The Muppets

On the way home from SXSW: American Airlines DFW > BOS. Somewhere over the Midwest I finally got to see The Muppets, I movie I narrowly missed seeing last fall.  CAVEAT: Read this review knowing that I heard it over earbuds on a noisy plane, and watched it on a LCD screen mounted on the ceiling of a badly-lit airplane.

A gentle and loving reintroduction to the Muppets, as hosted by Jason Segel, Amy Adams, and a new Muppet named Walter. It was a little odd that Kermit was not the star of the movie, it was almost like the idea of the Muppets was the star. In fact, every minute spent on Segel, Adams, and Walter meant less time for the Muppets, so by the time the movie was over, every Muppet had been bumped down three slots to the point where second banana Fozzie Bear was reduced to fifth banana.
The humor and music was just the right tone for a Muppet movie, and the overuse of random Hollywood celebrities was very familiar- Jack Black has an extended cameo.
The ending didn't make any logical sense at all- even for a movie with a preposterous premise, the ending didn't jibe with the premise. I found Kermit to be too wishy-washy. Kermit gives up over and over (I counted three times), and must be coached and urged to fight on. He seemed to have no backbone at all (insert frog joke here).
There was one scene in the Muppets variety show where a Muppet barbershop quartet (in a barbershop) perform a shave and a haircut while singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit". If that's funny, I don't know how, and how a 20-year-old song is relevant, I don't know either.
I'm going to give The Muppets another shot, but I didn't see the slam-dunk I had hoped for.
NOTE: The movie playing on the BOS > DFW flight was The Big Year, also starring Jack Black. (No review: I was in the window seat and could not see the whole screen.)

Friends With Kids

Adam Scott seizes the opportunity in his first major leading dramatic role. The ensemble shines through, but the plot decomposes into a rote "When Harry Got Sally Pregnant" rewrite. The sloppy production values and Jennifer Westfeldt's distracting face (more on this later) made it hard to keep focused...literally. Any movie about struggling with love, parenting, and marriage for upper-middle-class 40-somethings is going to resonate with me, but I found it hard to continue to root for parents making such bad choices.
 SPOILERS AHEAD
Jason (Adam Scott) and Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) are best friends with their two best married couples (Jon Hamm & Kristen Wiig; Chris O'Dowd & Maya Rudolph, all from Bridesmaids). The six of them are tightly knit, but Jason and Julie never settle down: it's shown to us from the very first scene that they care for each other more than any stranger could compete with. They don't acknowledge it to themselves, but they compare their first dates against their best friend every time.
This makes the conclusion of the film inevitable, so it's writer-director Westfeldt's job to make the trip to happily-ever-after worth watching. And it is mostly worth watching, and in most romantic comedies which explore this dynamic, it can be a lot of fun. In this case, I became increasingly allied with their child, and increasingly critical of their poor life choices. Maybe being the dad to a two-year-old has made me a killjoy or a big marshmallow, but let's face it: their clever "split custody" arrangement is worse than having your parents divorce: your parents appear to love each other, but they refuse to live together. Only later will this poor kid realize that the only thing standing in the way of a functioning family unit is the self-delusion and selfish gratification of the parents.
Speaking of selfishness, Jason finds true love with MJ (Megan Fox, age 25) whom many find to be the hottest woman on Earth. This makes 38-year-old Scott look like a prime horndog, especially when MJ has no other redeeming qualities. I found this galling when Julie (age 41) finds love with Edward Burns (age 43), admittedly a very tall and handsome man, but he's playing a child-loving divorcee. Jason comes of much worse, especially when Julie has her revelation and expresses her true love for Jason a whole year before Jason comes to his senses and reciprocates.
Jennifer's Face: Lee Ann and I both found Jennifer Westfeldt's face distracting. The color was too uniform throughout the movie. Every scene her skin was the same color all the time. Even in scenes where no one would be wearing makeup, she looked freshly airbrushed. Lee Ann suspects Botox is to blame; I noticed the skin color more than immobility.
Production Values: I am certain this movie was made on a strict budget, but there were two shots completely out of focus, which is supremely rare; and one scene set at sunrise in Central Park where the lighting looked totally fake. I also noticed several dialog scenes where the different camera angles were badly cut together: a characters hands mismatched, expressions not matching, and dialog from one shot used over-the-shoulder of another shot, so the lips didn't match. My grade: C-plus.
Not technically a SXSW screening. I saw this with Karen & Lee Ann at the Violet Crown Theater in Austin the day after SXSW ended.

Sleepwalk With Me

Mike Birbiglia's writing-directing-starring debut is terrific. Funny, sad, moving, scary, hopeful? I give it an A. Great music. If I have to criticize, I did find Abby (Lauren Ambrose) a little too flawless. Birbiglia is so transparent, I feel like I knew him right away, but Abby was just the "nice girlfriend" too much. I wanted to see what her character flaws were. This is not a knock on Ambrose- who, by the way, is more stunning than ever - but we needed one little example of her being a little human. Alamo Drafthouse, Austin TX

Yellow Submarine

For stoners only. Eye-bulging psychedelic "pop art" animation and spectacular music cannot save this plotless and overlong wandering through the Beatles middle catalog. The voice actors are mostly indistinguishable from each other, their dialog is mostly bad puns, the plot is "Beatles music makes bad feelings go away". The rest of the movie is Beatles music set to a Peter Max poster come to life. Beatles music in remastered stereo sound cranked up to 11, with imaginative surreal imagery is pretty awesome, but even I wondered why the movie was 89 minutes long.

NOTES: Wikipedia tells me that the character of George was voiced by one actor for half the movie, then the guy playing Paul filled in and did both. No wonder they're indistinguishable!
This plotless meandering screenplay is credited to four men! Paramount Theater, Austin TX

Beware of Mister Baker

I read Jay Bulger's 2009 profile of Ginger Baker in Rolling Stone; This 2012 biopic (writer-producer-director) is an excellent extension and sequel to that profile.
While Keith Moon and John Bonham were revered for their "hammer of the gods" rock and roll drumming, Ginger Baker was the best jazz drummer of his generation and a revolutionary rock drummer...and a terrible human being.
Over the course of months Bulger lived with Baker on his horse farm in South Africa, interviewing Baker, seemingly immobile in his leather recliner. Through these interviews and interviews with all his bandmates, wives, children, and peers, we discover an overlooked savant drummer and essential member of Cream and Blind Faith- two influential and outstanding bands which only lasted two years each, because no one can stand to work with Baker. Baker pushes away anyone who grows close to him, destroys every relationship, and refuses to compromise. A self-destructive, violent, drug-abusing madman who somehow survived to this day (age 72) while so many of his contemporaries didn't make it out of the 1970s.
Strongly recommended for all rock fans. The wealth of live concert and TV footage from every phase of his spectacular.
Paramount Theater, Austin TX

Nature Calls

Randy (Patton Oswalt) is a Boy Scout troop leader, desperate to save the troop for his dying father's approval. Randy kidnaps his nephew's sleepover party for one last Scout camping trip, but his brother Kirk (Johnny Knoxville) will do anything to crush Randy's dreams.
 

Nature Calls has a couple of ideas it tries to explore, and there are moments of humor too, but the end result is a unfocused mishmash of maudlin "last camping trip with Dad" sentimentality, pre-adolescent camping humor, and the kind of boorish shouting you'd expect from Rob Riggle and Johnny Knoxville at their least restrained.
The biggest laugh was an establishing shot of a McMansion with six identical minivans parked out front.
Stateside Theater, Austin TX

Best Picture Oscar Deathmatch

I have seen over 150 Best Picture Oscar nominees. But which films are my favorites, the best of the best? First, I took a list of all the Best Picture nominees and marked the ones I had seen. Starting in 1990, I have seen at least 3 of the nominees, usually 4 or 5 of them. To make the Best Picture Deathmatch slightly less grisly, I divided the competition into two: 1929-1989, and 1990-2011.
Getting those two lists down to 20 each was easy: I marked every film my wife or I had ever owned on VHS, laserdisc, or DVD. Then I added a couple titles (It's A Wonderful Life, Unforgiven), which get a bye into the finals. (What's the point in making up my own lists if I can't break my own rules?)

Enjoying Music Unironically

I try not to get caught up in what's cool and uncool in music. I was enjoying listening to "Never Surrender" by Corey Hart today, and I thought to myself "This is a good song. Could I put this song on a playlist, but not as a punchline?" I was really enjoying the song un-ironically...then the saxophone solo began. That sealed the deal. Too silly to be taken seriously.

Hugo

What a treat to see Martin Scorsese use his prodigious talents on a movie for the whole family to enjoy.
Not only is Hugo a whimsical adventure about finding (or reclaiming) your purpose in the world, but it's also a love letter to the birth of narrative filmmaking. My grade: A!

He only wears the beret for a minute, I swear.

Asa Butterfield (born 1997) was terrific as the determined, crafty orphan with the giant pale blue eyes and artfully unkempt hair. I wonder if Scorsese made him cry or if those massive teardrops were just faking?

Chloë Grace Moretz (also 1997) continues to charm. Isabelle is a passionate book lover, always eager to try out a new adjective, and hungry for a real-life adventure.

Ben Kingsley's Georges Méliès is a sad broken old man, but he's a joy to behold in flashbacks, playfully drunk on the joy of fantastical filmmaking.

I can't decide whether Sacha Baron Cohen is overacting or not. His performance has moments of grace and subtlety, but the yelling, the crooked limping, the warped accent, and the electric blue uniform are all so extreme. He looks like a plastic Lego construction (with an Erector set leg).

In supporting roles: Narcissa Malfoy, Vernon Dursley, and Madam Maxime from the Harry Potter movies, and Emily Mortimer, who will always be Phoebe, Jack Donaghy's ex-fiancee (the one with the hollow bones and the vertigo), from Season One of 30 Rock.

Based on a book by Brian Selznick, the plot felt overcomplicated at times. It felt like the complications were in deference to the rich detail of the source book, but they ended up with a three hour story condensed into a 126 minute movie.

I did find it odd that the movie is set in a Paris train station yet no one has a French accent. I imagine they're showing a dubbed French version in Europe which must be very popular!

A note on 3D: The 3D is done very well, but I continue to find it unnecessary. For me, 3D is a novelty at best, and distracting at worst. Every time it snowed outside, all I thought about was "wow, I wonder how much RAM it takes to render these fake snowflakes in 3D?" Why am I paying $3-$5 extra for a distracting novelty? Why is Martin Scorsese so taken with it? It's a mystery. AMC Church St Harvard Square, Balcony (right).

136: Dove Tail

Sometimes two songs fit together perfectly. Sometimes this is pure chance, sometimes I place songs in a certain order for conscious reasons, sometimes for reasons I can't explain. Somehow, when I chose to place "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens right after "Glory" by Liz Phair, I made a perfect dovetail fit. The end of one and the beginning of another complement each other so well. What an exciting way to start this mix.

1. "Glory" Liz Phair
   
2. "Chicago" Sufjan Stevens
   
3. "Break Me" This Lemonheads song is from Evan Dando's scattershot final album before bottoming out on drugs, Car Button Cloth. The song is underwritten but has its moments.
   
4. "Rearviewmirror" [live] I was at this epic Pearl Jam show, at the Orpheum Theater April 12, 1994.
   
5. "Live With Me" [live] The Rolling Stones, from Get Yer Ya Ya's Out!
   
6. "Evangeline" Just when it seems I've put every song from Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend on a mix already, I find this one.
   
7. "The Ballad of El Goodo" I only began listening to Big Star about a decade ago, and I've come to appreciate them, if not love them.
   
8. "Chains of Love" A nice little Ryan Adams song, from his mellow new album Ashes & Fire.
   
9. "Chasing Pavements" My sister-in-law Sara was my Secret Santa this year. She got me both of Adele's CDs, plus her live DVD!
   
10. "Philosophy" Ben Folds Five I just heard Ben Folds perform this song on The Nerdist podcast this week.
    
11. "Valerie Plame" I fell in love with The Decemberists The King Is Dead last year, now I'm discovering some of their previous music.
    
12. "How'd You Like That" The Kooks are perfecting some mid-80s Britpop...
    
13. ...which reminds me of "Perfect Way" by Scritti Politti.
    
14. "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" Tears For Fears, live at Knebworth June 30, 1990.
    
15. "Get Rhythm" I just watched Walk The Line on FX last month. I don't know if I can fit this Johnny Cash song onto this mix?

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I am very fond of spy thrillers. They come in all shapes and sizes, and based on the trailers, I guessed that this one would be impenetrably complicated and jam-packed with the best English character actors. As long as you don't expect the crack open the puzzle box, I can recommend the movie. I also recommend the big screen. It's too quiet and dark to enjoy on TV at home, unless you watch it late at night with all the lights out.

There's lots of old-school trenchcoating in this movie.

Gary Oldman is retired espionage veteran George Smiley, called back to the MI6 to root out the Soviet mole amongst the agents who control British spies behind the Iron Curtain. The suspects:

• David Dencik (both Dragon Tattoo movies),
• Ciarán Hinds (Munich, Road to Perdition, There Will be Blood),
• Toby Jones (Captain America, The Mist, Hunger Games),
• and Colin Firth!

(L-R): Dencik, Firth, Jones, Hurt, Oldman, and Hinds.

Gary Oldman is terrific as a spy winding down his middle age, creaking into retirement. It feels like he hardly talks at all in the movie. How do you write a part like this on paper? People reveal themselves to him and he observes, nods, grimaces, and gives orders. Only in the dénouement does he reveal what he's thinking, and he only raises his voice one time. Oldman's finally been nominated for the Sean Connery "De Facto Lifetime Achievement" Oscar for this part. Of course it's not his career best performance. I would be hard-pressed to choose between Sid Vicious, Dracula, and Stansfield the crooked narcotics detective in LEON.

The movie is full of tension, suspense, drama, but almost no action. Except for three people getting shot,-- two very matter-of-fact, and one extremely graphically-- the spying consists of listening, watching, and reading typed reports.

Cheers to the art direction for the dour 1970s color pallette. I think the sun came out for one scene, the remainder is gloomy wet Englishness.

The stellar cast also includes Mark Strong, who dies in the first 5 minutes (no surprise there), John Hurt, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Next Big Thing Tom Hardy: After grabbing everyone's attention in Inception, he's wearing a bad wig in TTSS, and all over your TV this week in commercials for THIS MEANS WAR.
He'll be Batman's nemesis Bane in the new Dark Knight movie later in 2012.

I was also pleased to discover there were three speaking parts for women! One analyst, one secretary (Lady Edith from Downton Abbey), and one wife.

ALSO by Gary Oldman on STUB HUBBY:

• Batman Begins & The Dark Knight
• Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban
• Hannibal
• Lost In Space
• Air Force One
• The Fifth Element
• Immortal Beloved
• Leon: The Professional
• True Romance
• Bram Stoker's Dracula

Another Rant About West Newton Cinema:  It's always a gamble seeing a movie in West Newton. The clientele are the worst variety of upper-class entitled seniors, talking to each other like we're in their living room. This type of moviegoer NEVER understands the plot of the movie, and TTSS was sure to be complex. The good news this time, there were only maybe two dozen people in Cinema 1, and the baby boomers near me were quiet. I could hear murmuring in the distance between EVERY dialog scene, but I could live with it.

Guys Movie Night: 48 HRS and COMMANDO

My Birthday at the Movies
The David Patrick Kelly/James Horner Double Feature

What a great time! The Somerville Theater has a "microcinema" in their basement. It looks like a regular theater, but teeny: 35 seats, with a decent sized screen, Blu-Ray player, surround sound, and digital projector. For $200 it's yours all day. We had a great time eating pizza, drinking beer, and enjoying two manly movies for guys. What a treat it was to watch two movies I'd never seen on the big screen, and certainly never with the sound turned way up! Just the Paramount logo and the opening notes of James Horner's 48 HRS score gave me chills.

 48 HRS is still terrific thirty years later. The action scenes as crackling good, Nolte is perfect as the tough detective out to revenge the cop killed with his gun, and Eddie Murphy blows up the screen in his debut, with a performance we'd all take for granted by the end of the decade. James Remar is riveting as the vicious cop killer Albert Ganz.

NOTE: grey sweater vest

It's a gritty detective movie with a funny side to it, but the humor is filtered through a grim layer of racism, sexism, and general meanness. The blend is remarkable. It's kind of amazing that it works. The humor is not fun, if that makes any sense. It's also kind of amazing that it was a commercial success, considering I can't recommend a guy take his girlfriend to see it.

Landlines & Payphones: Obviously no one has a mobile phone in this movie. It seems every 5 minutes someone is placing a call on a landline. It's hilarious. I can only imagine what my son's generation will think.

Don't stare at the lump on my forehead!

There's one scene where Nick Nolte's lieutenant chews him out "everybody's watching on this one", "your ass is on the line", etc, etc, which is such a cliche now that the same actor (Frank McRae) spoofed that speech in National Lampoon's Lethal Weapon 1 and The Last Action Hero (both 1993).

It's also hard to watch Nolte driving a sky blue 1960 Cadillac convertible with a straight face. It's such a cliche, and maybe the worst possible car to drive in hilly San Francisco. Speaking of San Francisco, you may notice the lack of romantic "postcard" views of the city- I appreciated that. Also, I think the city's historic cable car system was being rebuilt during the time of filming, which would explain why we don't see any cable cars.

The score: I really like James Horner's non-traditional score, full of steel drums. That same year he scored Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but perhaps he's best known for the score to Titanic. Other memorable films include: Avatar, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Braveheart, The Pelican Brief, Glory, Field of Dreams, Aliens, and the second movie in our double feature, COMMANDO.

Try not to stare at the vein bulging in his biceps.

 I watched COMMANDO many times as a teenager. Arnold Schwarzenegger is John Matrix, a retired elite Black Ops Commando, although you wouldn't know he's retired from the size of his muscles.

Saturday is tree-carrying day.

Matrix launches a one-man war against a group of South American criminals who have kidnapped his daughter.This one-man war consists of hand-to-hand combat (sometimes versus a dozen mall cops), brute force, explosions, automatic gunfire, scalping with a circular sawblade, dismemberment with a circular sawblade, impalement with pitchfork, and finally, barely disguised homoerotic knifefighting against a portly Australian in a mesh sweatervest.

Another grey knit sweater vest, and yes, it makes you look fat.

Brooklyn native (and Tufts University graduate) Dan Hedaya plays the villain, a deposed dictator from "South America". The 1980s were a golden age of movies with made-up Latin American banana republics!
Besides all the unintentional comedy in the action scenes, the movie hardly makes any sense. Unlike 48 HRS, which was too awesome to riff on, COMMANDO was a hot mess. We had a blast picking it apart.

 Our double feature had two major players in common: James Horner is back with another steel drum-filled score, but not as effective this time around. And David Patrick Kelly is back, playing another douchebag, this time with more spine. He dies in both movies.

I made all my friends pledge to host movie parties for each of their birthdays this year. If booked for a weeknight, it's only $100, or $10 each if nine friends attend. THINK ABOUT IT Adam, Angus, Brian, Brian, Geoff, George, Ilan, Jeff, Jose, Kevin, Scott, Tom, and Vinnie.

135 Calamity Music

1. "We Belong" Big Daddy's Pizza in Brighton has good pizza, excellent hot sandwiches, tasty fried dough bites, the best crab rangoons, and a dance remix of this Pat Benatar on their "hold" music.
   
2. "Every Little Kiss" I have wanted this Bruce Hornsby & The Range CD for twenty-five years. The drums and synths sound super-dated, but I don't even care anymore.
   
3. "Crash And Burn" The synths on this 'til tuesday song also sound dated, but Aimee Mann is so terrific, I have been trying to squeeze this song onto a mix for 10 years.
4. "Dawned On Me" My favorite song from Wilco's new album The Whole Love.
   
5. "Secret Smile" I have been a fan of Semisonic even since I read the drummer's memoir of their one-hit wonder moment in the spotlight: So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star. This ballad has that post-Achtung Baby "One" production sound.
   
6. "She's The One" When I heard this World Party song on the radio, I was immediately reminded of...
   
7. "Still Fighting It" Ben Folds
   
8. "Kiss From A Rose" When I was a radio DJ in 1994, I played this Seal song on the radio at least 6 times a week for six months, so naturally, I spent most of the last 17 years avoiding it. However, the karaoke version on Community cracks me up and has resurrected the song for me.
9. "Crazy On You" Heart: The classical guitar intro fits nicely with the baroque feel of the Seal song.
10. "Calamity Song" I love every song on The Decemberists new album The King Is Dead. This is the latest favorite. Andalusian tribes, indeed! Fits nicely with the "end of the world" 2012 Mayan baloney going around these days.
    
11. "Romance" I used to play this R.E.M. song on the radio when I was in high school. It's from their "best of" album Eponymous, released at the end of their contract with IRS records. According to the sleeve notes, the song "used a microsecond in the still despairing Alan Rudolph's 1987 film "Made In Heaven".
    
12. "Never There" CAKE
    
13. "Crazy Love, Vol. II" Paul Simon
    
14. "Long, Long, Long" The Beatles
    
15. "I'll Be Back" I forget where I heard that Shawn Colvin covered this obscure Beatles track. She only released it on her Best Of collection, but, in the era of iTunes, you don't have to buy a Best Of collection to get the one new song anymore!

MELLOW GOLD Collection

The track listing of the three-LP collection MELLOW GOLD. The magic of the Internet: for only $33 (minus whatever songs you already own) you can recreate this collection with mildewy sleeve and no changing the platter five times! I think I have 14 of these songs already, so, assuming nothing's out of print, I am $19 away from bringing this collection BACK TO LIFE!

Side 1

"Sundown" Gordon Lightfoot
"Midnight at the Oasis" Maria Muldaur
"I Say a Little Prayer for You" Aretha Franklin
"Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye" The Casinos
"Long Train Running" The Doobie Brothers

Side 2
"You Were on My Mind" We Five
"Sunshine" Jonathan Edwards
"Cherish" The Association
"Hey Jude" Wilson Pickett
"Ma Belle Amie" The Tee Set
"That’s the Way I Always Heard it Should Be" Carly Simon

Side 3
"S.O.S." ABBA
"How Can I Be Sure?" The Rascals
"I’d Like to Get to Know You" Spanky and Our Gang
"Everybody’s Talkin’" Nilsson
"My Special Angel" the Vogues
"Love the One You’re With" Stephen Stills

Side 4
"Anticipation" Carly Simon
"Dock of the Bay" Otis Redding
"Doctor My Eyes" Jackson Browne
"Feel Like Makin’ Love" Roberta Flack
"One of a Kind (Love Affair)" The Spinners

Side 5
"Summer Breeze" Seals & Crofts
"Baby, I’m Yours" Barbara Lewis
"Hello, It’s Me" Todd Rundgren
"Send in the Clowns" Judy Collins
"She’s Gone" Daryl Hall and John Oates
"(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" Aretha Franklin

Side 6
"Fallin’ in Love" The Souther, Hillman, Furay Band
"Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues" Danny O’Keefe
"Baby Don’t Go" Sonny and Cher
"Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town" Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
"Everything That Touches You" The Association

When I Was Eleven: 1983

This is not a "my favorite songs from 1983" playlist. This is a "when I was eleven, this is what I listened to" mix. I even think I thought "Der Kommissar" and "Major Tom" were the same song. If I ever heard a mashup of those two, my brain might melt.

1. "Der Kommissar" After The Fire
2. "Major Tom (Coming Home)" Peter Schilling
3. "Break My Stride" Matthew Wilder
4. "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" Daryl Hall & John Oates
5. "Bang The Drum All Day" Todd Rundgren
6. "Steppin' Out"    Joe Jackson
7. "She Blinded Me With Science" Thomas Dolby
8. "Who Can It Be Now?" Men At Work
9. "Only Time Will Tell" Asia
10. "Rosanna" Toto
11. "Tainted Love"    Soft Cell

When I Was Ten: 1982

This playlist represents what I remember about pop music just before I began to pick what I wanted to listen to for myself. Basically this is music I was exposed to by my mother, and by whatever Top 40 radio managed to break through to a boy who didn't listen to the radio yet.
I was ten years old in 1982. The mix for 1983 is much, much different.

1. "Gloria" Laura Branigan
   
2. "Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song" B.J. Thomas
   
3. "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" Crystal Gayle
   
4. "When I'm Sixty-Four" is the first song I remember singing with my mother. We would go on to harmonize on several other Beatles songs, including "If I Fell"
   
5. "Elvira" Oak Ridge Boys
   
6. "Rainy Days And Mondays" The Carpenters
   
7. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" John Denver
   
8. "Danny's Song" Anne Murray
   
9. "Leaving On A Jet Plane" Peter, Paul & Mary
   
10. "Monday, Monday" The Mamas & The Papas
    
11. "Flowers on the Wall" The Statler Brothers
    
12. "The Boxer" Simon & Garfunkel
    
13. "You Should Hear How She Talks About You" Melissa Manchester
    
14. "Back In Baby's Arms" Patsy Cline
    
15. "A Boy Named Sue" Johnny Cash
    
16. "Theme From Greatest American Hero (Believe It Or Not)" Joey Scarbury

There should probably be some Ricky Nelson and Barbara Mandrell in there too- I distinctly remember their well-coiffed photos on the covers of their Greatest Hits LPs.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

It's been five years since the previous Impossible Mission, and fifteen years since Ethan Hunt first ran across a movie screen. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol may not be any more memorable 5 or 15 years from now, but its humor distinguishes itself from the rest of the series. I sense that director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) can't help himself but make the movie funny.

Overkill: 130 stories? Wouldn't a fall from 13 stories be enough to kill him?

