“As a longtime MAGNET reader, I have patiently glanced through Andrew Earles’ Where’s The Street Team? column, hoping that one day I would either get the point or find some humor contained within. However, after reading issue #69’s ‘Made In Canada,’ I slowly felt a wave of nausea creep in, and it certainly wasn’t from side-splitting laughter. What’s the point of attempting to tear a strip off of both new and old MAGNET legends such as the Band, Arcade Fire, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen? You only have to flip a few pages later to the salivating preview of the Band’s new boxed set or to the gushing cover story on Vancouver’s New Pornographers to scratch your head over the disconnect between Earles and the rest of MAGNET. And as for naming a hummable song by the Band, has Earles ever heard ‘The Weight’?”
Marc Morrissette
Vancouver, BC, Canada
My Response:
Why don’t you patiently flip the page? “The Weight” is one of the more indefensible classic rock radio staples. Total shit, like the Band’s entire output. I’m going to come up there and beat you with the closest item, which will probably be a set of tire chains. THE SNOW WILL BE RED THE NIGHT THAT WE MEET, MARC, THE SNOW WILL BE RED!!!
“Thank you very much for stooping and becoming a lowbrow, lame music rag. I had to endure not one but two sad-sack articles that evoked the ghosts (and tiring, repetitious gags) of 1983 film Strange Brew. Wow, how novel. Instead of coming across as clever, Andrew Earles comes across as a complete moron. While he crowns Arcade Fire, Our Lady Peace and Sloan as the Kings Of Lame, their shit has tastier licks than any radio-friendly drivel that’s being pumped out ad nauseum south of the 49th Parallel. Has Earles forgotten about Linkin Park and Green Day?”
Richard Sigesmund
Toronto, ON, Canada
My response:
Jokes on you, Richard Needs-Another-Surname, as you’re the one that paid for the issue. There was nothing in the column that evoked Strange Brew. I wouldn’t be caught dead writing the phrase “Kings of Lame,” but it seems Richard has no problem writing “their shit has tastier licks…” Fucking moron. No, I didn’t forget about shitty American radio. The column was about Canada.
Before readers write this off as more complaining, I’d like to wedge in my commendation for Good Night And Good Luck, a minimal, easy, near-perfect film.
With that out of the way, here are two unfair and accurate movie reviews:
Walk The Line
Long, boring and less eventful than any VH-1 shot at the same genre. Factually questionable in some places, meaning, I question the validity of Waylon Jenning’s (played by son and King of Leon-come-lately Shooter) long hippie hair in 1966. The outlaws were outlaws in ’66, but they had yet to dirty themselves up. I question the drug usage throughout the movie. Johnny Cash was addicted to painkillers, yet many of the scenes depict the effects of speed, and speed is what he is offered early in the movie. Was he into speed before the painkillers? The shaking hands, frantic dialing of the phone, etc. Now, painkillers can have a speedy talky-talk impact on the system, but your hands don’t tremble, nor does one fly into fits of rage. Then, the withdrawal sequence is clearly one induced by painkiller addiction. Be straight with the audience. When a the script uses nothing more descriptive than the word “pills”, it serves to smooth over the product, turning it into what the filmmakers were obviously aiming for: Lifetime Channel vanilla for the big screen. Lastly, were we not led to believe, over the years, that Johnny Cash was of the reliably copy-worthy type? Specifically the mysterious, troubled, doomed, genius, ilk? According to this movie, he was a dirt stupid, bumbling oaf with infrequent flashes of determination and creativity.
“JUUUUUUUUUNNNNEEEEE, OPEN THE DOOR JUUUUUUUUUUNNNNEEE!!!!”
“JUUUUUUUUUNNNNEEEEE, ANSWER THE PHONE, JUUUUUUUUNNNNEEEE!!!!!”
(repeat ad infinitum)
And dragging along that nag-the-paint-from-the-walls frumpasaurous wife for ten plus years of total hell….it’s a wonder she didn’t stab him in his sleep.
SYRIANA
Oil is bad? For everyone? For everything? Hey thanks. Oil companies are corrupt? Our government is corrupt??? My mind is blown. I’m all “woke the fuck up” now!!! Like Traffic, which was written/adapted by this guy, Syriana is an infuriating mixture of the obvious being stated (a service to stupid people, I suppose…in this case, REAL stupid), preachy heavy-handedness, fantasy situations (more on that later), and clumsy ensemble maximization.
What it amounts to is clevered-up Jerry Bruckheimer, or we can reverse this and lump it into the growing, and longstanding, genre of Smart Films for Dumb People.
Sure, it’s entertainment. Entertainment that’s not very entertaining, sadly, and please believe all of the other bad reviews in one regard: It is a fucking mess. It feels like watching the first 15 minutes of 20 different movies. But aside from entertainment, it’s no leap to assume that this guy is shooting for some form of realism. Instead, he comes up with fantasy. For instance, I believe that the U.S. government is capable of nefarious activity. I believe that we’ve sanctioned or carried out assassinations. I do not believe that we would assassinate the “prince of Iran” with a missile from the skies. It’s almost as if I was watching a poorly-made conspiratorial thriller from the early-70’s, thinking to myself, “Ha, that would never happen or be spoken in that manner, especially these days,” but I was watching a movie set in 2005. Points for most hilariously misleading tagline of the year (“Everything Is Connected”).
A violent case of food poisoning/stomach virus (?) had down from 11p Saturday night until what feels like a few minutes ago, so I would hope that you are not hearing the bad, or inevitable, news from me. I lack any poignant Richard Pryor memories, other than pulling That Nigger’s Crazy out of my half-sister’s LP stack when I was seven, and being told to “put that back.” My first stand-up obsession was Bill Cosby…those LP’s were all over the house. Then I came up sneaking various episodes of HBO’s Young Comedians Special in the back bedroom. This paralleled a fixation on Eddie Murphy. Only later would I go through a Pryor phase, more with subdued reverence and strong belly laughs than a wide-eyed journey on a path yet traveled. His autobiography (Pryor Convictions) is sleek, easy, and good.
1. “Cocaine” From Is It Something I Said? (1975)
2. “Acid” From Bicentennial Nigger (1976)
3. His role in Blue Collar (1978) Note: Please rent this movie. Heartbreaking cinema.
4. “When Your Woman Leaves You” From Is It Something I Said? (1975)
5. Wanted: Live In Concert and subsequent film, Richard Pryor: Live In Concert (1978/1979) Note: Both are solid, no lose experiences. The latter created the stand-up movie genre.
6. Pryor’s Place (aired on CBS, September 1984 – June 1985) Note: Overlooked, inventive Saturday morning series produced Sid and Marty Krofft. Ray Parker Jr. sang the theme.
7. “Nigger With A Seizure” From That Nigger’s Crazy (1974)
8. “Black and White Women” From Bicentennial Nigger (1976)
9. “Just Us” From Is It Something I Said? (1975)
10. His refusal to speak, or even acknowledge the existence of the Laff Records LP’s. When Pryor walked off of a stage in 1970, after years of imitating Bill Cosby, and began honing his blue, racially/politically-charged material in small black clubs, Laff mogul David Drozen recorded much of this material (1970 – 1974), thus spreading LP’s of poor quality throughout the rest of the decade. Though without a legal leg to stand on (they were authorized recordings), Pryor nonetheless blanked out this chapter in his creative evolution. I filched the Laff logo for my website.