The newest movie from filmmaker Joe Swanberg is one of the most realistic I have ever seen. It was completely improved (the script was a drawing), the films cast was made up of other filmmakers, and the entire film was shot in less than a month. The film is basically about a girl who does not know what she wants in a relationship so she bounces around from guy to guy in her small circle of friends. Her break up with her first boyfriend was nearly exactly how the break up with my last girlfriend went and left me despising her for the rest of the movie. It was touching, and funny and um… other good things. Joe’s Q and A after the movie was pretty amazing too. The film was made in such a different way from the way you would expect movies to be done. He would edit at night and the next day they would watch what he had and then create a new scene that day. In NYC you can see for the next week at the IFC, if not you can watch it on IFC On Demand if you have cable. I would watch it at once. Yup. I’m going to see another one of Joe’s films Kissing On The Mouth tonight. I have seen it before and it is outstanding as well. Here is a clip of one of the more disturbing scenes in the film. Viewers be warned…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5wPt-ZJy0s[/youtube]

I read the second chapters in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon series.  The second one was just as good as the first.  The books tell about all the extremely fucked up stuff that happened in the golden age of Hollywood.  Basically you learn that people were on way more drugs and having way more sex than we are today.  As crazy as I think my life is, these people were really out of control.  James Dean liked people to put cigarettes out on his chest… Orson Welles named the sled in Citizen Kane after the clit of one of Hearst’s lovers… Cary Grant was gayer than Christmas… very interesting book.   About thirty pages or so just deal with all the Hollywood suicides including one man who killed himself by diving head first into the shallow end of a swimming pool.  What a fucking way to go.  Anyway, the most fucked up thing in the book however were the pictures of the Black Dahlia murder.  I have seen all sorts of fucked up shit on the internet, but seeing something so gruesome as a woman being cut in half, blood drained and then having her mouth cut from ear to ear is very disturbing.   So… I thought I would share for you the pictures!  Have a nice day.

I saw the Ten the other day and I have to say it was pretty great. It might have something to do with the fact I know or have met half the cast but it was still very funny. It’s the second feature from David Wain who directed Wet Hot American Summer. He also directed the amazing sketch comedy TV show the State in the early ’90’s and he is of course one third of Stella. The Ten features ever cast member of the State as well as more established actors such as Winona Rider, Janine Garofalo, and Paul Rudd. Rudd is fantastic as always. The movie has ten parts that weave together, one story loosely based on each commandment. Very funny, very worth seeing. Also, stay for the credits because their is a pretty amazing rap song during them based on the movie.

I started to read Kerouac’s On The Road many years ago, but I just never got into it. A week or two ago I finished the last book I was reading, which I don’t even remember what was, but I am sure it was about film, because that’s all I ever read about. That was a horrible sentence, but I am at work and its 7 am and I am fucking tired. So yeah, I finished this book, and I didn’t have another one. So I borrowed a book from a friend. That book was On The Road. I got pretty into it. The idea of hitchhiking all over America does not really appeal to me as I suffer from insomnia and sleeping in a bus station does not sound like my idea of a good time. What does interest me is the idea of writing a road narrative. I am constantly reading books that inspire me to write, and I never do. This one is no exception. So I will write you two hitchhiking stories.

1. The last time I hitchhiked I was in Austin, TX for this years SXSW. I was stuck downtown with my friend Ross and we were a few miles away from the place we were staying. We had our thumbs out for probably 30 min before we got picked up by three hillbillies in a pick up truck. They tried to make us pay them $10, but we talked them down to not paying anything. So we climbed in the back and hid down until we realized they had passed where we needed to be. I we finally got them to slow down and we gave them a Gaskets DVD for their troubles. Weird.

2. Once it was pouring rain and I was driving my mom’s mini van and this crazy looking guy was standing on the side of the road hitchhiking. Of course I picked him up at once. He told us his “bitch cunt girlfriend” left him out in the middle of no where and he needed a ride to DC. DC was out of the way, but we told him we would take him anyway. He told us he was a pilot and that he would give us free flying lessons. He told us he could get us 16 year old girls for sex. Then he passed out in the back of the minivan. At one point I stopped hard in the rain and he fell off the seat and laid unconscious on the floor of my mom’s car. Then we dropped him off at a random hotel in DC and he got out, very confused to where he was and what the hell had happened.

Bonus Story: Once I picked up this guy on the middle of the highway on a bridge between DC and VA. We drove him to a storage place in VA where he has his stuff. He ended up being hilarious and we hung out with him for a long time because he couldn’t get into the storage place. He is on the left in the photo below, my fried Matt is on the right.

Also, on a side note about the book, if nothing else, I have been saying “dig” twice as much as normal. And for anyone who knows me, that is a lot.

So I watched this movie yesterday about Washington, DC radio icon Petey Green. I am very interested in 60-70s black radicalism, so Green is very appealing to me. I am also from DC, so that made me want to see it more. It was a pretty solid film which did not really have much of a point or a plot. It is about an ex-con who got a job as a radio DJ. He was upsetting to people, but then a lot of people liked him anyway. Sort of like a black version of Howard Stern’s Private Parts only less funny. The he just sort of quit and then they flash forward many years and he died. Not very exciting. That being said, there are funny moments and some mostly exaggerated details about Green. I Googled him to find out more, and there is not much on him, but a bunch of things in the movie aren’t true. However, there is a scene where he comes out of my favorite restaurant in DC called Ben’s Chili Bowl, so I was pretty excited about that. And then I found this amazing video and I was even more excited.

Last night I went to the premier of Nerve.com’s new web series Tight Shots. It was pretty great. The Gaskets do all the music for the show and my little brother has a cameo in one of the later episodes, although he says nothing. It is very funny and I think it gets better as it goes on. I took like 5 photos at the after party and they are here. You should watch the first episode below and then check the site out every week for more.

As you probably know by now from reading this blog, my favorite director is Werner Herzog. I am sort of obsessed with him. Anyway his first “fictional” film since 2001 came out yesterday. It is called Rescue Dawn and it stars the amazing Christan Bale and the often hilarious Steve Zahn. The thing about Herzog’s films are that the documentaries have moments of fiction and the fictional films are filmed like documentaries. This one was based on my favorite of his documentaries, Little Deiter Needs To Fly, about a pilot who is imprisoned in a POW camp in Laos in the late 60’s. Everyone I saw Recuse Dawn loved it, and while it was more commercial than most of his films held true to the Herzogian cannon. The only noticeable difference was its lack of slow sweeping landscape shots. They were missed, and the film was faster paced than I am used to for a Herzog film. Oh yeah, and there was also a pretty cheesy Hollywood ending… that being said, the film is way better than anything else in the theaters right now and would be a good introduction to Herzog for people who keep to the multiplexes. So, go see it, now. Lots of explosions and guns and gross bugs! Woo…

I have seen a bunch of films in the last three days. (Helpful Hint: Don’t see Die Hard or Evan Almighty, even on a plane) Today I saw Zebraman, and snuck into Troublemakers, but I didn’t stay too long because I had some stuff to do. After said stuff, I went to see Michael Moore’s Sicko. I used to be a huge Moore fan until he became the mouth piece for leftist politics. I like his movies and TV shows, but I don’t really want him speaking for me as a liberal. He is sort of a douche. Anyway, his movie is probably really important to see. You will get all riled up and upset and then get pissed on the car ride home, and then you will go to McDonald’s and forget all about it. I know I will. My friend Teddy has had this horrible pain behind his eyes for the last two weeks, but he won’t go to the doctor until next week because his insurance hasn’t kicked in yet. I am going to lose my insurance in about 10 months. It is pretty upsetting. Once my friends and I got in a huge brawl. I had to take a few of them to the hospital. I had a black eye and a shovel had been broken over my back, it made a cool imprint, but I was completely fine. The woman at intake at the hospital convinced me the doctors should have a look at me. I agreed. I was there for about 20 minutes and I walked out with a 1500 dollar bill which included 8 dollars for two Advil. Luckily I have insurance, but there are 46 million US citizens who don’t. So, the movie was enjoyable, probably the least funny, least stunt filled effort of Moore’s career, but it certainly didn’t blow me away like Roger and Me did the first time I saw it.

This is the second Takashi Miike film I have seen that was made for little kids. This is the second time I have left the theater thinking how fucked up Japanese kids must be. With in 5 minutes of the film starting one of the main characters is talking about how he got crabs from a prostitute. Anyway, the movie is about this pathetic third grade teacher who dreams of being a 70’s TV super hero that no one has ever heard of because it was canceled after only 7 episodes. He makes a costume and once he puts it on, the episodes start becoming reality and he lives out the life of Zebraman fighting crab monsters and aliens for 2 hours. Completely different from Big Bang Love that I saw the other day, but just as twisted as his other kids movie The Great Yokai War. I would recommend you see every Miike film you can get a hold of, but he does like 5 a year, so who knows, there has to be a lot of mediocre films out there. Zebraman is pretty great though, just don’t bring your kids.