Strangely, the stakes are much higher in this episode, while it's the funniest episode too. Ex-KGB officer Hendricks (and John Boehner lookalike Michael Nyqvist) is intent on triggering a nuclear war. Hendricks blows up the Kremlin and neatly frames Hunt in the bargain. Once again Ethan Hunt is "disavowed". Hunt's boss is literally saying goodbye when their Chevy Suburban is riddled with bullets. The driver is killed, and the SUV swerves out of control down a dark Moscow street. At this point I leaned over to my friend Adam and whispered "there's going to be a river." Sure enough, they plunge underwater, and upside down too. Why is there always a river nearby? How come when a driver is shot, the vehicle never bumps gently into a Quizno's?

That's what I call network security!

 Hunt has to take his team rogue to save themselves, and the world. The team includes Simon Pegg's newly-promoted field agent/comic relief (but not too silly), and the latest young Mission Impossible ingénue, Paula Patton, who seems to have a furrow permanently dug between her brows, like she's constantly forgetting a phone number. Jeremy Renner is reluctantly tagging along, an cube-bound spook...with a secret?

 So this volume was exciting, sexy, and funny. The chases were all kinda the same- The Tom Cruise Run is best taken in limited doses for maximum effectiveness. I like car chases, but I kept thinking of the Bourne movies redefinition of vehicle chases. Maybe the producers choices were limited by their paid BMW placements. I was surprised they were allowed to rip the roof off a BMW convertible! The other thrills were solid - I liked the fights and Cruise's wall-crawling. The cat-and-mouse games worked too. By the last gasp, I felt like I had seen one too many chases, and one too many fistfights. The final fight scene, between a 49-year-old man (Cruise) and the 51-year-old villain (Michael Nyqvist) stretched my credulity to the breaking point.
The movie was sexy for everyone too: Paula Patton is a handsome woman who kicks ass and changes clothes in the passenger seat of an all-electric BMW sports car/spaceship; Léa Seydoux is pure French sensuousness as a soulless, braless assassin; and Jeremy Renner wears very tight trousers throughout the movie, with several lingering butt shots, which I'm told the ladies like?

"I must have left my underwear at my last kill."

Ghost Protocol delivered exactly what I expected, but was funny on top of that. My grade?  B-plus. (At the Capitol Theater, Arlington, with Adam and George)

Don't let the dealership find out about this, or you're going to void the warranty.

Odd Parallel: After Ethan Hunt successfully completes his 130-story outdoor skyscraper crawl, he reenters the hotel with his protective eye goggles still around his neck. He then immediately proceeds to begin the covert part of the mission, but Renner has to remind him to remove his goggles so the target won't see them.
Fast forward one week: I rewatched The Incredibles (one of my top movies of the last decade). Mr. Incredible prevents a few crimes on his way to his own wedding. He changes back into his tuxedo before entering the church, but his friend Fro-Zone has to remind him to remove his mask before entering the church so the guests won't see them. Just a small moment, but odd to see in two Brad Bird movies?

Looking Back

The Mission Impossible movies have been overcomplicated, humorless affairs. I have grown to appreciate the 1996 film -- I can hardly call it the "original" -- even if I probably don't understand it.

All I remember about the John Woo-directed M:I2 is Tom Cruise's long hair, a surplus of rubber masks, and some stunt motorcycle riding.

All I remember about J.J. Abrams' M:I3 is the nasty brain-exploding implant which kills Felicity
(spoiler alert!), and Philip Seymour Hoffman at his most vicious. I remember Ethan Hunt having a wife, but I could not remember who played her. Oh Michelle Monaghan, when I saw you in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, I thought you were going to break out, but you've been treading water ever since.

Concert Souvenirs?

It's always nice when my favorite band releases an official live album to accompany a tour I attended. And every once in awhile an actual performance I saw is recorded and released. These days it's easier than ever for a band to make every recording available. Three concerts I went to were recorded and released on offical live albums:

"Eleanor Rigby" live at the Worcester Centrum February 9, 1990 
Paul McCartney: Tripping The Live Fantastic

Unlike the contemporary trend towards releasing an entire concert from one night, McCartney recorded many dates of his 1990 tour. The resulting two-disc live album appears to select the best recording of each performance from the rigid set list. The result? The 37-track album was recorded in ninteen different cities. For example, eight tracks are from an eleven-night series at Wembley Arena, but they're from five different nights, and no two songs from the same night are presented together. I has a great time at the show (I had just turned 18, and had been a rabid Beatles fan for exactly 30 months) even if the Rolling Stone concert review spoiled all the surprises in the set-in-stone set list.
In the spring of 1990, six months before Tripping was released, while in New York City on a school trip, I visited a Greenwich Village record store and bought a three-LP bootleg recorded in Los Angeles the previous autumn. The bootleg was pressed on white vinyl with red, white, and blue spin-art designs in the vinyl. (photos to come)

Pearl Jam live at the Orpheum Theater Boston, April 12, 1994
The best rock concert I ever attended was the penultimate date of the 1994 Vs. tour. Thanks to my friend Meg (Goldstein) Chapman, who sold me her tickets. The show, when they finally started, was amazing. Mudhoney was the opening act, then there was a long interval (at least 45-60 mins) before Pearl Jam came on. I remember loving "Go" and "Animal" and the new song "Not for You". In 2011, Pearl Jam released a three-CD Deluxe Edition of Vs. including a full CD of the Orpheum show. Due to size constraints, the disc leaves out a third of the set list:

Included

• Oceans
  
• Even Flow
  
• Sonic Reducer (Dead Boys cover)
  
• Immortality
  
• Glorified G
  
• Daughter
  
• Not For You
  
• Rats
  
• Blood
  
• Release
  
• Tremor Christ
  
• Once
  
• Fuckin' Up (Neil Young cover)
  
• Dirty Frank
  
• Rearviewmirror
  
• Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
  

Excluded

• State Of Love And Trust
  
• Hard to Imagine
  
• Go
  
• Animal
  
• Alone
  
• Better Man
  
• Yellow Ledbetter
• I've Got a Feeling (The Beatles cover).

Ben Folds Live at Avalon June 8, 2002
June 8, 2002, three months before we would meet for the first time, my future wife and I would both attend this Ben Folds solo show at the former Avalon nightclub in Boston. It was a lot of fun, even if I am not a fan of the Reinhold Messner album.  The live album recorded during that tour features a photo taken at our show (I am not pictured) At least one song from the CD or limited edition bonus DVD was recorded on the night we attended.

Attack The Block

A Stub Hubby on DVD review

Attack the Block is another thrilling, funny, stylish, well-crafted UK import: Goonies vs Aliens?

A gang of bored, tough-on-the-outside London teenagers defend their housing project tower block from a horde of killer beasts from outer space.

