has a self-contained story and little is carried over to the next episode other than the character Ginko and his involvement in other strange events. This feature, often found in shorter anime productions (“Cowboy Bebop”, for example), tends to infuriate some fans of the genre. But this works perfectly for this subject, as every story is a short combination of mystery and magic realism. Especially in the case of “drifter stories”, it’s highly appropriate.

The Mushi, different in every appearance, comes across as both primal and complex. Man is often fearful or unaware of its existence, and even those who deal with them are often at a loss to describe its actions and reasoning. This fact is importantly established early on, as the reader understands that not even Ginko the expert can always handle Mushi-related phenomena. Ginko, with his anachronistic look and strange features, is just as uncanny as the Mushi, but that makes him perfect as the willing liaison between it and humanity. But as deep and contemplative as Ginko is, he is also sharp, sarcastic and amusing when needed.

People who enjoy the series will have been able to suspend their disbelief a touch. If you can accept that some of the inconsistencies make for neater mysteries, then “Mushishi” becomes all the more engrossing with its aesthetic qualities enhancing the experience. People who like more epic story arcs may also struggle with this, but remember that watching an episode of “Mushishi” is like reading a Sherlock Holmes story; when it’s over, you enjoy the climax and move on to the next story. The series is more enjoyable when you put yourself in the same shoes as the minor characters, who find themselves forced to deal with strange events they can hardly understand, sometimes without any resolution.

My Review: 5 out of 5

Lasting Appeal: Own. Unless fantastical anime is not your cup of tea, this is something that you can easily return to.

Look up more information here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushishi