Saturday, December 28, 2013

Iron Man 3 (2013) dir Shane Black

As we all know, well those of us who know, Shane Black has scripted Christmas for a lot of us.  Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.  These movies imprinted on me hard when I first saw them as a kid (I was 10 in 1987 - Mr. Black was 26 - the year that Lethal Weapon  came out).  Brutally hard movies with noir dialogue (and yes I knew what noir dialogue was when I was a kid because my father took me to a revival theater that mostly screened noir but that's another story for another time...).

So Shane Black directed and co-wrote Iron Man 3.

Fuck it.  This movie was awesome.  I wasn't expecting some of the human elements (though I should have) that Black brought to Tony Stark.  Stark's PTSD wasn't overplayed nor did it have/lean back on Hallenbeck humor (Tony Stark is too, well, Tony Stark).  I found the dialogue play between Downey Jr. & Cheedle to be not only the best parts of the movie but also the most Black-esque.

Not as satisfying as the first Iron Man movie nor as satisfying as Black's earlier works, I think that this movie will grow on me as I watch it.  Fuck, when's the last time I wanted to own a movie after watching it?  Iron Man 3 is fun and filled with mayhem and Black gets some solid performances out his crew (something Branaugh and Whedon didn't on Thor: the Blonde Douche God).

Valerie June "Pushin' Against a Stone" (2013)

Holy fucking shitfire.  The first post in months and it's about an album?

(Side note primus:  My life has pretty been suck and broke, mostly in tandem for months.)

I managed to drunkenly blunder up on and over Valerie June's "Pushin' Against a Stone" the other night when I was feeling sorry for myself (you know what sucks more than feeling sorry for yourself when you're drunk?  Feeling sorry for yourself when you're sober and watching SVU  on mute and eating crappy microwaved popcorn and still thankful you have the electricity to microwave anything).

In any case, this is one hell of an album.  It reminds me of: The Cowboy Junkies, Mazzy Star, Liz Phair, Portishead, Goldfrapp, and Sharon Jones.  It's twangy.  It's super Soul.  It's a make-out album.  It's a break-out album. It's fucking brilliant.  It flows and transitions smoother than a hand down a silk clad thigh.  It's a kitchen album.

There's a fucking guitar riff on the title track which reminds me of Cream but then track that follows ("Trials, Troubles, and Tribulations") is as good as any track off of Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story" (well...almost).

   

She's got some burn.

A hell of an album by a woman with one hell of a voice.  I've got her on heavy rotation, you should too.
generated by sloganizer.net

Greatest Hits

Blog Archive (s) It's like a Wayback Machine!