The gang, led by alpha dog Moses (50 Cent lookalike John Boyega), is in the process of mugging a young nurse Sam (Emily Mortimer lookalike Jodie Whittaker) when a meteorite crashes into a parked car. Moses is attacked by a slimy beast which emerges. Pride wounded, Moses hunts and kills the beast, but this is only the beginning. Dozens of meteorites follow, and the gang gathers a makeshift arsenal and prepare to defend their turf, while dodging the police on one side, and their tower's drug lord Hi-Hatz on the other. We're intimidated at first, but we quickly discover the gang is a bunch of goofballs who'd rather be playing FIFA on the XBox or trying to impress their would-be girlfriends than mugging; while everyone is talking and insulting each other simultaneously, I was reminded of The Goonies or E.T. Moses is the strong, silent type: Boyega exudes leadership. When Moses is arrested by two cops in a riot van, he says nothing as they tackle him and slap on the handcuffs. Moses spots one of the ravenous creatures approaching. After the cops read him his rights, he replies calmly "you better hurry up and put me in that van." Clint Eastwood couldn't have sounded cooler.

The aliens are unlike any creatures I've seen in a monster movie before. That was a big plus. The action makes effective use of the concrete jungle of the housing project, up and down the elevators, and the endless flourescent hallways.
The movie feels completely authentic to the inner-city poor Londoner experience, their attitudes, and the social dynamic is well explored within the context of the movie too.
And maybe best of all, the screenplay structure is airtight. All of the details fit together perfectly, and the internal logic of the movie all pays off in the end. The ending is realistic yet satisfying.
Attack The Block was written and directed by Brit comedy veteran Joe Cornish in his feature directing debut; he has co-adapted the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Tinin movie (with
Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright.)
Note to my American Readers: I understood about half of the rapid-fire South London dialect. I expected this going in, so I was not surprised, and I never misunderstood a plot point because of it. If you rent it on DVD, perhaps the close captioning could help, but I'm giving this an A grade even without the benefit of complete comprehension.

Maybe George Lucas Isn't So Bad After All

I watched a few minutes of Terminator: Salvation on TV this weekend (my review), and it got me thinking about creative control, and George Lucas' legacy.

I have complained that Lucas's complete creative control over the Star Wars franchise has completely smothered the whole universe. His stranglehold over the characters has prevented anything interesting or daring from happening to the series. Instead we got three terrific movies, a sixteen-year gap, then three very well-executed and polite, but lifeless "prequels." I would have preferred a wild, daring failure to a comatose failure.

 Then I watched Terminator: Salvation. We can all agree that Cameron is a visionary. Terminator 1 and 2 turned out EXACTLY the way he wanted. Only Arnold returned for Terminator 3. Terminator: Salvation is the flip side of the George Lucas coin. If a movie studio has complete control over a franchise, eventually you'll get a movie which is a sequel in title only. Salvation is a competent robots vs. humans post-apocalypse chase movie, but if you change the names of the characters? Cameron's legacy might disappear entirely.

 So when I see Jar Jar Binks, Baby Anakin Skywalker, or flying R2D2 on cable TV, I have to remind myself: if Lucas didn't have total control over Star Wars, 20th Century Fox would have remade and continued to sequelize the Star Wars franchise throughout the 1980s.

Maybe Star Wars would have ended up like James Bond: some good, some bad, but immortal and evolving.
OR, maybe Lucas's stale, airless prequels are the best possible outcome? WE WILL NEVER KNOW.

Related on STUB HUBBY

• Phantom Menace review [1999]
• Attack of the Clones review [2002]
• Revenge of the Sith review [2005]
• Commentary: Best and Most Successful Sequels of All Time
• Commentary: Summer Sequels & Remakes: The Worst
• Stub Hubby List Simply Disarming: Limbs (Original and Robotic) Removed in the Star Wars Movies
• 1970s Hubby Perspective: The Death of Obi-Wan Kenobi

The Descendants

To paraphrase Dickens: "The wife is dying to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that."
George Clooney's wife is in a coma, she's not going to come out of it, and his "limping towards divorce" marriage is suddenly turned upside down. A few tears, yes, but not Terms Of Endearment waterworks. Hijinks do not ensue either.
A lukewarm meditiation on death, grief, marriage, and parenthood.
A fine nuanced performance from George Clooney, and solid performances from the young cast help balance the meandering plot. It's not tragic enough to be a drama, not soapy enough to be a melodrama, and not silly enough to be a comedy. The movie never ties together tonally or thematically. It feels like the movie was allowed to wander away from director Alexander Payne. Perhaps spending nine months locked in an editing suite with your movie caused him to lose perspective?

The movie is set in Hawaii, which adds great texture, and contributes to the plot too... but Payne goes totally overboard with the Hawaiian ukelele music on the soundtrack. You know how a tourist might visit Texas for a week and believe that cowboy boots and fringed shirts are suddenly terrific-- until they get home to Connecticut and realize how dumb they look walking through Hartford looking like Roy Rogers? I picture Payne falling in love with Hawaiian music -- which is lovely in small doses -- and eventually every moment of the film is plastered with midtempo uke strumming + ululating vocals.

Shailene Woodley, 20, is fine as George's teenage daughter, but I hope the Oscar talk is just hype. If the Academy wants invent an honorary Exciting Newcomer award, great, but she's not some revelation.
The Stub Hubby Grade:  C-plus.

Stub Hubby Reviews Alexander Payne:

• Sideways (2004)
• About Schmidt (2002)
  

Christian Marclay: THE CLOCK

Synopsis from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston:

"The Clock (2010), an ode to time and cinema, comprises thousands of fragments from a range of films that create a 24-hour...video. The Clock tells the accurate time at any given moment, and wherever it is screened it is synchronized to the local time zone, so that it is literally a working time piece."

Four shots from the movie. There are NOT multiple screens
simultaneously, and the movie is not all close-ups of clock
faces. It's much more complex and amazing.

Here's what happened: I entered the theater at 10:55am. Onscreen was a clip from a movie where the time is 10:55am. The clips continue from 10:55am, to 10:56am, and so on. Not every minute is necessarily depicted onscreen, but almost all. More importantly, it stays in sync, so clips of 11:00am begin at 11:00am.

Each clip includes a clock, watch, or someone mentioning the time. Each instance of the time matches the current time I'm watching the film. Each clip is long enough to put the instance of the time in context, but rarely with any context for the plot of the movie from which it is taken.

Sometimes the time in the scene is the subject of the scene: "What time is it?" or "I'm going to be late!" and so on. Other times, there's merely a clock in the background of the shot.

What elevates this project from antiseptic obsessive-compulsive symptom to art is HOW the clips interact with each other. It's not merely the appropriate scenes edited in order. Marclay made choices:

• To smooth the transitions between scenes, the background "soundscape" and/or incidental music from one scene often continues after the visual ends. Sometimes it's just the street sounds, birds chirping, or, appropriately, a clock ticking.
• Characters from different clips will seem to be joined together: Johnny Depp talks to someone offscreen. We cut to Vivien Leigh demurely smiling back at him. We cut again to a dog, probably from Depp's original scene, and back to Depp again.
• An bell will ring in one movie, and a character will pop out of bed in another movie.
• A scene will begin, then three unrelated clips will play, then we'll return to the original scene, a little later on, as if the  original scene were taking place concurrently with the three imbetween. This is a editing technique called "parallel action" which we take for granted until clips gathered from the whole universe of cinema are edited together.
• Because it's assembled from nearly a century of filmmaking (from Buster Keaton to Jason Statham, I swear to God) the quality of the visuals varies wildly from scene to scene, but we're so hard-wired to trust the editor, it hardly matters.

Marclay's chosen one piece of the moving picture storytelling universe and discarded everything else. This eliminates all plot from the movie, but he could have accomplished the same thing by making a 24-hour-long montage of people eating in the movies, or people climbing stairs, or cursing. That would accomplish the goal of observing the art of cinema detached from the story and stars and music itself. Marclay's goal is larger than that. In a strange way, removing the plot and focusing on time reveals the plot of life as it is: not the things we do, or the things which happen to us, but rather everything which happens in between. Time is passing by us and through us every moment of our lives, whether we are paying attention to it or not. This movie, by moving Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Close, and Michael J. Fox to the background and placing their wristwatches, Big Ben, and alarm clocks in the foreground, reminds us that everything we've accomplished, everything we hold dear, and all our favorite memories, all happened while time was passing.

It's truly weird to watch a movie where you don't have to check your watch to see
what time it is. I knew I wanted to watch until 11am that day. I simply had to wait
until the movie WAS 11:00am.

This art can be easily sustained for a few minutes: the YouTube is full of "supercuts". THE CLOCK lasts for 24 hours. My Stub Hubby Grade: A-plus.

It's playing all day every day at the MFA through New Year's Eve. I strongly recommend checking it out for an hour or two. I have seen 10:55 through 11:35 on one occasion, and 10:20 through 10:55am the next time.

RELATED: Jennifer Bruni on THE CLOCK
VIDEO: BBC feature on THE CLOCK [seven minutes]

J. Edgar

J. Edgar is a meticulously crafted and compelling portrait of an ambitious, petty, vindictive, paranoid, ugly little man who created powerful and modern F.B.I. while consolidating his power with intimidation, surveillance, and blackmail.

Hoover arresting Bruno Hauptmann, the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby

At the same time, Hoover (DiCaprio) lives at home, Norman Bates-style, with his domineering, zealot mother (Judi Dench) and works and dines each day with his life partners: his secretary-for-life Helen Gandy (superb Naomi Watts) and his second-in-command/perfect specimen of manhood/daily "companion" Clyde Tolson (gorgeous Armie Hammer).

The movie is framed by 1960s Hoover telling his life story to a series of FBI ghostwriters. It's an old screenwriting tool, but it was inobtrusive.

(NOTE: The framing device reminded me immediately Attenborough's CHAPLIN biopic. NOTE: While this isn't covered in the movie, Hoover had Chaplin de facto deported from the US in 1952. Read more here.)

The movie shifts regularly between Hoover's 1930s heyday and the 1960s. What was amazing and clever about it was how organic and non-confusing these shifts were. Obviously, the makeup and costumes made it obvious when we were shifting time periods, but these shifts always felt natural to the storytelling. Dustin Lance Black's screenplay may be the strongest part of the movie.

The old age makeup was amazing, but I still feel it was a mistake to cast DiCaprio as Hoover. DiCaprio is a terrific actor, but DiCaprio is too young and too handsome to play Hoover. The makeup was terrific, but they had to work too hard to make one of our most handsome actors look like one of our Top 10 Ugliest Pubilc Servants of All Time. DiCaprio turned 37 on 11/11/11, but he plays Hoover from age 24 to 87.

Whenever Hoover would have a romantic dinner with his life parter Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), I would marvel at how smooth and beautiful Armie Hammer was. The DiCaprio would appear, with oily, badly cut hair, heavy black eyebrows, and pockmarks. It was too much!

Director Clint Eastwood always makes classy, efficient, un-fussy movies, and this is no exception. I grew a little weary of the heavily color-corrected/desaturated look of the movie. Using computers to effect the color palette of movies has been popular for over a decade-- O'Brother Where Art Thou? was a trailblazer-- but I worry that the desaturated look  will become a cliche'd trademark of this era. I suspect, 30 years from now, while watching Minority Report or Traffic, future moviegoers will say "Oh, this must be from the Aughts! Look at how de-colorized it is!"

Hauptmann

Clint's respect and clout means he can get great actors in every role, and this cast was Character Actor Hall of Fame:

• Jeffrey Donovan (from BURN NOTICE) played RFK. Did you know he's from Amesbury, MA?
• Zach Grenier
• Jessica Hecht
• Ken Howard
• Josh Lucas as Charles Lindbergh
• Dermot Mulroney
• Stephen Root
• Lea Thompson
  also: 
• Damon Herriman looks EXACTLY like Bruno Hauptmann, the man who kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.
• Christopher Shyer doesn't look like Nixon, but he got the cursing just right.
• Even Ed Westwick from Gossip Girl was in it!

Also On Stub Hubby:
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio

• Inception
• Shutter Island
• The Departed
• The Aviator
• Catch Me If You Can
• Gangs of New York
• Titanic
• The Basketball Diaries
• The Quick & The Dead

Directed by Clint Eastwood

• Gran Torino
• Mystic River
• Absolute Power
• The Bridges of Madison County
• A Perfect World
• Unforgiven

The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993) is the Casablanca of action thrillers. It could have been an unremarkable studio product, just another recycled genre script with an A-list star plugged into the lead. Instead, some kind of wonderful chemistry took place and the result is a rightfully celebrated classic. A crackling adventure with a terrific cast.

Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is thoracic surgeon Richard Kimble, wrongfully convicted of killing his wife. Harrison Ford is our best physical actor- he struggles, runs, climbs, and punches more realistically than anyone. He punches the bad guy like a real person would. When Kimble has nearly drowned in an icy river after a daring free-jump over a waterfall, his exhausted slog onto the riverbank is totally believeable. I also love that Ford grew an actual beard and actually shaved it off while on the run. Bravo to real facial hair!

Tommy Lee Jones saves what could have been a boring U.S. Marshal and won an Oscar. I am certain that his part on paper is pretty flat. Lots of actors could have been hired who would bring nothing to the table. Jones' Deputy Gerard is determined, rude, colorful, and fair. The close-knit working relationship between Gerard and his team felt lived-in and real. I love it when characters share inside jokes which aren't explained to us. The eccentric costuming of his posse is a little distracting, but maybe that's partially the antiquated 1990s at work?

To further bolster my premise: Harrison Ford made The Fugitive between his two Jack Ryan movies, Patriot Games and Clear & Present Danger. I am sure those movies made tons of money, but no one cares about them the way people remember The Fugitive. There's no reason on paper why The Fugitive should be any better than either of them, but I dare you to find someone who'd rank Patriot Games or Clear & Present Danger higher?

The Fugitive was directed by Andrew Davis. Davis was nominated for a Golden Globe and a DGA award for Best Director. At Oscar time, The Fugitive was nominated for Best Picture, Sound, Score, Editing, Effects, and Cinematography, but Davis was passed over for a Best Director nom (he would have lost to Steven Spielberg [Schindler's List] anyway).

Davis makes competent action thrillers: before The Fugitive, he'd directed six features, including The Package (with Gene Hackman) and Under Siege (aka Die Hard on a Battleship, with Steven Seagal).
Since The Fugitive, he's directed six unremarkable features.

Yes, we all wore chambray shirts in the 1990s. And yes, that is Jane Lynch!

Besides the memorable "train crashes into a bus" which kicks off the chase, the movie is chock-a-block with additional action sequences. The effects are above average throughout- the train crash still looks good. The exception which proves the rule: there's one shot in the sequence where Kimble is driving an ambulance towards the dam, while being pursued by Gerard in a helicopter. It's an establishing shot with the road in the foreground, a tunnel opening in the middle distance, and the dam, with water flowing over it, in the distance. It's clearly a composite shot of some kind, but the waterfall is super-grainy (that's typical) but the waterfall is also A STILL PHOTO! How could this happen? My guess is that Davis discovered he needed this shot in the editing room, long after location photography was complete? Maybe one of his assistant directors shot the required footage, but it was faulty? Thankfully the shot is brief, but thanks to home video, we can linger over it and shake our heads.

I found an unsealed DVD copy at a tag sale for $1 last month. You can pick up The Fugitive at Amazon.com:

• DVD for $4.99
• Blu-Ray: $7.44
• Instant streaming: Free to Amamzon Prime members

Watch it again tonight. You won't regret it. My grade: A-plus

He only had one word of dialog in this movie, but yelling "Kimble!"
at Harrison Ford is pretty awesome, even if
you are immediately shot and killed.

Moore is 32 years old in this photo, but looks 22!

WATCH FOR: Brief appearances by Julianne Moore, Jane Lynch, John Cusack's father Dick Cusack (as Kimble's attorney), Neil Flynn (the janitor on Scrubs) and NBC News anchor Lester Holt!

MORE Harrison Ford movies on STUB HUBBY:

• Star Wars Trilogy
• Apocalypse Now
• Indiana Jones x 4
• Blade Runner
• Presumed Innocent
• Sabrina
• Air Force One

Seventies Easy Rock

Also known as "Yacht Rock", this is another great mix from my wife.

1.    “Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)” Jim Croce
2.    “How Much I Feel” Ambrosia
3.    “On and On” Stephen Bishop
4.    “Sara Smile” Daryl Hall & John Oates
5.    “After the Love Has Gone” Earth, Wind & Fire
6.    “Dance with Me” Orleans
7.    “We'll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again”, and
8.    “I'd Really Love to See You Tonight”
England Dan & John Ford Coley
9.    “I Keep Forgettin'” Michael McDonald
10.    “This Is It” Kenny Loggins
11.    “Just Remember I Love You” Firefall
12.    “Sailing” Christopher Cross
13.    “Summer Breeze” Seals & Crofts
14.    “I Love a Rainy Night” Eddie Rabbitt
15.    “Steal Away” Robbie Dupree
16.    “Lotta Love” Nicolette Larson
17.    “Arthur's Theme” [live]  Christopher Cross
18.    “Baby Come Back” Player
19.    “Listen to the Music” The Doobie Brothers
20.    “Take It Easy” [live & acoustic] Jackson Browne

Moneyball

Who knew you could make a compelling movie about statistics?

I am not a statistics expert, but I love sharing interesting baseball stats so much, that I struck a deal with my wife: I only share ONE interesting baseball stat per week from the Boston Sunday Globe's Baseball coverage. While reading the MONEYBALL book, I had to limit myself to one tidbit per chapter. Lots of tongue-biting going on.

MONEYBALL the movie is also interesting and well-told, even if there isn't a lot of plot. A baseball career as a metaphor for life isn't a new idea, but Brad Pitt is compelling playing Athletics GM Billy Beane, a grown-up real person who's coming to terms with the good and bad choices in his past, while he makes similar "life choices" for the life of his baseball team. Who better to discover that the team need to turn its back on tradition than a man who learned too late that he wasn't meant to be a traditional baseball player?

Jonah Hill (right) does not play a passive-aggressive
bitter rageaholic in this movie, for a change.

Making changes to a baseball team is like u-turning a cruise ship: you can't expect to see results right away. It's convenient for the plot of the movie that the same season that Beane makes his radical changes to the Athletics, the team caps that season with a dramatic winning streak, featuring of Beane's radical Moneyball choices, newbie first baseman Scott Hatteberg (the terrific Chris Pratt). Maybe less convenient for the movie (and the Moneyball philosophy as a whole)? In the following decade, the Athletics have won 90 games only four times (with three playoff appearances).

Brad Pitt deserves some award recogition for his quiet, deep portrayal of a mid-life... well, it's not a crisis, more of a mid-life re-evaluation. Also, it's nice to see Pitt playing a guy who wears polo shirts and drives an SUV. Has he ever played an ordinary dad before? Anyone? My grade: B-plus (Somerville Theater, during the Halloween Snowstorm, with my wife)

MORE Brad Pitt movies on STUB HUBBY

• Interview with the Vampire
• Legends Of The Fall
• Se7en
• Twelve Monkeys
• Seven Years In Tibet
• Meet Joe Black
• Snatch
• Spy Game
• Ocean's Eleven
• Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (cameo)
• Troy
• Ocean's Twelve
• Burn After Reading
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button